sheâd be caught giving in to the cardinal-sin impulse of curiosity.
âIâll stand for her. Verena Feliachild, Verdanii.â
âVery well.â He dipped his head to Sophie in a way that seemed to mean âno offenseâ and handed the coins over.
Maybe itâll be Sophie of Sylvanna soon, she thought. The thought came with a thrum of guilt, a sense that she was doing wrong by her parents, back in San Francisco.
âWhat about these?â Sophie dug out an old wallet filled with little gems: a couple of diamonds, some semiprecious stonesâturquoise, amethystâand about six opals.
The jeweler raked through them with a look of studied indifference on his face.
âWhatâs the point of this?â Verena said.
âGetting a bit of money of my own,â she said.
âOpals?â
âGifts from over the years. Because of my middle name. They arenât heirlooms, Verena.â
âTwo of these might be all right for magic,â the jeweler interrupted. âThe rest, just for trinkets.â
âNonsense,â Verena replied. âTheyâre nice and symmetrical. Theyâre great for spells.â
Sophie entrusted the haggling to her sister, drifting on to the next vendor with her handful of coins. She paused at a blown-glass goldfish bowl. Three bright yellow creatures swam within; they were only the length of her finger but had the shape and gaping lionlike mouths of the silk dragons sheâd seen at Lunar New Yearâs celebrations in Chinatown. As she slowed, they broke the surface, letting water stream from their tiny jaws, and began to let out a whistle, the three of them pitching their notes so they formed a chord.
She found herself smiling. She extended her hand toward the bowlâ
The vendor caught her just as one of the fish made a sharp-toothed snap for her fingertips.
âBevvies, Kir? Brighten your day, bring good fortune.â
She shook her headâboth to say no and to shake off the odd, soporific effect of their song. It would be amazing to have live specimens of pretty much any species, but she needed somewhere to keep them first. She crossed to what looked like a bookstore, searching through the collection of bound diaries and ribbon-bound bundles of writing paper.
âNo booksâthese are blank?â she asked.
âOur booksellerâs ma took sick,â the vendor replied. âWent back to her homeland.â
Had Verena deliberately chosen a market without a bookstall?
âMay I ask you something?â
His face took on a suspicious cast. That wariness, again, of curiosity. Was it simply cultural conditioning, or was magic at work here, somehow? Courtesy or the customer service impulse won out. âOf course, Kir.â
âI got a letter recently that came with a sheet of paper thatâwell, I wrote on it, and someone from another ship wrote back.â
âMessageply.â He nodded.
âHow does that work? I want some for my brother.â
âThe pages must be prepared by a specially scribed paperworker and be of a sheet.â He pointed out a locked case with a giant, two-ply roll of what looked like toilet paper. âThe sheets are then picked apart and held by the separate parties. They are two halves of the same thing, you see.â
âSounds like quantum entanglement.â
âI donât know this term âquantum,â Kir.â
Bram would be fascinated. âTo use something like that to contact my brother, Iâd have to send him the other half of a page already in my possession?â
âThere are other ways to message. Cheapest is to scribe a pair of chitterbugs hatched of one casing. You teach them a tapping code, tell one, the other picks up the rhythm.â
âTapping codeâlike Morse?â She ran out a series of dots and dashes.
He nodded. âWealthy folk prefer birds whoâll talk.â
Verena and Annela would definitely
Learning to Kill: Stories