Blue Fire. Janice Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ not worry about that right now. Once we get out of the city, we’ll have more time to figure out where to go without soldiers breathing down our necks.”

      Aylin kept sneaking me looks, and she’d have her own set of questions as soon as she got me alone. So would Tali, no doubt.

      The others though? A few looked unsure about this plan, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they grabbed their share of the money and ran. And Saints help me, a few less people to worry about suited me just fine.

      But what if we weren’t welcome anywhere? Refugees from the Duke’s siege of Verlatta couldn’t be fleeing just to Geveg. The farms might be flooded with them. We might get there only to find there was no room for us.

      Or worse, we might find the Duke cared about sweet potatoes after all and there was nowhere to run to.

      “Can we keep any of this for ourselves?” Tali asked as we searched through the drawers in Zertanik’s study. She dangled a string of rose-coloured beads from her fingers.

      “We need to sell as much as we can. We don’t know who we’ll have to bribe or how long it’ll take us to find work once we’re settled.”

      “What if we can’t find a place?”

      “We will. Hand me that knife, would you? This drawer is locked.”

      Tali slipped the beads over her head and passed me the knife. “Half the drawers and cabinets in this place are locked. Zertanik didn’t trust people, did he?”

      I jammed the knife into the lock. “He was a thief.”

      “I guess that would do it.”

      The lock popped and I pulled the drawer out. Stacked on the bottom were pages written in neat glyphs, like Papa used to write.

       Those are funny letters, Papa. What do they do?

       They help me teach the pynvium to hold pain, Nya-Pie.

       Pynvium talks to you?

       No, but it listens.

      “Nya?” Tali touched my arm and I dropped the pages. They fluttered to the carpet. “What’s wrong?”

      “Nothing. It’s just… nothing.” I grabbed for the pages before she saw them, but she snatched one first.

      “Papa used to write like this.”

      “I know.”

      “Enchanter’s glyphs.”

      It surprised me she even remembered. She’d been seven when he died, and he hadn’t done much enchanting in the year before that. Like everyone else in Geveg, he’d been busy fighting a losing war.

      She stared at the pages, her eyes watering, then wiped away the tears. “Are they worth anything?”

      “I don’t know. Depends on the enchantment, I guess.”

      “They’re easy to carry, so we should try to sell them.” She collected the pages from the floor and smoothed them. “Are there more?”

      “I didn’t look.”

      She rooted around in the drawer and pulled out a thin pynvium plate the size of a book. Glyphs were carved into the metal with the same neat handwriting as the papers. Shiverfeet raced down my spine.

      “Ooo, pretty.” She ran her fingers across the glyphs. “This is worth something for the pynvium alone. Look how blue the metal is. It has to be pure.” She handed it to me.

      I jerked away. “That’s OK.”

      “What’s wrong?” She stared at me funny, then looked at the pynvium. “It won’t bite.”

      “I…” Didn’t want to touch it. Didn’t even want to be in the same room with it, and I couldn’t say why. “Put it back.”

      “Put it back? Do you know how much this is worth?”

      With the pynvium shortage going on, probably more than anything else in the town house. I still didn’t want it near me. “But it’s… wrong.”

      She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. The way I felt, maybe I had. “Fine, it’s gone,” she said. It thunked into the drawer and she shoved it closed.

      I could feel it though, and I’d never been able to sense pynvium in my life. Hadn’t even sensed that one until I saw it. It didn’t feel like what Tali had described when she’d tried to teach me how to push pain into pynvium like a real Healer. No call, no hum, just a quiver at the bottom of my stomach.

      It couldn’t be my shifting ability, either. Moving pain from person to person had nothing to do with those glyphs. But there was sure as spit something wrong.

      “I’m going to go check the library,” I said, jumping to my feet.

      “Nya!”

      I ignored her, eager to get out of that room and away from the pynvium. I shut the library door and flopped into a chair big enough for me and Tali. The quiver faded, but my unease remained.

      What was wrong with that pynvium? I’d never felt that way around the metal before.

       A chest with a band of blue around the lid, carved with glyphs. Men from the Pynvium Consortium had brought it, and Papa had yelled at them. “You brought that here? To my home? You don’t even know what it does!”

      I’d never seen Papa afraid of the glyphs before. Had they bothered him as well? I’d hidden, scared of the shouting and the way my stomach felt after looking at the chest. Grannyma had found me in the closet and put me to bed. She’d rocked and sung lullabies until I’d fallen asleep.

      “Nya, you in here?” The door opened and Aylin stuck her head in.

      “I’m here.”

      She glanced at the books lining the shelves but didn’t pick up any this time. There were quite a few books missing, so she must have more than enough to read for a while. “We’ve got quite the pile of treasure building downstairs. I had them dump it all on the dining-room table.”

      “Thanks.”

      “You OK? You look queasy.”

      “I’m fine.” I stood and put my palms over my belly. “Don’t think Soek’s fish stew liked me much, but it’ll pass.”

      She nodded and rifled through a desk drawer. “Did you want to start going through it all or do you want me to handle it?”

      “You can do it. You have a better eye for what sells.”

      “Merchant’s daughter.” She grinned, but then looked sad. She always did when she talked about her mother. Not that Aylin ever said much. None of us talked about our families. “Oh, I don’t think everyone is turning over everything they find. I caught Kneg СКАЧАТЬ