I stomped back down the corridor to the front door but drew the line at opening it for him. His knuckles were still white as pearls around the bag.
I couldn’t contain my curiosity. “What did you ask him for?” I wondered.
He jumped at my voice. “Do you live here?” he asked, ignoring my question. “How do you bear it?”
“Bear what?”
“Being so close to one ofThem.” He sounded awed.
I wasn’t about to go into my whole history, and so I said, “You get used to it.”
“I’ve seen them, of course, and heard stories ... But being so close?” He shook his head.
“Yes, well,” I said, with a little acid in my voice.
The man held out his purse with a trembling hand. “Payment,” he said.
Unthinking, I held out my hand, expecting theclunkof gold coin. Instead, a handful of unpleasantly squishy, damp things, something like fermented figs, rolled onto my palm.
I swore and let them fall to the floor in my surprise, and the man shot me a furious look and dropped to his knees to scramble them up again. He batted Cornelius away, who had been sniffing at one.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “Do you know what I had to do to get these?”
“I don’t even know what theyare,” I said. I stooped to get a better look at them.
“Hearts,” he said.
“Humanhearts?”
“They’d better be, for what I paid for them.” He seemed surprised by my ignorance, and his surprise had driven away his anger. “Don’t you know about them?”
I opened and shut my mouth like a fish. What to say? “I didn’t know they were likethat,” I managed. “They’re so small! And wrinkly!”
“Well, they’ve been dried a bit,” he explained. “These could probably do with a bit more drying, to be honest, but I had to take what I could get.”
I couldn’t believe it. Did everyone in the city cart a bag of hearts about with them? Was one half murdering the other half? Well. I didn’t know what to make of that. It seemed odd that such powerful sorcery was piddled out on little cantrips and potions for the public, and the hearts sold on the black market sounded like one big swindle to me.
“I would have thought you’d seen a lot of them, living here,” he said. “They all use them for their magicks, don’t they?”
“But ... they go out and get them on their own,” I said. “They don’tbuythem. How do you have so many?”
He cocked his head, puzzled, as if I was asking questions that were common knowledge.
“I’m not from here,” I explained. “I’m from the country.Farout in the country.”
“Oh,” he said, apparently satisfied. “Well yes, of course, they get their own. But there’s a market for these others, if you know where to find it. Some people say that you can learn to use them for magicks, even if you’re not one of Them, but I don’t know about that.” He had gathered all the hearts back up into the little purse, and handed it to me. I weighed it in my palm. I couldn’t imagine anything magical being left in these sad, squishy little things, but what did I know? Maybe there was something yet to be milked from them.
“And these are what they take as payment?”
“Of course,” he said. “Usually. But none of the others are selling magicks just now.”
“Why not?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. Things have been changing, lately. All the others turned me away.”
Clearly Sylvester had been a last resort, as he had said. “Well, good luck to you,” I said.
The man nodded goodbye and ducked out the door quick as winking, relieved to be out of there. I inhaled a tantalizing gasp of outdoor air before the door swung smoothly shut. I looked at the repulsive little bag in my hand.
