Cordimancy by Daniel Hardman Page A

in. But could you help unweave the ribbons and flowers in my hair? I could reach, but extra hands would help.”
    Kinora’s face glowed with pleasure.
    Malena pulled a chair away from the desk along the wall, and sat while little fingers worked.
    “You seem very young,” she said. Her eyes ran over a sextant that served as a paperweight for a stack of letters and parchment. She shifted a large geode to study the maps spread across the desk.
    “But I’m a good worker,” said Kinora.
    “I’m sure you are. How did Semya hire you?”
    “My voice,” Kinora answered shyly. “I was singing in the market, and he said he followed the sound until he found me.”
    “What were you doing in the market?”
    “My stepfather sells cloth and dyes there, and he had me watch his goods while he went to the tavern, sometimes.”
    “You stayed in the market all by yourself?” asked Malena. This girl was much too young for such duty, but Malena tried to keep the disapproval out of her voice.
    Kinora nodded seriously.
    “Every day?”
    Kinora nodded again. “An old man and his wife in the next stall helped me. I was supposed to run and fetch my tat if a customer wanted to bargain, while they kept an eye on the stuff. But sometimes I didn’t run fast enough, and the customer would wander off. Then Tat got mad.”
    Malena felt a pang of sadness, but also some hope. Apparently her husband noticed cuffed urchins, too—and he tried to help. Maybe she would have other chances to bolster this lonely child.
    Ribbons slid out of her hair.
    Malena scanned the array of books on Toril’s shelves. She saw poetry—much of it familiar—as well as some history, geography, and geometry. Some titles were in foreign languages. She could read them all, more or less, although she’d convinced her tutor to gloss over that skill in reports to her parents...
    She supposed her own trove of books would join these; she’d brought a trunk filled with them. Would her husband be surprised by that? Cheerful? Or would he react like Father, threatened if a woman showed any intelligence or initiative?
    Malena had seen two words, clear as could be, written in the rocks on her naming day. One cluster said labor . It chafed at her, even after all these years, that the Five would suggest drudgery—not accomplishment, not craft, but the glyph for plain old backbreaking work—as a true expression of her identity. The other cluster, heart , was equally frustrating. After wading deep and wrestling, they had sent her back to shore with no magic to show for it—made her a common heart like everybody else, and arranged some rocks to make sure she got the point. “You’re a heart, Malena. Don’t pretend better.”
    Even when she combined the words, it felt like a prediction of misery, not joy.
    Those weren’t words for an independent thinker of thoughts, creator of beauty, chaser of dreams… She had swept the rocks away, and stayed behind the curtain until she found rocks she liked better. She had vowed to the goddess of spring, and art, and poetry.
    Why was her husband the one with the talent?
    Would Toril be willing to sail beside her to Tarkanal to hear the Great Choir? Would he ride across the mountains with her to Lumira, so she could study the glazed sculpture that folk said would make you weep? She had heard of a texturing technique that was only taught by ceramics masters there… Would he listen to her own ode to Jurivna, and whisper it back in her ear on some spring morning? Or would he dismiss such things as girlish nonsense?
    Would he like her antechild?
    Malena realized she’d neglected the conversation, and returned to the topic at hand with an embarrassed sniff. Kinora’s tat had punished her for mismanaging a stall in the market. “You say he’s your stepfather?”
    “My real tat was killed by a sloth bear when I was a baby.”
    “What about the rest of your family?”
    “I have a stepbrother, Elesel. He’s mean. He’s thirteen, and