The Promise of the Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

cashews. His eventual opinion? After all that? That they were ‘most assuredly of equal merit.’ Astonishing.”
    â€œIt was ‘optimum fingernail length’ when I met him at the port,” said Drimys, burping gently into his hand. “No more than three inches of white among polite society, I’m reliably informed.”
    â€œWas he always like that?” asked Lycaste, still regarded as an outsider by most residents of the Province despite having lived by the beach for almost twenty years. He looked at his own long nails, polished and clipped that evening in expectation of Pentas’s arrival.
    â€œEver since I’ve known him,” Impatiens said. “They say he bored the crew of a ship from Brindisi into throwing him off here, but he won’t ever tell you his own story. That I’d wait all day to hear.”
    Lycaste stirred the remaining food on his plate with a long fork, mushing it all together. “Do you think he’s just trying to get home?”
    â€œI can’t imagine they’d want him back,” Impatiens said and rubbed his whiskers, apparently remembering something. The eyes in his great, gnarled face lit up. “Did you see what those boys gave me today?” He stood, walking into the next room and producing a brace of fish from a basket. “I don’t recognise them.” He slapped them on a salver in the middle of the table, a large iron hook still fastening the catch together. Lycaste thought they looked like the deep-sea creatures sometimes caught in Mersin, all teeth and eyes.
    â€œWhat did you give them?” asked Drimys, pulling one from the hook and peeling its lips back to see inside its mouth.
    â€œThey owed me.” He took the remaining fish from the plate and stretched its fin back to expose the spines, letting it flop back into place. Its wide, pale eyes were frozen in a startled expression. “Might be worth something up in Karaoz.”
    Lycaste detected the onset of merchant-speak, laying down his fork and folding his unused napkin carefully. Soon they would be discussing pounds or ounces or similarly opaque things, the stuff of grown men to which Lycaste—who had never really understood trade at all, having inherited everything when he came of age—felt hardly able to contribute. As far as he saw it, his gardens grew plenty of whatever he required, from delicate cuts of grown meat to fruit, plastics and metal ores. If anything needed to be bought for the house the helpers did it, leaving Lycaste written receipts of trade that he barely looked at before they were filed away in a cupboard somewhere.
    He went to the wall and rang a small bell on a chain to let the birds know there was work to be done. Those two would talk all night, forgetting Lycaste was there entirely.
    â€œIt must be deeper out there, at Lesser Point. Could be as good a place as any to start,” Drimys was saying.
    â€œStart what?” Lycaste asked, ringing the bell again. Something about Drimys’s expression had caught his attention.
    â€œThe fish only grow large enough at the Points,” Impatiens said, lifting one of the creatures from the platter again and miming a little dance, wriggling its fins. Both of them began to laugh.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    Impatiens and Drimys fell silent after a moment, considering him. “You wouldn’t like it,” said Impatiens, putting down the fish.
    â€œLike what?”
    He turned to Drimys, who was avoiding eye contact as he refilled his glass. “Shall we tell him?”
    Lycaste was losing his patience. He pulled on the bell a few more times and waited for an answer.
    â€œHow strong is your boat, Lycaste?” Drimys asked, glancing up finally.
    He looked at them both, uncertain if they were playing a joke on him. The two men appeared serious enough in the dim light. “It hasn’t fallen apart yet. Why? Do you want to take it