Tourists were at something of a premium these days. The harbor traffic, which was all that kept the city alive and reasonably prosperous, provided some custom for the inns, but nothing like what they had been accustomed to before the troubles began. Some hostelries had simply converted themselves into apartment blocks serving those displaced by the nomad invasions or the discord in the countryside, but it was still a buyers' market for short-term accommodations. Which was how Zaranda was able to keep herself and her comrades quartered in reasonable comfort despite the state of her finances, which were eroding like an arroyo bank in a heavy rain.
Preoccupation and a poor night's sleep dragged Zaranda's head forward and down from its customary proud carriage. As a result, she almost bumped into a man who came boiling out of a gate to her left. Or rather, smoking; he was trailing smoke and sparks from hair and clothing, and caterwauling like a man whose hair and clothes were on fire.
He pitched himself headfirst into a stone horse trough, raising a substantial hiss of steam and an even more substantial reek.
"What seems to be the problem?" Zaranda asked mildly as he reared up with algae hanging about his face and ears like green dreadlocks.
He pointed a dripping, still-steaming arm back through the gate into the stableyard. "Th-that witch," he said, sputtering spray. "She put fire to me."
Zaranda felt her brows knit in a frown. Her own ex-perience told her "witch" usually referred to a female, and in no complimentary way. Best move along right now, the cautionary voice within her said. You've an appointment to keep, and this affair is none of yours.
She hitched her belt around to bring Crackletongue's hilt more closely to hand. "What witch?" she asked.
Faces were beginning to poke out of windows. Some were sleep-blurred and reluctant, others open and awake, but all showed some degree of eagerness. This was a dis-trict of honest working folk who rose and set with the sun, as well as others who lived to different schedules, morally and chronologically, but Zazesspurians of all stripes relished little more than a good civic disturbance.
A small but brisk disturbance brewed in the stable-yard. Angry voices muttered. There came thumps and foot-scuffles and a squall like an angry badger. Then into the alley came a knot of rough-hand laborers and stable-boys, dragging with them what appeared to be an animated bundle of pale sticks and dirty burlap. The bundle was kicking and flailing and emitting the angry noise.
As they cleared the open gate, there was a sharp crack!, a fat blue spark, and a smell of ozone. At the same instant the whine resolved itself into "... let me go!" The bundle's captors instantly obeyed, with yelps of dismay.
"What," Zaranda asked mildly, "is going on?"
A gap-toothed stableboy wearing a badly stitched leather hood was waving his hands in the air as if to cool them. "The creature shocked us!"
The creature in question reached a thin, dirty hand to part tentacles of dirty red hair. An amber eye peered forth from a grimy, snub-nosed face. It took in Zaranda with a wild adolescent mix of defiance, hope, and fear.
"Why were you holding, um, her in the first place?" asked Zaranda, concluding mainly from intuition that the captive was female. She made her hand slide along her belt away from the saber's hilt. She felt she had lost points yesterday by drawing blade on Earl Ravenak's earnest young ravers. Surely she could handle a ran-dom handful of louts without recourse to arms. Particu-larly since this is no business of yours.
"She witched Zoltan!" another lout exclaimed. He was a pinch-faced lad with curly, dirty blond hair and soiled apron, who was waving a butter paddle with as much menace as such an implement could muster. Unlike most of the others, who wore the blue and green of the Hostlers & Stablehands Guild, he had a green and brown rag knotted about one skinny biceps, signifying his affiliation with the Taverners, Innkeepers, & Provisioners.
"She's always up to tricks," a third said. "She soured a pail of cream Luko was carrying to the buttery of Bus-tamante's Excellent Hostelry."
"I did not," the redheaded girl said heatedly. She was even dirtier than her tormentors, Zaranda noted. "At, least, I don't think I did."
"Did too!" blond Luko declared, brandishing his pad-dle for emphasis. "And now she set Zoltan all aflame."
"He didn't look all aflame to me when he hit the horse trough," Zaranda said. "More smoldering around the edges."
"She made me get all tingly all over my body!" Zoltan announced. The way the slime-tendrils hung down over his ears and between his wildly rolling eyes made him re-semble some kind of exotic and unsavory sea creature that had crawled up the pilings in the harbor. "Then my hair caught fire! And my clothes, too. I was burning up!"
Zaranda stared at him.
He dropped his eyes. "Well," he said, "I was smoking pretty good. Feh." He spat out muck.
"It's time we paid her back for her tricks!" cried somebody from the back of the small mob. The others growled assent—an ugly sound, though without any perceptible move to put it into effect.
"What's your name, girl?" Zaranda asked.
"Scab."
"How attractive. Did you really do that to him?"
She nodded. "I woke up to find him pawing me as I slept in the s-s-straw!" The dam of her defiance burst, and her face flooded with tears.
Beyond her sobbing, the silence in the alley grew even thicker than the fog.
"No, child," Zaranda Star said for what felt like the hundredth time. "I don't need an apprentice. Besides, it's not exactly healthy to be in my vicinity at the best of times, and these are far from that."
Scab stuck out her underlip in a truly impressive pout. Zaranda said nothing. The girl produced a tremor in the projecting lip, and when that elicited no more re-sponse, a shine of moisture appeared in an eye visible between clumps of dirty hair.
They sat on the steps of what had once been a fine residence of green granite blocks, between a pair of stone guardian beasts that had long since weathered to couch-shaped lumps. The building had been converted to a carpet warehouse; the arched doorway at her back was bricked over. Zaranda had her long trouser-clad legs drawn up before her and her arms around her knees, and, still ignoring her companion, gazed off across the Carpet Mart.
The sun was high in the sky. The broad plaza, flagged in yellow sandstone worn to a shiny and treach-erous polish by generations of feet, was dotted with the rug merchants' kiosks, hung like flags with their color-ful wares. Despite the troubles, buyers still flocked to Zazesspur from the north of Faerun to purchase excel-lent Tethyrian wool carpets, as they did to buy the finely finished furniture and cabinetry for which Zaz it-self was famous. Myratma was better known for other textiles; but Zazesspur was the place for rugs.
Of course, the buyers would go back home with lurid tales of having purchased their wares from camelback, from hawk-faced bearded men with flowing robes and headcloths, and would sell them as "Calimshite" rugs. In fact Calimshite silk rugs, though pretty, were infe-rior in craftsmanship and durability to Tethyrian wool carpets; the real gems of the great bazaar in Calimport were silken rugs from far Zakhara—wondrous indeed, if of the nonflying variety, since the Zakharans ex-ported few of their magic carpets willingly. Still, to most of the folk of the Heartlands and farther north, all fine rugs from the South were Calimshite, and that was that, just as Amn and Tethyr were called Empires of the Sands, in spite of not having any sand to speak of. People are like that, and not just on Toril.