Thief With No Shadow by Emily Gee

finer than anything Bastian owned, the linen thick and dyed a deep, expensive green.
    Bastian grunted and turned slightly away. The youth’s assumption that he wanted to listen to him, the way he laid his forearm along the counter as if he owned it and not his father, irritated him. Cocksure.
    “Stupid bints don’t understand the word No. You ever noticed that? Nothing up here.” Julien tapped his forehead. “Dumb.”
    The ale soured in Bastian’s mouth. He put the tankard down.
    “Girls from down by the docks are the worst.” Julien’s tone was self-important, almost boastful. “Take my advice and stay away from them.”
    Bastian straightened away from the counter. You think I’d take your advice? He didn’t waste his breath uttering the words. Instead, he felt in his pocket for a coin. His hand itched with the urge to take Julien by the scruff of his neck and drag him outside. He hadn’t been able to hit the wraith, but Julien would be easy. Too easy , he told himself. The youth was soft beneath the fine clothes and had the uncalloused hands of someone who did no real work. It would be like beating a child. Or a woman.
    “Sluts,” Julien said expansively. “All of those dockside girls. They’re sluts.”
    Bastian clenched his teeth together. The silver coins were small and heavy in his pocket, dirty. The copper coins were larger. He felt for the thinnest of them and slapped it down on the counter. The serving girl saw the movement and exchanged a last laughing word with a customer. She came towards Bastian and reached for the coin.
    Julien ignored her. “Spread their legs for you, then say they’re pregnant and expect you to marry them.” His tone was aggrieved.
    The serving girl paused with her fingers on the coin. She glanced at Julien. The good humor was gone from her face.
    “As if I’d marry a dockside girl.” Julien’s upper lip curled in disgust. “I’m not a fool.”
    Bastian curled his hands into fists on the counter, then flexed them open. A brawl would be satisfying, but he didn’t want to come to Silvia with split knuckles and blood on his clothes. “You give a very good impression of one,” he said, his voice flat with contempt. “Only a fool would speak as you do.”
    The serving girl raised her eyes and smiled at him. Her face transformed from plain to pretty. Bastian nodded at her and pushed away from the counter. He didn’t want to eat at Ronsard’s after all.
     
     
    B ASTIAN’S ILL TEMPER slowly evaporated as he strode through the town. It was impossible to be angry, with the signet ring on his finger again and Silvia two streets away and the bustle of the Thierry market around him. So many scents: hay and freshly slaughtered meat, leather and herbs and peppercorns, cow dung, fish, and sweet toffee apples. The large square was a medley of color and texture. He saw skeins of coarse black wool, the pale yellow and violet of spring flowers, the dull brown of workaday cotton and the vivid red of silk ribbons.
    The metal bender had come from Isigny, as he did several times a year. He was doing good business. Housewives queued with dented pots and farmers carried broken scythes and crooked plough blades. Children had gathered to watch the man shape metal between his fingers as easily as if it was butter.
    Sounds swamped him: loud bargaining and bleating sheep and the giggling whispers of young girls, the apology of the housewife who brushed so busily past him, the exhortations of the pie-seller who thrust a steaming pasty beneath his nose.
    Bastian inhaled deeply, tasting the market on his tongue. This place was alive, as Vere wasn’t.
    He was aware of the dogs, aware of images and impressions and a faint babble of sound nudging inside his head. Nothing was clear, not like with Endal. But Endal’s voice had always been strong, even as a pup.
    Usually he blocked the confusing blurs of sound and image from the other dogs, the yammers of excitement, but he missed Endal.