After Forever - Chapter 4.
Oct. 28th, 2004 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bouteillebleuFirefox crashed on me for the first time today. I think it got overwhelmed by the number of extensions I installed, and had to go and lie down with a damp towel on its forehead for a few minutes while I let Mozilla know what had happened. I found out it keeps a crash counter.
Today I'm planning to go over my Korean vocabulary, because it's very embarrassing to be asked by the teacher to come up with an answer to a question and have to admit that you don't know the word for "you". But other than that, not much to report. I have a few ideas for this November's novel, though I'm not going to think too much about it. I like the feeling of making parts up just in time for the next chapter. And in the vein of NaNoWriMo, back to Livia and Daniel as they get to Anford.
Chapter IV - The Great Fair
The first impression most travellers had of Anford at the time of the Great Fair was that it was big. Not in the sense that the town sprawled across the horizon - in fact, considering the width of the road they were approaching it on, Anford could appear to be fairly small. The real impression of size came from the several large wooden towers that jutted out towards the sky, so tall that they could be clearly seen even over the rather impressive town walls. As well as the towers, there were also a few shorter wooden structures, that appeared to cover more ground. Livia pointed them out as she and Daniel walked along the side of the road - they'd left their moos at the last inn, since the rest of the road to Anford was easily walkable.
"What do you think those are?" she asked, and Daniel pulled a folded, slightly crumpled sheet of paper with a flourish from his pocket.
"One of the barmen at the last inn had some of these," he told Livia as he unfolded it. "It's a short guide to the Fair, or so he said."
"The Great Fair and You: How to Leave Anford Without Your Wallet Empty," Livia read as she peered at the paper over his shoulder. The two of them read on, and after a short while Daniel exclaimed, "Oh, here it is." He pointed at a rather crude sketch of a semicircular construction, which had the caption, "Amphitheatre - Auction Seating".
"Wow. Each of them can seat how many?" Livia said, sounding impressed, as she read further on. Daniel glanced up from the paper, and grinned.
"Do you have your citizenship papers on you?" he asked Livia, as he folded up the guide they'd been reading. She frowned.
"I was still reading that..." she muttered, and then pulled her bundle of papers from her jacket's left pocket. "Yup, here they are."
At the gates to Anford, there was a small booth and a collection of rather bored-looking soldiers standing around near it, their rifles slung over their backs. One of them, his clothes slightly more ornate and less dusty than the others', was waving carriages past, and checking the papers of most of the other visitors. He sighed as Daniel and Livia approached him, and held his hand out.
"Papers please."
Daniel handed his and Livia's over, and the man glanced at them, frowning slightly as he noticed the state of Livia's form, but passing them back without comment.
"Purpose of visit?"
"The Great Fair," replied Daniel, and the man sighed deeply, sounding rather exasperated.
"Of course you're here for the Great Fair. Nobody comes to Anford otherwise. Now are you here to buy, sell or just to gawk at the rich people?"
"Both," Livia said, and the man stared at her. "I mean, all three," she amended, grinning foolishly.
"We're here to look for something that's on sale, and to sell some items as well," Daniel added smoothly, taking one of the objects out of his bag and unwrapping it. It turned out to be the item made of copper pipes, and it glinted quite agreeably in the sun as the man looked at it, his brows knitted. After a few moments, he nodded, and then smiled slightly.
"Buying and selling, then. Well, at least you're not just here to laze around."
"Er, what's the matter, mister?" Livia asked, and the man gave a short laugh.
"Most of the people who come here on foot are just here to gawk at the sights, and look at all the pretty things on sale. And they never stay long enough for the town to make any money out of them being there." He jerked his head towards one of the carriages that was crossing the bridge. "At least the rich folk have money to spend. Even if they do treat us like dirt. And the merchants..." The man grimaced, and spat on the road next to him. "They're even worse than the rich folk. Argue every tax, every charge the town gives 'em."
"Um," was Livia's only reply, and the man shook his head. "Never mind. You're free to go in. Do you need a guide to the Fair? They're only three copper merems."
"We've already got-" Daniel started to say, and was interrupted by Livia elbowing him in the ribs and saying, "Yes, we'd like two, please."
The man looked rather pleased with this turn of events. "Six copper merems, then, please." Daniel sighed and handed over the money, and the man grinned broadly as he gave them their guides. They were in slightly better condition than the copy Daniel already had, and were printed on slightly better paper. Livia took one and started to read through it as she and Daniel passed the booth and headed through the town gates, while Daniel just shook his head.
"Why did you do that?" he asked her, and Livia stared at him in surprise.
"Because he needed the money," she replied. "That's why he was complaining about the people who don't buy things at the Fair, wasn't it?"
Daniel sighed. "Possibly. But we needed that money, too. I can't make twenty silver merems last forever, you know." He opened his belt purse, and winced as he glanced into it. "At this rate, we'll definitely have to miss out on Anford on the way back from Thane. This place is really expensive."
Livia was inclined to agree with him when they reached their inn, and she saw the amount of money he'd had to hand over for the room they were given. The inn wasn't inordinately dirty or flea infested - indeed, compared to some of the places they'd stayed on the way, it was positively sparkling with cleanliness - but the double room they'd been given was tiny, barely larger than the two beds in it that had been somehow stacked one atop another.
"How did they do that?" she asked Daniel as they deposited their bags next to the beds.
"Do what?"
"Get the beds to stand on top of each other." She glanced nervously at the top one. "Won't it fall off?"
"No, they'll stay where they are," Daniel replied, patting at the column formed where one of the legs of the top bed extended to meet the top of one of the bottom bed's legs. "See, they fit together perfectly here."
"Are you sure it's safe?" Livia asked, apparently not convinced, and Daniel nodded.
"I slept in one of these when I was younger, and my brother was still at home. The top bed never fell on me."
"Oh, okay." Livia sat down on the bottom bed, dodging the ladder that led to the top one as she did so, and ducking to make sure she didn't hit her head. She then frowned, straightened suddenly and winced as her head came into contact with the bed above.
"Can't they make these things any taller?" she complained, and lay down on the bed with a disgusted sigh, then turned her head to face Daniel. "You have a brother?"
"He's quite a lot older than me, and he left home years ago." Daniel sighed, and leant against the wall. "He was working with dad in the shop for a few years, and he was doing well at it - and then all of a sudden, he said he wanted to go and join a monastery."
Livia blinked. "He, um... what?"
"My parents didn't know why, either," Daniel replied with a grin. "Dad says he tried to talk Aaron out of it for a month, but he wouldn't listen. Last I heard of him, he'd gone to study at St. Allophone's. Dad doesn't talk about him much anymore, but he's why the shop's still called 'Laver and Sons' rather than 'Son'."
Livia nodded a little, and pulled her Fair guide out of her pocket. Looking at it, she frowned. "It says here that the registration's in the centre of town, but it also says that it's over in the North Quarter." Still frowning, she read on, and then added, "Oh, one of them's for buying and one's for selling. I think they're at the same time today, though."
"Why don't you register for buying, then, and I'll go register for selling?" Daniel suggested with a shrug. "That way neither of us needs to do too much running around." Livia nodded, and carefully got off the bed, glaring at the part she'd hit her head on. "Stupid thing. Why isn't it bigger?"
Daniel pointed up at the ceiling, where there was almost as little space between bed and roof. "That'd be why."
Livia left the inn muttering darkly about small rooms, ridiculously high prices and the unnaturalness of having two beds in the space where only one should be, while Daniel tried hard to suppress his amusement. They headed off to tackle their separate registrations, and it was a few hours before either of them returned to the inn.
In the interests of saving space, and therefore managing to uphold the claim of being the "cheapest inn in Anford", the Bellflower Inn where Livia and Daniel were staying had reluctantly foregone all the extra income that might come from having a bar, and was simply a collection of small rooms and a desk to collect the keys from. Because of this, the evening found the two of them in their room, Daniel lying on the top bed and Livia having decided on the bottom one, after some initial trepidation. Somehow Daniel had managed to find a place to sit that didn't leave him hunched over, and he was busily adjusting one of the objects from his bag with a screwdriver, several other objects lying on the bed next to him. Livia was idly kicking her heels in the air as she looked at some of the papers in her bundle, though it was fairly clear that she wasn't paying attention to the sheet she was looking at from the way she was staring at the pattern on the pillow rather than the writing. After a few minutes of this, she sighed, moved the papers onto the floor and flopped down on the pillow.
"Daniel?"
"Whuh?" Daniel replied, his voice muffled by the screwdriver he was holding in his mouth. "Huwh whun," he added, took the screwdriver out and asked, "What is it?"
"When's the auction for the things you're selling?"
Daniel grinned as he went back to attacking the object he was holding with the screwdriver. "Two days' time, the man said. They looked at the things I was selling and took magical pictures of them, so they can show them off at the auction without anyone trying to steal them from the viewing tower."
"The viewing tower?" Livia repeated, and then said, "Oh, yes. Those were the towers we saw on the way here..."
"Yeah, that's right. Apparently the town council frown on people stealing things while they're here." He grinned lopsidedly, and picked up a form that was lying next to him, with the words 'Seller's Contract' at the top. "Stealing things outside of Anford, and selling them here, though... they don't mind that."
"That's what the man who registered me said, too," Livia replied, sounding rather bitter. "I did tell him what I was looking for, and he let me know when it was being sold, but he read Clause Fifteen out to me first."
Frowning a little, Daniel skimmed through his copy of the sellers' contract, and smiled a little when he got to clause fifteen.
"Nice of them, isn't it?" he remarked to Livia, who muttered something that made Daniel blink in surprise. "I didn't know you knew those sorts of words, Livia."
Livia laughed shortly in reply. "You'd be amazed what sorts of things the people in the queue ahead of me were saying. Some of them really didn't like some of the parts of that contract." Her voice took on a more amused tone. "Like the part that said they had to pay once they'd won, or the part that forbade killing other bidders..."
Daniel snickered, and prodded at the object in his lap one last time with the screwdriver, then placed it on the bed next to him. "So, when will your hand be on sale? Did they give you a lot number, or just a time?"
"They gave me both of them. It's lot number..." Livia squinted at the piece of paper on the top of the pile next to her, and haltingly read, "...3525937. I think. It's being auctioned tomorrow afternoon, from the West Tower."
"Okay," was Daniel's reply, and the two of them fell silent for a while.
"Daniel?" Livia finally asked, after a few minutes had passed.
"What?"
"You said that the man made some sort of magical copies of what you were selling, right?"
"Yes, to stop people from stealing them." Daniel frowned. "Where are you going with this?"
Livia ignored his question. "And there's a place where people exchange their items, isn't there? And somewhere that you can find out who's buying and selling things."
"Livia, if you're thinking of stealing your hand back..." Daniel started to say, then sighed. "It's what we're here for, but shouldn't we try to buy it back first?"
"But..." Livia's voice was almost desperate. "You must have seen some of the starting bids on what people were selling. There's no way we'll have enough to get it back, not with all these rich people around." She paused, biting her lip, then continued. "We don't have to get it back here. We could follow them out of town when they leave, and get them then."
"Get them how?" Daniel replied, shaking his head. "I can't pick pockets or fight people, and neither can you. And we've got to head to Thane after this, anyway. What if the person who buys it isn't us, and isn't heading that way?"
"Then we'll follow them instead," Livia replied stubbornly. "Didn't you come on this trip to help me get my hand back?"
"Well, yes, but-"
"Then we have to get it back."
"How?" Daniel exclaimed, sounding more annoyed than he'd intended, and Livia fell silent. When she spoke, it was in a rather more quiet voice.
"You're right, it wouldn't work. Sorry for mentioning it."
Silence fell again. It was a good few minutes before it was broken, this time by Daniel.
"Livia? Are you okay?"
There was no reply, apart from the quiet sound of Livia's breathing. Daniel frowned, and climbed down the ladder. Glancing over at Livia as he reached the floor, he noticed that she'd taken her jacket off, and the sleeve on her right arm was rolled up to expose the bandage wrapped around it. She turned to look at him, and then looked back at her right arm, smiling sadly.
"It's been like this for about as long as I can remember," she said, and fumbled with the bandages. Daniel moved forward. "Do you need a hand there?" he asked, and then winced. "I could have said that better, couldn't I?" he asked, and Livia closed her eyes, smiling a little more happily than before.
"Yes, you certainly could," she replied, and added, "But you can help. Could you try to unwrap the bandage around my elbow? I think I can do the rest."
Daniel nodded, and carefully tugged at the edge of the bandages. They took a little while to come loose, and as he started to unwrap them he asked Livia curiously, "You said it's been like that as long as you remember. How long's that, then?"
"I'm not sure," Livia replied, and thought for a while. "About three weeks, I think."
"Three... weeks?" Daniel repeated weakly, and shook his head. "I've got the bandage loose now." Livia nodded, and started to unwrap it herself, while Daniel leaned against the nearby wall. "Three weeks?"
"That's about twenty days, isn't it?" she said, and he nodded.
"Well, yes, but..." He turned to look at Livia. "I know this might sound obvious, but you don't look like you're three weeks old. Any more than you look fifty three years old, like your citizenship form says."
Livia simply smiled. "I know," she replied. "One of the first things I remember is going into your shop and asking you for help. Before that, I mostly just knew that my feet ached."
"You 'mostly' knew?" Daniel said, and shook his head. He sat down on the floor next to Livia's bed, choosing a spot just next to the pile of papers she'd placed on top of her jacket. "Livia, there's a lot you're not telling me about, isn't there?" He picked up the top few sheets, and Livia gasped.
"Don't you dare look at those!" she cried, and leant over to snatch them from him with her left hand. The bandage on her right arm, already loose, unwound and fell off her arm, and Daniel stared at the exposed arm. Unsurprisingly, given the state of the bandages, there was no blood. There was also no scarring, and no new skin where the hand had been - the arm just ended, as if the hand had simply been chopped off. Which, Daniel reflected as he took Livia's right arm to look at the end more closely, it probably had.
The end of the arm looked similar to what he'd seen underneath her knee, with several metal rods and springs of differing shapes and sizes jutting out to just near the edge. There was a hollow area in the centre, about the size of Daniel's little finger, but the rest of the space was taken up by the metal rods.
Livia had struggled a little when Daniel first grabbed her arm, but by the time he'd finished his inspection and looked at her face she was smiling wryly.
"I suppose it would've been sort of hard to hide that, once we got here," she said to him. "You'd start asking me things like 'why is your hand still intact, when it's been cut off from your body for at least two weeks?' And probably 'why aren't you bleeding to death?', too."
Daniel snorted. "I may just be a mechanic, but I do know a bit about the human body, thank you very much."
"Which is obviously why you never commented on my arm before," Livia replied archly, and Daniel shook his head.
"No, I just thought it'd be rather rude. Besides, there've been enough strange things about you so far that I'm not all that surprised. Your feet, your birthdate on that form, you not having a surname or remembering where you're from..." He let go of her arm, and picked up the pile of paper next to him. "And these. What's on these?"
"I'd really rather not show you them," muttered Livia, but Daniel shook his head. "What's on them?" he said once more. "You don't have to show me them if you don't want to."
Livia sighed, and held out her hand. "Give them to me, please?" she asked. Daniel hesitated, but handed them over, and Livia flipped through them, commenting as she went.
"Those two are the citizenship forms that you've seen already. That's a letter to someone in a language I can't read, that's another letter, that's a letter I can read. That one's the sketch you pointed out back in that inn." She glared at Daniel. "For your information, I don't know whether it was done in a tight outfit or not. I can't read the notes."
"Okay, okay..." replied Daniel, holding up his hands in surrender. "I said I was sorry, didn't I?"
"Hmph." Livia turned her attention back to the papers. "The next few are sketches of various... bits." She hesitated, then pulled one of them out of the pile and handed it to Daniel. "I suppose it'd be a good idea for you to see that."
Daniel took the paper, and glanced at it - then, once he'd seen what it was, he looked more closely at it, his eyes widening in astonishment.
"Who did this?" he asked. "The level of detail... and if this is an accurate sketch, the level of detail in your feet's got to be amazing." He looked at one part of the sketch, frowning in concentration, and then back at Livia.
"Take your shoes off."
"What?" Livia replied incredulously.
"Take your shoes off," Daniel repeated. "I want to check something out." He frowned. "Why are you wearing shoes on your bed, anyway?"
Livia rolled her eyes, and started to sit up, then noticed the low 'ceiling' formed by the bed above her.
"You take them off."
It was Daniel's turn to roll his eyes, as he replied, "Fine..." and started to untie the laces of Livia's boots. This didn't take long, and he placed the boots carefully on the floor, then pulled off her socks. Livia giggled suddenly as he finished tugging one off, and Daniel turned to look at her surprised.
"You're ticklish!" he accused, and she nodded. "How does that work? They're made of metal, for goodness' sake," he asked. Livia shrugged.
"You're the one who's looking at my feet. You tell me."
Daniel just shook his head, and finished getting her socks off. He glanced at the paper he was holding, then pressed down firmly on the big toe of the right foot.
"What are you doing?" Livia asked curiously, and stared as the skin covering the top of her foot buckled and popped up in much the same way as her kneecap had done before. Daniel smiled broadly.
"See, I'm a useful person to have around," he said, and peered under the skin. "This way, you can fix your foot if anything goes wrong, and just oiling it doesn't work." He pushed the skin back down until it clicked into place, and then commented, "Your left foot should have something just like it... ah, here we are." Pressing on the big toe had much the same effect as before, and Livia nodded, impressed.
"You're right. Maybe I should have shown you those before." As Daniel clicked the left foot's skin back into place, Livia looked down at the papers on her lap, and looked thoughtful. Finally, she handed another sheet to Daniel, and then another.
"The first one's my legs, and the other's my arms. Those should be useful for you, in case anything goes wrong."
Daniel nodded, looking at the sketches avidly, and sighing when he'd finally inspected all of them as best he could. "If I could read the writing here, we'd be able to tell much more about the way your legs and arms were made," he commented. "I can guess at some of the notes, but others..." He shook his head. "Who made your arms and legs? They must be an amazing craftsman."
"If I knew what those letters said, I could tell you," Livia replied.
"Didn't you say you could read one of them?" Daniel asked. Livia nodded slightly.
"It doesn't say anything about anyone who might have made me... made me my limbs," she said, hesitating and stumbling slightly over her words. "It mentions me, though. I think." She flicked through her papers, looked for a while at the letter, and then handed it to Daniel. It didn't take him long to read it, and when he'd finished he shook his head.
"It might not even be you they're talking about," he said. "I mean, just one line asking 'How is Livia doing? Is she getting better?' doesn't necessarily mean it's you."
"Why do I have it in my pocket, then?" Livia retorted.
"That's a good point." Daniel frowned. "How did you get those papers, anyway?"
"I don't know. As far as I remember, I've always had them."
"Which could be for just three weeks." He looked at the letter again, then turned the paper over, and peered at it. "There's something else written on the back, but it's in the same symbols as those notes on your sketches." He stared at the writing for a little longer, and then said, "I wonder if there'll be someone at the Library who'll be able to translate this for us..."
"Didn't you say something about that before?" Livia asked. "You know, while we were on the road here."
"Did I? Must've slipped my mind." he handed her back the paper, and leant back against the side of the bed. "Though it'd make sense if someone studying there knew how to read it. It'd even make sense if the person who made your legs was studying there."
"What?" Livia exclaimed in surprise.
"Well, why else would you be from Thane?"
Livia narrowed her eyes. "I can think of several reasons why that argument doesn't work." She paused.
"Well?" Daniel asked.
"I don't feel like arguing about it at the moment," she replied loftily, and then laughed. "Sorry about that, Daniel. Shouldn't we be getting to sleep soon?"
"It's not even nighttime yet," replied Daniel, and Livia nodded.
"I know that, but the man who gave me my buyer's contract said that the seats get taken very quickly. He said if we wanted to be able to see what was being sold, we'd better be there early in the morning." Daniel groaned, and Livia looked at him in surprise.
"Didn't you have to open your shop early, back in Linton?" she asked. "Surely it's just like that."
"It's not just the early morning, Livia," Daniel replied wryly. "If we'll be there all day, I'll have to find somewhere nearby that sells food, and they'll overcharge me as much as they can."
"I'm sure we can figure something out," Livia said, and the optimistic tone of her voice was enough to make Daniel smile.
"You're right. We'd better get to bed, then. Turn around."
"What? Why?" Livia demanded, and Daniel sighed.
"I'm not sleeping in these clothes, and you are not watching me undress," Daniel replied firmly.
"Oh, why not?" she teased.
"You're scaring me now, Livia."
"Spoilsport," Livia retorted, but she obediently turned over so that she was facing the wall, and hummed quietly to herself for a while. She heard the bed creak, and asked, "Are you decent yet?"
"Yes, you can turn around now," came Daniel's voice from the bed above her.
Livia flopped over onto her back, and lay staring at the wooden slats of the bed above her. It was a little while before Daniel asked, "Well, aren't you going to change your clothes?"
"What to? This is the only set I have," she replied.
There was a pause, and then Daniel said, "You're right, it is. I never noticed that before. Would that be another one of the strange things about you that you haven't explained yet?"
"Yes." Livia offered no reply other than this, and Daniel decided that now might be a good time to get some sleep. Within a few minutes, he was snoring quietly, leaving Livia still awake as she lay on her back, still staring at the bed above her.
Today I'm planning to go over my Korean vocabulary, because it's very embarrassing to be asked by the teacher to come up with an answer to a question and have to admit that you don't know the word for "you". But other than that, not much to report. I have a few ideas for this November's novel, though I'm not going to think too much about it. I like the feeling of making parts up just in time for the next chapter. And in the vein of NaNoWriMo, back to Livia and Daniel as they get to Anford.
Chapter IV - The Great Fair
The first impression most travellers had of Anford at the time of the Great Fair was that it was big. Not in the sense that the town sprawled across the horizon - in fact, considering the width of the road they were approaching it on, Anford could appear to be fairly small. The real impression of size came from the several large wooden towers that jutted out towards the sky, so tall that they could be clearly seen even over the rather impressive town walls. As well as the towers, there were also a few shorter wooden structures, that appeared to cover more ground. Livia pointed them out as she and Daniel walked along the side of the road - they'd left their moos at the last inn, since the rest of the road to Anford was easily walkable.
"What do you think those are?" she asked, and Daniel pulled a folded, slightly crumpled sheet of paper with a flourish from his pocket.
"One of the barmen at the last inn had some of these," he told Livia as he unfolded it. "It's a short guide to the Fair, or so he said."
"The Great Fair and You: How to Leave Anford Without Your Wallet Empty," Livia read as she peered at the paper over his shoulder. The two of them read on, and after a short while Daniel exclaimed, "Oh, here it is." He pointed at a rather crude sketch of a semicircular construction, which had the caption, "Amphitheatre - Auction Seating".
"Wow. Each of them can seat how many?" Livia said, sounding impressed, as she read further on. Daniel glanced up from the paper, and grinned.
"Do you have your citizenship papers on you?" he asked Livia, as he folded up the guide they'd been reading. She frowned.
"I was still reading that..." she muttered, and then pulled her bundle of papers from her jacket's left pocket. "Yup, here they are."
At the gates to Anford, there was a small booth and a collection of rather bored-looking soldiers standing around near it, their rifles slung over their backs. One of them, his clothes slightly more ornate and less dusty than the others', was waving carriages past, and checking the papers of most of the other visitors. He sighed as Daniel and Livia approached him, and held his hand out.
"Papers please."
Daniel handed his and Livia's over, and the man glanced at them, frowning slightly as he noticed the state of Livia's form, but passing them back without comment.
"Purpose of visit?"
"The Great Fair," replied Daniel, and the man sighed deeply, sounding rather exasperated.
"Of course you're here for the Great Fair. Nobody comes to Anford otherwise. Now are you here to buy, sell or just to gawk at the rich people?"
"Both," Livia said, and the man stared at her. "I mean, all three," she amended, grinning foolishly.
"We're here to look for something that's on sale, and to sell some items as well," Daniel added smoothly, taking one of the objects out of his bag and unwrapping it. It turned out to be the item made of copper pipes, and it glinted quite agreeably in the sun as the man looked at it, his brows knitted. After a few moments, he nodded, and then smiled slightly.
"Buying and selling, then. Well, at least you're not just here to laze around."
"Er, what's the matter, mister?" Livia asked, and the man gave a short laugh.
"Most of the people who come here on foot are just here to gawk at the sights, and look at all the pretty things on sale. And they never stay long enough for the town to make any money out of them being there." He jerked his head towards one of the carriages that was crossing the bridge. "At least the rich folk have money to spend. Even if they do treat us like dirt. And the merchants..." The man grimaced, and spat on the road next to him. "They're even worse than the rich folk. Argue every tax, every charge the town gives 'em."
"Um," was Livia's only reply, and the man shook his head. "Never mind. You're free to go in. Do you need a guide to the Fair? They're only three copper merems."
"We've already got-" Daniel started to say, and was interrupted by Livia elbowing him in the ribs and saying, "Yes, we'd like two, please."
The man looked rather pleased with this turn of events. "Six copper merems, then, please." Daniel sighed and handed over the money, and the man grinned broadly as he gave them their guides. They were in slightly better condition than the copy Daniel already had, and were printed on slightly better paper. Livia took one and started to read through it as she and Daniel passed the booth and headed through the town gates, while Daniel just shook his head.
"Why did you do that?" he asked her, and Livia stared at him in surprise.
"Because he needed the money," she replied. "That's why he was complaining about the people who don't buy things at the Fair, wasn't it?"
Daniel sighed. "Possibly. But we needed that money, too. I can't make twenty silver merems last forever, you know." He opened his belt purse, and winced as he glanced into it. "At this rate, we'll definitely have to miss out on Anford on the way back from Thane. This place is really expensive."
Livia was inclined to agree with him when they reached their inn, and she saw the amount of money he'd had to hand over for the room they were given. The inn wasn't inordinately dirty or flea infested - indeed, compared to some of the places they'd stayed on the way, it was positively sparkling with cleanliness - but the double room they'd been given was tiny, barely larger than the two beds in it that had been somehow stacked one atop another.
"How did they do that?" she asked Daniel as they deposited their bags next to the beds.
"Do what?"
"Get the beds to stand on top of each other." She glanced nervously at the top one. "Won't it fall off?"
"No, they'll stay where they are," Daniel replied, patting at the column formed where one of the legs of the top bed extended to meet the top of one of the bottom bed's legs. "See, they fit together perfectly here."
"Are you sure it's safe?" Livia asked, apparently not convinced, and Daniel nodded.
"I slept in one of these when I was younger, and my brother was still at home. The top bed never fell on me."
"Oh, okay." Livia sat down on the bottom bed, dodging the ladder that led to the top one as she did so, and ducking to make sure she didn't hit her head. She then frowned, straightened suddenly and winced as her head came into contact with the bed above.
"Can't they make these things any taller?" she complained, and lay down on the bed with a disgusted sigh, then turned her head to face Daniel. "You have a brother?"
"He's quite a lot older than me, and he left home years ago." Daniel sighed, and leant against the wall. "He was working with dad in the shop for a few years, and he was doing well at it - and then all of a sudden, he said he wanted to go and join a monastery."
Livia blinked. "He, um... what?"
"My parents didn't know why, either," Daniel replied with a grin. "Dad says he tried to talk Aaron out of it for a month, but he wouldn't listen. Last I heard of him, he'd gone to study at St. Allophone's. Dad doesn't talk about him much anymore, but he's why the shop's still called 'Laver and Sons' rather than 'Son'."
Livia nodded a little, and pulled her Fair guide out of her pocket. Looking at it, she frowned. "It says here that the registration's in the centre of town, but it also says that it's over in the North Quarter." Still frowning, she read on, and then added, "Oh, one of them's for buying and one's for selling. I think they're at the same time today, though."
"Why don't you register for buying, then, and I'll go register for selling?" Daniel suggested with a shrug. "That way neither of us needs to do too much running around." Livia nodded, and carefully got off the bed, glaring at the part she'd hit her head on. "Stupid thing. Why isn't it bigger?"
Daniel pointed up at the ceiling, where there was almost as little space between bed and roof. "That'd be why."
Livia left the inn muttering darkly about small rooms, ridiculously high prices and the unnaturalness of having two beds in the space where only one should be, while Daniel tried hard to suppress his amusement. They headed off to tackle their separate registrations, and it was a few hours before either of them returned to the inn.
In the interests of saving space, and therefore managing to uphold the claim of being the "cheapest inn in Anford", the Bellflower Inn where Livia and Daniel were staying had reluctantly foregone all the extra income that might come from having a bar, and was simply a collection of small rooms and a desk to collect the keys from. Because of this, the evening found the two of them in their room, Daniel lying on the top bed and Livia having decided on the bottom one, after some initial trepidation. Somehow Daniel had managed to find a place to sit that didn't leave him hunched over, and he was busily adjusting one of the objects from his bag with a screwdriver, several other objects lying on the bed next to him. Livia was idly kicking her heels in the air as she looked at some of the papers in her bundle, though it was fairly clear that she wasn't paying attention to the sheet she was looking at from the way she was staring at the pattern on the pillow rather than the writing. After a few minutes of this, she sighed, moved the papers onto the floor and flopped down on the pillow.
"Daniel?"
"Whuh?" Daniel replied, his voice muffled by the screwdriver he was holding in his mouth. "Huwh whun," he added, took the screwdriver out and asked, "What is it?"
"When's the auction for the things you're selling?"
Daniel grinned as he went back to attacking the object he was holding with the screwdriver. "Two days' time, the man said. They looked at the things I was selling and took magical pictures of them, so they can show them off at the auction without anyone trying to steal them from the viewing tower."
"The viewing tower?" Livia repeated, and then said, "Oh, yes. Those were the towers we saw on the way here..."
"Yeah, that's right. Apparently the town council frown on people stealing things while they're here." He grinned lopsidedly, and picked up a form that was lying next to him, with the words 'Seller's Contract' at the top. "Stealing things outside of Anford, and selling them here, though... they don't mind that."
"That's what the man who registered me said, too," Livia replied, sounding rather bitter. "I did tell him what I was looking for, and he let me know when it was being sold, but he read Clause Fifteen out to me first."
Frowning a little, Daniel skimmed through his copy of the sellers' contract, and smiled a little when he got to clause fifteen.
15. Stolen Goods
While we appreciate that some visitors to the Great Fair may be searching for items that were taken from them unlawfully, we would like to remind such visitors that once items are in Anford, the authorities do not care where they came from. Buy the item back, or deal with the buyer and seller once you and they have left.
However, if you try to steal goods while in Anford, be assured that the matter will be dealt with severely, and quite possibly lethally. You have been warned.
"Nice of them, isn't it?" he remarked to Livia, who muttered something that made Daniel blink in surprise. "I didn't know you knew those sorts of words, Livia."
Livia laughed shortly in reply. "You'd be amazed what sorts of things the people in the queue ahead of me were saying. Some of them really didn't like some of the parts of that contract." Her voice took on a more amused tone. "Like the part that said they had to pay once they'd won, or the part that forbade killing other bidders..."
Daniel snickered, and prodded at the object in his lap one last time with the screwdriver, then placed it on the bed next to him. "So, when will your hand be on sale? Did they give you a lot number, or just a time?"
"They gave me both of them. It's lot number..." Livia squinted at the piece of paper on the top of the pile next to her, and haltingly read, "...3525937. I think. It's being auctioned tomorrow afternoon, from the West Tower."
"Okay," was Daniel's reply, and the two of them fell silent for a while.
"Daniel?" Livia finally asked, after a few minutes had passed.
"What?"
"You said that the man made some sort of magical copies of what you were selling, right?"
"Yes, to stop people from stealing them." Daniel frowned. "Where are you going with this?"
Livia ignored his question. "And there's a place where people exchange their items, isn't there? And somewhere that you can find out who's buying and selling things."
"Livia, if you're thinking of stealing your hand back..." Daniel started to say, then sighed. "It's what we're here for, but shouldn't we try to buy it back first?"
"But..." Livia's voice was almost desperate. "You must have seen some of the starting bids on what people were selling. There's no way we'll have enough to get it back, not with all these rich people around." She paused, biting her lip, then continued. "We don't have to get it back here. We could follow them out of town when they leave, and get them then."
"Get them how?" Daniel replied, shaking his head. "I can't pick pockets or fight people, and neither can you. And we've got to head to Thane after this, anyway. What if the person who buys it isn't us, and isn't heading that way?"
"Then we'll follow them instead," Livia replied stubbornly. "Didn't you come on this trip to help me get my hand back?"
"Well, yes, but-"
"Then we have to get it back."
"How?" Daniel exclaimed, sounding more annoyed than he'd intended, and Livia fell silent. When she spoke, it was in a rather more quiet voice.
"You're right, it wouldn't work. Sorry for mentioning it."
Silence fell again. It was a good few minutes before it was broken, this time by Daniel.
"Livia? Are you okay?"
There was no reply, apart from the quiet sound of Livia's breathing. Daniel frowned, and climbed down the ladder. Glancing over at Livia as he reached the floor, he noticed that she'd taken her jacket off, and the sleeve on her right arm was rolled up to expose the bandage wrapped around it. She turned to look at him, and then looked back at her right arm, smiling sadly.
"It's been like this for about as long as I can remember," she said, and fumbled with the bandages. Daniel moved forward. "Do you need a hand there?" he asked, and then winced. "I could have said that better, couldn't I?" he asked, and Livia closed her eyes, smiling a little more happily than before.
"Yes, you certainly could," she replied, and added, "But you can help. Could you try to unwrap the bandage around my elbow? I think I can do the rest."
Daniel nodded, and carefully tugged at the edge of the bandages. They took a little while to come loose, and as he started to unwrap them he asked Livia curiously, "You said it's been like that as long as you remember. How long's that, then?"
"I'm not sure," Livia replied, and thought for a while. "About three weeks, I think."
"Three... weeks?" Daniel repeated weakly, and shook his head. "I've got the bandage loose now." Livia nodded, and started to unwrap it herself, while Daniel leaned against the nearby wall. "Three weeks?"
"That's about twenty days, isn't it?" she said, and he nodded.
"Well, yes, but..." He turned to look at Livia. "I know this might sound obvious, but you don't look like you're three weeks old. Any more than you look fifty three years old, like your citizenship form says."
Livia simply smiled. "I know," she replied. "One of the first things I remember is going into your shop and asking you for help. Before that, I mostly just knew that my feet ached."
"You 'mostly' knew?" Daniel said, and shook his head. He sat down on the floor next to Livia's bed, choosing a spot just next to the pile of papers she'd placed on top of her jacket. "Livia, there's a lot you're not telling me about, isn't there?" He picked up the top few sheets, and Livia gasped.
"Don't you dare look at those!" she cried, and leant over to snatch them from him with her left hand. The bandage on her right arm, already loose, unwound and fell off her arm, and Daniel stared at the exposed arm. Unsurprisingly, given the state of the bandages, there was no blood. There was also no scarring, and no new skin where the hand had been - the arm just ended, as if the hand had simply been chopped off. Which, Daniel reflected as he took Livia's right arm to look at the end more closely, it probably had.
The end of the arm looked similar to what he'd seen underneath her knee, with several metal rods and springs of differing shapes and sizes jutting out to just near the edge. There was a hollow area in the centre, about the size of Daniel's little finger, but the rest of the space was taken up by the metal rods.
Livia had struggled a little when Daniel first grabbed her arm, but by the time he'd finished his inspection and looked at her face she was smiling wryly.
"I suppose it would've been sort of hard to hide that, once we got here," she said to him. "You'd start asking me things like 'why is your hand still intact, when it's been cut off from your body for at least two weeks?' And probably 'why aren't you bleeding to death?', too."
Daniel snorted. "I may just be a mechanic, but I do know a bit about the human body, thank you very much."
"Which is obviously why you never commented on my arm before," Livia replied archly, and Daniel shook his head.
"No, I just thought it'd be rather rude. Besides, there've been enough strange things about you so far that I'm not all that surprised. Your feet, your birthdate on that form, you not having a surname or remembering where you're from..." He let go of her arm, and picked up the pile of paper next to him. "And these. What's on these?"
"I'd really rather not show you them," muttered Livia, but Daniel shook his head. "What's on them?" he said once more. "You don't have to show me them if you don't want to."
Livia sighed, and held out her hand. "Give them to me, please?" she asked. Daniel hesitated, but handed them over, and Livia flipped through them, commenting as she went.
"Those two are the citizenship forms that you've seen already. That's a letter to someone in a language I can't read, that's another letter, that's a letter I can read. That one's the sketch you pointed out back in that inn." She glared at Daniel. "For your information, I don't know whether it was done in a tight outfit or not. I can't read the notes."
"Okay, okay..." replied Daniel, holding up his hands in surrender. "I said I was sorry, didn't I?"
"Hmph." Livia turned her attention back to the papers. "The next few are sketches of various... bits." She hesitated, then pulled one of them out of the pile and handed it to Daniel. "I suppose it'd be a good idea for you to see that."
Daniel took the paper, and glanced at it - then, once he'd seen what it was, he looked more closely at it, his eyes widening in astonishment.
"Who did this?" he asked. "The level of detail... and if this is an accurate sketch, the level of detail in your feet's got to be amazing." He looked at one part of the sketch, frowning in concentration, and then back at Livia.
"Take your shoes off."
"What?" Livia replied incredulously.
"Take your shoes off," Daniel repeated. "I want to check something out." He frowned. "Why are you wearing shoes on your bed, anyway?"
Livia rolled her eyes, and started to sit up, then noticed the low 'ceiling' formed by the bed above her.
"You take them off."
It was Daniel's turn to roll his eyes, as he replied, "Fine..." and started to untie the laces of Livia's boots. This didn't take long, and he placed the boots carefully on the floor, then pulled off her socks. Livia giggled suddenly as he finished tugging one off, and Daniel turned to look at her surprised.
"You're ticklish!" he accused, and she nodded. "How does that work? They're made of metal, for goodness' sake," he asked. Livia shrugged.
"You're the one who's looking at my feet. You tell me."
Daniel just shook his head, and finished getting her socks off. He glanced at the paper he was holding, then pressed down firmly on the big toe of the right foot.
"What are you doing?" Livia asked curiously, and stared as the skin covering the top of her foot buckled and popped up in much the same way as her kneecap had done before. Daniel smiled broadly.
"See, I'm a useful person to have around," he said, and peered under the skin. "This way, you can fix your foot if anything goes wrong, and just oiling it doesn't work." He pushed the skin back down until it clicked into place, and then commented, "Your left foot should have something just like it... ah, here we are." Pressing on the big toe had much the same effect as before, and Livia nodded, impressed.
"You're right. Maybe I should have shown you those before." As Daniel clicked the left foot's skin back into place, Livia looked down at the papers on her lap, and looked thoughtful. Finally, she handed another sheet to Daniel, and then another.
"The first one's my legs, and the other's my arms. Those should be useful for you, in case anything goes wrong."
Daniel nodded, looking at the sketches avidly, and sighing when he'd finally inspected all of them as best he could. "If I could read the writing here, we'd be able to tell much more about the way your legs and arms were made," he commented. "I can guess at some of the notes, but others..." He shook his head. "Who made your arms and legs? They must be an amazing craftsman."
"If I knew what those letters said, I could tell you," Livia replied.
"Didn't you say you could read one of them?" Daniel asked. Livia nodded slightly.
"It doesn't say anything about anyone who might have made me... made me my limbs," she said, hesitating and stumbling slightly over her words. "It mentions me, though. I think." She flicked through her papers, looked for a while at the letter, and then handed it to Daniel. It didn't take him long to read it, and when he'd finished he shook his head.
"It might not even be you they're talking about," he said. "I mean, just one line asking 'How is Livia doing? Is she getting better?' doesn't necessarily mean it's you."
"Why do I have it in my pocket, then?" Livia retorted.
"That's a good point." Daniel frowned. "How did you get those papers, anyway?"
"I don't know. As far as I remember, I've always had them."
"Which could be for just three weeks." He looked at the letter again, then turned the paper over, and peered at it. "There's something else written on the back, but it's in the same symbols as those notes on your sketches." He stared at the writing for a little longer, and then said, "I wonder if there'll be someone at the Library who'll be able to translate this for us..."
"Didn't you say something about that before?" Livia asked. "You know, while we were on the road here."
"Did I? Must've slipped my mind." he handed her back the paper, and leant back against the side of the bed. "Though it'd make sense if someone studying there knew how to read it. It'd even make sense if the person who made your legs was studying there."
"What?" Livia exclaimed in surprise.
"Well, why else would you be from Thane?"
Livia narrowed her eyes. "I can think of several reasons why that argument doesn't work." She paused.
"Well?" Daniel asked.
"I don't feel like arguing about it at the moment," she replied loftily, and then laughed. "Sorry about that, Daniel. Shouldn't we be getting to sleep soon?"
"It's not even nighttime yet," replied Daniel, and Livia nodded.
"I know that, but the man who gave me my buyer's contract said that the seats get taken very quickly. He said if we wanted to be able to see what was being sold, we'd better be there early in the morning." Daniel groaned, and Livia looked at him in surprise.
"Didn't you have to open your shop early, back in Linton?" she asked. "Surely it's just like that."
"It's not just the early morning, Livia," Daniel replied wryly. "If we'll be there all day, I'll have to find somewhere nearby that sells food, and they'll overcharge me as much as they can."
"I'm sure we can figure something out," Livia said, and the optimistic tone of her voice was enough to make Daniel smile.
"You're right. We'd better get to bed, then. Turn around."
"What? Why?" Livia demanded, and Daniel sighed.
"I'm not sleeping in these clothes, and you are not watching me undress," Daniel replied firmly.
"Oh, why not?" she teased.
"You're scaring me now, Livia."
"Spoilsport," Livia retorted, but she obediently turned over so that she was facing the wall, and hummed quietly to herself for a while. She heard the bed creak, and asked, "Are you decent yet?"
"Yes, you can turn around now," came Daniel's voice from the bed above her.
Livia flopped over onto her back, and lay staring at the wooden slats of the bed above her. It was a little while before Daniel asked, "Well, aren't you going to change your clothes?"
"What to? This is the only set I have," she replied.
There was a pause, and then Daniel said, "You're right, it is. I never noticed that before. Would that be another one of the strange things about you that you haven't explained yet?"
"Yes." Livia offered no reply other than this, and Daniel decided that now might be a good time to get some sleep. Within a few minutes, he was snoring quietly, leaving Livia still awake as she lay on her back, still staring at the bed above her.
