“How long until that shipment?” asked Viv.
Fern raised her head from her cradling arms. “Who knows? Overland shipping is unpredictable. Maybe a few days?” she said bleakly. “Not that anyone will want to buy them. I just occupied the whole gods-damned reading population of Murk with half-priced books. When the new ones arrive, they won’t need anything to read!” She appended a few choice expletives with precise savagery.
Viv tapped the third of the Beckett mysteries, her current distraction. “They’ll finish and need something else. Right?”
The rattkin sighed and grudgingly admitted, “Yes. Theoretically. I suppose.” She glanced at Satchel, who’d begun emerging during the day, given the absolute dearth of custom. “Too bad they don’t read as fast as him.”
The homunculus sat ensconced in one of the chairs with a stack of books at his side. He’d been consuming them at a prodigious rate. Potroast lay at his feet, nipping at the bones of his toes while Satchel gently dipped them away from his questing beak.
“How do you read those so quickly?” Viv waggled her fingers. “Is it some kind of … I dunno, magic thing?”
Satchel turned a page with one slender digit. “I look at the page, and then the words are in my mind. That’s the accepted way, yes?”
“All of the words on the page? All at once?” said Fern.
He looked back and forth between them. “You read them one by one?” he asked curiously.
“Yes!” they both cried at the same time.
He appeared to think about that. “That seems quite inefficient, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Viv shifted aside the curtains to look out one of the windows. The inactivity in the wake of the sale hadn’t done much for her growing impatience. She felt prickly, extremely aware of the passage of hours and days, and increasingly anxious for Rackam’s return. Or for anything to happen, really. She almost wished another gray-clad stranger would wander into town, just so she’d have something to do.
Only yesterday she’d taken a detour from her morning walk to stand before the bounty board, studying every scrawled offering, daydreaming over bandit camps and ortheg nests and highwaymen. Hells, even a spineback hunt would’ve been welcome.
Her fingers had ached to hold steel the entire time.
What she wanted at the moment was to return to her room, place her hands on the hilt of the greatsword, and put in some hard work. Really build up a sweat. And to be fair, she did that every day, out back of The Perch.
But she’d also pledged to help Fern with her shop, to try to push it past survival into something more like living. Viv had made a commitment, and she liked to think she took her commitments seriously.
She wrestled her thoughts back in that direction. From the limpness of Fern’s tail, she could tell she was slumping into her former listlessness.
Viv forced a smile onto her face and turned from the window. “So we’ll be waiting a few days, and nobody’s coming into the shop. Doesn’t matter what we do in here, then, right? What if you just closed, and we took care of some work around the place? That way, when the new books show up, that’s not the only thing that’s new.”
Fern stared at her, chin resting on her arms again, but she didn’t say anything for a while. She was thinking about it though, Viv could tell. At last, Fern asked, “Like what?”
“Well, for starters …” Viv pointed at the cracked hurricane lamp. “Every time the door slams, I expect that damn thing to shatter all over the floor.”
“So you think a new lamp is going to solve my problems?” Her voice was a little exasperated, but she was trying for good humor.
“Bothers me every time I see it. But maybe some fresh paint, too. Maybe an actual new rug? This one doesn’t stink so bad anymore, but it’s still …”
“Malodorous,” supplied Satchel.
“Can you even smell anything?” asked Fern in surprise.
“My Lady was very particular about such things,” he said primly.
Potroast squawked an agreement.
“None of this changes what I sell, though,” said Fern. “This isn’t a hotel. It’s a bookshop! It’s not that I don’t want it to be nice. I do. But it’s just hard to believe that any of that will make a real difference. You don’t weed the garden when the house is burning down.”
Viv tried to figure out how to frame what she wanted to say. She snapped her fingers. “The bakery! If it was, uh …”
The rattkin saw where she was headed. “Like my shop is now,” she said grimly, motioning for Viv to continue.
“I wasn’t going to mention your shop. I was just going to say … dirty.”
Fern snorted. “Nice try.”
“Anyway, do you think Maylee would do as well?”
“No, but that’s different. That’s food. If it’s repulsive there, you lose your appetite.”
“I guess I’m saying that you kind of have to have an appetite for this, too.”
“Hmmm.” Fern didn’t seem entirely convinced.
“What’s the worst that could happen if we did a little work in here?”
“We could waste all the money I earned in the sale, and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference?” replied the rattkin.
Viv blinked. “Okay, I guess that is the worst case.”
Fern took in the shaggy paint, the cracked lamp, the shabby drapes, and the disreputable carpet. “I don’t really even see those things anymore. It’s just home. I’m … used to them.”
“Maybe you’re resigned to them.”
The rattkin sighed. “Okay, so say we were to try a few things—”
Satchel perked up. “M’lady, would it be all right if I were of assistance now?”
“Call me Fern, Satchel.”
“Yes, m’lady.”
* * *
Notwithstanding her furtive trips by the bounty board, Viv really hadn’t spent much time within the actual city of Murk. Apart from the distance, there wasn’t a lot she needed to do there, and the potential of running into Iridia—even given their temporary peace—usually put it out of her mind.
Now, though, she was eager to find out if the gnome brothers were still selling estate furniture.
With the CLOSED sign posted on the door, she and Fern headed toward the fortress walls. They’d tried to convince Satchel to ride along in his bag, but he’d demurred, saying he preferred to stay back and read.
It occurred to Viv that she’d never really gone anywhere with Fern before. Potroast tagged along, trotting by Fern’s side and goggling at everything with his pink tongue out.
“Hang on a second,” said Viv when they reached Sea-Song. “I think Maylee might like to come. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not. If you don’t work harder at worshipping that woman, she’s going to escape. Then how am I supposed to get free scones? I’ve got a vested interest.”
It took more than a second, but Viv returned with Maylee alongside.
“If the bakery burns down with Helsa runnin’ things, I’m holdin’ you responsible,” the dwarf groused, but Viv was warmed by the smile underneath it.
The sun reflected off the placid sea in streaks of blinding white, and heat shimmered off the sand. Down on the dry flats of the beach, she could see folk sitting on blankets or under big umbrellas made of sailcloth. Some even braved the waves, swimming and bobbing on the swells like corks.
All three of them were relieved to pass underneath the arch and into the relative cool of the walled city, where the shadows cast pools of refuge.
“First, the most important thing,” said Viv solemnly. She hooked a thumb at the chandler’s shop—the one where she’d first seen Balthus all those days ago.
Grinning at Fern’s quizzical expression, she led them inside, where she purchased a new chimney for the hurricane lamp and asked to have it wrapped to pick up later.
“Well, at least the important thing is out of the way,” said Fern dryly. “You and that cracked lamp.”
Next, they visited the gnome brothers’ lot. There was indeed a fresh variety of furniture, ranging in condition from irreparably decrepit to surprisingly sturdy and clean.
Maylee held up an ornate bookend. “Huh. Some kind of seabird?”