Kenjii enters the Merry Minstral with (although he doesn't realize) Muriru close behind, and both find the tavern to be in full swing of a rather dirty song that eerily ends the moment the doors close behind them, the other patrons returning to conversations as if the singing had never happened. As he receives his drink, Muriru approaches him and he demands to know why she was wandering around alone. It is then that another patron, Maeve, makes her presence known and asks Kenjii if Muriru is his pet. To Muriru's annoyance, the conversation takes a turn towards insult as the two discuss whether or not Muriru is a pet or a stray, and she eventually storms out of the tavern, not seeing Saerun as the Elvaan enters.
The three 'idly' chitchat for a bit, and the conversation inevitably turns towards Aht Urghan. In the course of it, Saerun shows Kenjii her boarding pass, trying to convince him that it is becoming possible to get there. Kenjii claims the pass to be fake but Maeve examines it and is pretty sure that it is legitimate, and comments that Saerun must either have friends in high places, or helped out someone who was in a really bad bind. Saerun supposes that the latter could be true, as she only had to pay for the pass with her time. This infuriates Kenjii, remembering what he had gone through to go to the Far East, and he almost storms off. He stops when Maeve asks both him and Saerun an odd question: how old they are. Upon being told, Maeve tells them of a brief period of time, at least seven years prior, where relations between the Middle Lands and the Near East briefly thawed and a bit of tentative trade occurred. This, however, did not last after there were incidents on both sides and even hinted that the Tenshodo might've had something to do with the routes closing, as it seems they were unable to land exclusive trading rights and were losing money. Kenjii leaves soon after the story ends, both to see if he can perhaps lean a bit on someone in the Tenshodo to give him more information and because, as Maeve reveals at the end of the story, it seems that Mirror knew all this and didn't share.
Saerun questions Maeve on why she keeps referring to Mirror as a 'freak', to which Maeve becomes tight-lipped and only offers that there is something 'unnatural' about him that disturbs her greatly. Maeve takes a moment of Saerun's confusion to change the subject, asking Saerun about her own 'uniqueness' and questions the two 'ribbons' she sees, as usually a second ribbon means that a woman is pregnant, but its obvious to Maeve that Saerun isn't. Saerun asks if what Maeve sees is a gift, and if she can use it to do more than just see things. Maeve admits that it would be a gift to any healer however she doesn't have the temperament to be one and, even if she was so inclined, that her voice was too far gone and she was too old to care about trying to recover it.
"How hard did you hit him?" "Quite hard, actually. For some reason he irritated me." They stared back to where the Grolim lay. "You're getting to be more like Belgarath every day," Silk told him. "You do more damage out of simple irritation than most men can do in a towering rage."
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652 weeks ago