“Three boots… and not a pair between them,” he replies. “Don’t know what good that is to anybody, but…”

With a shrug, he bends over the linen shirt he’d laid out, and pours the contents of the boot out onto it, then makes a soft sound of surprise.

He had been expecting small shells, or beetles, or a few coins. What he did not expect is what comes shimmering out of the top of the derelict boot: a little waterfall of jewels pooling on the linen. Nothing in it that looks like a ruby or an emerald, but garnet and moonstone and amethyst and onyx and tourmaline.