The lens of the loupe opened up an entirely new world of patterns and systems, and the boy was utterly ensorcelled. He was uniquely gifted to work out all the permutations of ferly, the subtle differences in primary and dependent worden, and to interpret the results when they layered over each other. And little by little, the Roaming World became his world, though it was some time before he wrote to Morvengarde, or encountered another roamer in person.
One day a few weeks after his meeting on that lonely road, he happened to be passing by Jacinda’s garden in the field at the edge of town. She was pulling up weeds from around the flowers that grew among the meteorites. Foulk lingered, as he always did when passing there. And as he watched her weeding and humming to herself, some imp of the perverse made him take the loupe Morvengarde had given him from his pocket.
He fitted it to his eye, and gasped as the quality of the world changed before him. Jacinda’s garden was roiling, absolutely flooded with ferly. He had never seen so much in one place.
He took the lens from his eye, wiped it clean on the edge of his shirt, and looked again. No, there was no mistake: the garden was positively alive with weyward lumination.
Of course, gardens often hide secrets; we have Madame Grisaille’s tale from last night as an example. But Foulk didn’t think there was much of a secret to the ferly he was seeing. This was, after all, a garden full of things that had fallen from the sky. One of them—perhaps more than one—was, in some way, miraculous.
He went home and wrote immediately to Morvengarde to tell him, and to ask him to come and give a valuation. Jacinda’s family wasn’t what you’d call poor, and he knew Jacinda would never willingly part with her meteorites, but he thought surely they’d all like to know if they possessed something as valuable as it seemed at least one of these sky rocks was likely to be. There might be an emergency one day, some reason they might need the money.
A week later, a blond woman turned up at Foulk’s door with a tall, muscled man in smoked spectacles standing respectfully behind her.
“I have come from Morvengarde,” she announced, presenting her own card. It was identical to the card the Roaming World merchant had given Foulk, except where the first had had simply the name MORVENGARDE in large copperplate followed by the title GRANDMASTER IN TOTO, this one read SELEUCIA DEACON, GRANDMASTER SECONDARIA. “I believe you have found something needing a valuation.” The tall man in the smoked spectacles said nothing.
Something about the pair gave the boy the feeling of someone walking over his grave. But his fascination with the Roaming World had only grown since he’d met Morvengarde, and here were two more denizens, right at his door.
“It’s a garden,” he said. “A garden of meteorites. It belongs to my friend. It’s—I think it’s got a lot of ferly to it.”
“Show me,” the woman ordered, and together the three of them walked to the road that passed the field with Jacinda’s garden. Jacinda was there, of course, her back to them as she cut long-stemmed flowers with heads the size of saucers and laid them in a basket.
Foulk reached into his pocket for his loupe, but Deacon had already taken a glass of her own from inside her coat. “Oh, my,” she said, even before she had the glass fitted all the way into her eye socket. She looked for a moment, then passed the glass to the man who’d come with her. He tucked the loupe between his right eye and the smoked lens covering it, made a noise of surprise, then passed it back. “Very well, Foulk,” Deacon said, pocketing the loupe. “You are absolutely right. Well done. Would you introduce us, please?”
Heart pounding, Foulk led them to a break in the garden wall, and they walked to where Jacinda was working. She looked up from her basket of flowers as they approached. Dahlias, they were, shaped like exploding fireworks. Red ones, yellow ones, dark purple ones like the late-evening sky he had seen in the reflection of his crossroads in the rain puddle weeks before.
Foulk could barely speak from nervousness, but somehow he managed the introduction. “Jacinda, this is Miss Deacon. I brought her here because she and her partner are merchants who specialize in . . . very valuable objects. She’s interested in your meteorites and asked me to introduce her to you.”
In the midst of this speech, both Seleucia Deacon and the man who’d come with her looked sharply at the boy. He fumbled but carried on, thinking they were reacting to his reference to her partner; he’d meant Morvengarde, of course, but perhaps they thought he’d been referring to the silent man, who seemed to be more of a bodyguard.
When he finished speaking, Jacinda looked to the newcomers. Her smile was friendly but wary, and Foulk realized he’d been a fool to think that Jacinda would be excited about the idea of selling her precious meteorites at any price. “It’s very nice to meet you. I don’t know if Mama and Papa will sell any of the meteorites, but they’re home, so you’re welcome to talk to them. This way.” She tucked the basket of red, yellow, and purple dahlias over one forearm and motioned toward the house.
Before she could take a step, Seleucia Deacon put a hand
