Lark and Wren

She picked up the hot brick and tucked it into the foot the bed, replacing it under the stove with another. The heat did a great deal of good for Tonno; already there was a bit more color in his face, and some of the lines of pain around his eyes and mouth were easing.

He took another sip of tea, and nodded. 'Do you see what I mean by suiting the girl's nature? Likely she's even convinced herself that this was why she came to work there in the first place, to keep an eye on the welfare of others' souls.'

'No doubt,' Rune said dryly. She stirred oatmeal into a pot of water, and set it on top of the stove beside the kettle to cook. 'She'll always want the extreme of anything; if she can't be a highly paid whore, she'll be a saint. What I can't understand is why Amber lets her stay on-you pretty much implied that she knows what Carly's up to.'

Tonno laughed, though the worry lines about his mouth had not eased any. 'That's the cleverness of our Lady Amber, dear. As long as Carly is in place, she knows who the spy is. If there is truly someone whose reputation with the Church is so delicate that he must not be seen at Amber's, then all the lady needs to do is make certain Carly doesn't see him. And I suspect Lady Amber has whatever official Carly reports to quite completely bribed.'

Wiser in the ways of bribery than she had been a scant six months ago, Rune nodded. 'If she got rid of Carly, someone else might get his agent in, and she'd have to find out what his price was.'

'But if she stopped bribing the old official, he'd report on what Carly had given him already.' Tonno shrugged. 'Amber knows what's going on, what's being reported, and saves money this way as well. And what does Carly cost her, really? Nothing she wouldn't be paying anyway. She'd have to bribe someone in the Church to be easy with the clients, no matter what.'

Rune shook her head. 'I guess I'll have to put up with it, and be grateful that I personally don't care that much about the state of my soul to worry about what working in a whorehouse is going to do to it. I'm probably damned anyway, for having the poor taste to be born on the wrong side of the blankets.'

'That's the spirit!' Tonno laughed a little, and she cheered up herself, seeing that he was able to laugh without hurting himself. She gave the room a sketchy cleaning, and washed last night's supper dishes. By then the oatmeal was ready and she spooned out enough for both of them, sweetening it with honey. She ate a lot faster than he did; he wasn't even half finished with his portion when she'd cleaned her bowl of the last spoonful. She put the dish into the pan of soapsuds just as the bell to the front door tinkled.

He started to get up from sheer habit, but she glared at him until he sank back into the pillows, and hurried to the front of the shop.

As she'd anticipated, since it was too early for either of the children having music lessons to arrive, the person peering into the shop with a worried look on his face was one of the University Students. The red stripe on the shoulders of his cloak told her he was a Student of Philosophy. Good. They had money-and by extension, so did their teachers. Only a rich man could afford to let his son idle away his time on something like Philosophy. And rich men paid well for their sons' lessons.

'Can I help you, my lord?' she said into the silence of the shop, startling him. He jumped, then peered short- sightedly at her as she approached.

'Is this the shop of-' he consulted a strip of paper in his hand '-Tonno Alendor?'

'Yes it is, my lord,' she said, and waited. He looked at her doubtfully.

'I was told to seek out this Tonno himself,' he said. The set of his chin told her that he was of the kind of nature to be stubborn, but the faint quiver of doubt in his voice also told her he could be bullied. Another of Tonno's lessons: how to read people, and know how to deal with them.

'Master Tonno is ill. I am his niece,' she lied smoothly. 'He entrusts everything to me.'

The soft, round chin firmed as the spoiled young man who was not used to being denied what he wanted emerged; in response to that warning, so did her voice. 'If you truly wish to disturb him, if you feel you must pester a poor, sick old man, I can take you to his bedside'- and I'll make you pay dearly for it in embarrassment, her voice promised-'but he'll only tell you the same thing, young man.'

Her tone, and the scolding 'young man,' she appended to her little speech, gave him the impression she was much older than he had thought. Nearsighted as he was, and in the darkness of the shop, he would probably believe it. And, as she had hoped, he must have a female relative somewhere that was accustomed to browbeating him into obedience; his resistance collapsed immediately.

'Scholar Mardake needs a book,' he said meekly. 'He looked at it last summer, and he was certain he had purchased it, but now he finds he hadn't, and he has to have it for his monograph, and-'

She let him rattle on for far too long about the monograph, the importance of it, and how it would enhance Scholar Mardake's already illustrious reputation. And, by extension, the reputations and status of all of Mardake's Students.

What a fool.

She tried not to yawn in his face, but it was difficult. Jib had more sense in his big toe than this puffed-up popinjay had in his entire body. And of all the things to be over-proud of-this endless debate over frothy nothings, like the question of what a 'soul' truly consisted of, made her weary to the bone. If they would spend half the time on questions of a practical nature instead of this chop-logic drivel, the world would be better run. Finally he came to the point: the name of the book.

'By whom?' she asked, finally getting a word in. Of all of the Scholars, the Philosophers were by far and away the windiest.

'Athold Derelas,' he replied, loftily, as if he expected that she had never heard of the great man.

'Ah, you're in luck,' she replied immediately. 'We have two copies. Does your master prefer the annotated version by Wasserman, or the simple translation by Bartol?'

He gaped at her. She stifled a giggle. In truth, she wouldn't have known the books were there if she hadn't replaced a volume of history by Lyam Derfan to its place beside them the day before. It was bad enough that she'd known of the book; but she'd offered two choices, and he didn't know how to react. He'd loftily assumed, no doubt,