“Most?”
“Finder’s fee.”
Kreya grinned. Death hadn’t slowed him or changed him one bit. Dying may have had an impact—she knew he had nightmares—but all the important parts of Jentt were there. No matter how much time had passed or how much they’d gone through, his essence remained. He was so full of life, even in his second life. “Remember how we met?”
“I stole your necklace, and you stole my heart.”
He smiled as he looked at her, and she felt as if she were melted goo inside.
Zera rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You know it didn’t happen that way. I introduced you, and you talked to each other every day for, like, a month. The ballads had to spice it up because you two were so damned boring.”
“He made me laugh,” Kreya said.
“Imade you laugh,” Zera said. “He made you feel smart.”
“She’s brilliant,” Jentt said as if it were a fact as immutable as sunrise. She loved that about him. He believed in her. Even after her plans had gotten him killed.
“Are you two even aware of how nauseating you are?”
“Oh, yes,” Jentt told her. “It’s one hundred percent intentional.”
Kreya agreed. “You make hilarious faces when we’re lovey-dovey.”
Arm around her, Jentt squeezed her closer and kissed her, and Kreya kissed him back, running her fingers through his hair.She’d need to cut it again, now that he was going to be alive for a while. Zera huffed and walked faster, ahead of them, and from the way her shoulders twitched, Kreya knew it was so that they wouldn’t see her laughing.
She’d missed teasing Zera as much as she’d missed kissing Jentt.
She remembered those early days when they’d both been unsure of their feelings, when every little word was so fraught with the weight of meaning. The popular love ballads went on and on about new love as something so amazing with all its firework-newness, but Kreya vastly preferred this: the absolute certainty that Jentt had her back.
Ahead, Zera paused to check the street signs. “Only a few blocks,” she reported. “If he hasn’t moved.” She pointed toward the twisty streets, as if they shaped the buildings into anything like “blocks.” It was more triangles or trapezoids. No city planning had gone into Ocrae. It had sprung up naturally, with buildings erected on a whim and streets laid out where they could fit. In fact, the whole city looked like a childlike god had dribbled mud into towers.And then a drunk god vomited rainbows on it,Kreya thought.
She didn’t know what Marso was doing here. This was the worst kind of place for a sensitive bone reader, especially one of Marso’s unparalleled range. He should have been someplace quiet and peaceful, like a forest glade. He couldn’t possibly read any bones in this cacophony.
They turned onto Marso’s supposed street and were confronted with an open-air market with dozens of fruit, clothing, and trinket vendors clogging the sidewalks. Each had spread a colorful blanket across the paving stones to display their wares. A few beggars were positioned between them, as well as performers. On opposite corners, horn players were belting out tunes that clashed into one another, while a bell ringer focused on her windchime-like cascade of notes. A few girls with braided hair were dancing around a boy with a tambourine.
All three of them halted.
“Marso can’t live here,” Zera said.
“You’re the one who said he did,” Kreya reminded her. Zera had claimed the info was only a few years old, though, so maybe the market was a new addition and Marso had moved to a quieter area of the city. Or out of the city entirely. “He can’t have changed so much that he’dlikethis. He used to stuff his ears with cotton so he could block out the sound of crickets in the forest.”
“In his defense, crickets can be loud,” Jentt said.
Crickets were soothing.Thiswas an assault on her eardrums. And eyes. She felt as if she were being bombarded with too much activity, and belatedly she realized why she hated it so much. It wasn’t that she was used to her quiet tower. It was that it reminded her too much of being in the middle of a battle, where there was too much motion, too many screams, too much danger, too much death.If it feels this way to me,she thought,what must it be like for Marso?
Jentt snagged a boy with ribbons tied to his back as he ran past. “We’re looking for a bone reader named Marso. Silver coin for you if you can help us.”
“Don’t know any bone readers. Thought they were all dead long time ago. Killed and stuff.” The boy squirmed out of Jentt’s grip. “But do know a Marso. Everyone does. He’s the guy who sleeps in the fountain until the city guards make him stop. Back there the next day, though, and then the guards give up for a while until someone complains they don’t want to washtheir laundry with a naked guy snoring and drooling on their skivvies.”
“That can’t be our beloved Marso,” Zera said.
But the boy dragged Jentt forward, through the market, and Kreya and Zera followed along. “You said a silver coin?” the boy prompted. Halting, he pointed at a fountain of three horn players. Water spouted out of the horns and into a murky pool, tiled with either green tiles or algae-coated tiles. Sure enough, a man lay on top of the fountain.
Jentt tossed him a silver coin, and the boy scampered away.
“Seriously, how much was your ‘finder’s fee’?” Zera asked Jentt.
Both Kreya and Jentt ignored her, instead staring at the man on the fountain. Stretched across the trumpets, he was naked except for a tattered loincloth. His body was so sun soaked that his skin looked like leather, and you could see every one of his ribs. He was waving his arms in the air as if he were dancing.
