Ghosts, he thought absently. He wasn’t the only one around; this place – this city, the Rose – was full of ghosts. They thronged in the streets, in the Dove, on the docks, in the ocean. They took the forms of half-recognized faces, shadows in the corners of your eyes that beckoned and then vanished.
This shop was like him, in a way. He looked around and he saw the husk of Cholmondoley’s; he heard Gauthier’s mincing excuses in his ears, felt the man’s thin shoulder in the firm grip of one of his hands. He heard the shattering of a pot he’d carelessly and cruelly tossed, heard his own mocking laughter. This place breathed with memories to anybody who’d been there before, anybody who’d known Gauthier. Now, though, it was occupied by a different soul entirely, and Tom found himself—
Disappointed? Let down? Anxious? They were both different now, he and this shop; he was a soul with a different body, and it was a body with a different soul. He didn’t know what to expect from anything anymore.
“Aminark’s Treasures,” he muttered, frowning deeply. He’d been told the place was run by a Gioran passive priest of some sort, but that was all he knew; then again, with a name and sign like that, he could’ve guessed as much. He repeated it under his breath another time, scanning a row of nearly-identical, cherry-red cups. “Aminark’s Treasures…”
From behind him, a soft voice said, “Aye, sir.”
The Incumbent’s bodyguard was a human named, ironically enough, Tom Hale. He was big enough, looming over Anatole by about a foot, a heavyset towhead with an easy smile and hard eyes. They didn’t talk much, being honest; Tom didn’t know what to say to him, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have wanted to say it out loud. That all seemed to be fine with Hale, who didn’t seem much the talking sort anyway. Right now, he was looking up at a statue of Alioe, a contemplative look on his face.
So Tom Cooke didn’t say anything.
He paused by a statue of some kind of deer, black paint glistening in the grooves of its fur, the silk-smooth curves of its antlers. He reached out to touch its graceful head, but his hand twitched back. It peered at him through the beady eye on one side of its head, the expression on its face animal and unreadable. At its delicate hoof, flowers bowed their withered heads.
Unsettled, he turned away, then stopped. Something on a nearby shelf had caught his eye, and he wandered over.
It was a little mug – at least, he thought it was a mug, though he reckoned it could’ve been an even smaller bowl. It resembled some kind of misshapen fruit, petrified and hollowed-out, the pale glaze chipped and fading. More importantly, he reckoned it was the saddest-looking thing he’d ever seen, and that was why it’d jumped out at him. It made him feel something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, reminded him of that feeling that weighed in the bottom of his stomach like an anchor. That’s how I feel, he thought, looking at it and – again – not quite knowing why.
When he picked it up, it had a good weight in his hand. Now he noticed a hairline crack on one side, lovingly-sealed. “Far’ye?” he asked quietly, then winced, glancing around. Hale was studying a statue of Roa on a shelf nearby, but he had a faint smile on the edge of his lip; Tom felt sure he’d heard. Bang moony fucking golly, eh? But Tom didn’t put it back. Instead, he took it in both of his hands, running his thumbs over the worn, rough glaze. Somehow, he felt like that faceless surface was looking back at him.
He suppressed a smile, biting his lip and scowling hard. He wandered out from the shelves, his warped little treasure cupped between his hands carefully; despite his grim expression, he looked like a man holding a newborn kitten.
“Good afternoon,” he called out, more loudly, in his Uptown toffin’s accent. “Is anybody in today?”