“Laticillo,” Niel echoed. “Fine. Good. I liked it there, too.” An odd laugh escaped his lips.
“What? It isn’t funny,” she protested.
“We’re going to be parents,” he said, fighting against another laugh. “Us.Me? Half a year ago, could you have imagined—? I thought my life was over. And here we are, in a country I had barely evenheardof, and nobody even knows where we are, and we’re… we’re starting a family. I’m sorry, it’s not a joking matter, but I can hardly believe it. IhopeI’m not just dreaming this all up.”
He didn’t even know what was happening in Enar, or with the war, and he wasn’t sure hewantedto know. He was free of it. And their child would grow up free of it, too. Their child wouldn’t be heir to the dutchy of Mount Eyron or a descendant of the Arevon dynasty. Niel’s father would not serve as a grandparent, though he’d have liked his mother to know. There would be no knighthood and no getting beaten to a pulp and nosquiring to a man like Hannes. And no matter how desperate things got, if they had a daughter, he’d sooner die than sell her off to a man like Ditmar.
There would just be oranges, and a cheerful donkey, and winters without any snow.
Perhaps it would be alright.
He stared up at her from the bed and tried to quell the mad buzzing in his head, a thousand things they needed to do and that he had no idea how to begin.
“We’ll be fine, though, won’t we?” Ayla asked. “We can do this?”
“We’ve made it through worse,” Niel said. “After all that, a baby will be easy.”
“You may live to regret those words,” Ayla told him.
“Well,” Niel said, and reached out towards her. Ayla came towards him, and he pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her. “We’ll live, and we'll love, that’s the important bit. The rest, we’ll figure out as we go.”
“Niel? Can we leave for Laticillo tomorrow?”
“If you’re up for traveling. A few days of rest won’t hurt. And maybe youshouldsee a healer?”
“I want to get there,” Ayla told him. “I’m certain I’d feel more settled, if I just knew where we were going to live.”
“Alright, then.” Niel’s heart still hadn’t stopped pounding. “Tomorrow, we set out for our new home.”
A Pouch of Coins
Laticillo had glassmakers. A number of them. The shops were outside the city, because of the fire risk. It had been hard gaining access. There were secrets kept in those shops, techniques that had brought wealth to the city’s ruling family. It was partly by luck and partly by determination that she managed to convince one of the glassblowers she had some talent at the craft.
It wasn’t enough to get her access to the kiln or the tools. She sat on a small stool, sorting through cooled remnants of a fire to separate wood-ash from debris, and watched as Mastro Gante used a curved soffieta tube to blow the goblet he was making wider. In Enar, the glass was mostly green; forest-glass, they called it. Not so in Laticillo. The goblet Mastro Gante was forming now was a mosaic of flame colors.
She carefully weighed out the ash she’d collected, and mixed in crushed quartz and lake sand to match. Ayla waited for him to finish, then wordlessly showed him the mixture. When Gantenodded and returned to his own work, she set it into a basin in the upper hearth and fetched a ladle to stir it with. It was not a swift process. When Gante’s apprentice came hours later to relieve Ayla, her shoulders and arm ached from the simple act of stirring. The substance would keep cooking, under constant supervision, for another dozen hours. She took the two small coins she was offered and trudged home, her body aching and covered in a sheen of sweat from the fires. They’d been in Laticillo two months, and the days were growing hot.
They’d spent most of their remaining money and sold Flower to buy a home. It was small, and modest, and their only furniture yet was the kitchen table and chairs, and their bed. The walls were a mixture of brick and clay, the doorways so low Niel had to duck slightly under them. But the courtyard behind their street had a shared well, and a garden where their neighbors grew food, with a plot for Niel and Ayla to use. Children of all ages played back there. The street itself was quiet, but only a ten minute walk to a large, bustling market that was open from sunup to sundown.
She unlocked the door and walked through the quiet house, listening to the distant laugh of children. Niel was still out. She hoped that meant he’d found work for the day. With a sigh Ayla rinsed her face and went to the kitchen to figure out a supper. Niel had left legumes soaking on the counter, and a bread dough rising with a towel draped over the bowl.
She had the bread in the oven and a stew simmering when he returned. Ayla sat at the kitchen table, looking at the careful ledger she’d kept of market prices and trying to work out how they could possibly survive when she could no longer manage the glassblowers’ shop. She didn’t know how long Gante would let her keep working, once her pregnancy began to show under her loose gowns, and she wasn’t sure how to ask, even though the language was getting easier to navigate. She certainlycouldn’t spend hours fritting sand and ash to make glass while she was nursing an infant.
Niel came into the kitchen silently. She murmured a hello and quickly closed the ledger. Ayla wasn’t certain what they’d do for money, but she knew Niel was worried too, and blaming himself. He went out each day for work, but there wasn’t much that needed doing, or at least nothing steady. He’d found a few odd jobs, but none lasting more than a couple days. It wasn’t enough to live off, and they both knew it.
She bit her lip and watched as he approached the table, pausing across it from her. His face was blank of emotion. Niel unbuckled his belt purse and opened it.
Then he upended it over the wooden counter and spilled out a fountain of coins. Ayla gaped as two handfuls worth of copper and gold coins clattered and jumped. One rolled towards the edge. Niel grabbed it before it could fall off the table. He flicked it up into the air and caught it with a grin, then placed it on top of the pile and sat down across from Ayla. She was still staring open-mouthed.
“That ought to tide us,” he said.
“What?” Ayla looked between the pile of money, up to Niel, and back again. “How? Did you rob a gemseller?”
“I came by it honestly.”
“But…” Ayla’s stomach sank. “No. Tell me you didn’t, Niel.”
He glanced away, his expression going tight.
