Page 69 of Dark Water Daughter

My hand shot into my pocket, scrambling for a coin that had not been there since Tithe.

I was in Usti, however, and the crowd that flowed past me now boasted the garb of a dozen nations, all gathered under the Usti flag to live and trade. And the Usti, as a neutral party in the war, would have plenty of Mereish traders.

I set off, scouring the vision from my mind and hiding shaking hands in my pockets.

“Mereish?” A black-skinned trader with a thick Sunjani accent squinted at me half an hour later, the brim of his felt hat sitting low atop thick eyebrows. “Why is an Aead looking for Mereish goods?”

I cleared my throat and gave a bracing smile. “We may be at war, but the Mereish are still the finest jewelers on this side of the world.”

“That is fair.” The trader considered for a moment, lips pursed, nose flared. “Just remember, your people have no power here, Aead. These are Usti waters. Do not bring your war. Do not bring your grudges. You will be in irons up at the keep before nightfall, and those dungeons floodeverytide.”

I nodded and shoved my hands deeper into my pockets.

“Now, if you are looking for Mereish goods,” the trader mused, “try the bridge on the Boulevard of the Divine, south of the bridge in the Knocks. Plenty of Mereish folk there.”

“How do I find that?”

The trader leaned over hiswares—finelycarved pipes of variouslengths—andpointed through the market towards a statue of an armored woman riding a great snow bear. “Take a left by SaintHelga—ourHelga, Aead, Our Lady of Bears, you see her? Yes? We do not worship yourSainthere, or his red crown. Keep on for a span past the statue, and you will be on the Boulevard.”

I swallowed my brimmingoffense—Iwas well aware of the variants of religion outside of Aeadine, and the myriad saints of Usti andMere—butthe merchant had been helpful, in the end. I smiled stiffly and started off, weaving through marketgoers from every imaginablenation—though,considering the varied ancestry of the Usti themselves, it was hard to separate foreigner from local. The Usti were, at their core, a conglomerate of peoples from across the known world, who had banded together and flourished.

I watched a pair of Capesh women with colorful headscarves walk arm in arm past a stall selling dragonflies, the glowing little creatures arrayed in glasses of every size. Men with hooded eyes and longbeards—Ismani,from the far, farwest—stoodbeside old Usti men in traditional kaftans, smoking pipes around a brazier. A violinist with prominent Sunjani nose piercings played with an Usti’s measured emotion beneath the statue of Saint Helga. The violinist’s music was swaying and regal, and ever on the edge of breaking free.

Two round-faced girls in fur hoods darted past me, chasing a dog and followed by a tired father.

“Sorry, sir,” the man said in Usti as he ducked around me. “Kat! Iri! Back here right now!”

I watched them go, my Sooth’s senses momentarily straying after their footprints in the snow. Another vision trickled around my guard, whispering and full of potential. I saw myself as that man, chasing a little girl who looked back at me, laughing, with my own eyes. Benedict’s eyes.

She looks like us.

An ache started in my chest. The violinist’s song was no help, tugging the pain along in a medley of regret and sadness, lost possibility and a fierce, burning injustice. For myself, for that girl, and her misled mother.

I started walking again, faster now, following the merchant’s instructions until my path emerged onto a broad boulevard and a stone bridge.

The bridge was decorated for an upcoming festival, strung with pine and holly garland. I made for the eclectic sprawl of stalls on the east side, where I caught sight of one in the deep, bruised purple fabric signature of the Mereish.

“Katash!”the merchant greeted me, using a traditional Usti honorific. She smiled and touched her heart, then waved a long-fingered hand at the cases of wares on her table. I was in luck, finally. She was a proper jeweler, and the thick saber at her hip attested to her goods’ value.

“I’m Aeadine,” I said in Mereish. “Not Usti.”

She squinted. “Are you and I at war?”

“I am simply a customer,” I replied with sincerity. If there was anything I had taken from my time with the Navy, it was that civilians, particularly merchants, were not the enemy.

“A customer who speaks my mother’s tongue?”

I had learned it at the Naval Academy in Ismoathe, but she did not need to know that. “I do. I am searching for a charm, the kind only your people can make.”

Her chin dropped slightly to the side. Caution slipped into the lines of her plump body, but her smile remained polite. “Mm. What would this charm do?”

“Root a mind in our world,” I replied, not bothering to mince my words. “Suppress a connection to the Other. A charm for a troubled Sooth.”

The merchant’s chin strayed even farther to the side, more of her politeness ebbing into narrow-eyed scrutiny. “That is not possible. A charm for love? I have. For a healthy baby or a good voyage? These arecommon—noteasy, but common. What you seek, you will never find.”

“I have had one before.”

“Then you had a great treasure.” The woman’s composure returned. “I wish I had one to sell,katash, you may trust me on that.”

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