The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers, Deluxe Illustrated Edition (11 page)

Gerard tried to cover his surprise. “Am I
already so famous?”

“You have something of a reputation, yes. And
you’re hard to miss.”

Gerard sat back. It was true that his height
set him apart in a crowd, but usually only to shelts who’d met him
before. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

The ocelon shrugged. “I was on Holovarus
once—just a ship’s clerk. I doubt you remember me.”

Gerard didn’t, but he would not make the
mistake again. “Can you read?” he asked with interest.

For answer, the ocelon showed him the book in
his hand.
Not only read,
thought Gerard with a jolt.
Write.
The book was a blank of vellum sheets produced for
scribes who copied manuscripts. Gerard spied an inkwell and pen at
the ocelon’s elbow. A moment later, his surprise turned to
puzzlement. The characters on the page were not grishnard. They
were the strange, spidery script of the ocelons.

“It’s the phonetic,” said the ocelon as
Gerard examined the book. “Bookkeeping for a merchant vessel.”

The owner of the teahouse appeared at that
moment and asked Gerard what he wanted. She spoke haltingly, with
downcast eyes. Gerard was still looking at the book. “Whatever he’s
having.”

He stared at the dense lines of script. They
didn’t look like any bookkeeping he had ever seen, but Gerard had
no experience with the phonetic. He returned the book. “Do you read
and write grishnard also?”

“Not as well, but, yes, I can.”

“And other languages? Hunti? Mountain
grishnard? Maijhan?”

The ocelon smiled, his lenses flashing in the
censor’s light. “I speak a little of everything.”

Gerard drew a deep breath. As far as he knew,
what he was about to suggest had never been done before.
Still,
the Priestess has a foxling leading her Watch. I don’t see why she
should object to an ocelon in the Police.
“Would you like a
job?” he asked.

The ocelon nearly choked on his tea. Gerard
took a moment to realize he was laughing. “Forgive me,” he said
after a moment. “I was only thinking of what my master would say. I
have debts I cannot abandon, but thank you for your offer. I
realize it’s a high compliment.”

The mistress of the teahouse had brought
Gerard’s drink. She passed it to the ocelon, who handed it to
Gerard. “I could arrange for payment of your debts,” Gerard
persisted. “I’m in need of a shelt who speaks Maijhan.”

“I’m sure you are,” said the ocelon,
gathering his supplies into a bag. “But I’m not the one to help
you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go.”

“At least tell me your name and the name of
your ship.”

The ocelon hesitated in the doorway. “Flag,”
he said, “and my ship is the
Defiance
. Good-bye,
Captain.”

Gerard frowned.
Defiance
was a strange
name for a merchant ship. Something was tickling at the back of his
brain. Almost, he got up and went after the ocelon, but he couldn’t
think of a way to detain him except by force. He didn’t have a good
reason, just a gut-level sense of wrongness. At that moment, he
remembered Montpir’s list.
Tea cups—tea leaves?

Gerard glanced down at his cup. It was
ordinary clay. He reached across the table and picked up Flag’s
empty cup, but the sodden leaves told him nothing. He sniffed at
them, then sniffed at his own cup.
I thought I told her to give
us the same kind of tea.
He was fairly certain that the teas
were not, in fact, identical, but he couldn’t be sure.

Grishnards and griffins did not possess a
keen sense of smell, a trait they shared with fauns. However, other
panauns did have extraordinary noses, including foxlings. On an
impulse, Gerard tipped out his tea onto the dirt floor, keeping the
leaves. As he did so, he noticed something under the ocelon’s chair
and picked it up—a scrap of downy, blue-gray feather.
It could
have come from anywhere, but…
Gerard stood up all at once. He
picked up both of the small cups and put one in each pocket. The
owner was still nowhere in sight, so he deposited several cowries
on the table—more than enough to pay for both his tea and the
cups—and ducked out of the tent.

He had not gone far when he ran into Silveo’s
party returning from the warehouse. Gerard fell in with them.
His eyes!
he realized suddenly.
I don’t think they were
slitted. I was so busy looking at his lenses that I didn’t
notice.
Of course, the teahouse had been dim, and any shelt’s
eyes would have been dilated. Even a slit-eyed shelt’s pupil might
look round in that light, but Gerard thought he was right.

He picked up his pace and reached the front
of the group. “Silveo, are these teas different?”

Silveo leapt back as though Gerard had tried
to hand him a live snake. In his excitement, Gerard realized he’d
been over-familiar. He was also asking Silveo to do in public
something that set him apart as a non-grishnard. It might make him
angry, but at the moment Gerard didn’t care. “Teacups,” he said
impatiently, waving them in the air. “Different—yes or no? It’s
important.”

For a moment, Gerard thought Silveo would
refuse, might even spit in his face. Then he took the teacups,
moving with deliberate slowness. “Has anyone ever introduced you to
the concept of verbal communication, Holovar? Sentences,
perhaps?”

Gerard was thinking again.
The face spots
could have been paint or kohl. And he was wearing boots.
Normally, only panauns wore boots. They were unnecessary and
uncomfortable for fauns, but a faun wishing to disguise himself as
a panaun could construct padded and reinforced boots.
Did he
have a tail?
Gerard didn’t remember seeing one. Of course,
long-tailed shelts sometimes tucked their tails into their pants to
keep them out of the way, and a tail could be amputated in an
accident. Picturing the shelt standing up made Gerard think of
something else.
His height!
Flag had been tall for an
ocelon, but he was about the right height for a shavier faun.

Silveo broke into his thoughts. “You could
say they’re different, yes. Did you actually drink any of this,
Holovar?” He was holding out Gerard’s cup.

“No.”

Silveo clicked his tongue. “A pity. It’s
poisoned.”

Gerard started to laugh.

Silveo raised an eyebrow. “I had no idea you
would find the idea so entertaining. This is really crude work; I
can do much better. Priestess knows I’ve exercised self-restraint
in the matter of your food.”

Gerard hardly heard him. “I think I just met
Gwain.”

Chapter 14. Flirtation and
Chocolate

In many cases, minstrels are essentially the
priestesses of the courts they serve. However, a few minstrels
choose to dig deeper than their basic training. Their school houses
the oldest library in Wefrivain. Some of the old ballads and epics
contain kernels of truth that make our High Priestess and her
dragons uneasy.

—Gwain,
The Truth About Wyverns

Silveo stopped his banter at once. “You met
whom?”

“Gwain.” Gerard started away. “In a
teahouse.”

Silveo had to trot to keep up. “Which
teahouse? Where?”

“You know who Gwain is?” asked Gerard.

“Of course, I know who he is. He’s a
nuisance. I’d love to carpet my library with his pelt.”

“Arundel didn’t seem to think he’s a real
person.”

“Arundel doesn’t think anyone but himself is
a real person,” retorted Silveo, and then he seemed to remember who
he was talking to and that his command was listening. “Holovar, I
demand that you stop and explain yourself. That’s an order. Then,
you’re going to lead us to this teahouse.”

Gerard stopped walking. He realized belatedly
that the price of Silveo’s help was Silveo’s interference. “Listen:
they think they’ve poisoned me. They don’t know that I know. Let’s
not kick the hornet’s nest yet. I think we can learn a little
more.”

“What you’ll learn,” growled Silveo, “is that
the whole arrangement is up and gone by tomorrow. You don’t poison
a Captain of Police and then stay in town to see what happens.” His
eyes lit up. “We could burn Ocelon Town for this. It’s been a nest
of Resistance traitors for ages. This would give us the perfect
excuse. The magister will whine about it, but the king won’t
care.”

Burn it?
Gerard thought of the
children staring up at him shyly from their jumping game scrawled
in the dirt. He took a deep breath. “So we’ll make enemies of every
ocelon in Wefrivain? They’ll hate us, and they’ll never help
us.”

“They already hate us,” said Silveo.
“Besides, not many will survive the fire to hold grudges. If you
think you can make friends out of them, you’re dumber than I
thought.”

They were about to have a full-blown
argument, and Gerard had the sinking feeling he would lose. The
sailors with Silveo had backed off to a respectful distance. Gerard
understood their nervousness. When superiors fought, the loser
often took out his frustration on the nearest subordinate. However,
before either of them could say another word, a messenger came
running up the street. He bowed.

“Magister Alvert says that he is honored at
the presence of both the Temple Sea Watch and Police on his
island—”

“
Honored,”
muttered Silveo, “more like
scared witless.”

“—and he would like to invite sirs to dinner
at his city estate. He also begs me to tell the Captain of Police
that his wife is here to see him.”

Gerard’s breath caught in his throat. “Thess
is
here?”

The messenger kept his eyes downcast. “She
said that you would not be pleased. She asked me to tell you that
she is blind, not crippled.”

Silveo started to laugh. “I like her
already.”

Gerard shot him a look.
If you come
anywhere near her, I will break you in half.

“Would sirs come with me now?” asked the
messenger.

“Yes, yes,” said Gerard, “lead the way.”

* * * *

The magister’s city estate was a lavishly
manicured garden fortress at the top of a hill. They were met
halfway there by a wind-carriage drawn by four purple and gold
pegasus, their feathered manes twined with flowers. The carriage
had foldable, kite-like wings attached to its sides, and a balloon
of light gas attached to the rear. It was constructed to skim along
above the rooftops when the wings were opened. The market area at
city center provided space for take-off.

Farell and several of the captains from the
ship met them there, brought by messenger. Silveo sent the rest of
the sailors back to the ship with permission to take the evening
off and enjoy themselves. Gerard thought of Alsair. The griffin
would have been entirely at home in such an environment, and Gerard
wished he hadn’t sent him away.

They had a pleasant ride over the rooftops
with the wind in their faces and arrived at last at the hilltop
estate amid spreading trees and rich archways of flowering vines.
Nothing could seem further from Slag Harbor or the squalor of
Ocelon Town, but Gerard noticed that most of the retainers were
ocelons. They looked better fed than those in the streets,
immaculate in white and gold livery that accentuated their exotic
stripes and brilliant eyes. They padded around the estate, bootless
on their spotted paws, quiet as shadows and as ornamental as the
flowers.

The light had almost faded when they arrived.
Torches had been lit in the garden. Gerard heard harp music coming
from the pavilion at the center and strode towards it. “Thess?”

The music stopped at once, and she came
tripping down the steps, as light-footed as a gazumelle. She ran
into his arms. “Gerard!”

He hugged her hard. “Thess.” His voice almost
broke. “You cannot follow me around. How did you get here?”

She laid her head against his chest. “An
airship. We had a favorable wind. I’ve sailed that route before.”
During her touring days as a minstrel student, Thessalyn had been
all over Wefrivain. She’d traveled more than Gerard. “You seemed so
unhappy about coming; I thought I’d beat you here and surprise
you.”

“You did.” He wanted to lecture her, but it
felt so good to have her in his arms.

Marlo Snale came slinking out of the
pavilion. “Sir, I tried to stop her—”

Gerard shook his head. “I understand.”

“There was nothing to do but come with her,”
continued Marlo.

“Thank you for that,” said Gerard.

“I am sorry, sir.”

“It’s alright,” said Gerard, although it
wasn’t.
But there’s nothing Marlo could have done. If I can’t
keep Thess from walking in harm’s way, he certainly wouldn’t be
able to.
He remembered a time he’d found her strolling alone on
the beach on Holovarus, how he’d chided her about tides and pirates
and wild animals, and she’d just kept talking about shells and
ballads and the smell of the ocean. The trouble was that she’d
never been able to see. A shelt who’d gone blind later in life
would know the world as it was, would fear their vulnerability in
it, but Thessalyn knew only the world as she perceived it, the
world in her mind. Gerard had never been able to convince her that
it was a deeply dangerous place.

“They have giant butterwort flowers here,”
continued Thessalyn. “They’re very interesting. They eat insects.
They don’t grow anywhere else. Come and see!” She used that word
blithely, knowing that for her it meant to touch, and for him it
meant something else.

“Thess!” Gerard took her by the shoulders.
“Listen to me: you really can’t follow me around Wefrivain.
It—is—dangerous. Please!”

She frowned and brought out her practical
voice. “You don’t really expect me to sit at home and worry about
you like a sailor’s wife? I am a
professional
wanderer; you
can’t take that away from me, Gerard.”