A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,29

porcelain, part of a set my wife had been gifted long ago, feeling the heat seep into my fingers and watching the steam rise from the surface in a sort of nonthinking haze. I didn’t notice Elynea emerge from my bedroom until she pulled out a chair and sat across from me, murmuring a soft good morning.

“Good morning,” I replied. I hadn’t seen her or the children since they had all slammed doors yesterday to demonstrate their displeasure with me. When I had come home after the bard’s performance, the doors were still closed and the house was quiet, and I didn’t want to disturb them. I stretched out on the couch after a cold meal of bread and smoked moonscale and began a string of short uncomfortable naps that passed for slumber. The cot in the palace had been easier on my back. “Can I make you a cup?”

“I want to apologize,” Elynea said, her eyes downcast but her voice firm. Tea apparently would be a distraction when she had apologies to make.

“There’s no need,” I said, and she looked up. “Truly. I’m sorry I upset you and the kids.”

Her eyes dropped back to the tabletop, and she traced a slow pattern on it with her finger. “I know you didn’t intend to. You were right that healing will be slow. Here we are nearly a year past the invasion, and I’m only now beginning to think of rebuilding my life. I think perhaps the well of my patience had run dry after my job search yesterday morning and I needed time for it to refill.”

“I understand,” I said. “You’re welcome to search again this morning if you and the kids can stand it. I’m free until a half hour before noon.”

“Thank you,” Elynea said, her voice fervent. “I’ll change and go right away. I don’t wish to be a bother to you any longer than necessary.”

“We’re all bothered these days,” I said. “But you’re far less of one than you think. Your welcome is still fresh and clean here.”

Elynea made a grimace that might have been an attempt to smile in gratitude and disappeared into the bedroom to change into the same orange ensemble she had worn yesterday while I set about making breakfast. She woke the kids and told them all was well and she would be back before noon, adding to Pyrella that she should try to teach her younger brother something today. They were sad to see her go but distracted themselves soon enough after they had eaten.

If Tamöd’s play was any indication of his future, he would seek a kenning as early as he could. He wanted to be a tidal mariner with all his being.

Pyrella, I noticed, never pretended to have a kenning. Perhaps she was simply playing foil to Tamöd, but I noticed that she chose to oppose him with defensive creatures or those which renewed themselves easily. She was the oyster in a shell, or a sea turtle, or even ever-blooming algae but never an aggressive predator like a bladefin or a longarm. Tamöd even asked her to switch. “Come on, be a kraken,” he said, and she refused. “But it’s no fun beating up algae,” he complained, and as soon as he did, Pyrella changed the game on him as if she’d been waiting for him to say that. I suspect that she had.

“Maybe you don’t have to always beat things up,” she said.

Tamöd looked lost. “What else is there?”

“There’s growing.”

The seven-year-old scoffed. “Tidal mariners don’t grow things, stupid!”

“Of course they do. Nothing grows without water.”

“I know plants grow with water, but that’s not something a tidal mariner does!”

“They do, but they’re sneaky about it. Tidal mariners influence the currents, right?” Pyrella prodded him.

“Yeah, so?”

“All the food that ocean plants and animals need is carried on the currents, and tidal mariners use those currents to help everything grow faster, which helps feed us, too. There’s even a song about it! The Current Chorus. Do you know it already?”

“No.”

“I can teach it to you. Or everything I know anyway. All the tidal mariners know the whole thing.”

That hooked him. If the tidal mariners knew it, he wanted to know it, too. “Okay!”

My house was an endless repetition of the Current Chorus after that, but I didn’t mind. I knew firsthand that the education system had been dissolved in the flood of refugees and if children weren’t taught by clever older siblings or their parents, they wouldn’t be taught at all. I