David Whitter

David has lived most of his life in the two rooms above his father's cobbler shop on one of Goodberry's quieter side streets, falling asleep most nights to the rhythmic tap of a hammer on leather from the workshop below. He grew up underfoot among offcuts of leather, spools of waxed thread, and the particular smell of tanning oil, and could sort nails by size before he could write his own name.

Two years ago, a traveling merchant came to settle an account with David's father and walked away believing he was owed three additional silver. David, then eight, quietly pointed out, in his careful stammering way, that the merchant's own tally stick was cut wrong and the debt ran the other direction. The merchant was annoyed, then embarrassed, then oddly impressed, and made a point of telling half the street that "the cobbler's boy does sums better than the tax clerk." David has been faintly mortified by the attention ever since, though his father has not let him forget it.

A retired schoolteacher who lives two doors down noticed David loitering by her window whenever she read aloud to her grandchildren, and began lending him books, simple ones at first, then increasingly not. David devours anything with numbers, maps, or mechanisms in it, reading by candlelight long after he's meant to be asleep. His parents don't fully understand what he sees in it, but they've stopped telling him to put the books away, mostly.

David died on Heatwave 22, 1306, alongside his parents, killed in the rooms above the workshop by an unknown assailant who left no evidence of how they came or went. Every door and window in the building was found locked from the inside the next morning, with no sign of forced entry anywhere, a detail the neighborhood has turned over uneasily ever since. The book he'd been reading was found still open on his windowsill, and more than one person on Cradle Row has quietly admitted to counting the roof tiles themselves since, just to see if he was right.

David had been counting roof tiles when the flames came through the workshop window, forty-one from his sill to the chimney, same as always, and then there had been nothing at all to count. What returned to him on Goldenleaf 7 arrived the same careful way most things did for David: quietly, and a beat behind everyone else's understanding of it. He was aware, first, of the mattress beneath him and the ordinary weight of a blanket, and only after several long seconds did he register that this should not have been possible, that the room around him should have been ash, that his mother's voice calling his name from the next room should not exist to be heard. He sat up very still, the way he always did when uncertain, and counted the roof tiles visible through the window. Forty-one. Exactly as before.

His parents reached him within moments, having woken in their own beds to the same impossible, ordinary morning, and for once in his life David did not go quiet or careful or wide-eyed in the face of an adult's attention. He let his mother hold him as long as she wanted to, which was a very long time, and he let his father's hand rest on his shoulder without flinching away from the unfamiliar weight of open affection. He still does not know how to explain what happened to Cradle Row's neighbors, who now count the roof tiles themselves whenever they pass the workshop, half in memory and half, since Goldenleaf 7, in something closer to relief.

On Thawbloom 12, 1307, David's father, Garrett, died of a sudden heart attack. David, who has always needed a little longer than everyone else to understand what has happened, needed longer still to understand this. His father had come back once already, and some careful, counting part of him kept waiting for it to happen again. It did not. The workshop below their rooms is very quiet now, and David, who used to sort nails and leather scraps by size at his father's elbow, has not yet worked out what to do with that quiet.

More than anything, David wants to feel like he's earning his place at the table. He helps in the workshop every day after his lessons, not because he loves the trade, but because he can see how tired his father is by evening and doesn't want to add to it. He worries, in the quiet way children worry about things they don't say aloud, that wanting something other than the family trade makes him ungrateful.

David has not told his parents, but he has begun quietly wondering whether a scribe, a clerk, or even an alchemist might someday take on an apprentice who's good with numbers and doesn't mind close, careful work. He has no idea how such a thing would happen, who he'd even ask, or how his father would take it, so for now it remains a daydream he turns over while sorting nails.

David would, quietly, like to be able to speak up in front of people without his face going red and his words tangling. He admires anyone who can walk into a room and just talk, and has started practicing in front of the workshop's cracked mirror when he's sure no one's listening, rehearsing things he'll probably never say out loud.