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Worth Its Weight in Silver
Session: 2026-11-11
A woman stepped off the path to let them by. Then a man with a handcart. Then two boys, who stopped and stared until their mother pulled them along.
"A community," Victor said under his breath, "that isn't trying to kill us."
Vath noticed it the way he'd notice wind changing. People got out of their way now. They nodded. A fishwife lifted her chin at Cain like she knew him. Word travels down a road faster than the people it's about.
Cain had a sack over his shoulder that clinked when he walked. Silver-plated cutlery. A wash basin. Jugs. A menagerie of other people's tableware, carried a long way.
"Some say," Cain said, "that a silver spoon is worth its weight in —" He stopped and thought about it. "Silver."
Nobody improved on that.
The market was a farmers' market. Turnips, squash, eggs, apples going soft at the bottom of the barrel. Down at the water, smaller boats came and went among the fishing boats — ferries, a barge with crates, a skiff loaded past sense.
Cain wanted Deathbringer cleaned up first. The public stables sat by the River Gate, and the man who ran them was Bearndon Dire. Cain gave him a gold piece for the mule. Zephyr gave him another, for Prudence.
Bearndon looked at the sack of silver. "Hearndon's the one for that," he said. "He'll know." He mentioned the Fishbowl too, as a place a person might sit down.
Zephyr went off to see about the gems. He came back a while later having learned that a gem was worth something in trade, if you didn't mind losing a share of it, and that nobody in Vogler wanted to buy one outright.
Vath spent his own time at the stalls looking for small bottles. Stoppered ones, the size of a thumb. Tinctures. Oils. He found a few people willing to talk about it and fewer willing to part with anything.
Hearndon Dire was apologizing to a woman who was swearing at him. He kept apologizing until she ran out and left.
"Bearndon sent us," Cain said.
Victor stepped in beside him. "Bearndon suggested you might be the type of person who could offload some silver."
Hearndon looked left. Then right. Then he looked at the sack, and something in his shoulders settled into business.
Cain laid it out. The basin. The jug. The cutlery, a fistful at a time.
"Were these purchased?" Hearndon asked.
Cain looked at Victor.
"From a retailer," Victor said, "far in the north."
Hearndon turned a spoon over and didn't ask anything else.
"Forty-five gold," Cain said.
Hearndon thought about it. "That sounds fair. I may be able to — I don't know that I have that much gold." He bent under the counter. "I do have these."
A box of coins. Pale. Not gold and not silver, somewhere between. Electrum.
"Yes," Cain said, before anyone could have an opinion.
It was lighter than gold. Cain tipped the coins into his own purse, a pale little stream, and hefted it like he'd just put down a pack after a long climb. Then he turned and held the empty box out to Vath.
"You could find a use for this, non?"
Vath took it. Good wood. A lid that sat tight. Smooth inside. He didn't argue.
Victor wanted oils and balms. Something to build up a friend's muscle. He didn't say which friend, and he didn't need to.
"Froswin might have something like that," Hearndon said. "Little short guy. You won't miss him."
They didn't. The stall said Puppets by Froswin, and the counter was covered in fishbone carvings. Froswin was working on one and squinting through a pair of fish-eye goggles.
"Good day, Froswin," Victor said. "I'm looking for balms. Lotions. Perhaps tinctures. For boosting a friend's muscularity."
Froswin looked up through the lenses. "Tinctures. Potions and the like." A pause. "Hearndon told you this?"
He closed up the carving. Then he took hold of the counter and flipped the whole top over. On the other side were soaps and tinctures and little oils in rows. Vath leaned in. He knew some of the smells. Not all.
Froswin pointed at a plate. "These."
Cookies.
"Battle biscuits," Froswin said. "No side effects. But if he eats one of these —" He shook his head. "Wooo-eee."
Six for ten gold. Victor tried to haggle. Froswin wouldn't move. He was pleasant about it and he still wouldn't move.
"He could buy four," Vath said.
Victor looked at him the way you look at someone who has suggested cutting a horse in half. "I need all of them."
He paid the ten.
Victor had another question. Did Froswin know a learned man? Someone who knew scrolls, books. A shrine to Valkur, maybe.
"Johan," Froswin said. "The historian. Travels. Gets his books from Silverport."
Johan's stall was two rows over. A sign hung on it: Gone to Silverport.
Zephyr, meanwhile, had found a pair of leather gloves for Cain, good ones, and had given up on gems altogether. "Do you have jewelry?" he asked. "I need two nice platinum rings."
Froswin flipped the counter back to the fishbone side, as if that settled it. "Silverport," he said. "Lord Baccus, maybe." Then, lower: "But he's a jerk."
Vath bought a lavender bubble bath for five silver. He uncorked it and smelled it and corked it again. Someone in this town was making scents. It was worth knowing how good they were.
They sat down somewhere out of the traffic and talked about the gems.
It was a serious talk. Nobody joked. What it came to was simple. The stones were worth more as a way back than as money. If one of them went down and didn't get up, Cain might be able to bring them back, if he had the stones in hand when it happened.
They gave him the gems. Cain put them away carefully and didn't say anything.
The bagpipes started somewhere toward the water. Then they got louder.
Pedro was on the dock with a mug at his feet. He had said that morning he didn't want a fight, not just now, and he had said it in a way that meant he was still thinking about the last one. This was apparently what he did instead.
The song was slow. Long, low notes that hung over the water. People had stopped to listen. Victor stood at the front of them, fascinated, his head tilted.
Zephyr's face was down. Pedro saw it. He didn't stop playing. He just went faster, and then faster again, until the slow song had turned into something else entirely — a jig, all elbows.
"Your music," Zephyr said, "is good for the soul!"
Behind them, two men started hitting each other. Then a third.
Vath looked at the mug. Coppers, some silver. A gold piece.
He's better at this than at fighting her.
Fish on the boards, coin in the mug,
a ferry at the gate, a cart of squash,
two men in a fight about nothing much —
Vogler had a good day,
and a piper who'd had a bad one.
Victor wanted to go to the temple of Valkur. Vath could see he wanted to go alone. He went to the Fishbowl instead.
Victor told it to them afterward, standing by the water, more quietly than he usually told things.
The temple was one room, down off the docks, with a cloud carved over the door and three lightning bolts coming out of it. Inside, one man, grinding something in a mortar. Tattoos all over him. A voice so mellow it barely moved the air.
"Hello, my child. How can I help you today?"
Victor said they'd met one of his flock. A woman named Mirabelle, in Serenholme.
The priest didn't know her. He had friends in Seacrest; perhaps Victor knew them. He'd been here a very long time. He didn't travel. "What's the issue?"
So Victor told him. Not why they had been in Serenholme. Just the rest — what she had become, what had moved her. The priest had to stop and catch his breath more than once. When Victor got to the part where she went down into a pool of ichor and was gone, the priest was quiet for a while.
"Either she was corrupted by evil," he said, "or she lost her mind. This is very abnormal." He shook his head. "Valkur would never do this to one of his children."
"Okay," Victor said.
Then he showed him the journal.
The priest read it. Victor watched him read it, and said the man's face went further away with every page. When he closed it, he held it shut with both hands.
"I have never seen or heard anything like this before. Can I hold on to this tonight? I'd like to study it. Get a better reading."
Victor said yes. The priest thanked him.
On his way out, Victor heard the lock turn behind him.
Vath thought about a book with something in it, sitting overnight in a room by the water.
Victor shrugged and went to applaud Pedro, who was still playing.
Nobody had decided where to sleep. Somebody mentioned the Bass Crab. It had been nice.
Vath sat on a bollard with the box on his knees and set his bottles into it. The few he'd traded for. The lavender. He moved them around until they stopped clinking against each other, then moved one more.
It would do for bottles.