Rara nodded. “What do you want to buy?”
“I don’t want to buy anything,” he said. “I want to sell something to you.” He was barefoot; his pants frayed into nothing at mid-calf, and his sleeveless shirt had no fastenings.
“What do you want to sell?” she asked, her voice deepening with skepticism.
He reached into his pocket, and brought out a rag of green flannel, which he unwrapped now in his hand.
They had been polished to a milky hue, some streaked with gold and red, others run through with warm browns and yellows. Two had been rubbed down to pure mother-of-pearl, rubbed until their muted silver surfaces were clouded with pastel lusters. There in the nest of green, they swirled around themselves, shimmering.
“They’re nothing but sea shells,” Rara said.
Alter reached her forefinger out and touched a white periwinkle. “They’re lovely,” she told him. “Where did you get them?” They ranged in size from the first joint of her thumb to the width of her pinky nail.
“By your departed mother, my own sister, we can’t afford to give him a centiunit, Alter. I hardly sold a thing before that brute officer forced me away.”
“I found them on the beach,” the boy explained. “I was hiding on the boat and I didn’t have nothing to do. So I polished them.”
“What were you hiding for?” asked Rara, her voice suddenly sharp. “You don’t mean you stowed away?”
“Un-huh,” the boy nodded.
“How much do you want for them?” Alter asked.
“How much? How much would it cost to get a meal and a place to stay?”
“Much more than we can afford to pay,” interrupted Rara. “Alter, come with me. This boy is going to talk you out of a unit or two yet, if you keep on listening to him.”
“See,” said the boy, pointing to the shells. “I’ve put holes in them already. You can string them around your neck.”
“If you want to get food and a place to sleep,” said Alter, “you don’t want money. You want friends. What’s your name? And where are you from?”
The boy looked up from the handful of shells, surprised. “My name is Tel,” he said after a moment. “I come from the mainland coast. And I’m a fisherman’s son. I thought when I came here I could get a job in the aquariums. That’s all you hear about on the coast.”
Alter smiled. “First of all you’re sort of young…”
“But I’m a good fisherman.”
“…and also, it’s very different from fishing on a boat. I guess you’d say that there were a lot of jobs in the aquariums and the hydroponics gardens. But with all the immigrants, there are three people for every job.”
The boy shrugged. “Well, I can try.”
“That’s right,” said Alter. “Come on. Walk with us.”
Rara huffed.
“We’ll take him back to Geryn’s place and see if we can get him some food. He can probably stay there a little while if Geryn takes a liking to him.”
“You can’t just take every homeless barnacle you find back to Geryn’s. You’ll have it crawling with every shrimp in the Pot. And suppose he doesn’t take a liking to him. Suppose he decides to kick us out in the street.” The birthmark on her left cheek darkened.
“Aunt Rara, please,” said Alter. “I’ll handle Geryn.”
Rara huffed once more. “How come when we’re two weeks behind on the rent, you can’t find a kind word in your mouth for the old man when he threatens to throw us onto the street? Yet for the sake of a handful of pretty shells…”
“Please…”
A breeze seeped through the narrow street, picked a shock of Alter’s white hair and flung it back from her shoulder.
“Anyway, Geryn may be able to use him. If Tel stowed away, that means he doesn’t have any papers.”
Tel frowned with puzzlement.
Rara frowned with chastisement in her eyes. “You are not supposed to refer to that, ever.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Alter. “It’s just a fantasy of Geryn’s anyway. It’ll never happen. And without papers, Tel can’t get a job at the aquariums, even if they wanted him. So if Geryn thinks he can fit him into his crazy plan, Tel will come out a lot better than if he had some old ten-unit-a-week factory job. Look, Rara, how can Geryn possibly kidnap…”
“Be quiet,” snapped Rara.
“And even if he did, what good is it going to do? It’s not as if it were the king himself.”
“I don’t understand,” said Tel.
“That’s good,” said Rara. “And if you want to keep going with us, you won’t try to find out.”
“We can tell you this much,” said Alter. “The man who owns the inn where we stay wants to do something. Now, he is a little crazy. He’s always talking to himself, for example. But he needs someone who has no identification registered in the City. Now, if he thinks he can use you, you’ll get free food and a place to sleep. He used to be the gardener on the island estate of the Duchess of Petra. But he drank a little too much and I guess at last he had to go. He still says she sends him messages though, about his plan. But…”
“You don’t have to go any further,” Rara said, curtly.
“You’ll hear about it from him,” said Alter. “Why did you stow away?”
“I just got fed up with life at home. We’d work all day to catch fish, and then have to leave them rotting on the beach because we could only sell a fifth of them, or sometimes none at all. Some people gave up; some only managed to get it in their heads that they had to work harder. I guess my father was like that. He figured if he worked enough, someone would just have to buy them. Only nobody did. My mother did some hand weaving and we were living mostly on that. Finally, I figured I was eating up more than I was worth. So I left.”
“Just like that, and with no money?” asked Rara.
“Just like that,” Tel said.
“You poor boy,” said Rara, and in a sudden fit of maternal affection, she put her arm around his shoulder.
“Ow!” cried Tel, and winced.
Rara jerked her hand away. “What’s the matter?”
“I…I got hurt there,” the boy said, rubbing his shoulders gently.
“Hurt? How?”
“My father—he whipped me there.”
“Ah,” said Rara. “Now it comes out. Well, whatever the reasons you left, they’re your own business. Anyway, I’ve never known anyone yet to do something for one reason alone. Don’t lag behind, now. We’ll be back at Geryn’s in time for lunch.”
“I thought if I could sneak aboard,” went on Tel, “that they’d have to let me off in the City, even if I didn’t have money. I didn’t know about papers. And when I was in line, I figured I’d explain to the men at the desk. Or maybe I’d even give them my shells, and they would get the papers for me. But the guy ahead of me had a mistake in his. Some date was wrong, and they said they were going to send him back to the mainland and that he couldn’t leave the ship. He said he’d give them real money, and even got it out of his pocket. But they started to take him away. That’s when I ran out of line and jumped the fence. I didn’t