The Vermilion Emporium by Jamie Pacton

Author:Jamie Pacton [Pacton, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Now that Twain had found more starlight, both his and Quinta’s minds eased and October raced by, each day a bit of the same and wholly different. It had been twenty-nine days since Twain and Quinta met. He was now fully, entirely, hopelessly, and completely in love with her; and he was mostly sure she loved him back.

Not that she said anything about it.

He didn’t ask her to leave Severon with him again, though he wanted to every day. He would wait, as he’d promised, until the night before the ball.

They spent their mornings reading about starlight magic, walking through the streets of Severon, and exploring the Orpiment. In the afternoons, Quinta wove lace. They had discovered that Twain was no lacemaker. He had tried, but only ended up with tangled threads or torn fragments. As far as they knew, only Quinta could weave the lace. They also learned that Quinta had to start with one of the patterns in the book, and then she could make something new from there. They both had so many questions about how the magic worked and where starlight originated from, but neither of them could find the answers in the Casorina’s books or in the Great Library.

While Quinta wove the lace, Twain sat near her reading or telling her news of the world he’d picked up from around the palace. He also spent many hours in front of the map that hung on the library wall, telling her stories about the countries that surrounded Severon and where he planned on traveling.

“Have you ever noticed that our part of the world looks like a snarling wolf?” Twain said one day.

Quinta looked up from her lace work to snort, but he took her hand, bringing her over to the map.

“I’m serious. Look, Severon and Aix are the upper jaw and teeth; Reyoux makes up the muzzle, and Vestun is the wolf’s head. Lake Navatar is its eye, and Tszana is an ear. To the south, Ysitar is one part of the lower jaw.”

“Where does that leave poor Ixily?” asked Quinta, pointing to the narrow island between Aix in the north and Ysitar in the south.

“Trapped like a piece of food between the wolf’s jaws, is what my father used to say. Which, of course, is why they’re so intent on making their people the fiercest fighters in the world.”

“You couldn’t pay me to visit Ixily,” Quinta said with a laugh. “And I wouldn’t tell Damian that metaphor.”

They’d bumped into Damian, the scholar from Ixily, a few more times, and they’d taken him around the city to see the night market and the grand museums. Something held them back from showing him the Vermilion Emporium—perhaps it was the scholar’s intensity as he asked them questions about their work (which they deflected) or perhaps it was just that they still wanted to keep the Emporium a secret. Damian was friendly enough, but he was a passing ship in their lives. Neither of them would miss him too much when he returned to Ixily after the Scholar’s Ball.

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