THE WORD DEALER
by
Pen Clements
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PUBLISHED BY:
The Word Dealer
Copyright © 2012 by Pen Clements
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The Word Dealer
I’d always wanted Caroline. And she’d never wanted me. Not because I was beneath her, mind. This isn’t one of those ‘serving boy in love with a princess’, ‘butcher smitten by the noble’s daughter’ kind of stories. I’m from a merchant family - not a greedy, cheating, voracious merchant family but a perfectly respectable, decent one. Ask anyone about the Langwolds and they’ll tell you the same.
As well as being the only son of a reputable merchanting family, I’ve been told I’m pretty easy on the eye. I’m tall and I have blue eyes and thick chestnut hair. I smile easily. Caroline? She’s a baker’s daughter. Her family has been baking bread for generations and very good they are at it. But still. A baker’s daughter. Arms covered in flour and all that.
I’d have thought I was a good catch, but Caroline doesn’t think so. Her eyes slide over me when we’re talking as if she’s looking for a better prospect just behind my shoulder. I’ve asked around and there isn’t anyone else. Nobody is courting her. I don’t have a rival. I tell myself that’s a good thing but I suspect it isn’t because it means she’s just not interested, even without another man as an excuse.
Caroline’s not a beauty either. She is to me of course, with her fresh skin, silken hair and sweet smile. But I’m not completely blinded by love. Besides, beauty doesn’t matter because it’s what someone is like that truly counts. I don’t see why stories always say the heroine is the most beautiful woman in the realm. It’s enough for me that Caroline is generous and honest and hard-working. I know this because I often watch her serving and going about her duties. She laughs a lot and customers like her.
You know what happens when someone isn’t interested in you. One of two things - you decide you’re not interested in them either, or you get obsessed. We want the unattainable, it’s just how we’re made. And that’s how it was with Caroline. The smell of baking reminded me of her. If there was a dusting of flour on her pretty nose I wanted to kiss it off. When I bit into warm, freshly baked bread I thought of her nestled beside me, of how her skin would feel and taste. And when I watched her knead dough, I couldn’t help but think of those hands kneading me.
I grew distant and dreamy. I couldn’t think of anything but Caroline and I spent my life watching her from behind corners or lying on my bed in a miserable, yearning state. My mother was concerned and father was angry when I lost track of profits and losses and forgot to check on deliveries. It got so bad that I began to seek out remedies. The herbalist was no good. Everyone knew her love potions didn’t work. The Duke had made a declaration against sorcery so anything along those lines was impossible to find. But there was a section of the city that respectable merchant’s sons should never visit, a place of twisted alleys and ancient cobbled stones. I went there, of course.
I was heedless and uncaring. I didn’t give a fig if the Duke’s men followed me. I was oblivious to the threat of cut throats, foot pads and robber gangs. There were eyes on my back the instant I entered the Shadow Quarter, whispers of fabric and quiet footfalls. Faces melted into doorways and darkness, eyes slid sideways behind twitched curtains. But I’m a strong man for merchants must defend their goods now and then. My father always said my brothers and I should never rely on others and must always know how to look after ourselves. So I’m handy with a blade, and with my fists. I squared my shoulders, walked upright and kept my hand on my sword.
I journeyed far into the Quarter. I didn’t know what I was looking for, only that if anyone in this city who could help me, this was where they’d be. The stones were slick with slime and the air smelled like it had never tasted the wind or felt a clean breeze from the sea. The walls were so narrow I could have reached out and scraped the muck off the crumbling mortar. As for the inhabitants, apart from those narrowed eyes and vanishing faces, they were nowhere to be seen.
I walked steadfastly along the twisted alleys, ignoring the stinking garbage and the fetid stream struggling through the gutter beside my path. The houses, if they could be called that, were made of worm eaten timber and dirt and piled upon each other with no thought of structure and stability. Sometimes they met in mid air and I walked through a grimy tunnel that seemed to have no end.
It was getting dark when I heard voices. The alleyway turned a corner and there was a twilight market, an open square crowded with people and stalls. I wandered among them, searching for someone who might help me or point to the place I sought. I knew there must be something here but people turned their backs and muttered under their breath. They didn’t call out and barter, make cheeky comments or share gossip. If I tried to talk I met closed, suspicious faces. It was nothing like the market in my part of the city. The fruit here was poor and fly bitten. The vegetables were twisted and old. The butcher wasn’t jolly, robust and red cheeked and he sold cuts of meat I would never touch. A bucket full of eyes lay at his feet and grey lungs hung on hooks and dripped a sticky fluid over the pile of hooves on his table. As for the flies, well, give it another day and it would be maggots he was selling.
At the edge of the square I found a woman dressed in faded velvet, sitting on a threadbare carpet with a cluster of lanterns before her crossed legs. I wasn’t looking for carpets or lanterns but I squatted beside her.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ I said. She looked mildly surprised to be addressed as such. ‘I search for a potion maker, a creator of spells. A hedge-wizard perhaps. No fake-merchant, no dealer in coloured water. One with real gifts.’
We both knew such people were forbidden in the city for the Duke would not have them amassing power and wealth or forming alliances that might threaten his rule. The woman looked at me with a blank face. She wasn’t sharing with strangers.
‘Perhaps this will assist your memory.’
I placed a small gold coin on the ground beside her knee. It twinkled in the lantern light. She held out a cupped hand.
‘Another?’ I said.
I’d already given her a small fortune. Her hand didn’t move. I sighed and placed a second coin into her grimy paw. She peered at me and cackled.
‘Love, is it?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Over there. Past the fountain.’
The fountain had ceased flowing long ago and the basin was choked with remains that I didn’t care to look at. Besides, my eyes were fixed on faded gold letters scrawled above a window made from many tiny panes of coloured glass. The shop was straight in front of my nose and the old lady cackled again at the irritation on my face. It stings to waste two gold coins when you pride yourself on your trading abilities.
‘Word Dealer,’ the sign above the shop said.
Whatever that meant. I’d never heard of a Word Dealer, for potions and powders are the way of things in my land. I knew I’d find a way to slip syrup into Caroline’s drink, drop a tincture into her soup or get her to knead a powder into a bread roll. But a Word Dealer? What was that?
The door was a faded, peeling blue. I knocked on it. Nobody answered so after a moment I turned the knob and crossed the threshold. The shop was small and had no wares on display but the carpets were rich and brightly coloured and bronze lamps glowed warm against dark purple walls. Plump embroidered cushions littered the floor and the place felt cozy and snug after the gloomy decay of the Shadow Quarter.
‘Welcome.’
A tall man came out from behind a curtain at the back of the room. He wore a waistcoat of tooled black leather and breeches of fine charcoal grey. They set off his skin, which was red, red as blood, red as rubies. I’m a merchant’s son an
d I’ve met just about every race there is. I’ve seen yellow-skinned Kersonese, the dappled Orsonites, ebony desert dwellers, the marble toned Ilonians. I’d never seen anyone like him. His skin vibrated with crimson, shone like a jewel in the lantern light. And even more strange, it didn’t stop him being one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. I couldn’t help but notice the purity of his features, the cleanness of his limbs, the length and strength of his muscles. His dark eyes were mesmerising and even though he was scarlet I suspected women would have wanted him. I was glad Caroline wasn’t there.
I shook his outstretched hand. He gestured to the fat cushions and I sank into one, the Word Dealer into another.
‘My name is Pieter,’ I said, ‘I am not aware of your