"Did I say anything to suggest I had a problem?"
Sasha sighed. This was going to be a wildly unpleasant conversation. And all the Connlaothians to have it with, he had to choose a Mordecai.
"If you really want to know...yeah, it might be. Maybe. I know you don't like or trust magic, and fair enough - it's dangerous in untrained hands, same as any other tool. I wouldn't give a kiddie a fishing spear either, or one of the flintlocks we buy from you! I'm just going to say that...up here, sometimes it's different. Sometimes a mage keeps bears and wolves away. Sometimes they put a charm on fishing boats, so everyone comes back. Sometimes they find a kid who's gotten muddled in bad weather, who's scared and alone and freezing to death less than a mile from home."
He reached into the collar of his shirt, pulling out the yellowed bone manaia charm he wore. It was the same as the one he'd sold to her earlier - bird's head, man's body, fish tail. He turned it over in his hand, again and again.
"I told you I don't sell magical ones of these. I told the truth. I don't sell them. Yours is just a trinket...but this one, this one I'm wearing is not. I was one of the lost kids in the snow. I was found, by a mage who'd run north from Connlaoth, because I wore this."
