Plain Kate

Rye Baro’s face was impassive. No one else spoke. The inspection stretched and stretched. Daj shifted behind Kate, creaking from knee to knee. “By the Black Lady, Rye,” she said. “Don’t tease the child!”

Rye Baro laughed.“Well, does she not know she is good? Good!” He handed the carving to Daj. “You’ve a gift, Kate Carver. Your hands know things.”

Daj looked at the carving.“Aye, good does not begin it. It’s beautiful,mira. In its own horrid way, of course. There’s craft in those hands.”

“Too much craft,” said Stivo, taking the carving. “Thegadje don’t know craft. They won’t pay for it. It is good, though”—and here he smiled at her, both scorn and peace offering—“little girl.”

“Soon we will see what thegadje have a mind to pay for,” Rye Baro rumbled. “We will press for Toila tomorrow. And there’s that riding colt that you broke without craft, Stivo. Xeri, the one who eats. See if you can sell him before we’re stuck with the feeding of him for the winter.”

“Ah,” said Behjet, coming to his brother Stivo’s rescue. “Xeri’s a good beast at heart. We’ll wash him in the river and comb him till he shines. All of Toila will cover their eyes against his brightness.”

They fell into talking about the horses, and Plain Kate got up quietly and went back to the redvardo, where Taggle was keeping her bedding warm.

And the next day they went to Toila.

SEVEN TOILA

Toila was bigger than Samilae, and had three markets: the market of the animals, the market of the vegetables, and the market of the steps. Which, Drina explained, did not of course sell steps, but was held on the broad steps of the tithe barn, near the river.“It’s a city,” she said as if city were another word for “wonderful.” And she turned a handspring, just because she could. Taggle copied her: gray twist and silver flash.

“It’s a city,” echoed Behjet. “And in a city Roamers must be careful. Remember that, girls. Stay together.”

Behjet and Stivo led the dray colt off down a cobbled alleyway, his hoofbeats thudding off the stone walls of the buildings close at either side. Kate had never seen so much stone. She and Drina seemed small in the middle of it.

“This way,” said Taggle, and sauntered off with a curl in his tail. “They’re selling fish cakes!”

They followed him through little nooks and twists, meeting only narrow-faced saints in niches, guarding nothing. To Kate, so long among the Roamers, the figures she had once carved looked foreign. The girls began to think they were lost. But then the alley turned and spilled through a wooden arch and into the market.

Huge and loud, the market stopped them, gaping. Just in front of them lengths of homespun in russet and ocher and indigo flapped in the wind off the river, tossing little showers of rain, chopping the view into confusing glimpses. Banks of spices. Songbirds screeching in cages. Wheels stacked in a heap. The scorched-metal smell of a smithy, the stink of a tanner. There were stalls and blankets, and barrows and people everywhere. The town’s weizi stabbed upward from the center of the market, like one tree left standing in a shattered forest. Scenes of commerce were carved in its sides.

Drina was pressed close to Kate, her confidence gone. Taggle was perched between Drina’s feet, with his tail straight in the air and his eyes round and shining.

“Move there!” came a voice from behind. A handcart crashed into Kate’s back, crunching into her pack-basket. Plain Kate staggered and the cart spilled tin pitchers and cups clashing across cobbles. The carter glared. “What’s this? A country mouse and a Roamer pickpocket? Taking the air, are we, girls? Seeing the sights? Blocking the road, at any rate.” Plain Kate had stooped to gather the pitchers, but at this she straightened up. She took Drina’s elbow, and they walked off like ladies.

The unpleasant carter had at least helped Drina find her tongue.“The great market of Toila,” she said, “is held only thrice a summer. So it can’t always be so…much.” This seemed to comfort her. They threaded their way into the press and the noise, looking for a place to sell Plain Kate’s carvings.

The girls settled on a place at the bottom of the broad steps—a prime spot neglected by the other sellers because it had recently been favored by some horse. Drina, a horsewoman in her heart, kicked the knobs of dung away with no trace of disgust. Nearby a fiddler with white hair was playing for coin. Plain Kate’s heart jerked, but then the fiddler turned, and she saw his face, and it was not Linay.

“We should have brought a blanket,” said Drina, startling Kate free of her focus on the fiddler. “For your charms.”