“Bully for them,” I grumble to myself. Despite the work Sasha and I have put into the bookshop, the Lord Mayor’s patronage, and our sale tables, I still get very few customers inside the actual shop. I try not to feel too resentful about it, but I fail, regularly.
“Cheer up,” he says, almost gently. “You could be out of here as soon as your reluctant suitor appears and lays one on you.”
“It won’t work. You and I both know it won’t work.”
I’ve looked up again; his attention is, again, back on his nails.
“Life is short; let’s see what happens.”
What a philosophy. I stare down at what I’ve doodled, set it aside, and pull out my ledger. My accounts are in perfect order; I work on the books after I close up in the evenings. And, given how few customers I have outside of Sasha’s tables, there’s not muchtoorder. I set the book aside and start to make a list; we’ve sold both copies ofThe Thorn and Her Rosesand I should see about getting more in. If I can figure out how to do such a thing myself without leaving the bookstore. I wonder what else I can do to attract customers, and eye the front windows speculatively; perhaps if I arranged some books by theme in the windows, and decorated the way bakers often do…but of course, bakers can make artful shapes from their products to attract customers. What artful shapes can I make from books? Perhaps a building…
I’m just starting to sketch a design when the chimes ring, and I look up. But it’s only Sasha, carrying her book bag and looking excited.
“There’s another prince in town!” she exclaims, then catches sight of the pirate. “Oh. Ifhe’shere then you probably already know.”
“Yes, he showed up a few hours ago and persists in just…sitting there,” I say.
“Surely you can make him do something useful?”
I glance at the pirate, who’s smiling at me in an annoyingly self-satisfied fashion. “I can’t even get him to tell me about his curse,” I say.
Sasha rolls her eyes. “Boys,” she says, wearily, and I suppress my smile at her world-weariness.
“But I haven’t missed anything? With the new guy?” she says.
“He’s taking his time. Look, I had an idea…” I gesture her over to the desk and show her my drawing. I am determined to ignore the pirate—as well as I can—and in laying out my ideas about the windows to Sasha, I unintentionally wind up forgetting about the pirateandthe forthcoming prince, which is a nice change—when the chimes ring, and we all look up again. A figure is standing in the doorway, backlit against the golden afternoon sunlight, and looking decidedly…well, droopy.
I sigh, and stand. “Hi, Bel,” I say.
“Tanadelle,” he says, sounding weary. “We meet again.”
Chapter 25
There’s no point in standing on ceremony, and I’d really like to get this next bit over as quickly as possible, so I edge around the desk and make my way to him. He’s looking around the shop with an almost incredulous expression.
Bel bows, rather stiffly. He’s dressed in his formal court clothes, which is no mean feat; the formal court clothes from the city-state of the Five-Fold Night are immensely complicated. No wonder it took him so long to make it here from the inn, if he had to change into all that. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to travel in it.
“I’d never have expected to find you cursed in such a place,” he says, his voice almost wondering.
“Oh?” I say, dropping into a genteel curtsy. I’m not wearing anything approaching courtly clothing, but my dress serves the purpose well enough. Bel is a big fan of formality and, like Hamishbefore him, seems unimpressed by my clothing. I find it doesn’t bother me much.
“I’d expect a gothic tower, perhaps, or a ruined castle. But this…It’s just rather rustic, and you’re so…” He pauses. “As the great scholar Zantaran tells us, ‘a library is a balm upon the scarified soul.’ A bookstore, however…I don’t believe he had anything to say about so plebeian a thing as a bookstore.”
I raise an eyebrow and wait. Bel has no great opinion of me; he tends to think that the only literature one should read or ought to read is epic poetry, followed—maybe—by philosophy; if one isn’t going to read in order to improve one’s mind, oneoughtn’tread at all. My taste for light literature is, according to him, a greater waste than if I spent my days merely not reading anything.
It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s a theory he concocted when he was about twelve and explained to me at length when, during a state visit, he caught me readingAn Everlasting Night. He’s never really respected me since, and I find him so exhausting to talk to that I haven’t done much to change his opinion of me. There’s never been any need.
“Well, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised,” he amends. “Supposing that your taste in literature has never improved.”
“So good to see you,” I murmur. “Shall we?”
“I’m only doing this as a favor to your parents,” he adds. “I don’t expect it to work. Duty to one’s parents and one’s country is a privilege. A gift. So we are reminded by the mystic D’ran. ‘That which is common has the least care bestowed upon it. That which is truly unique, however, requires the greatest attention by the greatest of those among us.’ My royal duty, of course, is unique to me and me alone, and thus requires the greatest of care in its execution.”
“Naturally.”
“Immature of you to get caught up in such a situation,” he adds, stepping toward me.
Curses, I’ve come to learn, tend to happen no matter one’s age or how cautious one is; there aren’t many precautions one can take, besides the obvious ones like avoiding handling money and keys. That said, forgetting those precautions is what got me here in the first place. I decide not to make an issue of it; I don’t agree with him in theory, and the fact that I was cursed in practice because I was careless about a key is not going to improve his opinion of me any. And Iwastrying to help an old lady, after all.
