But Tenar had left her living in the Middle Valley. She had not thought when she left so suddenly of how long she might stay. She had not brought with her the seven pieces of ivory, Flint’s hoard; nor would that money have been of use in the village except to buy land or livestock, or deal with some trader up from Gont Port peddling pellawi furs or silks of Lorbanery to the rich farmers and little lords of Gont. Flint’s farm gave her all she and Therru needed to eat and wear; but Ogion’s six goats and his beans and onions had been for his pleasure rather than his need. She had been living off his larder, the gifts of villagers who gave to her for his sake, and the generosity of Aunty Moss. Just yesterday the witch had said, “Dearie, my ringneck hen’s brood’s hatched out, and I’ll bring you two-three chickies when they begin to scratch. The mage wouldn’t keep ‘em, too noisy and silly, he said, but what’s a house without chickies at the door?”
Indeed her hens wandered in and out of Moss’s door freely, and slept on her bed, and enriched the smells of the dark, smoky, reeking room beyond belief.
“There’s a brown-and-white yearling nanny will make a fine milch goat,” Tenar said to the sharp-faced man.
“I was thinking of the whole lot,” he said. “Maybe. Only five or six of ‘em, right?”
“Six. They’re in the pasture up there if you want to have a look.”
“I’ll do that.” But he didn’t move. No eagerness, of course, was to be evinced on either side.
“Seen the great ship come in?” he asked.
Ogion’s house looked west and north, and from it one could see only the rocky headlands at the mouth of the bay, the Armed Cliffs; but from the village itself at several places one could look down the steep back-and-forth road to Gont Port and see the docks and the whole harbor. Shipwatching was a regular pursuit in Re Albi. There were generallY a couple of old men on the bench behind the smithy, which gave the best view, and though they might never in their lives have gone down the fifteen zigzag miles of that road to Gont Port, they watched the comings and goings of ships as a spectacle, strange yet familiar, provided for their entertainment.
“From Havnor, smith’s boy said. He was down in Port bargaining for ingots. Come up yesterevening late. The great ship’s from Havnor Great Port, he said.”
He was probably talking to keep her mind off the price of goats, and the slyness of his look was probably simply the way his eyes were made. But Havnor Great Port traded little with Gont, a poor and remote island notable only for wizards, pirates, and goats; and something in the words, “the great ship,” troubled or alarmed her, she did not know why.
“He said they say there’s a king in Havnor now,” the sheep-buyer went on, with a sidelong glance.
“That might be a good thing,” said Tenar.
Townsend nodded. “Might keep the foreign riffraff out.”
Tenar nodded her foreign head pleasantly. “But there’s those down in Port won’t be pleased, maybe.” He meant the pirate sea-captains of Gont, whose control of the northeastern seas had been increasing of late years to the point where many of the old trade-schedules with the central islands of the Archipelago had been disrupted or abandoned; this impoverished everyone on Gont except the pirates, but that did not prevent the pirates from being heroes in the eyes of most Gontishmen. For all she knew, Tenar’s son was a sailor on a pirate ship. And safer, maybe, as such than on a steady merchantman. Better shark than herring, as they said.
“There’s some who’re never pleased no matter what,” Tenar said, automatically following the rules of conversation, but impatient enough with them that she added, rising, “I’ll show you the goats. You can have a look. I don’t know if we’ll sell all or any.” And she took the man to the broom-pasture gate and left him. She did not like him. It wasn’t his fault that he had brought her bad news once and maybe twice, but his eyes slid, and she did not like his company. She wouldn’t sell him Ogion’s goats. Not even Sippy.