A Play of Shadow (61 page)

Jenn didn’t hesitate, going right inside. Bannan followed after a carefully casual look up the stairs. They were empty, and no one on the walkway seemed to pay undue attention. Their watcher? Nowhere to be seen. Good. He ducked to enter.

Inside, a banner hung from the ceiling, its neat black letters declaring: “Birr’s Custom and Imported Tokens—If I Don’t Have It, Who Will?” A round-faced man, presumably “Birr,” sat beneath on a tall stool behind a counter. Seeing them, he frowned. “You took your time.”

“You weren’t our first stop,” Jenn Nalynn replied without hesitation or apology. She made a show of examining the multitude of items displayed on the counter. No two were the same, though there were groupings. Polished stones and gems; small stoppered bottles; folded paper squares; an array of animal parts, scales, pickled hearts, dried fins, more of that sort.

The largest group took pride of place at the center: bones, lovingly arrayed upon a swath of black velvet. They’d have had history, Bannan thought, such bones. Names and stories. Loved ones. Enemies. Now, all that remained was what value they’d bring from those who’d grind them to powder.

In hope of magic.

“We’re here now,” she said and touched fingers to shoulder. “I am Jenn. May I have your name, esteemed artisan?”

Bannan winced inwardly. Jenn wasn’t to reveal they knew of this Birr, but he’d not anticipated a sign, especially placed where it couldn’t be missed.

A sign she couldn’t read.

But the artisan merely nodded. “I’m Plevna. Birr’s gone for the day.” He touched his own shoulders, their skin so covered with ink it gave the illusion of clothing. He glanced at Bannan, waiting for an introduction.

The truthseer tapped his own shoulder with his staff and didn’t approach, a merchant making it clear his apprentice would speak. The artisan turned back to Jenn.

“Business, is it?” His eyes traveled from her head to her boots and back. “Well, then. What’s your lie?” he challenged.

Plevna had expected someone. Was this a code, to identify the right buyer? If so, they’d walked into a dealing with nothing safe about it. The truthseer’s fingers closed on the staff. He’d checked its heft and balance. As good as a club, should the need arise.

Jenn, being less suspicious, took the question for an honest one. “I’m here to offer you a token for information, which isn’t a lie.” She tilted her head. “Why would you want one?”

“I collect them.”

The truth, however odd. Bannan relaxed his grip on the staff.

Plevna stretched his arms over his head, spine cracking, then brought them down, laying his palms flat on the velvet between the bones. “Everyone has a lie. Yours could be interesting. New, perhaps. Or not. It’s our favored coin, we makers of magic.” He smiled, exposing teeth with letters written in red upon each. “Come. Tell me yours.”

The mass of shoulder tattoos, Bannan realized, were letters—words. He’d met token sellers whose pockets bristled with scraps of paper, each covered with wishings. He supposed this was more permanent.

“My lie,” Jenn Nalynn said, the truth shining in her face to Bannan’s deeper sight, “is that I speak Naalish.”

After an incredulous stare, Plevna broke into a wheezing laugh. “Ancestors Clever and Convincing,” he said at last. “I am impressed, woman. A spell is it? And a bloody good one. How much do you want for it? Come!”

“Your lie,” she said calmly.

Bannan carefully didn’t smile.

“Mine,” the artisan said finally, wetting his lips, “is not for the telling. Not till I’m done with life and safe.” A finger tumbled a bone, then stabbed at Jenn. “Birr told me to close and go home, business being so slow, but I stayed, feeling lucky. Here you are. If you’re that luck, best be worth my time. A token for information, is it? What do you want to know? More importantly, what are you offering?”

They’d practiced what to say and how, so the truthseer waited for Jenn to ask about the jail.

She drew a sharp, triumphant breath. “You stayed open to be found.”

Bannan’s heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be—

Jenn set the tiny black vial, the roll of parchment waiting a name, and the red starstone on the counter. “You prepared this.”

—but was. He could have hugged her as recognition flared in Prevna’s eyes. Recognition and fear. The artisan leaned back, waving his hands as though to shoo the tokens from his sight. “Illegal. Forbidden. Not mine.”

Fragments of truth. The man was an experienced liar. Trusting Jenn’s gift, Bannan went to the door flap and let it drop, then spun on his heel to bring his staff whistling down.

To stop just above a skull.

“We don’t care about you. We’ll settle,” the truthseer said grimly, “for a name. Who bought these tokens?”

“My customers expect privacy—”

“Do they?” He knew this dance. Instead of pursuing the name, Bannan took a tangent. “What does this wishing do?”

He hadn’t expected Plevna to flinch. “Didn’t say what or why,” the man blurted. “I don’t ask.”

“But you know, don’t you?” Purple, in Jenn’s eyes. She wasn’t happy with this man, not happy at all, and for once Bannan welcomed the chill in the air.

And the ominous snap as canvas walls swelled and billowed with the approaching storm.

~Surely sufficient, elder sister,~ the toad fussed.

It wasn’t wrong, Jenn realized, coming to herself. Dirty pots, she thought determinedly. Days old. Greasy pots.

When the storm didn’t abate, pots and cleaning being homely things, she made herself think of strangers brushing her hair.

The storm subsided, such as it was.

The token dealer, in her opinion a person unworthy of trust or the care of a Blessed Ancestor’s bones—or those of more than one, spotting a second skull on a shelf—turned a peculiar color, then reached a shaking hand for the tokens. “Yes. Not that I myself would make such a thing—but I’ve heard rumors—”

Bannan’s staff inscribed a small circle in the air.

“It’s a wishing to bind a seer of truth. Gift and will.”

Bones became dust; stones and gem shattered; bottles and stoppers and papers and bits of poor creatures burst into flames that quickly spread to velvet and countertop. Plevna scampered from his stool to cower in a corner. “I made them! I’ll tell you! Stop!”

Flames being dangerous to others, Jenn wished, with more restraint, for them to cease.

And they did.

Bannan put his boot to the charred counter and pushed. It fell asunder, cold cinders and ash covering the carpet that was the floor. He held out his open hand. There, on the palm, were the tokens. She’d not seen him retrieve them.

“Start with who,” he said then, harsh and unforgiving.

And Jenn didn’t know if Bannan meant who’d intended to bind a truthseer . . .

Or the truthseer intended to be bound . . .

“Her name’s Nellie and she makes flowers that blossom as glass. Her asters are too yellow.” Having made her report, Jenn put her hand flat on Bannan’s chest. “He told you where to find the city jail,” she said quietly, mindful of the crowd. “Why are still we doing this?”

Because what had chased two little boys from their home wanted nothing so sane as ransom, and if it wasn’t Werfol—for the token dealer hadn’t known the target—then they’d been after him, scattering his entire family in their pursuit.

Covering her hand with his, Bannan nodded to the next stall in the market. “Not seeing our watcher doesn’t mean we’re unseen. A few more, Jenn, so they don’t think the token dealer our true destination. Then we’ll go.” They’d been fortunate. Between the performers on the walkway and the music all around, the disturbance within Plevna’s had escaped notice.

He’d escaped with blisters on thumb and forefinger to show for saving what they had to have. A name alone wasn’t enough. A name, together with the tokens now back in his belt pouch? Proof.

The source of the flame firmed her round little chin and nodded back.

The truthseer watched Jenn, in her tunic and pants, hair of gold and shoulders of silken skin, as she went to yet another artisan. Framed images as tall as he lined the opening to the stall, each a card from the Whither Omen Decks employed by fortune-tellers across Mellynne and Rhoth. Bannan wondered idly if they’d ever told a fortune for a turn-born.

Then Jenn’s hand lifted, beckoning him to follow, and idle wonder became alarm. Ancestors Beguiled and Gullible! Bannan laid his hand over his purse—and the toad inside it. “Tell your elder sister it’s time to go.”

From her frown, the little cousin had done just that, but Jenn simply waved more vehemently. Before she could shout, Bannan sighed and went to join her in the stall.

“This is Thomm.”

Thomm was a slender young man. A thin scar ran from forehead to cheek, giving him a rakish look; knife cut, Bannan guessed, just missing the right eye. Though quietly dressed, in a simple black tunic and pants, the artisan’s right shoulder and what showed of his arm were tattooed in the seeming of a chain whose links penetrated the flesh. Above his heart, exposed by his shirt, was a second tattoo: a pair of small black ovals, their tips overlapped so one flowed into the other.

He’d seen the like before. The ovals represented a fortune-teller’s link to the limitless future. The chains? A vow to be bound by the truth. In Bannan’s experience, the only binding involved the fortune-teller’s fingers and the purses of fools. But that was in Vorkoun.

Thomm brushed fingertips over the nearest standing card. Its depiction of Prosperity—a figure wreathed in exotic flowers and fruits—bowed, even as the chain tattoo took on a golden glow.

Magic, indeed. Well, there’d be no fortunes told today. If this Thomm was like every other fortune-teller, he’d want to know his clients’ present before peering into their future; they’d trouble enough hiding what they were. “Jenn.” Silently cursing whatever Rhothan accent he supposedly had, Bannan bent his head emphatically toward the walkway.

“Thomm’s been waiting for us,” Jenn countered. “He’s—”

The truthseer turned on the artisan, unable to restrain himself. “Let me guess. You’ve seen a future with us in it. One of profit.”

Fingertips to chain. “It is not my place to view a Keeper’s future,” Thomm replied softly. “The only profit comes from What the Source Provides. By the Blessings of our Ancestors, I give myself to this service. And to yours.”

Shadow Sect.

Waiting for them. Why? A thrill of suspicion ran along Bannan’s bones. “Have you been following us?” he demanded, watching for a lie.

“We have not, and would not. But someone dared,” Thomm said. “Shall we continue in private?”

It was the truth.

Heart’s Blood. Bad enough the Shadow Sect knew of turn-born, of Jenn and himself. That, he’d hoped they could manage.

If they learned the rest—that they’d come to rescue his sister and her husband—how long before they discovered he wasn’t turn-born, but something far more useful?

A man, able to live within the Verge.

With the tokens to bind a truthseer in his belt.

He should have let Jenn destroy them, but it was too late for that sensible notion now.

Thomm led them to the back, where a cloth-covered table waited. He gathered up the palm-sized cards strewn across the cloth, tapping them together into a pile. More of the life-sized cards surrounded the table, their figures looming as if trying to read over her shoulder. They weren’t, in Jenn’s opinion, at all pleasant, being shown in distorted postures. None had faces.