“Pity,” Aric said. “That might have been just what I’m looking for. I suppose anything about journeying through the wastelands would do, since I don’t even know which direction we’ll be traveling in.”
The man flashed a smile, but it was more forced than his earlier ones. “I have a few like that. Not much. A diary or two, one printed account from about fifteen years ago. Perhaps an annotated map somewhere.”
Much of what he was saying passed over Aric’s head. “How about the printed account?” he asked. “Things couldn’t have changed that much in fifteen years. I’m only trying to get a sense of the things we might encounter, and to see how others survived them.”
“This is what you want, then.” The man put his hands on a slender volume, bound in reddish sygra leather. “That’ll be a cp.”
“An entire piece?” Aric asked, stunned. He could get a decent pair of boots for a ceramic piece, had expected a book to be more like three or four bits.
The man started to put it back on the shelf. “If you don’t want it …”
Aric’s purse was still heavy, however, from his sale to Tunsall. “No, I’ll take it!”
“Very well.” The man handed it over. It was heavier than Aric expected. He took out a ceramic piece and gave it to the man, who eyed it for a moment before it disappeared into his palm and then into a hidden pocket someplace. “Will there be anything else?”
The following day, Aric sat inside his shop, trying to read the book he had purchased. There were many words he didn’t know, and letters he didn’t recognize even though the thing was written in common.
Because he and Ruhm would both be gone on the expedition, he had hurried through the last bits of work he had promised, and had turned away more. This left him time to get through the book as best he could. As usual when Aric read, Ruhm removed himself from the scene, not wanting to be tarred with the “literate” brush if things went bad. He had once heard about a free commoner caught in the same room with a couple of books. Although the books didn’t belong to him and he claimed not to be able to read them, the templar who had found him there argued that even if he could read, he would pretend not to, so therefore he was guilty of the crime of literacy. According to the story, he was still alive, working as a menial slave in the Naggaramakam.
So Aric sat on the floor beside his workbench, where passers-by couldn’t see him from the doorway or the window, and struggled. He was so immersed in the effort that he didn’t hear soft footsteps on the floor, didn’t know he was observed until a sudden, startled “Oh!” alerted him.
“Who’s there?” Aric demanded, closing the book and shoving it into a cubby in the workbench. “What?” He grabbed the bench’s upper surface and hauled himself to his feet.
Rieve stood there, hands covering her mouth. A pink flush graced her fair cheeks. “I’m sorry, Aric,” she said.
“You—you won’t tell anyone, will you?” he pleaded. He was glad it had been her and not a templar, but he didn’t know her well enough to trust her. “I didn’t hear you.”
“I wasn’t certain you were even here. I saw the door open, so I came in, and then I thought I heard you breathing. She touched his arm, just a light, glancing brush. “You were so intent, it was cute. But I was surprised to see you there and couldn’t keep my mouth shut.”
Cute? As in attractive? he wondered. Or the way a baby animal or an infant is cute when it tries to do something obviously beyond its abilities?
“Well, you surprised me in return,” he said. He fidgeted with his coin medallion.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Aric. I know this is terribly bold of me, but I wanted to see you. I didn’t just happen to pass by. I’ve been thinking about you.”
“And I you.” He doubted she had been thinking along the same lines he had. But he would never know unless she told him.
“Do you remember the other day, when my grandfather wanted you to teach me how to use my sword?”
“Of course.”
“Corlan has been trying. He’s quite skilled in it himself. But what he’s not so good at is imparting that skill to someone else. He thinks I should just be able to watch him do something and immediately master it. Perhaps that’s how he learned it, but it doesn’t work that way for me. Then he grows impatient, and we argue.”
“If you’re to be wed, arguing seems bad,” Aric said.
Rieve laughed. The pink had gone out of her cheeks, but her laughter brought it back. Aric envied the color, lying as easily upon her soft skin as sunlight on polished steel. She had always been lovely, but at that moment her beauty snatched his breath away. “My parents argue frequently,” she said. “You’d be surprised at the screaming. I believe some married people elevate arguing from a passing interest to an obsession. But I don’t like it. I have known Corlan since we were children, and been betrothed to him almost as long. He’s a dear friend. None of that makes it easier to be snapped or shouted at.”
Aric couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to ask his next question. “Why tell me this?”
Instead of answering directly, she wandered about the shop, scrutinizing his tools, his small store of metal, even peeking through the doorway into his bedroom. “You have no woman?”
“There have been women,” he admitted. “None who mattered much.”
“I’m surprised, you’re such a handsome fellow.”
He noted that she hadn’t used the word man, which some refused to apply to anyone who wasn’t fully human. “Thank you.”
She spun around to face him again, looking right into his eyes. “Would you teach me? Help me with the parts that Corlan can’t? No one ever has to know. I just want to learn enough that I can convince Corlan he’s actually teaching me something. I can pay you.”
Aric considered this. It would mean spending time with Rieve, a certain amount of close physical contact. Both would be payment enough. “I don’t need your coins—” he began.
She cut him off before he could finish. “When I happened upon you, before I startled you, it looked like you were having some difficulty reading. Your forehead was all wrinkled up like old clothes.”
“I can read a bit,” he admitted. “But that book—parts of it I can’t make out at all.”
“I could help you. You teach me the use of the sword, I teach you how to read better.”
“That’s most generous,” he said. “And I would truly love to accept your offer. But I’m leaving the city shortly. A day, two, perhaps three, I don’t know yet. The journey will be a long one, and I don’t know when I’ll return.”
Her eyes brightened and she put a hand on his arm again. He liked it when she did that. “Where are you going?”
“I wish I knew. Nibenay has asked me to accompany an expedition he’s sending to a lost city somewhere, to look for a trove of metals that might be there.”
“The Shadow King himself asked you?”
“That’s right.” Aric couldn’t help letting pride swell his chest a little. “He said your grandfather told him about me.”
“I am impressed.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial level. “He has been generous with some of the noble houses, including ours.”
“He was pleasant enough with me, and generous as well,” Aric said. “But since I’ll be leaving, I can’t promise to teach you.”