Chapter 60: Two Hundred Gold, in Rocks

The fish woman came running up the hill towards Hale’s house just before noon, red-faced and out of breath, with her basket of fish still banging against her thigh, and she started screaming before she had even made it around the corner to the gate.

"SWEETHEART!" the fish woman hollered. "SILVER HAIR! NICE SHOES!"

Kai was halfway through his second bowl of porridge when he heard her, and he made it to the front gate so quickly that he left one of his new boots behind under the table. The fish woman gripped the iron bars of the gate with both of her huge hands and bent over, gasping for breath, while the King’s guards stared at her in horror.

"You told me to scream," the fish woman said, still breathing hard. "So I’m screaming."

"Thanks," Kai said. "Where was he?"

"The market square," the fish woman said. "By the auction stage, talking to that sneaky little salesman who sells slaves off of it. I saw him with my own two eyes, sweetheart, rings and nice shoes and that slicked-back hair, and he was handing the weasel a purse of coins so fat that the weasel nearly dropped it."

Kai felt his stomach drop, because he knew exactly who she was talking about, and exactly where. On his very first day in Veyrath, he had stood in front of that stage wearing a stolen purple robe with flowers on it and a pair of boxers with smiling tacos on them, and he had bought a girl with a handful of rocks.

He spun around and saw Mira standing in the doorway behind him, and her face had gone pale, because she knew it too.

[Kai, your heart rate just doubled]

"I know," Kai whispered.

The four of them went to the market square together, Kai and Mira and Elowen and Garrick, with the fish woman stomping along ahead of them and clearing a path through the crowd with her basket. The square looked exactly the way Kai remembered it, busy and loud and smelling of fish and spices, and at the far end of it stood the wooden auction stage. It was empty today, but the iron rings were still bolted into its boards.

Mira stopped walking when she saw it.

She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t need to. She just stood there in the middle of the market square, staring at the stage where she had once stood in chains, and Kai watched her hands clench into fists at her sides.

"We don’t have to go up there," Kai said quietly.

"Yes, we do," Mira said, and she kept walking.

The salesman was sitting at a small wooden table beside the stage, counting coins out of a fat leather purse and stacking them into neat little piles. He was a skinny little man with a pointy nose and sharp, darting eyes, and when he looked up and saw Kai standing in front of his table, he gave him a smile that didn’t reach anywhere near his eyes.

"Well, well," the salesman said. "The god of rocks."

"They were glamoured rocks," Kai said.

"Rocks are rocks," the salesman said, sweeping the coins back into his purse. "You stood in front of my stage and bought a girl with rocks, and every coin turned to stone the moment I bit into it. That’s stealing in every city in the world." He looked past Kai at Mira, and his smile grew even bigger. "Hello again, pretty lady. You look much better with clothes on."

Garrick took a step forward, and the salesman flinched so hard that he almost fell out of his chair.

"Whoa, whoa," the salesman said, holding up both his hands. "I’m a witness now. An important witness. You don’t want to hurt a witness three days before the Conclave."

"What did Draven pay you to tell them?" Kai asked.

"The truth," the salesman said. "Which is the funny part. Lord Draven doesn’t need me to lie to anybody. He only needs me to tell them that the God of Failure stole from me and paid with rocks." He leaned back in his chair. "And there are others, too. The guard with the big beard you embarrassed on your first day here. The officers at Ironwatch who had their wine poured for them by a nun. The captain who wrote a poem for a woman who never existed. Lord Draven has found everyone you’ve ever lied to, and do you know what the best part is?"

He looked over at Elowen and the sword resting at her hip.

"You brought your own executioner," the salesman said. "Every one of us will tell the truth about you, and her sword will prove it."

Kai looked at Elowen, hoping against hope that her sword would light up, but it didn’t. It stayed dark.

"He is telling the truth," Elowen said quietly.

Kai just stood there in the middle of the market square, and for the first time in a long time, he had nothing to say. Everything the salesman had said was true. He had paid for Mira with rocks, and he had lied to the guard with the beard. He had lied to Brekk and to Draven and to half of Ironwatch, and before that, he had lied to dentists and landlords and grandmothers on Earth for most of his life.

[Kai]

"He’s right," Kai whispered. "I’m a liar. I’ve always been a liar."

[You were a liar. That is not the same thing]

"It is to the Conclave," Kai whispered.

Mira walked up to the salesman’s table and stood in front of it, looking down at him with an expression so cold that the salesman stopped smiling.

"You sold me," Mira said. "You put me on that stage in chains and sold me off like a piece of cattle. And you want to stand in front of the seven churches and call him a thief?"

"I’m a licensed seller," the salesman said. "Everything I do is legal."

"So was hanging my father," Mira said.

The salesman didn’t have an answer for that, and he looked down at his purse and didn’t look back up again. A few people at the nearby stalls had stopped to watch, and one old woman selling onions spat on the ground in front of his table and went back to her onions without a word.

Mira turned and walked away from the table, and Kai followed her, and they didn’t stop walking until they had reached the far side of the market square. They were standing next to the fish stand, right where Kai had first landed in Veyrath with nothing but his boxers and a voice in his head.

"What are you going to do?" Mira asked.

Kai thought about it for a long time. He thought about lying and the Conclave and Elowen’s sword, and he thought about how everything good that had happened to him in Veyrath had happened because he told the truth when a lie would have been easier.

"I’m going to tell them," Kai said.

Mira looked at him as if he had just told her he was going to jump off the roof of the Cathedral.

"You’re going to stand in front of the seven churches and tell them that you’re a con man?" Mira asked.

"I am a con man," Kai said. "Or I was one. Draven wants them to hear it from somebody else, so that it looks like I was hiding it. But if I tell them myself, before that salesman ever opens his mouth..." Kai shrugged, and he found that he actually meant every word of what he was saying. "Then I’m not hiding anything anymore. It’s just a story about a guy who used to lie and stopped."

[Faith gained. Elowen Ashgrave: +7%. Status: Proud.]

Kai looked back across the market square, where Elowen was standing next to Garrick with her blindfolded face turned towards him, and the corner of her mouth twitched, which for Elowen was basically a smile.

"That might be the bravest thing you’ve ever said," Mira said quietly. "Or the dumbest."

"Probably both," Kai said.

[It is always both]

Mira chuckled, and some of the color came back into her face. Behind them, the fish woman had started arguing with the man at the cabbage cart about the price of turnips, apparently just to pass the time, and it felt so normal that Kai felt the knot in his stomach loosen a little.

Kai stood there listening to them haggle, with Mira’s shoulder pressed against his arm, and he realized that he wasn’t nearly as afraid of the Conclave as he had been that morning. Then, across the square, he saw a flash of silver.

A man was standing beside the auction stage, half hidden behind a cart full of cabbages, and he was looking directly at Kai. His silver hair was slicked back from his handsome face, he wore rings on almost every finger, and his black leather shoes gleamed in the noon sun.

Lord Castor Draven touched two fingers to his forehead in a small, polite salute, and then he stepped behind the cart, and by the time Kai had pushed his way through the crowd to reach it, he was gone.

All that was left behind the cart was a single gold coin lying on the cobblestones, and when Kai picked it up and turned it over in his fingers, it turned into a rock.

[Kai. He is mocking you]

"Yeah," Kai whispered, closing his fist around the rock. "He’s really good at that."

[3 days until the Conclave]