Rafe took his time to consider this. He smoothed down his ink-stained cuffs. “I think,” he said, “that a Balam dedicated to service would know the contents of the hold in the ship that had carried her from home.”
She scowled at him, but the quivering right corner of her mouth ruined the effect. “I grant,” she said, “that I might have been curious.”
“And it did carry cacao?”
“Aren’t you a merchant’s son? You know well it did. Several very good varieties, including the most excellent Caana I have given your family in exchange for this saffron. Perhaps your father will be interested in discussing a larger purchase.”
Rafe hadn’t thought to leave his father any. But he supposed that the continued prosperity of the Fenton empire was in his most general interests. He could spare a few ounces. “How long was the journey?” he asked, casually.
“Oh, three months, the way your people calculate them.”
“So many! Is that normal?”
“If we sail straight through the North Sea. Sometimes the boats spend much time on the coast, and then on the islands of stonecutters and basket-makers.”
“Is that part of your service, then? Sailing those great boats?” He took care not to appear too wide-eyed, merely curious. “Watch your step,” He took her arm to keep her from slipping into a hole in the road. From the smell of it, the bums playing jacks nearby had used it for a latrine.
She shook him off gently. “Some are specialized for that service,” she said. “And others . . . for other things.”
“You have some of these other skills, I take it? I won’t dare ask you what they are.”
“Clever of you.”
Rafe had to strangle a grin. “And those great journeys,” he said, as the market came into view. “You are guided by . . . maps? Charts? It must have taken your people many, many generations to find the way.”
“Not so many,” she said absently. “We follow the way of the Four Hundred Sibling Gods, who are the stars in the sky. The priests interpret their signs and give us the routes.”
“And how long have your people known the earth is shaped as a sphere?”
She frowned. “It is—is it?”
“That’s what we believe now. But moving across it is—”
She bared her teeth. “A complete mystery to me.”
Oh, damn. Perhaps he hadn’t sounded as casually uninterested as he had thought.
“I just meant—”
“So where do we find the hares? Or should we look for saffron first?”
Their glance felt like a brief clash of blades—one which he summarily lost. He had always suspected that to navigate those great distances the Kinwiinik must have some knowledge of mathematics and natural philosophy which those at the University lacked. Given the proposed bylaw change, he had to sit his master’s exams within the month if he didn’t want to find himself at the mercy of a handful of hidebound doctors who despised him (for entirely trivial reasons). If he could do so with some actual mathematics for his theories about the sun and the stars and the earth’s place in the universe—if these could be bolstered by the truth of why navigators from the Land either foundered on unexpected shores or drowned in their attempts to traverse the large ocean distances that the Traders from the chocolate lands did as a matter of routine—
Well, even old hidebound curmudgeons like de Bertel couldn’t fail to acknowledge the justice of his evidentiary methods.
But first he had to gain the Balam girl’s confidence. So he elbowed his way through the milling crowd of bourgeois dowagers and scullery maids and potboys sniffing and cawing and bargaining for the winter’s last root vegetables and the spring’s first asparagus and peas. He had been going to this market since he was younger than those potboys, and while his merchant background was often a source of shame to him in the University, he could not help but hear the energetic clatter of a market day as a hum that warmed his veins and told him that here, too, was a home.
It is no longer, he told himself viciously. He could exploit his experience and contacts without quibbling over the implications. Knowing the fair price of sea bass on a spring morning after a storm did not make him a closeted merchant. It made him a young intellectual with layers. He sighed; he could practically see Joshua rolling his eyes.
The hares were duly selected and sent along to the Balam compound with the saffron via a boy. That only left the letter in his pocket.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” he told the Balam girl, “I have one last errand to attend to before we head back.”
She inclined her head. Quite regally. Damned princess, he thought, more savagely than necessary. He was nervous about meeting Micah’s cousin.
Cousin Reuben was unmistakable (and Micah’s directions precise—Rafe did indeed note the purple cockerel). He had the family nose (flat) and the family jawline (square) and the family hair, precisely the shade of wheat before a harvest. He wore muddy breeches, fingerless gloves, and a well-kept leather hat with a large white feather that practically gleamed above the late-season rutabagas.
“What can I get for you today, son?”
Rafe scowled, realized this might not put the cousin entirely at ease, and forced a smile. “I have a letter,” he said. “From your cousin Micah.”
Cousin Reuben frowned. “I’ll be damned. Another one? With another excuse, I’ll bet. Well, let’s have it.”
He took the letter, looked over the folds, and took his time unpacking it. He read with his finger beneath the evenly spaced lines, pronouncing the words in a low voice.
“Cousin Reuben this is Micah I have found many friends here especially Rafe Fenton who is showing me many things especially math. You remember how I like math—Oh, don’t I!—and it turns out that here there is plenty of it so I think I’ll stay another week. I’m very sorry for neglecting the garden I know it is time for asparagus because I had some soup last night and also because the rains have come. I promise I’ll come back next week as soon as I solve these ek—eek— What the hell word is this?”
“Equations, sir,” Rafe said.
“. . . as soon as I solve these equations they’re very interesting. I’ll tell you all about them next week. Love, Micah.”
He peered over the letter. Rafe tried not to fidget. “You’re the one who’s taken our Micah, then?”
“Now hold on, I haven’t taken him . . . he’s a genius! He deserves to have his intellect planted in fertile soil! Not left out to rot in the country!”
Cousin Reuben looked a little worried. “Is he, now? Does he? And what if he isn’t all you University types hope?”
“He absolutely is, sir.” Rafe was very sincere. The Balam girl gave him a searching look.
Cousin Reuben sighed. “The kid does sound happy. Math.” He shook his head. “I trust you to take care of our Micah, son. Fenton, eh? I’ve met your father.”
Rafe couldn’t tell if this was a threat or a statement of confidence, but he felt a momentary urge to take a potshot at the gleaming feather with one of the sandy turnips. Instead he made vaguely reassuring sounds and hurried away.
“What was that about?” the girl asked. She easily kept pace with his large strides; in fact, she seemed to glide beside him. His scowl deepened.
“I have his cousin in my rooms. A boy wonder. A mathematical genius. The key to all of my financial and academic worries! I just need to keep him.”
“The cousin of the root vegetable vendor?”
“I could