The weave of the concave shell was not simple, but his fingers took care of it while his mind recited once more the list of things he’d hoped to do in Divalia that had not happened and did not look likely to. Try an exotic drink in a tavern. Take a ride on a boat in the river. See the Great Cathedral. Meet a noble (even the lord of his own land of Deverin would do). Witness a master thief in action. The only one that seemed remotely likely at this point was the last, and that only if a master thief were desperate enough for food to try to steal a loaf of barley bread or a pawful of raw barley. In the pouring rain. Coryn’s father, of course, did not see it this way. “This is the weather the thieves love,” he’d snarled. “They come out when honest folk are cozied up in their beds, when nobody expects ’em to be out.” And though he knew better, Coryn had argued, accomplishing no more than to be sitting under his stall with a bruised muzzle.
