“He’s got almost as many books as you do,” said Viv.
“A bibliophile?” asked Fern, brows rising with interest.
“She exaggerates my collection,” replied Highlark, inclining his head. “Mostly reference texts. I confess, this is a charming idea.” He ran a forefinger down the front of one of the bundles. “Treachery, alchemy, and brotherhood. Intriguing.”
“Pretty literary stuff in that one,” said Fern.
“You’ve read them? All of them?” asked Highlark, in apparent surprise, as he gestured across the tables.
“Not exactly. But I’ve read all of those. Do you like Tensiger?”
A more genuine smile bloomed on Highlark’s face than Viv had ever seen. “You might even consider me a bit of a fan.”
Fern tapped another bundle. “Then this one might be of interest, too.”
When the surgeon finally departed, he had three bundles under his arms and a bun in his teeth.
* * *
As the horizon began to burn red out over the sea, the tables were well and truly picked over. They hadn’t sold everything—maybe only half—but Fern had needed to take the cashbox inside to empty it when it became overstuffed with coins. The entire endeavor had been wildly more successful than Viv had imagined it might be.
Maylee had left shortly after delivering her contribution, and now the baskets sat empty on the tables, nothing but crumbs lining their bottoms.
Viv carried them down to Sea-Song, returning them to Maylee with Fern’s thanks, a murmured sweetness, and a promise to visit the following morning. She wanted to make up for yesterday, but it would have to wait until they were alone.
When Viv got back to Thistleburr, Fern had already cleared the makeshift tables of books and was indoors.
Stacking the planks, Viv stowed them close to the boardwalk. She arranged the trestles over them until Pitts could retrieve them later, while twilight indigo gnawed away the sunset.
When she entered the shop, Fern let out a whoop and Viv started in surprise.
“Eight fucking hells!” the rattkin cried. “I can’t believe we did it! I don’t even know how many we sold!”
Satchel looked up from one of the chairs. Surprisingly, he had his feet propped on the stool, a book across his bony lap. “Eighty-seven books, m’lady.”
The rattkin blew out a breath. “Just Fern, Satchel. No ‘m’lady’ needed.”
The homunculus didn’t reply to that. Somehow, Viv doubted he’d honor the request.
The remaining wrapped books stood in neat stacks in the back hall, and the shelves throughout the shop were more thinly populated, awaiting the new shipment.
“Maybe you should wrap up all the books from now on,” said Viv, only half joking.
Fern laughed. “If only it was that easy! We really sold these cheap. It bought me some time and made some room, but if I did that with new stock, I might as well be giving them away. Still. That was amazing. And those buns didn’t hurt. I hope you thanked Maylee again for me.”
Viv bobbed a nod before addressing Satchel. “What’ve you got there, then?”
The homunculus looked down at the book and back up at her. “M’lady … Fern insisted I do something that could not be considered labor. This seemed the most obvious option.”
“And what do you think?”
He cocked his head to the side, blue eyes flickering. “It’s possible I can see the appeal. But perhaps I should sample one of the moist ones.”
Viv tried hard not to choke on her laughter.
29
One problem with successfully offloading a heap of books on the visitors and citizens of Murk—one that Fern loudly blamed herself for not seeing in advance—was that the demand for reading material was entirely satisfied. Thistleburr might as well have been a tomb in the wake of the sale.
The shelves had a desolate look about them, too, riddled with gaps, lonely stretches left unfilled.
“How long until that shipment?” asked Viv.
Fern raised her head from her cradling arms. “Who knows? Overland shipping is unpredictable. Maybe a few days?” she said bleakly. “Not that anyone will want to buy them. I just occupied the whole gods-damned reading population of Murk with half-priced books. When the new ones arrive, they won’t need anything to read!” She appended a few choice expletives with precise savagery.
Viv tapped the third of the Beckett mysteries, her current distraction. “They’ll finish and need something else. Right?”
The rattkin sighed and grudgingly admitted, “Yes. Theoretically. I suppose.” She glanced at Satchel, who’d begun emerging during the day, given the absolute dearth of custom. “Too bad they don’t read as fast as him.”
The homunculus sat ensconced in one of the chairs with a stack of books at his side. He’d been consuming them at a prodigious rate. Potroast lay at his feet, nipping at the bones of his toes while Satchel gently dipped them away from his questing beak.
“How do you read those so quickly?” Viv waggled her fingers. “Is it some kind of … I dunno, magic thing?”
Satchel turned a page with one slender digit. “I look at the page, and then the words are in my mind. That’s the accepted way, yes?”
“All of the words on the page? All at once?” said Fern.
He looked back and forth between them. “You read them one by one?” he asked curiously.
“Yes!” they both cried at the same time.
He appeared to think about that. “That seems quite inefficient, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Viv shifted aside the curtains to look out one of the windows. The inactivity in the wake of the sale hadn’t done much for her growing impatience. She felt prickly, extremely aware of the passage of hours and days, and increasingly anxious for Rackam’s return. Or for anything to happen, really. She almost wished another gray-clad stranger would wander into town, just so she’d have something to do.
Only yesterday she’d taken a detour from her morning walk to stand before the bounty board, studying every scrawled offering, daydreaming over bandit camps and ortheg nests and highwaymen. Hells, even a spineback hunt would’ve been welcome.
Her fingers had ached to hold steel the entire time.
What she wanted at the moment was to return to her room, place her hands on the hilt of the greatsword, and put in some hard work. Really build up a sweat. And to be fair, she did that every day, out back of The Perch.
But she’d also pledged to help Fern with her shop, to try to push it past survival into something more like living. Viv had made a commitment, and she liked to think she took her commitments seriously.
She wrestled her thoughts back in that direction. From the limpness of Fern’s tail, she could tell she was slumping into her former listlessness.
Viv forced a smile onto her face and turned from the window. “So we’ll be waiting a few days, and nobody’s coming into the shop. Doesn’t matter what we do in here, then, right? What if you just closed, and we took care of some work around the place? That way, when the new books show up, that’s not the only thing that’s new.”
Fern stared at her, chin resting on her arms again, but she didn’t say anything for a while. She was thinking about it though, Viv could tell. At last, Fern asked, “Like what?”