And yet, the girl came every day for spans, spending her visits browsing the foodstuffs mostly, probably fantasizing about what it would be like to eat so well, and from time to time she would pick up a few odds and ends from the general goods carts, but she never bought anything. Oh, she would stop by cart after cart, every time she visited the market, but she simply picked up object after object, turning them over in her hands and then putting them back.
All of the merchants talked about the blindfold she wore, with most remarking that the girl moved too confidently, and acted in a way that was counter to someone who was genuinely blind. Silena could not understand how the girl, apparently blind, never stubbed a toe or stumbled or stepped on anything dangerous.
She suspected the girl was in fact a con artist, and the blindfold was just part of an act to lure others into sympathy for herself as a poor wretched little blind girl. Beggars and their like were known for such deceptions. Silena was convinced that the girl was somehow pilfering food from the vendors, that she had to be taking something, else why continue to keep coming? But when she asked her fellow merchants if they were missing anything, they all claimed that everything was accounted for when she walked away.
No one even knew the girl’s name or if she could even speak, for she had never responded whenever Silena or any of the other merchants had tried talking to her, and eventually Silena had given up, simply waiting warily while the girl amused herself and then moved on. The other merchants had taken to calling her the Tatty Girl. Maybe she wasn’t a thief, maybe she really was just some ignorantly hopeful wretch looking to fulfill a fantasy or three each day, but for Silena, it came down to one simple truth.
She frightened away customers with her odd ways. And now here she was again, dressed once more in her strange costume, and Silena puffed herself up in preparation to shoo her off this time. She would have no more of this mangy denizen harassing her and driving away business.
As the girl approached, Silena had a hard time not scoffing once more at her appearance. Shoeless, dressed in filthy rags from head to knees, she looked like nothing less than a spectre risen from her grave.
When the thought occurred to her, she made the sign of the Three, two fingers of the right hand from forehead, to lips, then to heart, a warding to keep away the spirits of the dead. To make matters worse, Silena and the other vendors had discussed how, not only did the girl appear as a ghost from the ancient stories, but she had the unsettling tendency of vanishing like one too. One breath she was there, the next breath she was gone, as though she had dissolved into the air.
Silena, despite mostly having given up practicing her faith many sojourns ago, still believed in the Divines and in Their power, even if she did presume that They had long ago abandoned Exeter in favor of some other realm or universe.
Looking at the girl close up now, seeing her approach cautiously, Silena felt something change in her assessment and for a reason she couldn’t fully explain, she began to wonder what troubles had followed this young woman that could cause her to look and behave so unusually.
Despite her earlier misgivings, Silena had to grudgingly admit that the girl had never stolen a single item from her or any of the other vendors, and rather than simply shoo the girl away, she made the decision to let the girl approach, and see what might happen. But that didn’t stop her from going on high alert as she walked toward Silena’s stall now.
And now that she had opened herself to the girl’s approach, Silena could see that something was different about the girl this time. Normally, when she appeared in the market, she slowly, lithely made her way from stall to stall, taking her time and seeming to genuinely give each vendor a slice of her time, as though she had not a care in the world. But today, the girl moved with purpose and direction, making a beeline straight for Silena’s stall, and this caught her off guard. That was the first surprise of the day for Silena.
The second came when the girl stopped right in front of Silena, looked her in the eye, if the girl could be said to “look” at all, and opened her mouth to speak.
“You’re name is Silena, right? You deal in antiquities?” the girl said simply.
The voice that came out of that partially scarred face was surprisingly clear and young, and the tone of her speech kind and warm. The questions were completely benign and ordinary, and yet something about it made Silena’s heart leap into her throat, and she felt a moment of disorientation, without understanding why.
The phrasing of the girl’s words, the vocabulary and the confidence in such a young woman conspired to make Silena’s head feel light, and she had to steady herself, then narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Something was most definitely not right with this picture.
Silena regained her composure and felt the fluttering in her chest recede. She didn’t know why she had reacted so strongly to something so innocent, but Silena was shrewd and knew better than to play her hand with this good of a con artist. She decided to string this along to see where it would lead.
“So, she speaks after all. You know, girl, all those times that you’ve stood there like that, fingering my goods and ignoring me as I blathered to myself, you could have had the decency to at least say hello.” Silena let the barest hint of anger into her voice as she finished speaking, just to see how the girl would react.
To Silena’s surprise, the girl’s cheeks, which were already rosy from the web of ruined flesh protruding from under the blindfold, colored in embarrassment.
She sputtered and said “I’m...I’m sorry. I just...”
The girl looked sheepish and flustered now, as though she had been caught doing something she wasn’t confident about with herself, which stood in stark contrast to the confidence of her strides and the way she moved. She had the look of someone who had rehearsed an opening, but had no idea what to do when the response she expected was turned on its head.
Maybe she’s not so savvy after all, Silena thought.
The girl collected her thoughts and continued.
“I never know who to trust, so I don’t trust anyone,” she flatly stated.
Silena leaned in slightly to examine the girls face. She sounded completely sincere, and even more surprising was how honest and open the girl was being. She normally liked to look into a person’s eyes, which she used to gauge their honesty, but Silena had to give the girl credit for speaking so bluntly.
“A wise move in a place like this.” Silena admitted.
She still didn’t trust the girl, but the girl had shown her something that she hadn’t seen in a long time, and Silena decided that maybe she was worthy of being given a chance. Still, Silena wasn’t going to make it easy for her.
“You know who I am, but I don’t know you, so you have me at a disadvantage, and I won’t abide that. Tell me your name and your business or get gone. I’ve no time for idle chit-chat,” Silena stated.
The girl, almost involuntarily, bowed at the waist slightly in greeting, something else that Silena hadn’t seen from anyone since the time before Uriel III walled up the Seat for good. The girl was clearly no older than seventeen...born decades after the Seat had irrevocably changed.
How does she know of such customs?
“My name is Catelyn.” The girl stated it plainly, and without preamble or further illumination.
Silena could say this at least, she liked the direct way this girl conducted herself.
“I have something I would like to sell.”
Now Silena was truly intrigued, and she raised her eyebrow. But at the prospects of acquiring a new item, Silena switched over to all business.
“Really? And what makes you think that I would be interested in anything a street rat like you has?” Silena decided to test the girl’s negotiating skill. She thrust out her chest and put hands on hips, challenging the girl to deliver.
The girl simply smiled, and when she did, for some reason which Silena could neither explain nor understand, something inside of her...shifted. Her heart fluttered again, and
her palms grew clammy.
Feelings she thought long buried surfaced and threatened to overflow out of her, but she could put no name to what it was she felt. It made her uncomfortable and yet it warmed her at the same time, and to cover how discomfited she felt she crossed her arms across her chest defensively.
The girl reacted to her gesture with surprise, and Silena became convinced that this was all some sort of a con. Silena immediately looked all around her, expecting to see an accomplice stealing her blind while the girl distracted her with her charming smile and disarming foibles. But there was no one; just the girl, now looking slightly puzzled.
Silena focused her piercing gaze now on the young woman’s face, looking for any sign of deception, and looking closer at the blindfold. It appeared to be thick cloth, tied tightly around the girl’s eyes, and appearing to her to be quite legitimate. Could this girl really be for real? Silena had seen strange things over the sojourns, and this was certainly threatening to top all of them.
She watched the girl’s face closely, but decided for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom, to soften her tone.
“What game are you playing at, young one?”
The girl hesitated, turning her head as though looking around. Silena suspected strongly now that the girl could see as clearly as she herself could, and that the blindfold was a game, part of a ploy to earn sympathy or lower suspicion.
“Game? I don’t understand,” the girl said, looking confused.
To prove her point, Silena decided to be as direct with the girl as she was with Silena, and swiftly reached out and snagged the edge of the girl’s blindfold.
The girl, to Silena’s shock, was faster.
She didn’t flinch, but before Silena could react, the girl’s hand was grasping her own gently but firmly, preventing her from removing the blindfold. The girl possessed a strength that Silena would have never suspected her to have, just based on how skinny she looked. This girl was turning out to be full of mysteries.
“What are you doing?” the girl asked seriously.
For the first time, Silena heard a razor sharp edge to the girl’s voice, and she knew that she had just entered a dangerous new phase of the game.
Silena decided to wait it out and didn’t try to pull her hand away, with the girl still firmly holding her wrist. Silena quickly considered all her options and decided to return like for like, and told her the truth. All of it.
“I don’t think that you’re really blind. I think it’s part of an act you’re putting on, either to con people or to play for sympathy, or maybe both. I wanted to expose that secret, and so I was going to take off that blindfold so that I could expose your lies and we could both put all of our blades on the table.”
The girl smirked briefly. Then, as though she were handling a child, she removed Silena’s hand from her face, replaced it with her other free hand, and pulled the blindfold up over her forehead.
As soon as the blindfold was removed, and the girl named Catelyn let go of her hand, Silena knew that she had been wrong. So very, very wrong. Silena felt her head get light again.
Beneath the blindfold, where two eyes should have been, the skin was ruined; bubbled and puckered flesh, dense with striated, webbed scars. Where the eye sockets were, only two depressions of mottled flesh, the eyelids melted shut permanently by something.
The sight made Silena’s stomach flip over and her knees wobbled. The scars appeared old, and Silena could tell that whatever happened to have caused such damage, the girl had suffered immensely when she had received them. She marveled at just how strong this girl truly was, to have survived such an ordeal.
Such a will to live, she thought.
As that thought bubbled up to her consciousness, Silena once more felt something that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Sympathy.
And finally the name for the other feeling she had begun to feel once more appeared in her mind, as though it had never left: compassion. In that moment, although she couldn’t explain why, she had an overwhelming desire to help this girl. So many things came to her mind, words from the past, to try and express the sadness that she felt in that moment.
“Child, I’m...I’m sorry,” was all she could muster.
The girl put on a wan smile and brought the blindfold back down into place, precisely and expertly, and with at least this secret revealed, Silena now began to comprehend just how strong and talented and graceful the girl had to be to survive, to move, to find the wall to live each day, in spite of her condition.
Neither of the women, young or old, spoke of the establishment of trust that had just occurred, but Silena could sense that both of them felt it and it smoothed the transition as they moved right back to the business at hand.
“So, about the object I have for sale,” Catelyn said softly.
Out of habit, Silena put on her mask of cool detachment to once again conduct business, but she knew that this was not going to be anything at all like her normal deals.
“Well, I don’t know how much you know, but most of my business in antiquities comes from thieves and cutthroats on one end, and the Empire on the other. It’s clear to me that you’re not a beggar, despite how you may be dressed, so let’s assume that you legitimately have an item that carries some value.”
“That’s why I came to you. I‘ve...observed...all of the vendors in this marketplace and of them all, you stood out to me as a person I could trust not to stab me in the back or gouge me on the price,” Catelyn said.
Now it was Silena’s turn to inject a little of the unknown back into their transaction.
“Don’t be so sure about the second part. I will pay what I think it’s worth to the Empire, and not a mark more. Although they’re frequent customers, they enforce a particularly deep discount. You know the meaning of that, yes?”
The girl smirked, and bit her lip. It was clear she had anticipated some disappointment, but given what she could see of the girl, she assumed that Catelyn had been hoping for lifechanging money. Silena was being honest though; the Empire cared not one whit about keeping Silena in business. They would pay whatever they wished to pay, and there was no negotiating with the lapdogs who worked for the Emperor. If she shriveled up tomorrow, they would simply buy and sell from someone else and offer the same prices to them.
Still, Silena felt an odd compulsion to make this girl feel better.
What is happening to me?
“Catelyn, let’s do it like this. You wait for me to close shop, then let’s set a place to meet. You can show me this item of yours and I’ll tell you if it will be worth your parting with. If I like it, I’ll be honest with you and give you a fair price, as fair as I can offer without undercutting myself, and then you can decide if you still wish to sell.”
Silena surprised herself with her own words. But at hearing this proposal, the girl smiled again, and Silena smiled back without thinking, and although it was against her policy to do so, she knew it was the right thing to do.
Catelyn spoke again, with a reverence and a tone that Silena never heard anymore.
“Thank you Silena. You’re very kind, and I know I made the right decision to come to you about this.” Catelyn reached out and took Silena’s hand in hers, and now that some of the tension between them had been removed, Silena let it happen. She could feel the warmth of the girl’s hands, the skin a mixture of thickened toughness on her palms and softer skin on the tops of her hands.
Catelyn clasped her hands in silence for a second, then bowed with the barest hint of motion as she had before, and then stepped away with a grace and nobility that Silena had forgotten could exist in this world. Silena found that she couldn’t take her eyes off of the girl, watching as she swiftly blended into the throng of people crowding the marketplace.
Like a ghost among the dead, Silena thought.
No, not a ghost. Like...and Silena swallowed to even think such blasphemy. But she couldn’t help but finish the thought.
Like one of the Divin
es.
Silena didn’t know at what point it had happened, or how, but she felt a tear fall from her eye and trace a path down her sootstained cheek. She quickly wiped it away, then shook herself from her reverie and returned to hawking her wares.
After her victory against the rats, Catelyn had finally been able to get more than a few prayers of uninterrupted sleep, and upon waking, she felt almost whole again. She didn’t fully understand what had happened to her the previous night, but when she rose from her resting place in the corner of the crawlspace, she tested her senses by quieting her mind and stilling her body, and imagining herself standing inside of that bubble once more.
The crawlspace seemed to appear within her mind, looking to her almost like one of the sketches she had seen in the faded yellow books of her childhood. There were no details, but large shapes stood out in her mind; walls, floor, ceiling. Her visualization of the space was incomplete and shifted with each breath, almost as though it were a living thing, moving subtly this way, then the other. It was jarring and disorienting and made her stomach turn in circles at first, as her mind and body got used to the sensations coming in from all around her.
Catelyn’s own breath caught in her throat, and she reached out a hand tentatively, moving it close to where the wall was within her mind. As she slowly moved her fingers towards the surface, the area around the tips of her fingers solidified in her mental map of the room and she grew more confident that something was right there, just beneath her hand.
And then, it was. Exactly where it should have been. Catelyn felt the same rush of exhilaration she had experienced the previous night when she had thrown the chips of
Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) Page 12
