Tinwright had to walk carefully, but he was fascinated by the profusion of animal shapes. Some even had little glass eyeballs pressed into the clay or glued to the wood, making them seem almost alive... “Ah, there you are, small bastard,” said Aislin suddenly, to no one he could see. “There you are, my love.”
The black and white gull, which had been staring back at Tinwright so raptly he had thought it only another particularly well-made object, yawped and shrugged its wings. Tinwright flinched back and almost fell over. “It’s alive!”
“More or less,” she cackled. “He’s missing a leg, my Soso, and he can’t fly, but the wing should heal. Still, I don’t think he’ll go anywhere—will you, my love?” She leaned down and offered her pursed mouth to the gull, which pecked at it in an irritated fashion. “You have it too good here, don’t you, small bastard?”
Aislin had taken her hood off and unwrapped her head scarf, freeing a bristling tangle of white hair. Her face showed the usual Skimmer features, eyes far apart, lips wide and mobile. Like other old Skimmer-folk he’d seen she also had a curious hard look to her skin, as though instead of sagging and growing loose as ordinary folk’s flesh did when they aged, hers had begun to turn into something thick and rigid. Even the curl of inky tattoos on each cheek and at the bridge of her nose seemed to be disappearing into the horny flesh like unused roads disappearing under grass and weeds.
“Will you have something to drink, then?” she asked. “Warm yourself up?”
“Wickeril?”
“That muck?” She shook her head. “Wouldn’t drink it. That’s for Perikali sailors and other barbarians. Black Wrack wine, that’s your drink.” She slid between dangling charms toward the corner of the little house where pots and pans hung from wooden pegs—the kitchen, you’d have to call it, Tinwright supposed. She was shaped like a brewer’s barrel, but without the heavy cloak she moved with surprising nimbleness through the confines of her crowded nest.
“What’s it made with?” he asked—“Black Wrack” didn’t sound all that promising.
“What do you think? Don’t you know what wrack is? Seaweed! Grandsire Egye-Var protect you, boy, what do you expect? You wanted a tanglewife—what do you think ‘tangle’ means? Seaweed, of course.”
Tinwright didn’t say anything. He hadn’t known—he’d thought it was just the word for an old woman who made healing simples and...and other things.
“What do they call someone like you in a place where they don’t have seaweed—or Skimmers?”
She chortled with pleasure, a sound like a joiner’s rasp. “A witch, of course. Now drink this. It will take the hair right off your chest.”
Aislin was frowning as she emtpied her cup. She clearly contemplated pouring herself yet another, but instead sat back in the room’s only chair with a sigh. Tinwright was balanced much more precariously on his stool, especially after finishing his own cup. He couldn’t remember how much of the smoky wine he’d drunk while trying to explain the difficult, frightening business that had brought him, but he had downed more than a few. The wine was almost as salty as blood but still quite refreshing, and his fear had receded into a general smear of unconcern. He stared at the old woman, trying to remember how exactly he had come to this strange place.
“It’s not that I have any scruples, boy,” she said. “And I’m not frightened of much of anything, which you can see by me letting you in here in the first place.”
Tinwright shook his head. Soso the gull gave him a baleful look and feinted toward his ear. The bird didn’t seem as fond of the poet as he was of Aislin, and he especially didn’t like it when Tinwright moved—he’d given him a few painful pecks on the ankles and hands already. “What do you mean, letting me in? I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Hurt me? Should say not—I’d pop you like a bulb of rockweed, boy,” she said with an evil, self-satisfied chuckle. “No, because you’re a drylander...what was your name?” She stared at him, blinking slowly. “Ah, never mind. Because you’re a drylander, and your kind isn’t much liked around here just now.”
“Why?” There was no resisting the notion, once it had crept into his head, that Aislin the tanglewife looked and sounded like nothing so much as a huge, gray-haired frog in a shapeless dress. It made conversation tricky. That last cup of wine wasn’t helping, either.
“Why? By the Grandsire’s soggy cod, boy, didn’t you see? Big piece of Sealer’s Walk burned down? Who do you think did that?”
Tinwright stared aghast at the goggle-eyed Skimmer woman. “It wasn’t me!”
“No, you fool, and be glad it wasn’t, but it was drylanders from up in the town, a gang of them, young and stupid and hateful. Three of our people were killed, one of them a child. Folk around here aren’t very happy.”
“Why did they do it?” Suddenly he understood the way some of the Skimmers had watched him and a chill swept over him. “I hadn’t heard anything about a fire.”
“You wouldn’t. We take care of our own, and what happens here doesn’t interest the ordinary run of castle folk—not unless the whole place went up in flames and threatened the rest of the town.” The tanglewife settled back again, waving her broad hands as though to waft away a foul smell. “It’s been bad ever since those Qar creatures crossed the Shadowline. We folk are different—they used to call us kilpies and sea-fairies, did you know?—so things go bad for us. It happened when they came the last time, too, in my great-grandmother’s day. Everyone was driven out of Southmarch by them, eventually, but our folk were driven out first—and by our own neighbors.”
“Sorry.” The cursed wine had fogged his brain—how had they started talking about this? “What’s...what’s a Kwar?”
“You’re not quite saying it right, but close enough for a drylander. Qar is another name for the Old Ones living beyond the Shadowline—the Twilight People.” She stared at him for a moment. “You’ve been sitting here much of the afternoon, boy. Better get up and going before it turns dark. I don’t think it’s going to be a good night for someone like you to be wandering around land-legged on Sealer’s Walk.”
“Right, then.” Tinwright stood up, sketched a somewhat uneven bow, and began to bob through the dangling charms in search of the door, doing his best to ignore the black and white gull pecking aggressively at his feet.
“What are you doing?” Aislin called. “Didn’t you come here to buy something from me?”
He stopped, a thought suddenly gnawing at his mind. “Ah. Yes.”
“You have no head for Black Wrack, boy, that’s certain.” She grunted as she lifted herself to her feet. “Let me get to my powders and potions. Don’t sit down again, you’ll fall asleep.”
After she had been gone for no little time (a span during which Tinwright and the gull eyed each other with feigned disinterest) she came back carrying a small stoppered glass bottle no bigger than a child’s thumb.
“This venom comes from an octopus out of the southern seas—a small thing you would never think to be so deadly. Dip a needle in it and use that one drop only. Just that, and her journey will be painless. But be careful with it or you will murder yourself. This poison knows no master.”
Tinwright took it and stared at the thing in his hand. It was hard to know for certain through the blue glass vial, but the fluid inside looked clear and harmless as water. “Careful...” he breathed. “I’ll be careful.”
“You had better.” Her laugh was sharp and raw. “There’s enough in there to kill a dozen strong men. I don’t like handling it, myself. I had an accident once.” She sat down heavily. “And it goes without saying that from here out, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I’ve no qualms about much of anything but I don’t want trouble with the Tollys. So remember, if someone comes down here asking about me and blue glass bottles, someone will come looking for you in turn. Understand?”