Page 23 of Minor Works of Meda

Oraik blinked.

“Really?” he asked. I looked at him blankly and he sighed. “Did you see that long row of barges, just past the harbor lip? You must have, coming in.” I thought back to when I arrived and shrugged. I hadn’t paid much attention to the boats. “It’s where all the business goes that the Temple’s banned. You know. Brothels, and dreamfish, and gambling dens.”

It made a certain clever sense, I supposed. Put everything illegal on a boat and float it out on the water, and there wasn’t much even the Cachians could do about it. It was a fundamental truth that the sea was free from law, because the sea could not be owned.

“If that appeals to you, do it.” It seemed like the type of evening a man covered in gold might enjoy.

“You aren’t very helpful.” He frowned at me.

“I never claimed to be.”

He sighed. “So where are you from? Does anyone there ever smile, or are they all as cheerless as you?”

“Nis-Illous.”

“Nis-Illous,” he said slowly, turning the sound over in his mouth. Oraik frowned, then lit up. “That’s Nis’ westernmost isle. Isn’t it?”

He sounded terribly proud of himself, for having the equivalent achievement of pointing at the big glowing spot at night and going ‘that’s the moon. Isn’t it?’ But it at least had the effect of making me feel less sullen for not knowing about sin-boats or the night market, while simultaneously reminding me that the island where I’d spent my life was very small and unimportant compared to the Protectorate’s capital, former center of the world.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Are you a potter? That’s what it’s known for, isn’t it, the pottery?”

“My parents are potters.” I’d forgotten how terrible conversation with normal people was. Why did any of this matter?

“But you didn’t want to be. Ah! That’s why you came to Rovileis, seeking your fortune!” He clapped his hands together, eyes lighting up. “It’s like that story, Taavi and the Ten Gems!”

Once again I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He must have been from the other side of the Protectorate.

“I’m just meeting someone,” I lied. If I mentioned magic, I might have to mention the tower, and what had happened there.

He drummed his fingers on the table and frowned.

“A lover?” he guessed after a moment. “No, you’re too sullen to be meeting a lover. Unless that’s just how your face looks. Or you’re planning to break his heart. Her heart? Their heart?”

The idea that I’d come for something so insignificantly human was too much just then. I burst out laughing, and Oraik grinned like he’d won a prize.

“No, not a lover,” I informed him, covering my mouth and wiping a tear from my eye. The grin vanished. He looked disappointed.

“Then what’s so funny?”

“I’ve never met anybody like you.”

“But I’m perfectly ordinary.” He scowled.

“Are you? You’re covered in gold.”

“So?” He dragged his hands off the counter and buried them where I couldn’t see all his rings.

“Where are you from? What are you doing here?” I pushed the bowl of food away and stared at the ridiculous man.

“I am trying to decide what to do with my night,” he told me archly. “I don’t suppose you’d like to come with me? I’ll pay.”

“Me? You must be joking.”

“Oh, please. Don’t make me sightsee alone. I don’t even mind if you laugh at me.”

He clasped his gold-touched hands together in a beggar’s pose and stared at me wide-eyed. I wasn’t feeling so tired now that I’d eaten, and Oraik, though rich and ridiculous, didn’t seem much like a threat.

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