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WOLFLOCK FELT LESS inclined to say any more “merry part”s and turned into the marketplace along the bay’s edge. Two long, crooked rows of market stalls splashed vibrant colours between the grey sky and the brown bay. Displays of hard baked cakes and candies, roasted nuts and local fruits sat on pinewood trays. Someone had intricately decorated each tray and set of shelves with burnt lines resembling ropes, knots, and interlocked patterns. Some had written along them in the jagged Shiriling script. Wolflock could see every stall had the exact same design with the same collapsible trestle table. Whoever was the carpenter for the town would have to be very well known. Between the clinking strings of shells, beads, clothing, and food, Wolflock’s piercing eyes only needed to scan a few stalls once to find the maker’s seal on the back post. Burnt into the pole with the same intertwined design, a set of two pine trees, one pointing up, the other pointing down, and an axe coming from the trunk that joined them. He spotted the same symbol on several other stalls and an empty table that had a note weighted by a stone on it reading:
Jergess the Cobbler is away due to illness. For all cobbling needs, book in at his house or send mail to Elli at Mystentine.
He wondered what a cobbler could be doing besides minor repairs and new laces at a market, but he couldn’t see anything else in the rabble he would be interested in. While Wolflock moved through the bustling crowd, observing but not touching, Mothy groped and gawked at everything.
“Look at all the fish stuff!” he exclaimed, pointing to another fishbone trinket. “To work with such fine things, it must take so much skill.”
“I think,” Wolflock wrinkled his nose as a fresh whiff of fish stew assaulted his nostrils, “that you’ll find, as a doctor, that all of this is just monotonous repetition.”
“Huh?” Mothy looked at him with a mouthful of seaweed jerky in his mouth.
“The more you do a fine motor task, the better you get at it.”
“Fine motor?”
“Physical. Come now, Mothy! You’re sharper than that.”
“Oh, I know.” He shrugged and offered another seaweed treat out to Wolflock, who politely raised his hand to reject it. “You just got so upset with the captain trying to look after you, I thought you needed a moment to feel clever.”
“It has nothing to do with his care for my person. It is more to do with the fact that he didn’t tell me. I thought he believed me to be at a level of competence and trustworthiness, and now it is evident that he did not.”
They made it along the stone wall to the busy stall of children collecting rocks from the bay.
“What if he did it because he believed you were too capable? Like, he wanted to keep you safe and keeping you busy was all he knew how to do? Not everyone has your deductive abilities, Lockie. Some people have to go about things in a more ordinary fashion.”
Wolflock hummed a noncommittal response, leaving Mothy’s words to echo in the back of his mind as he watched a group of people walk away from the stall. Each of them held shattered rocks. Some rocks glittered with gemstones protruding out of them.
“For just a sentus, you could find a treasure!” shouted the tallest child. Wolflock raised an eyebrow. They couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve.
“A treasure?” Mothy asked as he approached the table.
“That’s right. You give us a sentus and choose a rock. We smash it in half, and you get to see what treasure you found!” The child grinned broadly, tucking a thick blonde lock under their grey hood.
“Umm... That one! I choose that one,” Mothy pointed at the smoothest rock.
The child took it and passed it to a small boy who smashed a hammer down on it.
“Oh dear, sorry, sir. Just plain stone inside. Maybe next time.”
“Interesting. And what treasures have come out of your stones today?” Wolflock asked, pinching his chin.
“Oh, all sorts, sir. Clear ones, red ones, purple ones. The favourite is the green ones, though. Malachite. The folks in Mystentine love dissolving it into potions of all kinds.”
“Do you have a trick for finding good stones?” Wolflock asked, picking up one and turning it over.
“We’d never give away the game, sir.” The child tapped their nose with a cheeky grin. The other children snickered behind them.
Wolflock set the stone down and yawned. “Well, it’s a simple game to win. I would say I could easily pick out your best stones and have the stall shut by lunchtime with a few good deimas in my pocket for it.”
“Big talk, sir, for someone who hasn’t even tried.”
Wolflock laid both hands on the table and looked at the stones. Some were very lumpy, others had large craters in them. Some were smooth and pretty. He noticed that the smoother ones laid through the middle and the front. The lumpier they got, the closer to the back and sides they were.
“I choose this one,” he said, picking up one that the stallholder had their own hands in front of.
With a scowl, the child flung the stone to the hammer child, and it cracked open, revealing a tiny cavern of amethyst crystals, perfectly lining the inside of the stone.
“Good work, sir. What luck.” The child rolled their eyes as others from behind them put another bucket on the wall’s edge.
“It’s not luck at all. The rocks with bubbles in them have formed differently, giving them their disfigured appearance. Those will be the ones hiding gemstones.”
The child’s face fell.
“Don’t fret. Answer a few questions for me and I won’t tell anyone around how to spoil your game. What’s wrong with the water in the bay? It’s it supposed to be the clearest in the land?”
The children avoided his eye for a few moments before one of the littlest children with dark brown hair piped up.
“Mam said not to go near it. Is bad.”
“Yes. I can see that. But why?”
“The mayor said it’s fine, but no one believes him. Mam said it was the miner’s fault. They dug up some rock that poisoned the bay, and now no fish or plant can be gotten out of it. The water can’t even be boiled for cooking or making brine with,” said the ringleader.
“Yeah! Da said he can’t make his famous fry fish with this water neither!”
The gaggle of children started squawking over the top of each other about how bad the water being brown had made the town. Wolflock raised his hands, and they fell quiet after a moment to finish their sentences.
“Why not just get what you need from a different part of the bay?”
The second tallest wiped their nose on their sleeve. “We did at first, but the brown has been seeping along all the pockets we used to go to. It’s going along the shoreline right up until where the rivers meet the sea. It’s too far for us to go every day.”
“Too far? Why not take a carriage?”
“During the Pisces Moon? Fat chance,” the ringleader scoffed.
“Why?” Mothy asked, as he paid for another rock to get smashed open.
“With everyone in Shiriling wanting to come in and out of the place, there is no way you can get a carriage to take you anywhere. During the festival, you basically have to stay put for a quarter moon or you walk. And we ain’t walking halfway to Mystentine to get fish.”
Wolflock’s gut dropped. They’d wasted so much time.
“Mothy, let’s go. We need to book our transport to Mystentine.”
“But I wanted to go see a few more shops first. I have to pick up a hat for the trip. My hair is thinner than yours.”
“If we don’t go now, we may never be going at all!” Wolflock snapped. “Where’s the nearest carriage depot?”
“To Mystentine? You want the North gate.” The ringleader nodded, pointing up one of the broader roads. “Take the main road that way. You can’t miss it.”
Wolflock whirled about and took off at a run with Mothy in tow. Every moment running through this foreign town felt like an hour. He didn’t think he’d be fighting against time again so soon. Every hiccup on the Silver Ice Hair had taken him hours, if not days, further from Mystentine. If he didn’t make it up the top of the mountain by the first of Winter, the paths to the top would freeze over and he’d be stuck for at least three months, if not longer if the mountain didn’t thaw in early Spring.
Three months...
Trapped with only a little money in a foreign city with no means to get by. He’d have to live in a temple or a boarding house where he’d have no freedom to do as he wished. He’d be better off working on the Silver Ice Hair until next year’s intake!
He gritted his teeth and ran harder. His lungs burned against the cold air and the heat of his exertion running uphill against the chill made his stomach revolt.
He rounded a wide bend in the road and saw it. The North Gatehouse Stables. Only as he made it to the outskirts of the town did he realise that a giant wooden wall cupped the town against the bay. He didn’t have time to marvel at the fan shell town design or the way the stone houses were built into a slope that looked both sturdy and cosy. His mind just focused on getting into the stable office.
He ran onto the wooden terrace and wrenched the door open. As he threw himself inside the stiflingly warm room, he collided with two tall figures that smelled of smoking herbs and medicine. One of them fell clean over, scattering jars of herbs all over the place.
“Out of the way!” Wolflock snapped and stumbled to the desk past them.
“Sorry, sir!” Mothy apologised as he tried to help the man up.
Wolflock threw himself at the counter.
Panting, lungs burning, he slammed his hand on the counter to the office and wheezed, “Two... to... Mystentine...”
The attendant, a young freckled burly lad, tilted his head to the side like a confused puppy.
“Two, two? So four?”
“No... Two to go... to Mystentine...” Wolflock scowled.
“Tutu go to Mystentine? Who is Tutu? Are you a dance group?”
Wolflock wondered for a moment if the boy had an unnaturally thick skull. It heightened his instant dislike of the boy when his box-like jaw started chewing on some kind of gum.
“No. Now, listen.” He inhaled slowly, catching his breath and summoning his Plughian authority to his voice. “The gentleman outside and I need to get a carriage to Mystentine. As soon as possible.”
The boy still looked bewildered.
“Oh, aye? There ain’t none left though for the week. Tha’ gentleman just took the last one.”
Wolflock turned his whole body to look back at Mothy between two men. A lean, grey jacketed Xiayahn looking man with almond-shaped eyes and a long black ponytail, and the familiar bald head of Stra. He sank to the floor as if someone had released plugs from his feet and let out all his enthusiasm.
“It’s over... The cut-off date for new students is... we won’t get there in time... it’s over...” He could have cried, but all he could do was look dismally at the scuffed wooden floor.
He stared into the distance, not hearing the perplexed counter boy try to speak to him. He barely heard the low chuckle of Stra as he approached.
“Merry meet again, Mr Felen,” he smiled cheerfully and looked down at Wolflock. “I see you may be in need of a lift. You may be in luck.”
Mothy, who had been talking to the man Wolflock had toppled into, stopped mid-sentence to listen.
“In luck?”
“Indeed,” Stra continued speaking without reaching out to help Wolflock off the floor. “The last carriage was a four-seater. We may be a bit cramped, but it will still get you to Mystentine with just enough time to get up that mountain of yours.”
“Really?” Wolflock slowly rose back onto his feet. “What would you like in return?”
His hazel eyes flashed, “Oh, nothing. To be honest, I am looking forward to having company on the journey. It will be a long and boring one without it. If you must, think of it as thanks for making those pesky fortune tellers depart sooner than later. They were quite the bother.”
Wolflock felt like Stra wasn’t being entirely honest, but he didn’t care. The man could ask for payment later. Maybe it was solving some private puzzle or finding a lost item. Whatever it was, it simply relieved Wolflock they had the transport they needed.
“Thank you, Stra. Thank you so very much. I am exceedingly grateful.”
“A young man’s higher education is imperative to his future. Our carriage leaves tomorrow just after breakfast. I’ll come and collect you. Where were you and Mr Enitnelav staying?”
“At the Mermaid’s Paddle. We haven’t been there just yet but, hopefully, the captain delivered our luggage there.”
“Lovely! I’ll see you then. Sorry to cut this short, Mr Felen, but I must be off. I have business here before we leave tomorrow. Merry part.”
Wolflock reached out with his left hand automatically, catching Stra by surprise. The thin, bald man swapped two little red tickets from one hand to the other. The hole punched edge he glimpsed said something about cargo and two tonnes. It had the same brand mark on it as the stalls and tables in the market; the two pines and axe.
His long, yellowed fingers gripped Wolflock’s like a falcon’s claws and, with a single shake, he nodded and departed. He wondered, for a moment, why Stra was ordering a cargo trailer as well as a carriage. He didn’t seem to have that much stock on the ship. Perhaps he purchased more or had something waiting for him. He wasn’t left too long to ponder as Mothy bounced up to Wolflock’s side, shoving his shoulder with excitement.
“See? It all worked out! No need to worry like you do.”
“The only thing I’m worried about now is being too cramped in the carriage.”