She nodded slowly, measuring his look. “How long ago was this?”
“Quite a while. I don’t remember a lot about it. I was just a boy. The little girl was just a child. She would be older now. Your age, maybe.” He grinned. “But she wouldn’t be nearly so interesting or pretty as you are, I bet.”
She was suddenly anxious to change the topic of conversation. “Tell me the rest of how you ended up being sent here as an indentured servant.”
He finished the last of his bread and meat and washed it down with several swallows of water. “As I recall, the bargain was that you were supposed to tell me something interesting about yourself first. Something other than that story about you and the dragon.”
“That wasn’t a bargain I made. That was your condition for finishing the story—a very unfair condition, I might add.”
He thought about it. “All right, maybe it was. If I finish the story, will you tell me something else about yourself afterward?”
She stuck out her hands. “Let’s shake on it.”
They shook, his hands strong and firm as they grasped hers. She liked the feel of them—not too rough, but they had seen hard work.
“Well, then?” she asked, withdrawing her hands from his.
“There’s not much more to tell,” he said. “My father sold me into indenture to His Eminence because he felt I might find a better future here than if I stayed with him. There wasn’t much work in the village and no one to teach me a useful trade. Or at least not a trade that interested me. He thought that coming here, working with books I could read and studying on my own when I wasn’t working, might better serve me.”
“Well, couldn’t he have sent you to study with His Eminence instead of indenturing you for five years? It would have been the same thing!”
Thom shook his head. “His Eminence wouldn’t allow it. No one gets to come to Libiris and stay without a reason. His bargain with my father was that if I came, it was as an indentured servant. That was the condition to my apprenticeship. When I am done working, I owe His Eminence half of my first five years’ earnings in my chosen trade, as well.”
“That’s unfair!” Mistaya was indignant. “He can’t do that!”
Thom laughed. “Tell you what. When you talk to the King about persuading the Lords to give up their lands to the poor people, put in a good word for me, too.”
“Maybe I will,” she declared boldly.
He leaned over and brushed her hair back from her face in a curiously tender gesture. “You have a good heart, little sister. Whoever you are and wherever you came from, you have a good heart.”
She didn’t know what to say. “I think you have a good heart, too,” she managed.
There was a moment when their eyes locked and time seemed to freeze. She waited, her anticipation of what might happen next so sharp it made her ache.
Then abruptly he stood up. “Come along. Back to work. Rufus will grow bored if we’re not there to be spied upon.”
She certainly wouldn’t want that, she thought. She felt a pang of disappointment that their time alone together was over. She wanted more. She determined that she would have it.
Picking up their plates and cups, she followed him back through the tower door and down the stairs to work.
It was late in the afternoon, the time nearly run out on their day’s efforts, when Mistaya heard someone calling. The voice was so faint and so distant that at first she thought she was mistaken. She stopped what she was doing and listened for a long few moments without hearing anything more. Her imagination, she supposed. A place this cavernous could play tricks on you, deceive you into hearing and seeing things that weren’t there.
She had risen to begin sorting through a new stack of books when she heard it again. She stood listening anew, staring off into space and trying to pinpoint the location. She thought it had come from somewhere back in the Stacks, where the darkness was so thick and deep that it was virtually impenetrable. But there was only silence.
“Did you hear something?” she asked Thom finally.
He glanced up and shook his head. “No. Did you?”
