Chapter 4
The market bazaar of Aransa was precisely how Detan remembered it. Unfortunately.
Shops were scattered all over the middle level of the city, as if some drunken god of mercers had waved a full bottle about while staggering his way home and wherever the droplets landed a filthy stall had sprung up. Some trades attempted a clumped confederation, but the edges of all of these were loose and fraying.
Produce vendors clustered along the rail that marked the edge of the level, protruding slightly over the level below. When the day was done they hucked the worst of their wares over the edge. Rumor was, some pretty choice mushrooms could be plucked from the shadow of that overhang. Mushrooms which were then resold by the very same purveyors of the fertilizer. Detan shuddered at the thought, or the smell, or really just the whole cursed experience.
Tibs glided through the press of cloth-hawkers and fruit gropers, somehow managing not to bump so much as an elbow with another soul. For his trouble, Detan was jostled and stymied, his feet trampled and his coat wrenched all askew. With a curse, he slapped away the third set of little fingers to go dipping about his pockets, and finally broke through the crowd to the more sedate stalls of the metalmen and woodworkers.
Here, at least, order had been imposed. It seemed even choice real estate wasn’t worth the risk of getting an errant ember in your stall’s awning, and so the hodgepodge of transient sellers stayed far away. Tibs’s sizable head swiveled, seeking the right shop, and Detan left him to it.
He liked to think he had a silver tongue, but these were folk close to the work, real crafters of wood and metal. They didn’t much care for Detan’s style of dealings. Tibs claimed they could smell the Honding blood in him.
Detan doubted they could smell much of anything over Tibs’s own unwashed trousers.
The shop Tibs picked was a good one by the standard of the others. Its paint was fresh and its sign had actual words on it in place of the myriad pictographs its neighbors used. The door hinges didn’t even squeak when Tibs swung them inward. Detan shuffled along behind, hanging back as he let his eyes adjust to the smoky lamplight.
It was smaller than it’d looked from the outside, but then Detan realized that there was a big desk cutting the room in half with a curtain behind it. Workshop adjacent, then. Possibly even a sleeping space. The burly old man behind the counter certainly looked like he might sleep here, he practically had wood shavings for hair.
“Morning, sirs.” The shopkeep adjusted a rather fine looking pair of spectacles and shut the cover on the sketches he’d been muddling through. Nice sketchbook, that. Smooth, pale paper with a creamy hide cover. Detan prepared himself to pay more than the supplies were worth.
“Got a flier needs fixin’,” Tibs said, cutting straight to the quick of it so fast Detan thought the shopkeep would blanch with offense. But no, if anything he looked a mite relieved to get the pleasantries over with.
“Let’s see it then.” He brushed his journal aside, making room for Tibs to place his own sketch on the desk. Tibs set it down and smoothed it out, not too careful, then let it sit there curling back in on itself like a smashed bug.
“Hrm,” the shopkeep said.
“Got the stuff I need?” Tibs prompted.
“Sure, sure. Well, the stuff you need, I got. The stuff you’re asking for won’t be easy.”
Detan blinked at the shopkeeper’s audacity, and Tibs shot a hand back, palm out, telling him to hold still, which was right insulting, because he hadn’t been planning on… oh. He’d taken a half step forward without realizing it.
“The stuff I’m asking for is the stuff I need.”
“This, here, I understand.” The shopkeep traced something on the paper with a finger. “Your flier looks in bad shape, and I can see how you want to patch her up. Looks good, too. Anyway, that’s fine, okay, but your materials take a shift here. You got reinforced leather for the sacks, proper stuff but nothing too fancy, and local wood for the supports and the rails, but all your cabin stuff is just too blasted big. And you’ve designed the whole mess to be removable. I can’t even imagine why you’d want that.
“I’m sorry, sirs, but I can’t recommend this at all. You’re asking for imported materials. They’ll be worth more than the whole thing. And anyway, you don’t need it, yeah? Outfit like this would work well on just a handful of vessels. I can only think of one in the whole city big enough not to be thrown off balance by… ah. I see.”
He stopped, blinked over his glasses at them, screwed his face up tight as he looked at Tibs. Detan couldn’t see Tibs’s expression, but he knew well enough the coot wasn’t good at feigning calm when he’d been had.
Time for Honding blood to stink things up, then.
“You told me these market men were discreet!” He stormed up to Tibs and shook a finger at him. “What will our mistress say, hm? Every mog in Aransa is wagging their lips over the tiniest bit of gossip surrounding her, and you bungle this? By the pits!”
Tibs ducked his head down, looking proper contrite, then dragged his hat off and set to fussing with the brim. Detan spared a sideways glance at the shopkeep and found him pale as a desert bone. Good.
“Now, there’s no need for upset, sirs. I’m happy to work quietly. I just needed to be sure you weren’t overreaching yourselves, you understand. Don’t want to be sticking my nose in anyone’s business, just want to make sure I offer a fair deal to all.”
“Well.” Detan cleared his throat, cracked his neck, and smoothed the front of his shirt. “I suppose that will have to do. When can you have these materials?”
“Day or two, sirs. Last shipment of Valathean wood came across on Mercer Agert’s vessel and, well… It’s in escrow, but should be out soon. I’ll put pressure on it.”
“See that you do.” Detan leaned over and flipped the man’s sketchbook open, then scribbled the name of their inn on a blank sheet. “Have it all sent there when it’s ready.”
“That’s not the most, ah, pleasant of addresses.”
“No.” He slammed the sketchbook shut. “It isn’t.”
“Right. Right. Happy to oblige, sirs. Now, ah, about payment…”
The shopkeep glanced to his book, scrawled upon so carelessly, and Detan had to bite back a grin. Just like that, the shopkeep knew they had grains to spare. And people with grains to spare were often the cheapest of bastards.
“Here.” Detan pulled open Ripka’s pouch and tossed a pinch of silver grains down – worth maybe a quarter of the total. “You’ll get the rest on delivery.”
“Yes, sirs, very good, sirs.” He swept up the bits of metal, and by the time he looked up again Detan and Tibs were gone.
Standing in the dusty street, Detan threw a companionable arm about Tibs’s shoulders and slipped his hand up toward the back of his hat. “Almost fouled the whole thing up, rockbrain.”
Tibs shrugged. “Didn’t see another clean angle. We needed that stuff, just like it was. No hiding it.”
Detan narrowed his eyes, realization dawning bright as the desert sun. “You sly son of a–”
“There are women and children present in this market. Sirra.”
Dean jerked his arm back and rolled his eyes, but didn’t needle him further. Tibs could be a pricklebush about that sort of thing.
“Now.” He rubbed his hands together. “For some paint.”
Picking a direction at random, he strode off in search of a sign that might give him a clue. He felt flush with success, the sun warm on his shoulders, a slight breeze alleviating the greasy texture of his hair. If they could just get this one point settled, then they’d be well on their way to calling Thratia’s airship their own. For Ripka, of course. Or whoever she was.