The first trade agreement failed because Tavi had drawn a hand without knowing what it said.
He knew that later. At first, he blamed the rain for keeping hands inside coats.
Sen stood on the far side of the boundary gate. Her baskets were piled beside her, pale wicker darkening in the rain. Each basket took three days to make. They were empty, waiting to carry grain that would feed her house until summer.
Councilwoman Orr stood on Tavi’s side with two men and a cart loaded with grain sacks. She had brought grain from the human storehouse. The harvest had been good enough to share some of it with the fae beyond the gate.
Tavi had made the words for them.
His little phrasebook held thirty-two useful sayings. Where is the road? This costs two coins. I need help. He had spent winter learning from Sen through the bars.
Today he had printed one copy for each side.
Orr held her copy under her coat.
“Give,” she said carefully in the fae language.
Sen repeated the word. Her fingers curled around her basket handle. The little thorn branch tied there curled with them, bending like a living hand.
Tavi smiled. Both women had said the same word.
The men unloaded the grain. Sen and her neighbor took it inside the gate. The cart rattled home empty.
Tavi wrote a tick beside the word in his book.
A week later, Sen asked when she must pay the grain back.
“Pay it back?” he asked.
“I’ll return the same amount after harvest. Your council must say when.”
“Return it? It was a gift.”
Sen looked through the bars at him.
“Then why did Orr make the borrowing sign?”
“She made no sign.”
“She held her hand closed around the book.”
Tavi remembered the rain. Orr had been gripping the phrasebook inside her coat.
“She was keeping it dry.”
“I said I accepted a loan. You heard me.”
He had heard the word. He had not watched her hand.
Orr came the next morning. She was furious that Tavi had made her look as though she was setting secret terms. Sen was furious that a loan now seemed to be a gift she should be grateful for.
The gatekeeper shut the small trade hatch. Behind Sen, a basket slid off its pile into the mud.
Tavi reached through the bars to lift it. Sen pulled it out of his reach.
“We can clear this up,” he said.
“You can start with my hooks.”
She held up one small metal hook used to pull wicker strands tight.
The other three had disappeared while human visitors were inside the gate the previous autumn. Tavi had promised to ask about them. He had put the promise behind his urgent work on the phrasebook.
Now she wanted them back before she heard another new word.
Tavi went to Orr’s storehouse. Two hooks hung over a barrel. A cart maker had borrowed them for binding a load and never brought them back. The third was in his shop.
“I didn’t know whose they were,” the cart maker said.
“You knew they weren’t yours.”
Tavi wrapped them in cloth. Then he looked at the cloth, at his closed hand, and at the word he’d ticked in his book.
He went back to Sen’s gate with his coat unbuttoned.
“Watch me,” he said.
He pushed the coat through the bars, keeping his fingers closed around one edge.
“Give?” he asked in her language.
Sen took the other edge. Her fingers closed, too. The thorn branch on her basket bent inward.
“Until when?” she asked.
Tavi pulled the coat back and opened his palm beneath it.
“Give?”
Her hand opened. The thorn branch straightened.
“Why?” she asked.
He swallowed.
“The same word. A different hand.”
“You taught Orr half a sentence.”
On the phrasebook page, beside the word, he had drawn a little hand. Four lines for fingers and one for a thumb. He’d drawn it as a decoration because Sen had liked his pictures of birds.
He had asked about unfamiliar spoken sounds all winter. The familiar-looking hands had seemed too obvious to ask about.
Sen waited while he took the cloth from his bag. This time he opened his palm and laid the hooks across it.
“Yours,” he said in his own language.
She knew that word. She counted the hooks, pulling each point across her thumbnail to check it.
“One is bent.”
“I’ll pay to have it repaired.”
“The cart maker can pay.”
He nodded. She was not going to let his good intentions settle every debt in town.
At the storehouse, Tavi showed Orr the two hand signs.
She closed her book, slowly.
“I wanted to help,” she said.
“Sen thought we wanted a trade.”
“She could have asked.”
“She did. With her hand. I told you it was nothing.”
Orr looked at the men stacking sacks behind him. The grain had come from people who worked the fields.
“We can’t have a payment date nobody knows,” she said.
“We can’t have a gift nobody knows is a gift.”
For two days, Tavi made a new page. He drew each hand large enough to show the fingers. Below it he wrote what the giver wanted: the thing returned, or nothing returned. He left a place for a date beside the first sign.
He took the page to Sen before printing any copies.
“What else is wrong?” he asked.
She pointed to the drawing of a basket.
“That one isn’t finished. You’ve left the bottom open.”
He laughed despite himself. Then he drew the bottom.
At the second meeting, Orr spoke first in her own language. Tavi translated in short pieces, showing the right hand sign each time.
Orr offered to leave the first grain as a gift. Sen shook her head. She had promised to repay a loan, and she wanted to keep that promise.
They agreed it would be a loan, returned after the harvest. They wrote the date on both copies of the page. Sen curled her fingers around her hook, and Orr curled hers around the cart handle.
The next cart would wait. Neither woman was ready to promise more.
The baskets would be bought separately. Orr named a price, and Sen crossed it out and wrote a higher one. They settled on a number between them.
It took most of the morning. Twice Sen stopped Tavi to ask what Orr meant. Once Orr stopped him because he had used a word she couldn’t repeat.
When it was finished, the gatekeeper opened the trade hatch.
Tavi carried the copies away with fewer ticks in his book than before.
At the top of its first page, he left a wide blank space. Under it, in both languages, he wrote a question he and Sen had checked together.
Will you show me?
A week later, Sen sent him a basket through the hatch. A note inside gave the price. Sen had sent the bent hook back to the cart maker for repair. He had returned it with a written apology Tavi had helped him translate.
Tavi counted the coins for his basket and opened his hand beneath them.
Sen raised one eyebrow.
“You aren’t borrowing the coins?”
He nearly closed his hand again. She laughed before he could.
He carried his new books home in a basket with a sound bottom.
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