Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Fourteen: Market Day

"I don't get it."

Jordan squinted at the tablet in front of him, but the squiggles still refused to make sense. Laurel sighed, looking at Jordan's scratchy earth alphabet and then back at her version in neat Nictavian Common.

"Neither do I."

They glanced at each other and laughed.

"This is ridiculous," Jordan said. "I'm never going to learn it this way."

"We need to find someone who knows earth Common," Laurel said. "Somehow. Anyway, eat. You haven't touched your food and Killian's taking you out soon."

"Oh yeah." He picked up his plate and began shovelling food in, forgetting for a moment that she was watching him. "I forgot."

Laurel giggled and he slowed, dull heat going to his cheeks.

"Sorry."

She smiled and shrugged, pulling the two tablets towards her again. "I don't care. Kiel's beard, your letters are so odd."

"Yours look just as odd to me," he muttered through a mouthful of starchy vegetables. Nictavians didn't seem too adept at agriculture, he'd noticed, at least insofar as how edible their produce was. He wolfed them down before he'd taken the edge off his hunger and couldn't bear to eat anymore.

They sat on the pallet in Jordan's tiny room on the top floor of the Demon's Brew. His eyes ached from his terrible night on the straw mattress. Yddris had left him late the previous evening without explaining what he was supposed to do with himself now, and it had been nothing but awkwardness since.

It wasn't that he didn't like Kedrick or Killian, he reasoned, it was that they seemed to forget he had no idea how anything worked in this world. It created something of a barrier when they tried to start small talk about the races or the state of castle politics. Even the weather was hard to comment on. He couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling that they were doing it to avoid talking about more important things.

And then there was Grace, who wouldn't leave his thoughts for more than a moment.

"How's your head today? I forgot to ask."

"Hm?"

Laurel smiled at him over her own food. "Distracted, huh?"

Jordan blinked, half-heartedly returning the smile. To stop her from prying any further, he reached up and touched the lump on the back of his head from the thug's attack. It pulsed faintly under his finger, the pain spider-webbing all over his head. He let out a hiss through his teeth and left it alone.

"Not great. You've been distracting me pretty well, though." He paused, thought a moment, and then cringed. "That came out wrong."

Laurel laughed. It was light and tinkling. A smile tugged on his lips.

"Are you nearly ready, Jordan?" Killian asked, stepping inside just as Jordan was scraping the last of his food up with a heel of bread. Laurel had returned to comparing their alphabets, brow furrowed.

Jordan got up, brushing crumbs from his tunic. He wasn't all that fond of Nictavian clothing, either. It was scratchy and too tight-fitting for his tastes – and warm. It made sense, he supposed, considering how cold the Reach was, but inside it was stifling. A thin sheen of sweat stuck his shirt to the small of his back when he moved.

He experienced a not-so-rare pang of homesickness. His eyes strayed to the jacket he had arrived in, seeming lurid and out of place on the chair in the corner, and wondered again about the note from Arlen. Perhaps the man could help them get home.