by Sharon Shinn
She felt her mouth twist. “Maybe,” she said. “But that still doesn’t make me an admirable person. Someone you should care about. It just means I’m atoning. Like you. Trying to do something good now and then to negate all the bad things I’ve done.”
His own smile went awry. “That is when I knew you would leave Malinqua. When I knew you would want to go home. Because you were finally finding within yourself the strength to change. To atone. To make everything right again.”
“What about you?” she asked softly. “When will you realize you have atoned? That by living a solitary and thoughtful life, you have made up for whatever sins you’ve committed?”
He dropped his hands but did not turn away. “I do not know that I ever will,” he said.
She put a hand on his arm and he didn’t shake her off. “But you want to. You want to believe you’re good enough for an ordinary man’s existence—surrounded by friends, loved ones, maybe a family. You want that, or you wouldn’t be here. Tonight, with me. You wouldn’t be in Welce at all.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But just because I want to be with you does not mean I believe I deserve to be.” When she started to speak, he gave her a stern look. “And just because you kissed me tonight does not mean you trust me enough to take up that life at my side.”
“Maybe not,” she echoed him. “But I want to.”
He spread his arms and her hand dropped back to her side. “I do not want to go backward from here—back to loneliness and isolation,” he said. “But I do not know how to go forward.”
She leaned up and gave him one quick kiss on the mouth, a reminder, a promise, a reassurance that she wasn’t afraid. “Slowly,” she said. “As we both find our footing.”
He bowed his head and nodded. “Slowly,” he agreed. “But I am not ready for any of the rest of it yet. Your friends, your daughter. Both of us must be more certain before we take a step down that particular road.”
“I agree,” she said. “But I hope the journey starts before long.”
“I hope for the same thing.”
She squeezed his arm, said, “I’m freezing,” and ran lightly up the walk. At the door, she paused to blow him a kiss before stepping inside.
Josetta was standing in the kierten, trying not to smirk. “I swear I wasn’t spying,” she said. “I thought I heard voices so I looked outside and then I realized it was you and so I—well—you could bring him inside, you know.”
Leah laughed and threw her arms around Josetta, who laughed and hugged her back. “Not quite yet,” she said. “Soon. But not quite yet.”
“In my experience, soon arrives when you’re not expecting it,” Josetta said. “Don’t think you can play too many games with fate.”
Leah laughed again. “Not this time,” she said. “I almost think I know what I’m doing.”
• • •
But Josetta was right. Soon came the very next day, when Chandran met Mally.
It was thirdday, never as busy as secondday, so Annova, Chandran, and Leah had a few quiet moments between customers to straighten the cash box and replenish stock. They were clustered around the front counter, debating which new pieces of merchandise to put out next, when Leah heard the door open and felt cold air swirling in. She had already donned her professional smile when she turned to greet the new visitors, but that warmed to an expression of real pleasure when she saw who had entered.
“Virrie! Mally! I didn’t know we were expecting you!”
Mally ran up to hug her—a mark of favor so great it still practically drove Leah to her knees—while Virrie offered her usual placid smile. “Josetta asked me to come with her to the shelter this morning and I didn’t think it was the place for a child,” Virrie said. “I hoped you wouldn’t mind watching her for the day.”
It took a second before Leah put those pieces together. Mally—here all day—with Chandran. At Josetta’s request. It required no great stretch of the imagination to guess that the princess had done this on purpose to engineer a meeting between Leah’s daughter and her admirer. And she thinks Darien is a meddler, Leah thought somewhat hysterically. She’s worse than he is.
“Of course—we’re always delighted to have her,” Leah said. She smiled down at Mally and patted the girl’s dark curls, but her mind was racing. In fact, her heart was racing. Was Josetta right? Was it time for Chandran to meet Mally? He would leave if she asked him to. In fact, she could sense him behind her, folding up his papers, stepping away from the cash box, preparing to announce he had some errand to run.
“I want to play with the rocks,” Mally said. “And feed the fish.”
“Then that’s what you’ll do,” Leah said.
Virrie waved and headed out the door. “Josetta sent an elaymotive for me, so I’ve got to go. I’ll be back tonight.”
Chandran’s voice sounded, right behind Leah. “I need to leave, too.”
She didn’t think about it too hard; she just turned toward him and placed a hand on his arm. Her other hand was still resting on Mally’s head and she felt like a conduit between them, a living connection. She could bind them together, she could keep them apart, and any consequence would be directly attributable to her actions.
“Oh, surely that other chore can wait,” she said. “You at least should stay long enough to say hello to Mally.”
Annova could always be counted on to know when a situation was volatile. “I’m going upstairs,” she said, and disappeared.
Then it was just the three of them. Still standing a few feet from the door. Still tied together by the placement of Leah’s hands. Chandran, she could tell by his corded muscles, was almost too tense to breathe. He stared down at Mally in absolute silence.
By contrast, Mally seemed at ease, deeply curious. She stared, too, but in a friendly way, taking in the details of Chandran’s face and clothing. In her role as decoy princess, she’d probably met dozens of foreigners, Leah realized, or at least had seen them at close range. She wasn’t frightened or shy, but she wasn’t simpering and obsequious, either. Merely, she was Mally. Interested in everything.
Leah dropped her hands to her sides as she began introductions. “Mally, this is Chandran. I knew him in Malinqua, where he traded in very fine merchandise, but he’s originally from Cozique. Chandran, this is Mally. She lives with the torz prime and his wife, Virrie. The one who just left.”
Leah had spoken in Welchin, since Chandran could manage it with reasonable fluency and she wanted this to be as easy as possible for Mally. Chandran offered the sort of bow he would give a high-ranking noblewoman, and Mally responded in kind.
“Do you speak Coziquela?” Mally asked.
“I do,” Chandran said.
“So do I,” Mally said, switching to that language, “but I’m not very good.”
Chandran bowed again and said, “I think you sound quite respectable.”
“It’s easier than Soechin,” Mally said. “Maybe because Soechin isn’t very pretty.”
“I agree,” Chandran said. “There is no language more beautiful than Coziquela—and no language spoken by more people. If you learn it, you will never be at a loss for conversation, no matter who you meet.”
“Were you born in Cozique?”
“I was.”
“Why did you leave?”
Leah sucked in her breath, but Chandran answered without hesitation. “My father arranged for me to marry a woman from the Karkades, so I went there to live. But I did not like it, so after a while I moved to Malinqua.”
“And now you’re here.”
“And now I am here.”
“Is this where you’re going to stay?”
“I do not know yet. How about you? Are you going to stay in Welce for your whole life?”
Mally gave the question a moment’s thought. “I don’t know yet,” she said, giving him back his own
answer.
“There are a lot of other countries to see,” Chandran said. “You might find one you like better.”
“I might find one I like,” Mally said. “But probably not one that’s better.”
Chandran smiled for the first time during this conversation. “So I understand that in Welce you all have elemental affiliations,” he said. “What is yours?”
“I’m torz. Like Taro and Virrie and Leah. What about you?”
“I do not seem to have an affiliation.”
Leah interposed. “Sometimes people from other countries don’t. Not the way we do.”
Mally regarded him a moment. “I don’t think you’d be torz, anyway,” she said.
“Is that a bad thing?” Chandran asked.
Now Mally smiled for the first time. “No, don’t be silly. You can be anything and it’s good. Unless you’re Rafe.”
Chandran raised his eyebrows. “He is not good?”
Mally laughed and Leah tried to explain. “He’s half Malinquese and half Berringese, and whenever he draws blessings he always ends up with ghost coins. Or so Josetta tells me.”
“Do you get ghost coins?” Mally asked him.
“No, indeed. I have tried it twice, and each time I have ended up with real blessings.”
“Like what?”
“Honor, travel, resolve. Honesty. Grace.”
Mally listened closely. “Which one did you get twice?” She didn’t miss anything, this girl.
“Honor,” he said.
“Maybe you’re elay. Like Josetta.”
“Maybe.”
Mally looked at Leah. “Taro could probably tell him.”
Leah was amused. “Why do you think that?”
“Because he’s the torz prime. He always knows what people are before they tell him.” She thought about that for a minute. “Well, he knows after he shakes their hands.” She turned back to Chandran to expand on her answer. “Zoe and Taro have to touch people to understand them. So does Mirti. Nelson has to hear them talking and Kayle just has to be nearby. All the primes are different.”
“I see,” Chandran said. He was obviously trying to hide his amusement.
“It sounds a little crazy, but she’s actually right,” Leah said. “Nelson can practically read people’s minds. Zoe can put her hands on people and analyze their blood—she can tell if they’re related to each other, just by touching them. It’s fascinating and a little unnerving to watch.”
“So you should ask Taro,” Mally said.
“Perhaps I will. If I meet him.”
“You’d like him,” Mally said. “Everybody does.”
“She’s right about that, too.”
Mally looked around the shop. “Do you still have the box of stones for me? Can I play with them?”
“Yes I do, and yes you can. Do you want to go upstairs with Annova or do you want to stay down here? You can set up in the window again. There’s a display table there now, but you can sit on the floor next to it. There’s lots of light.”
“I want to be in the window. I can watch the people walk by.” She looked at Chandran. “Do you want to sit with me?”
He glanced at Leah and she gave the briefest of nods. “That would be delightful,” he said. “There is nothing I would like better.”
NINETEEN
For the next hour, the shop was eerily quiet, existing in a strangely peaceful and undisturbed space. Leah sat behind the counter, tallying receipts; Annova moved between the upper and lower levels, carrying down merchandise and tidying displays; and Chandran and Mally sat in the window embrasure, talking in low voices. No customers walked in. There didn’t even seem to be any traffic down the boulevard. No one appeared to be alive in all of Chialto except the four of them.
Despite the calm, Leah was far from relaxed. She sat on a stool, counting money and reconciling accounts, and felt her whole body clench with tension as she strained to overhear what Mally and Chandran were saying. It appeared to be simple and random—he told her about the Great Market in Malinqua, she described Taro’s estate and Darien’s house—and yet they both seemed wholly engrossed in their conversation. Or maybe they were engrossed in their activity. Mally had hauled out the box of multicolored stones and dumped them on the floor between them. This time she wasn’t arranging them into patterns; this time she was balancing one on top of the other to create fantastical towers. She chose and placed her rocks with great care, laying a smooth, flat specimen across one that was more conical in shape, then placing another flat one on top of that. Leah was astonished to see how skillfully and solidly she was assembling these structures. She had already created one that was nearly two feet tall and showed no signs of toppling over, and she’d started a second one a few inches away. It looked as sturdy as the first.
Chandran sat beside her, building something of his own. He didn’t appear to be aiming for height so much as dimensionality. From what Leah could see without craning her neck, he had used a couple dozen rocks to define a honeycombed space about the size of a large dinner plate, and now he was essentially roofing this bottom level with a thin layer of wide, flat stones. He had a pile of chunkier rocks next to him; Leah thought he might be planning to use them to build a second level. So far, his construction didn’t appear to be any more likely to fall over than either of Mally’s.
Annova came back downstairs, glanced at the two builders, and headed to the sales counter to drop off some papers for Leah. “That looks like fun,” she said.
“I think I’d manage to put three rocks together before they all came tumbling down.”
“And you call yourself torz,” Annova scoffed.
Before Leah could answer, three women stepped inside the shop. She put on her professional smile and stepped up to greet them. “Welcome to Leah’s! Is there anything you’re looking for?”
The women wandered from display to display, asking questions and testing various items against their cheeks or hair. In the end, they only bought small trinkets and Leah was just as glad to escort them back to the door.
Before anyone else could walk in, she stopped by the window to admire the progress of the two artists. Mally had completed her second sculpture, almost exactly the size of the first and apparently just as steady. Chandran was working on the fourth layer of his building.
“Well, you two have certainly been busy,” Leah said. “Mally, I can’t believe how tall you’ve made those stacks of stones. Why don’t they fall over?”
“Because I put them together just the right way,” Mally said seriously.
“She has a great sense of weight and balance and center of gravity,” Chandran said. “Remarkable, really.”
“I see your own creation is just as ambitious, but not as high,” Leah said. “It looks like you’ve created a palace with many, many rooms.”
“He’s building the Great Market and I’m building both of the towers,” Mally explained.
They were landmarks from Malinqua. “Ah,” Leah said. “I suppose Chandran’s been telling you about the royal city of Palminera.”
“He says the red tower is for the sun and the white tower is for the moon. And the red tower is fire and the white tower is ice.”
“Yes, and they’re both really high. Each one has a stairwell inside and you can climb to the top, but you’re out of breath by the time you make it,” Leah said.
“Did you ever do that? Climb all the way up?”
“A few times.” The last time with Chandran. On the night of a citywide celebration. They’d brought food with them, and laughed and talked while they consumed their meal, then they’d stood at the railing and looked out at all the color and gaiety in the streets below. She’d planned to tell him she was leaving Malinqua, but he’d already guessed. She hadn’t known how to tell him goodbye; she hadn’t known how much she’d miss him once she was gone.
There were so many things she still didn’t know, but at least they were different things.
“Did you ever go to the Great Market?”
“Go there? I worked there. For a while, anyway, at Chandran’s booth. That’s how I learned so much about being a shopkeeper.”
“Maybe I’d like to see it someday,” Mally allowed.
“If you ever leave Welce,” Chandran said.
“If I ever do.”
Annova had come up to peer over Leah’s shoulder. “Look at that. Those piles are almost as tall as the girl herself.”
“I think you should build something,” Mally said.
Annova grinned. “I think I should.”
So Annova sat with Mally while Chandran and Leah minded the shop. And then it was Leah’s turn to sit with Mally while the other two waited on customers and kept everything in order.
“I don’t even know what to try to build,” Leah said, picking up pieces and setting them down again.
“I’ll help you,” Mally offered. She scooted closer. “Choose a rock.”
Leah sorted through the pieces on the floor and selected one that was a lopsided cube, rough on the edges but showing a certain defiant coppery spirit.
“That’s very good,” Mally said approvingly. “Now you want a flat one. But not too flat. See how your rock is a little taller on one side? You want one that fits it. The same but the opposite. And you put that on top.”
“Oh, I think I get it. Like puzzle pieces.”
“Except your puzzle is going up.”
Even with Mally to help build it, Leah’s tower fell over twice before she managed to make it more than six stones tall. Still, there was something unexpectedly absorbing about the exercise as Leah attempted to judge size and weight and counterweight. Absorbing and soothing. Leah had been jumpy and a little on edge ever since Mally had entered the shop, but this tranquil, focused task was calming her jangled nerves.
“I wonder if hunti people do something like this with sticks and tree branches,” Leah said. “Maybe they build little huts out in the forest and then sit inside and meditate.”
