an uncomfortable closeness. When he spoke again, it was to dispel that more than from any need. ‘Well, she’s come up in the world quite swiftly,’ he observed aloud as they passed Amber’s shop. He nodded toward a storefront on the corner of Rain Wild Street, where Amber herself sat in the window behind an expensive set of Yicca glass panes. They were as clear as water, and set in elaborately carved and gilded frames. They made the woman in the window look like a framed piece of art. The woven chair she lounged in was of white wickerwork. She wore a long brown gown that hung simply from her shoulders; it more cloaked than enhanced her slight form. Her shop windows were neither shuttered nor barred; no guards lurked outside. Perhaps Amber trusted to her own strange presence to detect thieves. A single dish-lamp burned on the floor beside her with a mellow yellow light. The rich brown of her draped gown pointed up the gold of her skin and hair and eyes. Her bare feet peeped from the bottom of her long skirts. She watched the street with a cat’s wide unblinking stare.
Althea halted to return that stare. She swayed slightly on her feet and without thinking Brashen put his arm around her shoulders to steady her. ‘What is she selling?’ Althea wondered out loud. Brashen winced, certain that the woman beyond the glass had heard her words, but Amber’s expression neither changed nor faltered from her emotionless regard of the dishevelled girl in the street. Althea screwed her eyes tight shut, then opened them wide as if that would change the view. ‘She looks as if she’s all carved of wood. Golden maple.’
The woman behind the glass could hear her words, for Brashen saw a small smile begin to form on her sculpted lips. But when Althea added plaintively, ‘She reminds me of my ship. Lovely Vivacia, with all the colours of life over the silk grain of wizardwood,’ Amber’s face abruptly changed to an expression of extreme distaste. Not quite sure of why that patrician disdain so alarmed him, Brashen nonetheless seized Althea by the elbow and firmly hurried her past the window and on down the dimly lit street.
At the next intersection, he allowed her to slow down. She was limping by then, and he recalled her bare feet and the rough wood of the boardwalk. She said not a word of that, but only asked again, ‘What does she sell there? She’s not one of the Bingtown Traders who have Rain River trade; only liveship families can trade up the Rain River. So who is she and why does she have a shop on Rain Wild Street?’
Brashen shrugged. ‘She was new here, about two years ago. Had a tiny little shop off the Odds and Bodkins Square. She made wooden beads and sold them. Nothing else. Just very pretty wooden beads. A lot of people bought them for their children to string. Then, last year, she moved to a better location and started selling, well, jewellery. Only it’s all made of wood.’
‘Wooden jewellery?’ Althea scoffed. She sounded much more herself and Brashen suspected the walk was sobering her up. Good. Maybe she’d have the sense to tidy herself up before walking barefoot into her father’s house.
‘That’s what I thought, too, until I saw it. I had never known a crafter could find so much in wood. She works with the odd little knotty bits, and brings out faces and animals and exotic flowers. Sometimes she inlays pieces. But it’s as much the wood she chooses as the skill with which she does it. She has an uncanny eye, to see what she does in a bit of wood.’
‘So. Does she work wizardwood, then?’ Althea asked boldly.
‘Fa!’ Brashen exclaimed in disgust. ‘She might be new, but she knows our ways well enough to know that would not be tolerated! No, she only uses ordinary wood. Cherry and oak and I don’t know, all different colours and grains…’
‘There’s a lot more that work wizardwood in Bingtown than would like to own up to it,’ Althea observed darkly. She scratched at her belly. ‘It’s a dirty little trade, but if you want a carved bit and have the coin, you can get it.’
Her suddenly ominous tone made Brashen uneasy. He tried to lighten the conversation. ‘Well, isn’t that what all the world says of Bingtown? That if a man can imagine a thing, he can find it for sale here?’
She smiled crookedly at him. ‘And you’ve heard the rejoinder to that, haven’t you? That no man can truly imagine being happy, and that’s why happiness isn’t for sale here.’
The sudden bleakness of her mood left him at a loss for words. The silence that followed seemed in tune with the cooling of the summer night. As they left the streets of the merchants and tradesmen behind and followed the winding roads into the residential sections of Bingtown, the night grew darker around them. Lanterns were more widely spaced and set far back from the road. Barking dogs threatened them from fenced or hedged yards. The roads here were rougher, the only walkways were of gravel, and when Brashen thought of Althea’s bare feet, he winced sympathetically. But she herself said nothing of it.
In the silence and darkness, his grief for his fallen captain found space to grow in him. More than once he blinked away the sting of tears. Gone. Captain Vestrit was gone, and with him Brashen’s second chance at life. He should have taken better advantage of all the Old Trader offered him while he was alive. He should never have assumed that the helping hand the man had extended him would always be available. Well, now he’d have to make his own third chance. He glanced over at the girl who still depended on his arm. She’d have to make her own way, too, now. Either that, or accept the fate her family parcelled out to her. He suspected they’d find a younger son of a Trader family willing to wed her despite her risqué reputation. Maybe even his own little brother. He didn’t think Cerwin would be any match for Althea’s wilfulness, but the Trell fortunes would mingle well with those of the Vestrits. He wondered how Althea’s adventurousness would stand up to Cerwin’s hide-bound traditionalism. He smiled grimly to himself, and wondered whom he’d pity more.
He’d been to the Vestrits’ home before, but always it had been by daylight, with some bit of ship’s business to take to the captain. The walk to Althea’s home seemed much longer in the night. They left even the distant sounds of the night market behind them. They passed hedges with night blooming flowers perfuming the air. An almost eerie peace descended over Brashen. Today had seen an end to so many things. Once more he was cut loose and drifting, with only himself to rely on. No obligations tomorrow, no schedules. No crews to supervise, no cargo to unload. Only himself to feed. Was that bad, really?
The Vestrit mansion was set well back from the public road. The gardens and grounds hosted insects and frogs, all trilling in the summer night. They provided the only sound other than the crunching of his boots as they walked up the stone drive. It was when he stood before the white stone of the entryway, before the familiar door where he had sometimes awaited admittance on ship’s business, that he suddenly felt grief once more clutch at his throat. Never again, he supposed. This would be the last time he’d stand before this door. After a moment, he noticed that Althea had not let go of his arm. Here, clear of the narrow streets and shops, the moonlight could find her. Her bare feet were dirty, her gown draggled. Her hair had come loose of the lace thing she’d bound it in; at least, half of it had. She suddenly released his arm, stood up straight, and heaved a great sigh.
‘Thank you for seeing me home,’ she said, her voice as level and formal as if he had escorted her home in a carriage after a Trader festival.
‘You’re welcome,’ he said quietly. As if the words had awakened in the rough sailor the genteel boy his mother had once schooled, he bowed deeply to her. He very nearly lifted her hand to his lips, but the sight of his own battered shoes and the tattering edges of his rough cotton trousers recalled to him who he was now. ‘You’ll be all right?’ he half-asked, and half-told, her.
‘I suppose,’ she said vaguely. She turned away from him and set her hand on the latch, only to have the door violently jerked open before her.
Kyle filled the door. He was in his nightrobe and barefoot and his pale hair stood up in tousled tufts on his
