“Naomi’s never been beyond the city gates,” Adibe informed, “And we don’t get many of your kind inside the city.”
“You’ve never been beyond the city gates?” Serenthel repeated with astonishment raising his perfectly shaped eyebrows.
Naomi felt judged and immediately disliked his perfect eyebrows. “So? How often do your kind go beyond their own wall?”
The Elvan boy’s eyebrows lowered and his lips upturned into a smile. “You have me there. I beg your pardon for my presumptuous judgment of your choice to remain within your city’s boundaries.”
His unexpected turn around left her without retort, and she found herself disliking his eyebrows a little less, and perhaps liking his smile a little more. That only made her want to redouble her defenses. Crossing her arms over her fabric wrapped chest, she ignored the elf’s apology and spoke to Adibe. “Why is he here?”
“I’ve come seeking aid from a master silversmith,” Serenthel answered to Naomi’s cold shoulder when Adibe just grinned.
“In the Washerwoman’s district?” Naomi’s pitch raised along with her ire at Serenthel answering a question obviously not intended for him. The elf’s eyebrow rose again. She cleared her throat and waggled a finger at Adibe while adding a gruff edge to her words in the hopes of sounding like more of a boyish bully than an irritated girl. “What’s going on, old man?”
“One should be more respectful of their elders,” Serenthel chided under his breath.
“One should mind their own business,” Naomi muttered back as Adibe snickered like a fool too far into his wine bottle.
A clattering cart loudly rumbled down the street behind Adibe’s stoop. The shadows of three gaggling women danced across the cobbles, their proximity to a rare sight in Ka’veshi going unnoticed. From further away, angry shouts went up about the late arrival of goods. A hot breeze blew through the narrow passage, temporarily drying the sweat from Naomi’s brow before the humidity returned with renewed vengeance. Another day in Ka’veshi, her city, her home.
“You were too young to remember,” Adibe finally spoke once the street beyond had calmed to its more muted mix of talking pedestrians and creaking wagon wheels. “But I haven’t always been sitting here on these stairs.”
Despite knowing it must be true, Naomi had a difficult time picturing Adibe anywhere else. He’d been sitting on those stairs for as long as she’d been on her roof. Memories of her childhood were fuzzy at best, filled with running and scrounging and a lack of shoes. It wasn’t something she let her mind linger on, for good reason. Looking backwards had a habit of making you unable to see the dangers right in front of you. She’d been the unwanted bastard child of a Rose and some man who’d rather Naomi never been born. That, she always thought, was more than enough to know about her past. It’s not like her story didn’t match up to any one of a thousand bastard orphan brats in the city, born to Roses and sold to one guild or another.
Except she’d never been sold. Never been guilded. Somehow, she’d wound up in this alley and up on that roof, and Adibe had always been waiting below.
More shouts from the streets cut into her wandering thoughts as Adibe took in a long breath only to cough it back out. His health had been getting worse, and she worried for him. The worry, she admitted, was for selfish reasons. Adibe remained her single link to existence in this city, and she feared what may happen to her when time inevitably snuffed it out.
“Want some water?” Naomi asked, her concern breaking apart her feigned machismo.
“Here,” Serenthel offered, holding out a water skin.
It made Naomi dislike him a little less. But, only a little. He was still a stranger, and an elf, and he kept glancing at her as if she were a puzzle to be solved.
“Thank you.” Adibe took a small sip and smacked his lips. “The city is becoming more parched as the days fade into Haden, and I fear the rains won’t come this year to offer relief.”
“I just heard the same crazy rumor near the soap house,” Naomi said.
“It’s carried by the unsettled sands of the Earth,” Adibe nodded. “And when it reaches the ears of the Water...”
Shouting from the street grew as it neared the alleyway’s entrance. Naomi leaned out past the tall elf blocking her view, squinting through the sunbaked haze. A few men ran by, their shadows casting lines over Naomi’s face. More shouts from farther down the street sounded angrier than before. A woman ran by next in the opposite direction, yelling for her husband.
“Ah,” Adibe sighed, his head lowering. “It seems the Water already knows.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Serenthel said as he leaned into the alleyway with Naomi, staring out at the growing commotion on the street. “What is this talk of earth and water I keep hearing? Is it some sort of weather event?”
Naomi tore her gaze away from the street to stare dumbfounded at the elf. “Weather event? Are you dim? You seriously don’t know who-”
“You must not judge Serenthel for his ignorance of our ways,” Adibe instructed in a clear tone, abruptly ending Naomi’s words and flushing her face with the shame of a scolded child. “Instead, you must become his guide in a word vastly different than his own, but a world he must come to understand if there is to be hope for all our peoples.”
“What?” Naomi blinked at the old man. “I’ve not got time to be some city chaperon to a lost elf boy who came to the Washerwoman’s district to find a damn silversmith!”
“Boy?” Serenthel bristled but went unanswered.
“Not a city chaperon,” Adibe said with a stubborn glare to match Naomi’s. “But a guide to the
