platter of sweet rice dumplings. 'My papa asks you take these as a gift, for fighting for the city. The Silver isn't permitted any.'
Eliar's frown deepened.
'That's rude!' muttered Mai.
'Maybe not meant so,' he said. 'Best the soldiers be seen accepting the gift.'
She gestured to Chief Tuvi. He strolled back to inspect the dumplings and the girl, who wasn't more than ten. He indicated she should eat one first, and when she popped one promptly in her mouth, he allowed the soldiers to share the rest.
'Even so, walking through the market is more than your sister can do,' said Mai, mouth watering as she watched the soldiers devour the moist dumplings. She couldn't bring herself to taste them when Eliar was rejected in that way, but if he meant to let the slight pass, she would not mention it again. 'She wasn't allowed to accompany me.'
'She's unmarried. She's not allowed to walk in the market until she becomes an adult.'
'Which I am, although I'm younger than she is? Just because I'm married? That doesn't seem reasonable.'
Like his father, Eliar might smile and charm but there were things he would not joke about. 'That isn't our way, verea.'
'Forgive me. I had no intention to offend. I grew up selling produce in the market in Kartu Town. It seems strange to me that your sister lives so restricted.'
'Let's move on,' he said.
Even Miravia's absence could not ruin the delight of walking through the bright day and enjoying the sight of a city so rich they could build with wood as much as with stone and brick. So many colors and smells! Vendors sold oil by the ladle. At food stalls you could buy noodles, or mounds of colorful spiced and pickled vegetables.
A girl sat on a blanket under the shade of a canvas awning, fruit mounded in neat piles before her, crying her wares in a cheerful voice: 'Sunfruit! Best and sweetest! Ghost melon for the new year! Strings of redthorn.'
Mai wiped away unexpected tears.
Priya cupped Mai's elbow under an arm. 'Mistress, are you well? Perhaps we should return?'
'Just remembering when I used to be that girl, selling fruit in the market in Kartu Town.'
She bought several sunfruit, making only a cursory effort to bargain, and shared out the segments with the others. The moist flesh cooled her mouth, but it tasted a little sour.
The smell of fried fish made her stomach turn, so they walked on, past carpenters raising walls where a hall had just days ago burned, past roofers shifting broken tiles, past folk hauling water and pushing wheelbarrows piled with bricks, past men and women calling out their wares in a singsong that grabbed and held the ear. The rhythm of the marketplace truly was the same anywhere. And today she had no need to feel hurried, to grasp at trinkets in passing, to wonder if the coin she'd been given as a sign of favor by Father Mei might be pried from her hand by Grandmother Mei in a fit of pique. She could wait, see what appealed, how prices compared, and she
could come back whenever she pleased, because she and Anji were wealthy. Anji's troop of Qin soldiers had saved Olossi. Acting as negotiator for their services, she had pinched the Olossi council for so much coin that she couldn't imagine how she'd had the audacity just days ago to manage it.
No, there was no haste to buy.
Not until they came to the street catering to those who knew how to write, with its brushes and inkstones and ink knives. In one shop, a dozen wretchedly preserved scrolls had been tossed into a dusty basket in the corner.
'Look here, Priya,' she said to the slave, drawing her close, hand tucked into her elbow. 'Don't those look like prayer scrolls? Whatever would such a thing be doing in this land, where they've never heard of the Merciful One?'
The shopkeeper hustled over. 'Verea.' He nodded at Priya, not realizing she was only a slave, and then at Mai, gaze shifting between the two to gauge their relationship. 'How may I help you?'
'I'd like to look at these,' Mai said. 'What a curiosity!'
'Please, please.' He was a short, broad-chested man wearing a sleeveless vest and loose trousers that fell to just above the ankle. He cleared a space on a table and carelessly dropped several of the frayed scrolls there.
A youth wearing only a kilt belted low on the hips was seated on the floor in the opposite corner at the rear of the shop, twisting hairs into brushes. His well-muscled chest was mostly hairless, quite smooth. He glanced up as if he had felt the weight of her gaze, and grinned flirtatiously right at her. She looked away, although not because she feared a lad's dazzling smile. The Hundred folk wore much less clothing in public than Mai was accustomed to, displaying a great deal of lovely brown skin. Perhaps it was no wonder Isar did not like his unmarried daughter to walk in the market.
Priya sucked in a sharp breath, a hiss of surprise. She had untied a ribbon and smoothed out the first few turns of a battered scroll, careful lest the ragged tears rip further.
'This is a copy of the Thread of Awakening,' she murmured.
Was that a tear below Priya's eye, or a stray drop of rain? Priya had always a well-modulated voice, in which Mai heard only
affection and wisdom. Tenderly the slave tied the scroll back and peeled open a second.
'Aie!' She sounded as if the sight pained her. 'The Discourse on the Seven-Branched Candle. Ill handled for its pains. I cannot imagine how these holy books journeyed here.'
'Yet here they are,' murmured Mai as the woman mouthed the words silently and rocked side to side to the rhythm of the unspoken phrases.
The months-long overland journey with Anji's company had been hard on Priya, but she had never relaxed her care of Mai, never once spoken of her own fears and aches. Nor had Mai, in the seven years Priya had been her personal slave, ever asked. Anji was the one who had discovered that Priya had been kidnapped years ago from a temple where she served the Merciful One, and marched over high mountains to be sold into slavery far away from her homeland. Her only comment: 1 survived because of the teachings of the Merciful One.'.
'Do these exceptional scrolls interest you, verea? They are rare. Outlander work. It was chance I was able to lay hands on them. You'll find nothing else like them in all of Olossi.'
'Look how dirty and torn they are,' said Mai with a kind smile. 'How sad that those who handled them treated them with such scorn. Here, now, what can you tell me of these prints?' She indicated a set of pictures leaning against the wall. 'How I love butterflies! So colorful they are! But is this a practiced hand? Or apprentice work? Please advise me, ver.'
Distracted, he followed her to the ranks of prints on display. 'It's very good work, although you might find Hoko's work more to your taste, she is a master artisan, the best in town. Here are Hoko's festival prints special for the Year of the Red Goat, which I can offer at a markdown since we scarcely had a festival this year due to the terrible events. See the detail of this wharf scene! The festival banners, the ghost ribbons, the food stalls. Here, the incomparable Eridit, and there a talking line of children from the Lady's temple dance the episode of the reunited lovers from the Tale of Change.'
'It's very fine, but the colors here look a little smudged. Oh, I do like that one, but-'
She smiled brightly and spoke cheerfully, and wielded her 'but's
like a trimming knife until the shopkeeper begged for mercy. 'Your sweet tongue is as sharp as those swords carried by your soldiers, verea,' he said, laughing. 'I accept defeat! What is it you want?'
'It seems a high price for prints for a festival now over, for a year that won't come around again for — well — how can I even count that far? Many rounds of years, surely, before the Red Goat walks again.'
'I can't lower my price, verea. My overhead. Surely you understand. But I could throw in something else. Is there something you have your eye on?'
She made a show of examining other prints, the brushes, the ink-stones. He had an assistant bring tea. As she sipped, savoring the gingery taste, she entertained him with a long digression about needing to bind a new accounts book, as she must of necessity set up a household.
'So you and the outlanders are indeed staying, as it is rumored?'
'Is it spoken of?'
'Surely it is, verea. You must know every person in Olossi talks of little else. How could it be otherwise, since your bold attack saved us from ruin?'
