Carys shrugged away the discomfort of that thought and upturned the clay pot on the hearth. The speckled bread might have finished cooking when Eurion woke to take his steam and cawl. The fireplace was unfamiliarly full, the fire hotter and brighter than she was used to. Carys couldn’t remember a day when she’d felt so warm, or seen her hearth so full. Not in these last ten years. There was the clay dome with the speckled bread, and the iron pot with the cawl; above them both hung the kettle. She hadn’t cooked so for herself in some time, and the warmth of it sat oddly in the space above her stomach that was usually so cold from wind and rain and sea spray.

  “Goat,” said Eurion, very clearly.

  Carys looked over at him, but he wasn’t properly awake. There was still a line between his brows, and now he was beginning to move restlessly beneath the covers. Hopefully it was simply because he was hungry, and not because he was sinking back into fever. She set the table, one side and then the other, and checked on the kettle. Eurion would need more of his tea before he had lunch. She could hear him stirring again, mumbling and protesting that the covers were eating him. She looked over again briefly, but he was now waking properly, pawing at his covers. By the time he had finished struggling with his covers the kettle was boiling, and she brought him a steaming bowl of Enfys’ tea before he could do more than work his arms free.

  “I can get up,” Eurion said, sitting up somewhat drunkenly. “I can sit at the table.”

  “You’re to stay in bed,” said Carys, and her tone brooked no disagreement.

  Eurion said hazily, “But you’ve set two places!”

  “There are always two places set,” Carys said. “It’s nothing to do with you. Breathe in your steam. I’ll bring you something to eat when you’ve finished.”

  There was a steamy kind of muttering from beneath the mop of Eurion’s hair but Carys wasn’t sure if Eurion was talking to her or himself. She wasn’t even certain he was completely awake yet: both his hands tugged on the strands of golden hair that hung down over his face as if he wasn’t quite sure they belonged to himself. Still, the steam kept him occupied for long enough for Carys to prepare a bowl of cawl for him. If he finished that, she would try him with the speckled bread. She probably shouldn’t have used the dried fruit so soon; there wasn’t much, and it should have lasted her through the end of the winter. She would get more at the market next time she went, Carys decided.

  When she brought over Eurion’s cawl, he was still hunched over the tea, but instead of tugging at his hair, he was tugging at one of his shirt cuffs. He must have been worrying at it for some time since, because it was frayed and shedding strands of cotton.

  “Stop pulling at the threads,” Carys said. “I’ll mend it tonight.”

  Eurion squinted at the cuff. “I think there’s something in there, Lady.”

  Carys remembered the belt she had taken and hidden. “What is it?”

  “I can’t get it out,” he said, tugging at the thready hole with slender fingers. He held his wrist up again at eye level and swayed as he sat.

  Carys took that wrist in one hand and pushed his head back down on the pillow with her other. “Stay where you’re told. I’ll get it out.”

  She turned his wrist to gaze at the thready hole. Something peeped through the white threads at her—brown and shiny. Was that oilskin? How many other secrets did this boy have about his person? Her small sewing scissors were in a wooden bowl that sat on the table beside her bed; she snipped the loose threads first and then carefully snipped away the stitches that held the cuff hem together.

  The hem uncurled damply—he was certainly sweating again—and disclosed a small, oilskin packet that was thin and paper-like. Carys took it, automatically putting a hand up to check Eurion’s forehead, and felt a slight dampness beneath her hand.

  “Don’t get up again,” she said. “I’ll feed you cawl shortly.”

  Eurion gazed up at her and said, “I won’t, Lady. What is it?”

  Carys turned the packet over in her fingers and found the fold that unpackaged it. From its folds emerged a piece of thin card, studded with two diamonds. She didn’t know anything about diamonds, just pearls, but they seemed quite large to her.

  Eurion’s hands patted at hers, trying to tell what it was by feel. “Do you know what it is, Lady?”

  “It’s a set of earrings,” said Carys, moving her hands away. She held up the card so that he could see the diamonds sparkle in the light from the window. “On a card. They’ve been sewn into your cuff.”

  “Lucky I didn’t lose them in the water!” said Eurion, playing with the frayed edge again. “I wonder if I hid them there, or if someone else did it. I wouldn’t hide earrings in my cuff, would I?”

  “Your ears aren’t pierced,” Carys said. She had noticed that earlier—most Eppan boys had their ears pierced quite early, but Eurion, along with his slightly more Sunderman features, also had whole earlobes. If it wasn’t for his Eppan eyes and colouring, he could have been born in Sunderland.

  Eurion gazed in wide-eyed surprise at the earrings. “Did someone else hide them, then?”

  “Why would someone hide their earrings in your cuffs?”

  “I don’t know,” Eurion said. “But why are there earrings in my cuffs at all? Wait! Lady, maybe there’s more things sewn into my clothes! You can take them and sell them!”

  Carys stood abruptly and took the tea bowl away. “Why would I sell your earrings?”

  “You can have the money!” he said. “Then I can pay for my board here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Carys harshly. She took up the bowl of cawl once more and sat down. “I told you. Whatever washes up on the shore is mine. I don’t charge a stray dog for staying on my hearth.”

  “I’m not a dog!” protested Eurion.

  Carys pushed a spoonful of cawl into his mouth. “Eat.”

  Eurion coughed, spluttering a few drops of broth onto his shirt, and swallowed. When he could speak again, he said plaintively, “Lady, are you trying to drown me again?”

  “If you would stop talking,” Carys said, “you wouldn’t choke on the cawl. Open.”

  Eurion opened his mouth dutifully, received his mouthful of cawl, and closed it again.

  “Chew,” said Carys. “Don’t even think about talking.”

  Much to her relief, he did as he was told. That removed one irritant but did nothing to alleviate the other—Eurion continued to watch her unblinkingly through mouthful after mouthful of cawl. At last Carys, unused the scrutiny and weary of bearing it, seized his chin and turned his face away from her.

  There was a brothy mutter of protest from him, but it was garbled enough to make Carys think that the warm cawl was making him sleepy again. She put the spoon back into the bowl and set them both on the bedside table. Eurion muttered once again, this time less brothily, and she heard a small snore.

  Carys gave a quiet sniff of laughter. It would be a waste of food to leave the rest of the cawl to go cold by the bedside, but she left a piece of the speckled bread there for when he woke up, instead. She refilled the bowl and ate her own dinner from it in her usual spot, looking out at the sea. It was difficult to tell the sea from the storm now, the whole of it a swirling greyness outside the window, but Carys watched it anyway. She always watched the sea as she ate.

  When the boy was snoring regularly, a small burble of noise against the strengthening wind outside, Carys got up from the table and retrieved his belt from behind its brick. There was no reason to be disturbing it so soon, but she was uneasy. The boy’s shirt wasn’t a rich one; it was good quality, but not the sort of quality that should be carrying diamonds about in its cuffs. What else had he been carrying about with him on his person? The belt hadn’t rattled or clinked when she took it off him—but then, if it was a well-made money belt, it wouldn’t. Carys hefted the weight of it in her hands; it was heavy, but not so heavy that the weight of it couldn’t be accounted for in the weight of the leather. It was unlikely to be more than a small amount of silver or gold, if silver or gold it was. Precious stones, on the other hand, it could very well be. She looked down at it for a long time before she brought herself to seek the opening in it. It didn’t pretend to be a normal belt, so it wouldn’t be one that was stitched invisibly in; no, the secrecy of this belt lay in the fact that it was worn beneath someone’s clothes.

  Carys, in turning it over, found a slice in the leather at the back of it. Through that space she could see the faintest glow of blue—silk?—when she bent the leather. The leather was stiff, but she could still work one finger into it, seeking the source of that mysterious blue gleam. She was still working that piece of blue out when she saw the other cut in the leather. This one was on the front of the belt, below the cutwork patterns, and if it hadn’t gaped just a little as she tried to work the blue material free from the belt, she wouldn’t have seen it at all. This one wasn’t a deliberate cut in the leather; it slashed right across the belt horizontally and took a small chunk out of the sewn edge. The edges were darkened with something black or red, though it wasn’t hard to decide which.

  Carys stopped, the blue silk halfway in and halfway out of the slit. Had the boy had a cut on his stomach, too? She hadn’t seen it when she took his wet clothes off, but the salt had taken away most of the blood he was bleeding, and his torso was already covered with myriad small cuts and abrasions from his time beneath the rocky seashore. Carys had been trying to avoid looking at him when he was in the bath earlier, too, and when he had run around shirtless with Enfys chasing him he had taken refuge behind her. Still, she wouldn’t have missed something like that, would she? She couldn’t even ask him without giving away the existence of the belt, and at this stage it was something she would very much rather keep to herself.

  Carys left the belt on the kitchen table and went over to the bed. Eurion muttered in Eppan when she untucked the covers and exposed his stomach to the fire-warmed air, but he didn’t wake. There was a cut there; it began above the waistband of his trousers and vanished beneath it. Nothing deep or dangerous, even if it was a longer cut than it looked; she must have seen it and passed over it when she first put him to rest. Carys breathed a small sigh and covered him again. It was a wonder he had bled enough for it to darken the edges of the notch the same cut had made in the belt. Eurion, thought Carys, her eyes running over the ruined leather one more time, had been very lucky. She had seen men felled by the kind of slice made in this belt—she had tended them on the rocky seashore, too. None of them had survived the experience.

  Someone, somewhere out in the chancy world of sea and ship, had tried very hard to gut Eurion.

  “Who would do such a thing to a child?” Carys said to the fire. The fire, as peaceful and unresponsive as it ever was, didn’t trouble her with an answer. She went back to the belt, a frown tightening the skin above her nose, and wrenched at the blue silk. What could be so important that it was worth killing a child?

  The blue silk, sticky and stiff with salt, came out with a sudden lurch, and the unexpected weight of it flipped it out of her fingers and onto the floor with a muffled thump that made Eurion protest in his sleep. Carys flicked a look at him but he didn’t open his eyes, and she stooped swiftly for the silk bundle, her fingers closing around something hard and rectangular beneath the cloth. She turned it to the fire to examine it. A thin strip of leather wrapped the bundle; perhaps it had been tightly tied a while ago, but now it was loosening, crumpled blue silk pushing up between the coils. Carys unwound it easily, pushing the contents of the pouch up and out into the firelight.

  Gold glowed richly in the firelight; gold spotted with red. Blood or ink? wondered Carys, a moment before it occurred to her that the square-edged column of gold was a seal, its far end still chased with the remainder of red ink and the end closest to her moulded in the likeness of waves. Not just a seal, but a gold seal. Something rich and beautiful beyond the dreams of someone like Carys, pearls notwithstanding. The seal itself was worth a great amount of money, but its value would lie in the seal it displayed, not in the intrinsic value of the precious metal. It was something that only an Eppan of very high birth would be carrying around with him, Carys knew.

  She gazed down at the seal with a troubled frown, turning it over between her fingers. Was Eurion someone so highborn, or had he stolen the items he was carrying? There was no real reason to be concealing earrings and seals in such a manner if he was carrying his own belongings, no matter the value of them. On the other hand, traveling by sea did bring with it a number of risks, magic-inclined boatswains notwithstanding, and it wasn’t out of the question for Eurion to feel safer hiding his things. He hadn’t struck her as a particularly careful or fearful young man, but there was the possibility.

  Carys slipped the seal back into its blue silk and wrapped it again. It was probably a good idea to show it to Eurion; it might jostle something loose in his memory. Despite that, she found herself pushing it back into the belt again, and when it was back in the belt, tucking the belt back into its hiding place in the wall. There were a few more questions she would like to ask around the village and of the traders who came on market day, before she went so far as to show the seal to Eurion.

  * * *

  The storm abated slightly the next morning. Carys was glad for it; it didn’t stop the rain from soaking her despite her oilskin, but it would make the journey to the village easier when she attempted it tomorrow for market day. She would need to take her seaweed to sell, but more than that, there were several traders she would like to speak to quietly. They didn’t regard her with as much suspicion as the villagers did, and she wouldn’t have to worry about too many tattling tongues, either.

  The boy was propped up on his pillows when she got back to the cottage just before noon, fast asleep with his head awkwardly tilted into the wall as if he’d sat up to wait for her but had fallen asleep in spite of himself. Carys saw the few, wet threads of sandy grass that littered her doorstep and came to the conclusion that Eurion must have needed to relieve himself some time that morning and not relished the idea of using the bucket again. That was good: he hadn’t eaten or drank very much since she found him, and it was a relief to know that, at least on the inside, he was beginning to heal. She checked his forehead, but it was dry and not too much warmer than a boy asleep in the warmth of a firelit room should be. That was satisfactory.

  Carys put the kettle on to boil in spite of that, and tore off a piece of the speckled bread to supplement Eurion’s lunch. The last of the cawl was in the cool box; it wouldn’t be as hearty cold, but it would be just as tasty as it had been yesterday. She put some in a bowl with the speckled bread and fetched the tea leaves. There were still enough for a cup or two, and no doubt Enfys would be more than happy to sell her more, grasping old harridan that she was.

  The seal still tugged at the back of her mind, inconvenient and worrying. That and the earrings, so carefully concealed on Eurion—the earrings, perhaps, more particularly so—what could they mean? There was a kind of honesty to Eurion’s face, perhaps from his youth, perhaps by nature, and Carys found that she didn’t like the thought of him being a thief.

  The kettle bubbled behind her as she drew closer to the bed. Eurion’s hands were clasped above the bedclothes, and Carys picked them up and turned them over. They were thin, long-fingered hands, but quite strong. They could have been a scholar’s hands—or a nobleman’s, suggested her mind—if it wasn’t for the roughness of calluses on the pads of them.

  Not likely to be a nobleman’s son, thought Carys, despite his carelessness with someone else’s hot water. Which meant that the seal, rich and expensive, was very likely a stolen one. She ran a finger thoughtfully over the calluses of one hand, wondering exactly where Eurion had gotten them, and the hand in hers flexed unconsciously. She put it back on the covers, and looked up to find that Eurion’s eyes sleepily opening.

  His face lit up at once. “Lady! You’re back! I tried to wait but I was too tired.”

  “There’s no need to wait when you’re tired,” Carys said, and went to pour water over Eurion’s tea leaves. “You should be sleeping.”

  “Is the storm still going on?”

  Carys frowned. The wind had dropped some time ago, and hadn’t been really howling since last night. “It’s settled for now. The wind has gone down.”

  “Oh,” said Eurion. “Then I think there’s something wrong with my ears.”

  Carys left the tea to brew and approached the bed again. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “It still sounds swishy and windy,” Eurion said, accepting without protest the way that Carys twitched his head sideways and tilted it so that she could see into his ear. “It feels like I’m still in the sea.”

  “You can hear me speaking?”

  “Mostly,” he said, without moving.

  Carys pinched the outer part of his ear between her fingers and pulled a little to see better. She couldn’t see blood or anything solid, which was a relief, but she thought she saw the faint glisten of firelight on water.

  “There’s still water in your ears,” she said briefly. She sat on the bed and twitched his head the other way to check his right ear. It was easier to see the water in that ear; it made a dark pool further than a rag could conveniently reach to draw it out. “What do you mean, it feels like you’re still in the sea? Do you remember something?”