The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

balcony at one of those awful melodramas. I always used to laugh in all the wrong places… But this drama was real, especially intriguing since everything that I’d noted about the boy while he was serving in the inn had indicated that he was a halfwit. He didn’t move like a halfwit now. He disappeared behind a stack of rotting fish boxes that had seen better days and emerged a moment later with something in his arms. He sat down on the wharf, surrounded by boxes. At a guess, the only place he would be visible from was my bedroom window.
    It was a dog he held, a mangy bundle with an oversized tail and huge feet. He fed it, played with it for a while, then shoved it behind the boxes once more. A few minutes later he was back in the kitchen.
    Even tapboys had their secrets on Gorthan Spit.
     
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    When I woke up from a second short nap, the worst of the heat had gone from the day and a breeze was beginning to rattle the shutters.
    Everything was quiet in the room next to mine.
    I found the drudge and, by means of a coin, persuaded her to get me some ordinary skin unguent. When she returned with some, I added some dried herbs that were supposed to be good for skin ailments, then went downstairs to the kitchen and persuaded the cook—also for a price—to give me some seaweed bread and fish paste. Finally I strolled out onto the fishermen’s wharf. It was still deserted, although the strong smell of fish offal remained and there were people working on the boats tied up there, rebaiting fishing lines. One of them raised his eyes, grinned and seemed about to say something—until he spotted the hilt of my sword poking out of the sheath on my back and thought better of it.
    It didn’t take me a moment to find the dog; it was much more of a problem persuading it to trust me. Gorthan Spit curs learned a thing or two about trust and survival, none of it good, very early in life. Eventually some of the bread spread with fish paste made him decide I couldn’t be all bad and he allowed me to rub him with the salve I had concocted. His initial growls turned to ingratiating whines and then to slobbering licks.
    I hadn’t expected to have the good luck to be caught at what I was doing, but that was what happened.
    The tapboy found me.
    He stood there gaping for a while, not believing what he saw. I guessed him to be about twelve, or perhaps an undersized fourteen. He’d been fair-headed once, if the freckles were anything to go by, but he was so dirty it was hard to tell. He had no ear tattoo that I could see. In the taproom he had looked at me with dulled, unintelligent eyes; there was nothing stupid about the way he looked at me now.
    ‘No lad,’ I said as he turned to run off. ‘There’s no need to be frightened. I won’t harm you, or your dog.’ I held out the jar of salve. ‘Here, take this. Rub the animal with it once a day and he’ll soon be rid of that mange. You won’t know him once he has a proper coat of hair.’
    He stepped forward as gingerly as a cat in snow and took the jar, while the dog thumped its tail in happy acknowledgement of his presence. ‘What do you call it?’ I asked.
    I had to ask him to repeat the barely decipherable mumble, and finally grasped that he’d said, ‘Seeker’. An interesting choice of name; perhaps there was much more to the boy than I’d hoped. I fumbled in my purse for some coppers. ‘See these? They are yours if you will try to answer some questions. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the answers to some of them; you just say so. Understand?’
    He backed off a little. He guessed now that the help I’d given his pet wasn’t prompted by just the kindness of my heart, and he was wary.
    ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
    ‘Tunn,’ he said and then added doubtfully, ‘haply.’ I wasn’t too sure whether he meant his name was Tunn Haply, or that he was, perhaps, called Tunn but he wasn’t sure; however, I didn’t pursue that question any further. Instead I