Two round-faced girls in fur hoods darted past me, chasing a dog and followed by a tired father.
“Sorry, sir,” the man said in Usti as he ducked around me. “Kat! Iri! Back here right now!”
I watched them go, my Sooth’s senses momentarily straying after their footprints in the snow. Another vision trickled around my guard, whispering and full of potential. I saw myself as that man, chasing a little girl who looked back at me, laughing, with my own eyes. Benedict’s eyes.
She looks like us.
An ache started in my chest. The violinist’s song was no help, tugging the pain along in a medley of regret and sadness, lost possibility and a fierce, burning injustice. For myself, for that girl, and her misled mother.
I started walking again, faster now, following the merchant’s instructions until my path emerged onto a broad boulevard and a stone bridge.
The bridge was decorated for an upcoming festival, strung with pine and holly garland. I made for the eclectic sprawl of stalls on the east side, where I caught sight of one in the deep, bruised purple fabric signature of the Mereish.
“Katash!” the merchant greeted me, using a traditional Usti honorific. She smiled and touched her heart, then waved a long-fingered hand at the cases of wares on her table. I was in luck, finally. She was a proper jeweler, and the thick saber at her hip attested to her goods’ value.
“I’m Aeadine,” I said in Mereish. “Not Usti.”
She squinted. “Are you and I at war?”
“I am simply a customer,” I replied with sincerity. If there was anything I had taken from my time with the Navy, it was that civilians, particularly merchants, were not the enemy.
“A customer who speaks my mother’s tongue?”
I had learned it at the Naval Academy in Ismoathe, but she did not need to know that. “I do. I am searching for a charm, the kind only your people can make.”
Her chin dropped slightly to the side. Caution slipped into the lines of her plump body, but her smile remained polite. “Mm. What would this charm do?”
“Root a mind in our world,” I replied, not bothering to mince my words. “Suppress a connection to the Other. A charm for a troubled Sooth.”
The merchant’s chin strayed even farther to the side, more of her politeness ebbing into narrow-eyed scrutiny. “That is not possible. A charm for love? I have. For a healthy baby or a good voyage? These are common—not easy, but common. What you seek, you will never find.”
“I have had one before.”
“Then you had a great treasure.” The woman’s composure returned. “I wish I had one to sell, katash, you may trust me on that.”
Anxiety worked its way up my spine, and the ambient noise of the market began to grate on my nerves. “That cannot be true. I… I will pay whatever you want.”
A little compassion entered the woman’s eyes. “You look weary, Aead. Can you not sleep?”
“No.” The word scraped out of me. What could it hurt to tell this woman, with her maternal eyes? I would never see her again. She was not Slader. She was not Fisher. She was not even Aeadine. “Most nights, no.”
With a decisive tsk, the merchant signaled to someone in the crowd. I stiffened as a man and a woman sauntered over and traded places with the merchant, who offered me a hand. “Follow me, young man.”
I hesitated. Admitting a weakness was one thing, but following a Mereish woman off into an unknown city?
“Perhaps I can help you, but not out in the open,” the woman chided, beckoning again.
I let her draw me out of the market and down a side street, where I more than expected to be robbed, stabbed and left for dead. But I was desperate enough to take the risk.
Fortunately, the woman did not lead me to my death, but a rose-pink door and hallway that smelled of spices. Down another passage I glimpsed running children, smelled fresh bread and heard the sound of Mereish women discussing daily tasks.
We entered a room with a single, tall window overlooking a canal. I could just see the water and drifts of snow through the foggy glass. It let in little light, but multiple lanterns and a crackling fire ensured the room was well lit.
A black-haired man sat at a desk beneath the window, sipping a short cup of coffee and eyeing a ring on a stand. Other pieces of jewelry were laid about the surface of the desk, along with various tools and a pistol which was already half-cocked.
The jeweler did not reach for the pistol as I entered, but we were both aware of it. “What is this?” he asked in Mereish.
“He needs a talisman, if you can make it,” my guide replied, then stepped back out into the hall. “Pay him when you are done, Aead.”
That reminded me I had yet to ask how much this would cost, but it seemed late now.
“Thank you,” I said to the woman.
She gave a smiling, one-eyed wink, and left me alone with the jeweler. I examined him for a long moment, and he examined me back.
“Well?” the man finally inquired in Aeadine. His skin had an olive undertone like many southern Mereish, and his accent was smooth, all curves and no edges. “What do you want?”
I shoved aside the last of my hesitation and rallied. “I am a Sooth, but I have no control over my visions. I slip into the Other continuously, especially when I sleep.”
“Were you born like this?”
“No, my twin and I were… They attempted to amplify us.”
Disgust crossed the Mereish man’s face. Clicking his tongue, he gestured for me to sit in another chair and took up a battered coffeepot. He poured me a cup and passed it over.
The admission had unsettled me, but I hid my feelings behind a stiff nod. I took the coffee and eased into a chair of dark wood and bright fabric, as out of place in Usti as I was in this shop.
“I can help you,” the man said, topping up his own cup. “But I will need a little of your blood, and it will take some time.”
The coffee scalded my tongue. “Blood?”
“Yes,” the man affirmed. He sipped his cup, oblivious to the heat, and set it aside. Standing, he scrounged a small bronze bowl and a long pin from a wall of overflowing but organized shelves. Turning to me, he held up the needle. “Just a drop. Sooth’s blood, for a Sooth’s charm.”
I thought about leaving, setting aside my cup and striding right out of the room. Bloodletting? That was proper Mereish sorcery, and I knew that Slader would string me from a yard just for being here.
I held out my hand, anyway. The jeweler pricked the end of my finger, waited for a droplet to well, then pinched it into the bowl. It fell in a single crimson droplet, and the man handed me a handkerchief.
I stopped the blood and took a long drink to cover my unrest.
The jeweler began to work. He produced a case of coins, some new and shining, round or oval, with the images on their faces crisp and clear. Others were worn like my coin had been, smoothed by years of worrying.
The jeweler watched my gaze travel over the coins, then selected one that my eyes lingered on—oval and smooth, just like my old one. This one did not have the symbol of entwined serpents, but a stylized owl on the wing.
He dropped it into the bowl with my blood, then began to fetch ingredients. I watched him add pinches of powders and a stream of oil, pungent and amber, then he opened a lantern and lit a long wick. He touched the flame to the oil, which caught in a flare of blue and white before settling into a more normal, orange hue.