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She appraised him in the flickering torchlight. ‘Yes. You would,’ she confirmed to herself. She shook her head. ‘Nothing you wouldn’t do, is there, Brashen Trell?’

‘Not much,’ he agreed coldly, resolute on ending the conversation. Once more he tugged at her arm but she still resisted.

‘Lots of places there will give me credit. Come on. I’ll buy for you, too.’ She had gone from judgemental to effusive in one breath.

He decided on a direct tack. ‘Althea. You’re drunk and a mess. You’re in no condition to be seen in any public place. Come on. I’m taking you home.’

The resistance went out of her and he led her docilely along the semi-dark street.

They were in an area of smaller shops here, some of an unsavoury nature, others incapable of paying the high rent of a night market location.

Dim lanterns shone outside those that were still open for business: tattoo parlours, incense and drug shops, and those that sated the more unusual cravings of the flesh.

He was glad that trade was paltry tonight.

Just when he thought that the night’s trials were over for him, Althea drew a long shuddering breath.

He realized she was weeping, all but silently.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her wearily.

‘Now that my father’s dead, no one will ever be proud of me again.’ She shook her head blindly, and then blotted her eyes on her sleeve. Her voice was choked when she spoke. ‘With him, it was what I could do. With all of them, it’s how I look, or what others think of me.’

‘You’ve had too much to drink,’ he said quietly.

He had meant the words to sound comforting, to mean that such things would only bother her when she was drunk and her defences were down.

Instead they came out sounding like another condemnation.

But she only bowed her head to it and followed him docilely, so he let it be.

He was certainly having no luck at making her feel better, and honestly he was not sure that he wanted to make her feel better, or had any responsibility to do so.

So her family had condemned her. Could she speak to him and forget how completely cast out from his kin he was?

Only a few weeks ago, she had thrown that in his face.

It wasn’t fair of her to expect sympathy now that the tables were turned.

They had walked some way in silence when she spoke again. ‘Brashen,’ she said quietly in a serious voice. ‘I’m going to get my ship back.’

He made a noncommittal noise. There was no sense in telling her he believed there was absolutely no chance of that.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ she demanded.

‘Yes. I heard you.’

‘Well. Aren’t you going to say anything?’

He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘When you get your ship back, I expect to be first mate again.’

‘Done,’ she replied grandiosely.

Brashen snorted. ‘If I knew it were that easy, I’d have demanded to be captain.’

‘No. No, I’m going to be the captain. But you can be the mate. Vivacia likes you. When I am captain, I’m only going to have people we like aboard her.’

‘Thank you,’ he said awkwardly. He had never believed that Althea liked him. In a strange way, it touched him. The captain’s daughter had liked him after all.

‘What?’ she asked him drunkenly.

‘Nothing,’ he told her. ‘Nothing at all.’

They turned into the street of the Rain Wild merchants.

Here the stores were more ornate, and all but one or two were closed for the evening.

The exotic and expensive merchandise they dealt in was for the very wealthy, not the wild and reckless youth that were the main customers of the night market.

The tall glass windows were shuttered for the night, and hired guards, heavily armed, loitered purposefully near the various shops.

More than one glowered at the pair as they made their way down the boardwalks.

The wares behind the shuttered windows were tinged with the magic of the Rain Wilds.

It had always seemed to Brashen that there was a shimmer of something both shivery and sweet on this street.

It prickled the hair on the back of his neck at the same time that it closed his throat with awe.

Even in the night, with the mysterious goods of the forbidding river trade hidden from sight, the aura of magic shimmered silvery-cold in the night air.

He wondered if Althea felt it and nearly asked her, save that the question seemed both too serious and too trivial to utter aloud.

The silence between them had grown until Althea’s hand on his arm was an uncomfortable closeness.

When he spoke again, it was to dispel that more than from any need.

‘Well, she’s come up in the world quite swiftly,’ he observed aloud as they passed Amber’s shop.

He nodded toward a storefront on the corner of Rain Wild Street, where Amber herself sat in the window behind an expensive set of Yicca glass panes.

They were as clear as water, and set in elaborately carved and gilded frames.

They made the woman in the window look like a framed piece of art.

The woven chair she lounged in was of white wickerwork.

She wore a long brown gown that hung simply from her shoulders; it more cloaked than enhanced her slight form.

Her shop windows were neither shuttered nor barred; no guards lurked outside.

Perhaps Amber trusted to her own strange presence to detect thieves.

A single dish-lamp burned on the floor beside her with a mellow yellow light.

The rich brown of her draped gown pointed up the gold of her skin and hair and eyes.

Her bare feet peeped from the bottom of her long skirts.

She watched the street with a cat’s wide unblinking stare.

Althea halted to return that stare. She swayed slightly on her feet and without thinking Brashen put his arm around her shoulders to steady her.

‘What is she selling?’ Althea wondered out loud.

Brashen winced, certain that the woman beyond the glass had heard her words, but Amber’s expression neither changed nor faltered from her emotionless regard of the dishevelled girl in the street.

Althea screwed her eyes tight shut, then opened them wide as if that would change the view.

‘She looks as if she’s all carved of wood. Golden maple.’

The woman behind the glass could hear her words, for Brashen saw a small smile begin to form on her sculpted lips.

But when Althea added plaintively, ‘She reminds me of my ship. Lovely Vivacia, with all the colours of life over the silk grain of wizardwood,’ Amber’s face abruptly changed to an expression of extreme distaste.

Not quite sure of why that patrician disdain so alarmed him, Brashen nonetheless seized Althea by the elbow and firmly hurried her past the window and on down the dimly lit street.

At the next intersection, he allowed her to slow down.

She was limping by then, and he recalled her bare feet and the rough wood of the boardwalk.

She said not a word of that, but only asked again, ‘What does she sell there? She’s not one of the Bingtown Traders who have Rain River trade; only liveship families can trade up the Rain River.

So who is she and why does she have a shop on Rain Wild Street? ’

Brashen shrugged. ‘She was new here, about two years ago. Had a tiny little shop off the Odds and Bodkins Square. She made wooden beads and sold them. Nothing else. Just very pretty wooden beads. A lot of people bought them for their children to string. Then, last year, she moved to a better location and started selling, well, jewellery. Only it’s all made of wood. ’

‘Wooden jewellery?’ Althea scoffed. She sounded much more herself and Brashen suspected the walk was sobering her up. Good. Maybe she’d have the sense to tidy herself up before walking barefoot into her father’s house.

‘That’s what I thought, too, until I saw it.

I had never known a crafter could find so much in wood.

She works with the odd little knotty bits, and brings out faces and animals and exotic flowers.

Sometimes she inlays pieces. But it’s as much the wood she chooses as the skill with which she does it.

She has an uncanny eye, to see what she does in a bit of wood. ’

‘So. Does she work wizardwood, then?’ Althea asked boldly.

‘Fa!’ Brashen exclaimed in disgust. ‘She might be new, but she knows our ways well enough to know that would not be tolerated! No, she only uses ordinary wood. Cherry and oak and I don’t know, all different colours and grains…’

‘There’s a lot more that work wizardwood in Bingtown than would like to own up to it,’ Althea observed darkly. She scratched at her belly. ‘It’s a dirty little trade, but if you want a carved bit and have the coin, you can get it.’

Her suddenly ominous tone made Brashen uneasy. He tried to lighten the conversation. ‘Well, isn’t that what all the world says of Bingtown? That if a man can imagine a thing, he can find it for sale here?’

She smiled crookedly at him. ‘And you’ve heard the rejoinder to that, haven’t you? That no man can truly imagine being happy, and that’s why happiness isn’t for sale here.’

The sudden bleakness of her mood left him at a loss for words.

The silence that followed seemed in tune with the cooling of the summer night.

As they left the streets of the merchants and tradesmen behind and followed the winding roads into the residential sections of Bingtown, the night grew darker around them.

Lanterns were more widely spaced and set far back from the road.

Barking dogs threatened them from fenced or hedged yards.

The roads here were rougher, the only walkways were of gravel, and when Brashen thought of Althea’s bare feet, he winced sympathetically. But she herself said nothing of it.