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She smiled thanks as Tao offered her the steaming cup of tea, but it was a brittle smile, quick and shaky, and Tao found herself thinking of a porcelain sparrow that she had seen once in a trinket shop. The sparrow had been crafted as if in flight, small wings lifted to catch a drift, and while it was beautifully made, there had been something sad about it as well, frozen in place in the shop window.
“A nunnery,” replied Esther doubtfully. “But I’m not very devout?” “The sisters at the nunnery,” said Tao carefully, watching Esther for signs of understanding, “believe that the best form of worship is to live well, and in peace. Away from the judgment of others, and in harmony with a community of women who…care for each other.”
Yet it was a very hard thing to leave the only place one had ever known. The streams one played in as a child, the trees one climbed, the faces one knew…Familiarity could look very much like love from a certain angle, if one didn’t look too hard.
Everyone deserves a home, Tao thought, patting Laohu’s whiskery grey nose. And what was a home but somewhere you wouldn’t have to feel quite so alone?
The dark-haired man was entertaining himself by rolling a coin across his knuckles as he walked. Up, and down, and up again, it winked in the sunlight and disappeared in a flash.
The western cities were only too well aware that their lesser wealth and distance from Margrave made them unimportant second sons in the eyes of the Crown, and, much like noble second sons are wont to do, channeled their resentment into a sloppy, nonchalant sort of degeneracy.
“Win some hands, did you?” grunted Mash, reclaiming his mug. “What a surprise.” Over at the gaming table Silt had just abandoned were several surly-looking men glaring daggers at his back. “I may have had some luck,” said Silt, grinning and leaning back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head.
aspersions
toque
legerdemain,
fatuously
nags
“Politics,” grunted Mash. “Easy to blame foreign folk for anything going wrong, when they’re not here to say otherwise. Easier still when they look and talk funny, and don’t pray to the Mother or her Sons.”
“People think they want true fortunes, but they don’t really. What they want are lies. Small lies, big lies, entertaining lies, comforting lies.
“And the suspicion turns to fear, and the fear, as it always does, turns to anger.”
jocular,
diffidently.
Tao found it surprising how easily the tension of constant company fell away from her shoulders and became something comfortable, like too-tight boots relaxing and fitting themselves to her feet.
Tao let the others carry the conversation and enjoyed the novelty of simply being part of a group with nothing expected of her but her presence.
I should have protected what I already had, instead of scrabbling for more coin.
“All cats are slightly magical, don’t you know? It’s why they’re so smug all the time.
“The mage hired out to our troop—he’d cast spells that made us fight like madmen. Made us brave; made us not feel any pain; made us invincible. Except we weren’t, and when the battle was over and the magic passed, half our men fell down where they stood and never got back up again. But we’d won, and killed far more of them than they killed us, so that was all right. Acceptable casualties, they called it.”
This left Tao and Silt remaining by the fire. Silt, halfway through rearranging his pack, eyed Fidelitus as the cat sauntered by and muttered something about fleas and feral beasts. Tao regarded him fondly; something about the dark-haired thief reminded her, in a way, of the stories her father used to tell—tales of the mischievous Monkey Prince, who was hero and scoundrel both in Shinn legend.
Trusted me more than I deserved. Made me want to earn that trust.”
She’s open; she’s not afraid to try things, and be seen trying, even if she fails sometimes. She’s kind, too!
brigand
“Did it attack you? Threaten violence; seize your goods?” “Eh? No, of course not. It’s worse than that,” said the farmer. “It went and philosophized at us!” There was a beat of silence while they wondered if they’d misheard him. “I’m sorry?” said Silt. “It wouldn’t let us pass!” wailed the farmer’s wife, clutching his arm more tightly. “It just kept going on about determinism, and the futility of it all, or some suchlike.
“Because I’m here! And why not! Aye, our lives are short and shaped by circumstance, and maybe we can’t control most of what’s to come. But we can control how we feel. We can savor the sweetness of a blackberry scone, and the company of our friends, and the warmth of the summer wind at night, and be grateful for it. We can be nothing, and choose to be miserable about it, like you—or we can be nothing, but choose to be happy, and let that be purpose enough. Which sounds more worthwhile to you?”
The world’s been kinder to me. And I feel a bit silly and ashamed to not have understood that before.” “It wasn’t silly. How could you have known without seeing it for yourself? And you certainly shouldn’t feel ashamed; it’s not as though it’s your fault that I get looked at funny for being Shinn, or that Silt had a rough childhood, or that Mash’s daughter was stolen. And there’s no inherent virtue in suffering.”
I’m still the same person, more or less. I thought that perhaps leaving Shellport would…change me, in some meaningful way?” “I think you have changed,” said Tao. “In enough small ways that you just don’t quite notice it while it’s happening, but then you look in the mirror one day, and you’re altogether different. That’s how it was for me, anyway.”
“When I left Margrave, I was…younger. Mostly just afraid of not knowing how to be on my own, I think. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing or where I was going. I just knew I needed to be far away from there—from that life that was hardly a life. From what they expected of me. “So I ran as far as I could, and made plenty of mistakes along the way. I’m still running now, in a way, but at least I’m stronger and less afraid.
“And I thought we could call them fortune cookies!
canelé,
“I was excited to see you. I thought…But never mind.” Tao swallowed; the rush of shame that ran through her was a hot, visceral thing. The shopkeeper’s eyes felt like her Baba’s. What kind of daughter are you, she imagined them saying, to no longer speak the language of your ancestors? But then, too, came the anger. Why should she be ashamed? She’d done what she’d had to, hadn’t she?
She had not seen then, as she did now, that no matter how clear her diction and how fine her clothing, she could never become a true Eshteran, for she could not change her eyes or her skin. “I am sorry,” she said to the shopkeeper in halting Shinn—one of the few phrases she remembered. She wondered why that was, and then discarded the thought. It didn’t matter.
“I am sad that you have lost so much,” said the old man, empty hand falling back against his side. “I hope you find new joys to take their place.”
But there was no audience here to judge her.
suffused
“Can’t be a bard,” said Mash. “Too busy being a…whatever it is I do for you lot. Baker’s assistant and fortune teller’s guard, I suppose.” “You mean a friend,” Tao said, and she smiled at him from across the fire.
“There is something liberating about traveling, isn’t there?” said Kina. “I’ve felt it since we left Shellport—only knowing where we’re going next, but not where we’ll end. The open road ahead of you—it’s a little scary, and a little wonderful.” Silt nodded back at her. “It’s also easier to enjoy it when you’ve not left anything behind worth missing.
“That’s no excuse. You were grieving, too. The difference is, you were a little girl, and she was your mother.” “Yes, well,” said Tao, staring fixedly at the reins in front of her. “What’s done is done. And even if I may have needed her then, I don’t anymore.”
Tao nodded, troubled. She generally paid little attention to news of politics and the broader affairs of the kingdom, for they had little impact on life aboard her wagon as she traveled between the remote villages on the outskirts. But she could not help but feel uneasy about what seemed to her a draconian and illogical policy, and what effects it might have on the poorer folk of Eshtera. The statute might harm only the pockets of the wealthy merchant class now, but—as she had heard a sailor say once—shit seemed to have a way of trickling down. Economics, they called it.
Tao felt, rather than saw, Silt prepare himself; his posture was still deceptively casual beside her, but she knew that he was holding himself as tightly as a coiled spring.
recriminations,
maelstrom
I suppose being on an adventure just makes me feel like one of the heroes from the old stories, instead of just…me.” “I think,” she said matter-of-factly, wiping her hands, “that the old heroes were probably people just like us. And there’s nothing wrong with being just you.”
“It was a phoenix egg,” said Silt, his tone bitter and harsh and very unlike him.
desultory
Tao swallowed hard now, feeling her walls of resolve beginning to crumble. Time to go. She looked back at her friends—her unlikely, unwanted companions—and tried in that moment to memorize their faces, and the way it had felt to sit with them around a campfire and be a part of something. “You may not see me again, not for a long time, but I hope you each find what you’re looking for. And thank you, for everything.”
It was the pride of Eshtera and widely agreed to be the most beautiful city in the civilized world (the civilized world, of course, being confined to Eshtera and a handful of allied kingdoms in the west, for everyone knew that beyond the Long Sea was only an empire of savages—their reverence for the arts and rumored technological developments notwithstanding).
