After Transmigrating, My Husband Is an Octopus novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Silver for Two

At the fish market Morwenna faces down a butcher who calls Lorcan a monster. Lord Tristram offers kindness and an orange, and tells her a pet who fails the Regent's examination goes to the Regent's kitchens.

The next morning Bess took me to the fish market, and nobody stopped me at the door.

It was an odd feeling.

I kept waiting for a hand on my collar, and kept walking anyway.

"You're allowed," Bess said, hooking her arm through mine. "He signed a pass for you last night. It's in your pocket. Don't lose it, or the gull wardens will have you in a cage by noon."

I touched the paper in my pocket.

It said my name, spelled right, and under it: Hearth-bound to Lorcan Brae. Free to walk the city.

The market ran along the quay.

There were stalls of silver fish and black mussels, and women with fins at the backs of their necks shouting prices.

It also stank.

Every few steps someone turned to look at me, and then at Bess, and then back at me with a look I knew from the school cafeteria.

"That's the Monster's pet," a woman whispered to her friend.

"Wife," said her friend, and they both laughed.

At the third stall, a butcher with a broad, scarred face and a rim of dark fur along his forearms weighed out a block of white fish for Bess and slid it across the counter.

Then he saw my face.

"Not for the Drift," he said, and slid it back. "Not for that house."

"It's for me," Bess said. "I'm paying."

"I won't sell to a man who keeps a thing like that under his roof. He's got eight arms and no mercy." The butcher spat on the floor beside my foot. "And you, girl. You walk in with it, you want to be careful what's left of you."

The people around the stall had stopped moving.

I could feel my heartbeat in my throat.

I should have taken Bess's elbow and gone.

But a man had walked into a hostile square for me, and he had never once raised his voice.

"He fed me last night," I said.

The butcher blinked.

"His girl put soup in front of me before I'd sat down, and he gave me a room and a door with no lock and told me I could walk out of it. Which of the people in this market did that?" I looked along the stalls. "Anyone? I was in a pen. I stood there a long while."

Nobody answered.

A fishwife in the next stall looked at her scale.

"You sold the last human who washed up here to a man who bit her," I said, because Bess had told me so on the walk. "She's been missing for two weeks. Eight arms are a lot less frightening than that."

"Careful," the butcher said, and his voice dropped.

"I'm being careful," I said. "I'm telling you the white fish is for Bess, and she's paying you in coin. You can take it or you can explain to the whole quay why you won't."

The silence went on.

Then the butcher scooped the fish up and wrapped it in paper with short, angry, shaking hands.

"Three silver," he said.

"It was two," said Bess, delighted.

"Two."

I paid him, and we walked on, and halfway down the next stall Bess started laughing so hard she had to hold on to a post.

"Your face," she gasped. "You went white. You went whiter than he does."

"Stop."

"Nobody's ever done that. Nobody's ever stood up in the market for him."

A hand touched my sleeve.

"Miss Harlowe," said a warm voice behind me. "That was extremely well done."

It was Lord Tristram Verrin, in a dark coat with the sea wind lifting his black hair.

He was carrying a paper bag of oranges.

"I thought I'd find you here," he said. "Bess, good morning. I won't keep her long."

Bess nodded and went very polite, which I noticed and put away.

"I wanted to apologise for yesterday," Lord Tristram said. "If I'd known the crowd would be so ugly, I'd have stood nearer. And I wanted to give you this."

He held out an orange.

It was cold from the shade and heavy and sweet.

"Thank you," I said again, because I had said it so often in two days that it had worn smooth.

"May I walk with you?"

Behind us the street opened.

A black carriage drawn by two grey horses rolled slowly along the quay, and the crowd bowed their heads as it passed.

A silver-haired woman sat straight-backed behind the glass.

She looked at me once, mildly.

Then her eyes moved to Lord Tristram, and her face softened.

A white number rose in the air between them: ninety-seven.

I thought, how nice.

They had obviously known each other for years.

Lord Tristram bowed to the carriage, and the carriage rolled on.

"The Regent," he said. "She is not as terrible as the Drift's gossip makes her. Quite the reverse, in my experience."

"Is she the one who's examining me?"

"She is." He paused, and his voice went gentle. "Has he told you what happens at the examination?"

"No."

"I thought not." He did not meet my eyes. "He's kinder than the law, and I'm sorry to be the one. A pet who fails at Pearl Hall isn't sent home, Miss Harlowe. She is released to the Regent's kitchens."

I looked at the orange in my hand.

"Released to the kitchens," I said, "meaning what?"

He told me.

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