13

The cold tea turned out to be more cool than cold. After encouraging Lyra to make herself comfortable at the small table in her kitchen — which had an identical layout to Cora’s kitchen, though it was much more cluttered, with half-finished wooden carvings and sewing projects on the surfaces — she opened one of the cabinets against the far wall and revealed a false bottom that led a shallow pit in the stone floor. Marid lifted a jug from the pit, which she brought over to the table along with a pair of mugs.

“This has been steeping since last night,” she said. “I dry the leaves myself. It’s a new mix that I haven’t tried before, so I hope it’s good.”

Lyra took the top off the jug and poured herself some of the amber-colored liquid within. Curious, she peeked inside the jug to find a little cloth satchel floating inside — a makeshift teabag.

The tea, when she sniffed it, smelled earthy and herbal. The taste wasn’t her preferred flavor. — it had notes of basil and something unidentifiable, which gave it a vague taste of black licorice — but it made a good change from drinking river water.

“Thank you,” she said politely. “It is very refreshing.”

Marid smiled at her and took a seat on the other side of the table. “Tell me more about your journey to the city. Do you have everything you need? Are you hoping to arrive by God’s Day?”

“I am, actually,” Lyra said. “Cora thinks we should make it with time to spare. She sent Kel and Gidal out to find supplies, since I didn’t have much with me when I arrived. I don’t have any money, so I won’t be able to pay for anything. I’ll just have to make do with whatever they can find.”

“It’s such a long journey to the city. You don’t want to just make do, you’re going to want to be comfortable. What do you need? More clothing?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I might be able to take some of what I found in the temple. There weren’t any shoes that fit me, though.”

“Let me see your feet, dear.”

Feeling self-conscious, Lyra turned so she could stick her feet out from under the table. She remembered that Cora had suggested Kel ask Marid for shoes that would fit her. He clearly hadn’t come here yet, so maybe she could take care of the issue herself.

“I have just the thing,” Marid said. “My husband bought me a new pair of boots for my birthday, bless him. My old ones are worn, but the soles are still good, and if you don’t mind a few scuffs, they should serve you just fine. You wait right here.”

Lyra sipped her tea as Marid hurried from the room. The thought of accepting charity was uncomfortable and a little embarrassing, but she knew she needed help. She couldn’t walk in too-small sandals for weeks.

Before long, the other woman returned with a pair of boots made from soft, floppy leather. They had obviously been worn for years, and one had a small hole in the toe box, but as soon as Lyra held it up to compare it to her foot, she knew it would fit much better than the sandals did.

“They’re a little rougher in condition than I remembered,” Marid said, clearly embarrassed. “But you’re welcome to them if you would like them.”

“Are you sure?” Lyra asked. She wasn’t sure how things like shopping worked in this world, but it didn’t seem like Marid would be able to run to the store if she decided she needed a second pair of boots. At least, not in a village the size of Kyokami.

“I’m quite certain,” Marid said firmly. “I’m not going to wear them again. They’re all yours, dear.”

Lyra thanked her profusely and stayed until she had finished her tea. Chatting with Marid was nice, and she was almost a little sad that she was going to be leaving the next day. She knew better than to suggest to Kel that they put it off, though. Getting home as soon as possible remained her biggest priority.

After thanking Marid for the tea and boots, she gathered her now dry clothing from the fence outside and left. The day had worn on, and the sun was drifting toward afternoon now. Her bladder was starting to complain, so she decided to look for the outhouses Kel had mentioned. He had said something about them being behind the houses, but she had already been behind the row of buildings in the direction of the river and hadn’t seen them. She decided to try the other side of the street.

Walking back to the temple, she cut through the alley that she had hidden in yesterday. When she came out the other side, she saw a row of small stone buildings set about ten feet apart from each other. There was a faint scent of sewage in the air that left no doubt as to what they were.

They weren’t the rickety wooden outhouses she had envisioned, which was a relief. After knocking on the door of the nearest one, she stepped inside. Instead of glass windows, the deep-set stone window frames were open to the air, probably to keep the air inside circulating. The windows were high up, too tall for anyone to see in, and small enough that nothing larger than a cat would be able to fit through them.

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There was a pit in the ground and a raised wooden seat much like a toilet from home. There was no toilet paper, but a basket next to the wooden seat was filled with leaves slightly larger than her hand. The purpose seemed clear enough, and when she left the outhouse a few minutes later, she felt much better.

Not having indoor plumbing sucked, but at least she wouldn’t have to keep using the bucket in the crypt or hide behind a bush in the forest.

Her relief only lasted until she realized she would have to hide behind a bush in the forest during her journey with Kel, unless by some miracle these stone outhouses had been built every few miles along the main road.

She was worried about the journey, especially since the longest she had ever hiked was six miles and she hadn't wanted to move an inch the following day, but dwelling on it wouldn’t achieve anything. The city was the most likely place for her to find the answers she needed, so she had to suck it up and get there, no matter how difficult the journey ended up being.

She returned to the temple, intending to try on the boots, but got distracted when her eyes caught on a book someone had left in the offering tray outside the door. Towr startled her when she appeared in front of the temple door.

“A borrower has returned a book to my collection,” she said. “Will you place it upon my shelves, priestess?”

She still wasn’t comfortable with Towr, but refusing would have been petty. Picking up the book, she flipped through it reflexively as she slipped through the temple door, only to come to a sudden stop when she realized the script on the page wasn’t unintelligible anymore.

She couldn’t just speak Moldaran. She could read it too.

Somehow, the thought hadn’t occurred to her, but now she realized she was in a library full of books with all sorts of information about the world — information she desperately needed.

She hoped Kel’s family ate dinner late, because she wanted to read as long as she had the daylight to do so.

It took Lyra a while to look through the shelves and find books that might be useful. Many of them looked interesting, but didn’t seem to have information that would be immediately useful. The book that had been returned was a guide on local plants and their uses. While it might be helpful to know what plants she could eat or use as medicine, she didn’t have the time to sit there and memorize what they looked like. There were a lot of history books, and more than a few books that were full of prayers and other religious writings. She dismissed these out of hand until she realized that, in a world where she could see and talk to the gods, religious books might be important. After looking through them a second time, she picked one that looked like it was about the mechanics of running a temple in the hopes it would offer practical answers to some of the questions she had.

She found a book full of hand-drawn maps, which she added to her growing pile, along with what seemed to be a farmer’s almanac — she was curious as to what the weather in the region she was in was like — and a book on the etiquette of different cultures for the inexperienced traveler.

There were a lot of books in the temple. She didn’t have time to look through all of them, and she also didn’t have time to read the ones she had selected from cover to cover, but skimming them gave her more information than she would have been able to gather from Marid unless they talked for hours straight.

The book about running a temple listed the different colors of tunics and — less helpfully — how to make dye for each color. Green was for wandering clergy. Sky-blue was to be worn on God’s Day and by priests and priestesses who worked in the temples of the Great God. Other colors were selected by the clergy of specific temples, based on the lιən of each particular god, and it listed far too many gods for her to ever remember which color belong to which, especially since some of the colors repeated. The only name in the list of gods that she recognized was Koval, whose clergy wore bright yellow tunics. She was pretty sure Towr had mentioned him in relation to the city she and Kel were going to, but she wasn’t sure how important the information would be.

The other books were less helpful, at least with how little time she had to study them. She found Heliotheopoli in the book of maps — it was on the coast, with a vast ocean to the west — but couldn’t find Kyokami in order to estimate how far apart the two were. The book on etiquette listed cultures she had never heard of before, and the almanac only told her that the area she was in, the Helioclades, had dry and rainy seasons. Since she didn’t actually know what the date was, she had no way of knowing how close they were to the end of the dry season.

She just hoped the rainy season didn’t begin while she and Kel were on the road.

She stopped reading only when the light grew dim enough that she found herself squinting at each page and beginning to develop a headache. She put the books to the side and gently moved the tabby cat, who had made herself comfortable on her lap, so she could stand up and stretch. She had spent hours sitting on the hard temple floor, using the light from the skylight to read. She might have been able to read a little longer by the light of the candle downstairs, but she really didn’t like the windowless room.

Towr was nowhere to be seen. Lyra wondered where the god went when she wasn’t hovering around the temple, but that was pretty far down on the list of things she wanted to know. She wished she had realized earlier that she could read the language as well as speak it, because there were still countless books she hadn’t even looked through yet. Any one of them might hold information that she needed to know. All she could do was hope libraries like this were common throughout this world. People like Kel and Marid could answer her questions, but books could answer the questions she didn’t even know she had.

The cat, who had been winding around her ankles as if it wanted Lyra to sit back down so she could lay in her lap again, let out a quiet meow and trotted toward the temple door. Lyra looked over in time to see the door swing open. Nira peeked into the temple.

“Mama said to tell you it’s time to join us for dinner,” the girl said.

“Thank you,” Lyra replied, only now realizing how hungry she was. “Give me one second. I have to get something from downstairs first.”