appropriate for a modest woman from the better part of town instead of the gaudy
layers of the S’danzo costume. Walegrin wondered from whom she had borrowed them
and if she had told her husband after all. It mattered little so long as she
could pierce the spell over his shard.
‘Shall I leave you alone?’ Walegrin asked after removing the pottery fragment
from the pouch and placing it on the table.
‘No, I don’t want to be alone in here.’ Illyra shuffled her fortune cards,
dropping several in her nervousness, then set the deck back on the table and
asked, ‘Is it too much to ask for some wine and information about what I’m
supposed to be looking for?’ A trace of the bazaar scrappiness returned to her
voice and she was less lost within the room.
‘My man Thrusher wanted to lay in an orgy feast when I told him I’d require the
common room tonight. Then I told him I only wanted the men out – but it’s a poor
barracks without a flask in it, poorer than Sanctuary.’ He found a half-filled
wineskin behind a sideboard, squirted some into his mouth, and swallowed with a
rare smile. ‘Not the best vintage, but passable. You’ll have to drink from the
skin…’ He handed it to her.
‘I drank from a skin before I’d seen a cup. It’s a trick you never forget.’
Illyra took the wineskin from him and caught a mouthful of wine without
splattering a drop. ‘Now, Walegrin,’ she began, emboldened by the musty wine,
‘Walegrin, I can’t get either your pottery nor Haakon’s oranges out of my mind.
What is the connection?’
‘If this Haakon peddles Enlibar oranges, then it’s simple. I got the shard in