“Why do you say so?”
He gave the shut door another moody glance, and then cracked a bitter, self-deprecating smile. “Because you wish to do that which you have been born into. I am the first son of a trading family, and I wish to dedicate my life to science. My family is . . . merely tolerant. As if the movements of the very stars in the heavens are a delirium, a fever that will pass if they spoil me enough.”
“I’m sure they have spoiled you sufficiently,” she said dryly.
Rafe didn’t catch the sarcasm. “They don’t bother to understand a damned thing about my world! Take today. Father summons me home to attend your blasted feast—no offense intended—and this week of all weeks is when we must protest the Board of Governors before they vote to ruin the very institutions of higher learning! There are rumors that they’ll meet at least once this week, and if I’m not on hand for the protests, I will never forgive myself.”
Kaab knew that she should ask him about these protests and learn more of the local political situation, but the unquestioning arrogance of his manner made her itch to bait him, just a little.
“You’re very important, then?”
Now Rafe noticed. “I’m—” He frowned at her. “Aren’t you the little princess.”
Kaab widened her eyes. “Do princesses here carry two pounds of Caana chocolate to make trades with the spoiled sons of spice merchants?”
Rafe’s bottom lip trembled even as the rest of his face struggled with outrage. His lip got the better of him and he let out a sweet, rueful chuckle. “Well, you’re interesting, at least. What was that you said about two pounds of chocolate?”
Kaab lifted her bag to her lap and loosened the drawstring enough for the rich, bitter aroma of processed cocoa to drift in his direction. He swallowed.
“Five ounces of saffron, you said?”
She nodded. “And the hares.”
“We’re spice merchants, not butchers!”
“I’m sure you can manage it. Are you not a merchant’s son?”
He looked at her sourly. “A scholar. As I said.”
“I can,” she said delicately, “of course, wait for his man of business . . .”
He looked again at the bag, with its very valuable chocolate. Even more valuable, she gathered, to a scholar looking for status and leverage over his colleagues, than to an established merchant who regularly bought from her family.
Rafe Fenton nodded with sudden determination. “I’ll help you. This business might be significantly beneath me, but”—he cocked his head and gave her a little grin—“I can certainly get you forty goddamned hares. Do we have a deal?”
Kaab automatically put her hand over her heart. He did the same and they exchanged bows. Only when she met his eyes again did she remember that these people clasped hands to make agreements. He tilted his head in that way he had, as if to say don’t underestimate me. She laughed.
“I could come to like you, Rafe Fenton. I don’t like everyone.”
“Well neither do I, Princess Balam. Indeed, I’d lay good odds that I’m even more accomplished in the art of making enemies than you are.”
Kaab quite believed him.
• • •
Visits home generally never netted Rafe more than a throat raw from arguing (not yelling, as his father loved to put it in that infuriatingly soft way of his) and a strong desire for strong wine, a strong man, and a bed sturdy enough to enjoy them. Depending on how impossible the visit, he had been known to forgo the latter in favor of whatever hard surface lay handy and tolerate Joshua—his best friend and long-suffering roommate—pulling the splinters from his chest the following morning. After receiving his father’s summons to the bosom of the Fenton merchant empire, he’d spent the morning in the pub with Joshua, alternating complaints about the Board of Governors’ proposed bylaw change with even more vociferous condemnations of the petty concerns of the so-aptly-termed petty merchant class.
“Thank the gods they won’t actually vote until next month. Imagine, letting the professors dictate which students’ committees they’ll sit on! Choosing one’s own committee has been the sacred right of examining students for . . . centuries, surely! How are we supposed to progress? Have new ideas? Break the goddamned status quo? I ask you! But still, I’m sure to get my slot in the next two weeks. They came too late to touch me.”
Joshua, having heard this many times before, had patted his knee and looked decidedly bored. Micah had been playing cards for minnows and paid him no attention whatsoever. The boy did, however, look up when Rafe gathered his belongings to leave. Micah had handed him a letter, rather ingeniously folded, and addressed to Cousin Reuben The Second Stall Past The Chicken Seller Fanoo The One With The Purple Cock.
Rafe had nearly choked on his beer. Micah took this to mean that perhaps he should come with him to the market and Rafe had wasted five minutes assuring the boy (and walking gold mine) that it wouldn’t be at all necessary.
But to his surprise, his visit home had yielded an unexpected opportunity: the new Balam girl, striding forcefully beside him in the inevitable ankle-deep muck of late spring. And as an added bonus, her presence had momentarily postponed the inevitable paternal confrontation. He had raided what stores of saffron he knew of in the house, which weren’t quite enough to satisfy the order. So they were now headed to the market, where both hares and the rest of the saffron could be procured, and he could also deliver Micah’s letter safely into the hands of the Cousin Who Must Not Take Him Away.
In the meantime, he had many reasons to be intrigued by the Balam girl’s conversation. Provided that he could channel it to the proper theme. He had long suspected the Kinwiinik of having a much more enlightened grasp on celestial mechanics than those doddering Rastinites who liked to fancy themselves natural philosophers at the University. But the trouble with believing something truly radical—for instance, that the earth revolves around the sun—was that one needed to gather evidence. And where better to look than with those who regularly use the stars to guide them unimaginable distances across the sea?
“I expect that you arrived on the boat that put in just last week. The long-awaited chocolate shipment?”
“Oh,” said the girl, with a sharp little smile, “I wasn’t told what it was carrying. But if it’s from home, it surely carried cacao. And other food, for the feast.”
“Those peppers that could curl the hair of a sheepdog?”
“Many,” she said. “The sun here isn’t very strong, is it? You people, with your ant-egg skin, don’t grow with much head-spirit.”
Rafe had not the slightest idea what ant eggs looked like, nor what that had to do with his skin (or his head-spirit!), but he could tell from her eyes that she was challenging him. He straightened. “The consumption of peppers hot enough to constitute a form of torture is hardly an indication of strength!”
She looked at him steadily. “You would say so.”
Rafe bit his lip on a nasty retort and took a deep, calming breath. He had a point here, and he would not let himself be diverted. He could subdue even his notorious temper in the pursuit of the sacrament of knowledge (as Nereau so eloquently put it).
“So what made you come here?” he asked with all the forced placidity of a tight curl beneath a hot iron.
“Saffron,” she said.
Rafe grit his teeth. “I mean, what made you leave your home? Why travel here? Is your family looking for a husband for you?”
A vague shot, which landed very satisfyingly home. She stopped in the middle of the street and rounded on him. “I am dedicated to the service,” she snarled, “and I may never marry if I do not choose. And I do not choose.”
“Ah,”