Which meant she’d better keep her eyes wide open and stop dreaming her way through these streets. Come on, Rose, you know the score. Get a move on, the sooner you’re under a roof the better.
7
The market was five acres of dust and noise. Several free traders were down onplanet looking for this and that, trading what they had for as much as they could get, a complex system of barter that both sides played out full-voiced and passionately, games both sides enjoyed to the max. Spice dealers and flower women, dealers in rare oils and essences, these turned the air into a soup of smells. There were cloth-sellers and leather dealers, used clothes men, lampsellers, knife women, pot women, chandlers and cosmetics dealers, dealers in everything imaginable. Jugglers and jongleurs plied their varied trades with varying success. Painters and sculptors and a local brand of artists who produced a complex combination of both with a touch of performance thrown in, these had their stands and their rivalries. A maximum of confusion and stimulus. Rose sighed with pleasure and plunged into the middle of it.
“Tuluat the Tukkaree, that is being me, buying and selling, selling and buying, come by, come and see, treasures for the trading, come by, come and see.” Tuluat stopped his chant, leaned across the table toward Autumn Rose, big dark eyes warm and confiding. “And what can I be doing for you, Jonjabaey, lovely Jaba’i?”
Autumn Rose smiled guilelessly back, newly browned eyes warm and trusting, the warmth as genuine as his. “Why, Fentu Tuluat, perhaps you can. I have a few trinkets…” she sighed, “that have sad memories attached. I hate to lose them, but a break is a break and time heals wounds. Perhaps you’d like to look at them?”
“The blessing of the Tanadewa, time and its healing.” Tuluat shook out a square of black velvet, smoothed it on the table in front of him. “Do be letting me see.”
Autumn Rose took her gleanings from the ship and set them with slow care onto the cloth, a ring with a starstone (slightly chipped), an antique chronometer in a nicked and battered gold case, a fingerstone of Tongjok jadeite in the form of a smiling fat frogga, an Escalari earbob its dangles carved from hardalwood and set with fossil amber, and half a dozen similar small but valuable items. When she finished, the serious bargaining began.
Autumn Rose weighed the coins in her left hand, shook her head and ran them through the portable assayer she’d found in Barakaly’s antique desk. She clicked her tongue. “Short, Tuluat. Lovely striking, but there’s too much base metal in the gold. I think another ema and two silvers, what are they, ah, peras will make up the difference.”
He shrugged, grinned and handed the coins over without protest. “Now if you are liking to sell that little gadget, I am offering… hmm… a nice sum, say… hmm… 300 emas.”
“No no, I don’t think so.” She tucked the assayer back in her belt pouch, flickered her fingers at him. “You’ve made enough from me today.”
He shrugged again, laughed. “So so, I will be having it within the week anyway and cheaper at that. Unless you prove more alert than I am thinking, Jonjabaey, lovely Jaba’i.” He turned away, flung out his hands, “Tuluat the Tukkaree, that is being me, buying and selling, selling and buying, come and see, come and see, treasures for the trading, come and see, come and see.”
“You are being a free trader, Jonja?”
Rose started, cursed under her breath. The guard had come out of nowhere, was suddenly pacing beside her; he wasn’t one of those in the market, he had a combination of green with purple diamonds and black slashes that was eye-blinding and surprised her because she couldn’t imagine him fading into shadow, no way. Tuluat just might be right, I’m not into this yet. “No,” she said, “just a traveler.”
“Where do you be heading?”
Uh oh, she thought. I hope this isn’t what it looks like. “Just ambling around, seeing what there is to see,” she said. Mistake, she thought. I shouldn’t ’ve answered in the first place. I don’t know. I don’t know. One thing I do know, I don’t like the smell coming off him.
“There is not being much worth looking at round here. Better you are letting me show you a place I am knowing.”
Right, she thought, just come alonga you, huh? No way, skinkhead. She didn’t say anything, just kept walking, looking straight ahead. If she couldn’t handle this jerk, she should’ve stayed away. Best if she could just lose him some way.
A long file of women came walking toward her, baskets on their heads; they were laughing and talking, walking with willow grace. Beyond them there were several handcarts and a tractor pulling a line of flats trundling along at a crawl beside the carts. Other flats and handcarts and oxcarts were coming from behind her. When the women got close enough, if she broke away suddenly, cut around them, didn’t get run over by a tractor, with a reasonable amount of luck she could get lost before the guard made up his mind what he was going to do. She risked a glance at him, stopped walking, her mouth hanging open.
The guard was sinking to his knees, folding down with a surprised look melting from his face. A small gray-green figure in a gray-green shipsuit had him by the elbows and was easing him down so that he didn’t bounce.
She looked at him and remembered. Z’ Toyff! Kikun. He hissed at her, flickered his long fingers impatiently, gesturing at her to get on, let him deal with this.
Right, Li’l Liz.
She swung round and strolled off, the incident immediately wiped from her mind along with Kikun.
##
She moved through a double dogleg, found herself in the kind of place she hadn’t seen before, a green space, grass and trees and a small fountain in the middle and behind that a graceful columned structure that was the antithesis of every other building in the city, open and airy, white marble with insets of colored stones in repeating patterns like those in the cloth the women wore. Three women were dancing on the grass, three women drummers squatted beside the fountain, along with a flute player and a woman crouched over an angular stringed instrument, plucking at it with a metal pick like a teardrop. A ninth woman sat cross-legged beside the walkway, murmuring blessings as passersby dropped coins in the wooden bowl in front of her. When Rose got close enough, she saw that the woman was blind. There were terrible scars on her face and one hand was mutilated, three quarters cut away, with only the little finger and a stub of thumb remaining.
The blind woman lifted her head as Rose walked past. “I am smelling blood,” she cried out. “I am smelling danger. A demon is walking among us.”
Embarrassed and annoyed, Rose walked faster, muttering to herself. Very impolite. Commenting on visitors to their faces. What about a little friendly hypocrisy, haah? She walked quickly on, constrained to a steady pace because she didn’t want to look like she was running, though she would have run if anyone had done more than stare at her. Everyone around stared at her. Blind bitch, what right had she got, saying things like that. You want demons, lady, look closer to home, haah!
A few doglegs on she stopped, sniffed. Sea air all right, where… ah! that way. Now, Rose, find a place you can go to ground. Then we’ll see, we’ll see…
11
Autumn Rose stood on the walkway and examined the house. Another white card in another brass and glass case.