24th of Deepwinter, 413 AH
The estate gate closed behind us, and the world got bigger.
The road from the estate ran downhill between bare winter hedgerows, and at the bottom, Norvo spread across the valley in a patchwork of rooftops and chimney smoke. Two months of corridors and training halls and a desk full of kitchen jars, and the world had been right there the entire time, fifteen minutes downhill.
Aldric had layered me for the cold. Shirt underneath, thicker fabric, and a heavy coat over everything. I'd undone the shirt's collar before he finished dressing me and unbuttoned the cuffs because the fabric was annoying on my wrists. He'd watched me undo the buttons with the expression of a man who'd built a sandcastle and heard the tide report.
Ren walked three paces behind and to my left. She'd worn armor today, a fitted cuirass over mail with Silver worked into the buckles. It caught the winter light at the shoulders when she turned. On the estate she'd always looked like a girl who happened to carry a sword. She looked much better like this.
(Ren Picture)
Spoiler
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A household girl trailed further back, thirteen or fourteen, sent along to carry whatever I bought. She'd been stealing glances at me since we left, looking away the moment I looked her way.
Ren had been quiet since we left. I glanced back and found her scanning the road ahead.
"Something wrong?"
"No, young master."
I went back to the view.
The road leveled out as we approached the outer wall. The city's sounds reached us before the gate did, faint at first and layering as we walked. Voices, cart wheels on stone, a dog barking somewhere to the left. By the time we passed through the gate, the noise had thickened into something continuous, the sounds of a place that was alive.
The guard at the gate, a woman in Silver house colors, nodded to Ren and looked at me for a long moment, then straightened as I passed.
The market square was three blocks in from the gate, and the sound built with every street, sellers calling prices, metal on metal from a workshop, something frying in oil. The smell cut through the cold air and the woodsmoke as the streets narrowed toward the square.
The cold bit harder here than on the estate. It settled into my shoulders even through the thick jacket. I tucked my hands into my pockets.
The square itself was wide, stone-paved, ringed by shopfronts with wooden signs. I stopped at the edge of it and took everything in.
People. More people in one place than I'd seen since waking up in this body. Women, overwhelmingly. Pemberton had covered the demographics in one of his early lessons, four women to every man for the human population, he'd said, give or take. He'd hinted the ratio differed for other races but hadn't elaborated.
The city's open market wasn't following Pemberton's number. I watched for a full minute, counting out of habit, and lost track somewhere past twelve to one without the number showing signs of correcting. The men were at home, presumably.
Most of the crowd was human. Near the far edge of the square I spotted a woman who wasn't, or at least whose proportions didn't match the local baseline. Taller by a full head than anyone around her, broader through the shoulders, with a face that carried angles no human skull produced.
The bone structure was built on a different plan entirely, with a wider jaw and more prominent brow. She moved through the crowd with a physical awareness that reminded me of Ren, except Ren had learned hers. This woman seemed to have been born with it. She was haggling with a fruit seller and nobody seemed to find her remarkable. I wanted to watch longer, but Ren was already drifting forward.
I found three men spread across the entire square, each walking beside a woman, bundled in heavy coats with their collars up and scarves pulled high. All three kept their attention on the street ahead while their wives browsed the stalls.
Not shy, exactly. Deliberately unavailable. I hadn't met any shy men so far. Pemberton wasn't shy. Father wasn't shy either, though he did most of his talking in questions. Maybe this was simply how men moved through a city where every stranger was likely to be a woman.
One of them glanced in my direction as he passed. His eyebrows rose as he took in my face, the Silver house colors on Ren behind me.
The women of Norvo looked like the estate staff, but rougher. Working clothes in heavy fabrics, hair tied back for function. A few wore Silver house colors on pins or neck scarves. Most didn't bother. They moved through the market with confidence, calling prices and arguments across the stalls without lowering their voices for anyone.
I had a list. Magnifying lens, the best one available. Glass containers that actually sealed. Preservation materials that wouldn't degrade within a week. Two months of repurposed kitchen jars had gone from inconvenient to actively costing me data. Three specimens lost to bad seals, which was three too many. That ended today.
"Where's the merchant quarter?"
Ren moved up beside me. "This way, young master."
She led. A woman selling dried herbs from wooden trays had specimens I didn't recognize, bundles of something gray-green with a sharp, clean smell that cut through the market noise. I stopped, bent over the tray. The leaf structure was broader than anything on the estate grounds, with visible veining that suggested a different water-transport system than anything I'd cataloged.
"Those aren't for eating, lad."
I looked up. The herb seller had her hand frozen halfway to a bundle, mouth open on the rest of a sentence that died when she saw my face. Her eyes went past me to Ren in Silver colors, then back. Her expression rearranged itself, and the rest of the warning disappeared.
I straightened from the tray, one of the gray-green bundles still between my fingers. "How much for these?"
She named a price, her voice higher than when she'd been calling across the market. "Young master, are you..."
"I'll take a bundle."
I paid, and she gave me the herbs and too much change. I tried to hand the extra coins back. She closed my fingers around them.
Odd.
I passed the bundle to the household girl.
The merchant quarter was south of the square, past a long street of residential buildings. Laundry hung between upper windows on lines that sagged with the weight of wet fabric in cold air. A cat watched us from a sill.
Two girls, maybe eight or nine, chased each other around a rain barrel and stopped dead when they saw me, staring with open mouths until one of them grabbed the other's arm and pulled her inside. I heard whispering through the closing door.
Was this what being a local celebrity felt like?
The further we walked from the market square, the quieter the streets got. Less foot traffic, more workshops. A cobbler's shop with boots in the window. A smithy where a woman twice Ren's size was hammering something on an anvil, and the rhythmic clang followed us for two blocks.
The merchant quarter itself was narrower, the shops closer together and better kept. Glass in the windows instead of shutters. A glazier. An apothecary with bottles arranged by color in the window, greens and ambers and something deep blue that reflected the winter light.
The glazier was small and warm, with the same ward-heated flooring as the estate corridors. I shrugged off my coat before stepping to the counter. She took my order for sealed jars without ceremony. Six small, four medium, two of clear stock. She adjusted the price downward before I'd answered, watching my face as if the discount was something she wanted me to notice. The benefits of status. I handed the jars to the household girl and put the coat back on.
The preservation materials were at an apothecary two doors down. The shop was heated too. I spent ten minutes asking the shopkeeper about the fixatives on her shelf, alchemical solutions for stabilizing organic material against decay. She couldn't explain the mechanism in terms I found useful, but the conversation narrowed down the process. Something that slowed cellular breakdown at the tissue level, as far as I could tell. Whether it worked differently on mana-saturated specimens was a question for the desk.
She charged me full price and handed over the wrapped bottles.
The optical shop was further than I expected. Ren led us past the merchant quarter's main stretch, down a connecting alley where the cobblestones were uneven and puddles of melted snow sat in the gaps, then onto a quieter street where the shops were spaced further apart and the signs were painted rather than carved. Specialist territory. A woman repairing a clock in her doorway looked up as I passed, squinted, and went back to her work.
The shop itself had a smaller frontage, a wooden sign with a lens etched into it. Everything else today had been logistics, but this was the integral purchase that might actually change what I could see.
The shopkeeper was older, late forties or maybe fifty, with a broad face and a warmth that filled the room the moment she spoke. A heating array kept the space comfortable. I hung my coat by the door and she came around the counter as I did.
"Oh, now. The young Master Silver." She had a round voice, certain and comfortable. "We don't often have the household down this way. What can I find for you, young master?"
"A magnifying lens. Highest magnification you carry. I need to resolve details smaller than a grain of salt."
Her eyebrows went up. "A scholar. Come, come. I have something that might suit your needs."
She led me past the front display toward a cabinet along the far wall. Her hand landed on my shoulder to guide me through the narrow aisle, casually steering me through an unfamiliar room.
This much personal attention is definitely going to cost extra.
"This is our best work." She reached past me to open the cabinet, her arm brushing against my sleeve. She smelled of lavender and something waxy. "Ground by the craftswomen's guild. Mana-treated glass."
She handed me a lens mounted in brass. I held it up.
The magnification was better than anything on the estate. Better how, though? It wasn't a microscope, nothing in this world seemed to approach that, but the resolution was sharper, the image cleaner. I moved it over the wooden counter. Individual wood fibers separated into distinct lines. Over my hand, the surface of the skin resolved into something approaching useful topography, short of cellular resolution but better than anything I'd had in two months of squinting through borrowed equipment.
"How does the mana treatment affect the optical properties?"
"Oh, you'd need the guild for the specifics, young master." Her hand was on my shoulder again, and she'd moved closer while I was examining the lens. Her hip was near my elbow. "I can tell you it has less distortion."
I tipped the lens toward the window. "The edge distortion is low, but not quite gone."
"You have good eyes, young master." Her fingers moved from my shoulder to the back of my neck, adjusting my collar as if it needed straightening.
She was attentive. More so than the other shopkeepers, but the same basic pattern. The Silver name buying me better service, closer attention, the care merchants showed when they wanted a noble household's repeat business. The duchy governed this city, and being helpful to the duchess's son was good economics.
I was turning the lens to check the edge distortion when her hand came to rest on my forearm. Her thumb settled against the inside of my wrist and pressed against the skin. Her fingers curled around my forearm.
Annoying. I'd been about to tilt the lens toward the window to check the edge distortion in better light, and now there was a hand on my arm that stopped me from getting the right angle. Could she not see I was working?
My hand adjusted on the lens, a small compensation for the new weight on my arm.
I was calculating whether the edge distortion was acceptable for the working distance I'd need at my desk when her hand disappeared.
All at once.
I looked up.
Ren had the shopkeeper's wrist. Her grip was tight, the fingers pressing hard enough to leave pale dents in the skin. The shopkeeper winced and tried pulling back. Ren held on, her other hand resting on the pommel of her sword.
"The young master has made his selection." Ren's voice was perfectly level. The eyes were something else.
"I was only..."
It died.
I watched Ren hold the shopkeeper's wrist. The touching had been forward, but merchants wanted noble households to return. This was deference.
Wasn't it?
Ren released the wrist. "We'll take the lens. What's the price?"
She named a number. The warmth was gone. Ren paid from the household purse. She wrapped the lens, handed it to the household girl with the rest of the purchases, and took my coat down from the hook.
She held it out to me. "Put it on. We're leaving."
"I still had..." I looked toward the display cabinet I'd been about to check.
"We're leaving."
I looked at the shopkeeper. She was behind the counter again, one hand holding the wrist Ren had gripped. She wouldn't meet my eyes, the warmth, the round voice, the "come, come," all of it gone.
I looked at Ren. She stood between me and the counter, her hand still holding my coat.
I put it on and followed her out.
The walk back was faster than the walk down. Ren set the pace and stayed closer than usual, her hand on the pommel. She presumably wouldn't need the sword on a supply run through her own city. Right? The household girl hurried to keep up, the jars clinking softly in the bag she carried.
The market square was still loud. Bread and smoke and a fermented smell. Women moved through the stalls in the same patterns as before, and everything looked exactly the same as when we'd arrived.
I glanced back to check on the household girl. She was looking at my back. Our eyes met and hers snapped down to the cobblestones instantly. She swallowed, then adjusted her grip on the bag and stared very hard at the ground.
I had my lens. I had my jars. I had fixatives that might actually preserve a specimen past Thursday. The excursion had accomplished everything on the list. Technically a success.
I'd wanted to check more shops. A supplier of collection tools the apothecary had mentioned and a bookshop that might carry technical references the estate library didn't stock.
Ren's pace hadn't slowed since the optical shop. Three steps ahead, hand on the pommel as if she was walking through hostile territory instead of her own city. I looked at her face and didn't ask.
We passed through the outer gate. The road climbed. The estate came back into view beyond the bare hedgerows.
Aldric was in the entrance hall, his eyes going to Ren first, then to me. Their eyes met. The whole exchange lasted less than a second, in a language I didn't speak.
The household girl set the purchases on the side table. Ren said, "Young master," and was gone down the corridor before I could form a question.