The huddled mud brick houses lining the dusty street peered menacingly at them. Jace flinched away from the yellow window lights at first, but soon came to find that they were tolerable, if she kept her distance and didn't look directly at them. They raised no blisters on the skin, but gave to everyday objects an unpleasantly sharp appearance, making their muted colors flat and harsh as they threw confusing shadows. Jace took Chess's hand and pressed it reassuringly, but felt no confidence herself. The street grew wider and they passed wide open doorways, with yellow light spilling out in wide bars. Loud voices, raucous or angry, surged out; Jace hurried Chess on. They did not walk close to the lighted buildings but kept well to the center of the street, hastening through the puddles of light as if they were slop spills. They turned a sudden bend and Jace dragged Chess into the shelter of a tall cart's shadow. They had come to the market, lit by dancing torches and thronged by such folk as did not do their business by day. Some, it was true, only preferred to shop in the coolness of evening, but many were there whose transactions would not bear the light of day.
Jace peered out around the corner of the cart. Her eyes widened and her nostrils tightened in horror and disgust. She was crouched behind a butcher's cart, its wood stained with old blood. Even the dark of night had not abated the cloud of flies that buzzed about it. The butcher himself stood tall on the cart's seat, loudly proclaiming the freshness of his wares. Jace swallowed down sickness. Her hand rose to cover her nose and mouth as she drew Chess on.
But now there was no shelter from the flurry of the market. They were caught in the tide of people coming to pick through wares or to set up their own stalls. Jostled by rough-looking strangers attired in the furs and feathers of fellow creatures, they were propelled into the whirl of the market. The invisible push and sway of the crowd took them from stall to mat to cart. Eager merchants held up swatches of cloth, snapped whips over their heads and flapped slabs of smoked fish before them. Jace felt bewildered and sickened by the coarseness of the shouting, by the belittling exchanges between merchant and customer, the bickering over prices and values. Somewhere in this din she must find sustenance for herself and her child. She stopped, forcing the crowd to flow around her. She fumbled with the hawk pendant Vandien had given her, looping the chain about her wrist as she clutched the bird in a damp palm. With dazzled eyes she squinted about for a place to trade it.
Of coins and money she had only the small knowledge that Chess had picked up in the tavern. It seemed a dubious exchange at best, to barter this bit of jewelry for pieces of carved metal that she would then exchange for food. Jace could not fathom the complication of it, and so she decided to bypass it entirely, and trade the hawk directly for whatever it would bring her. Gripping Chess's shoulder, she steered him through the press of the crowd. Each stall was a nightmare and a revelation. Here were chickens, their legs tied together, lying in bedraggled feathers upon a mat. Squealing piglets were caught up and thrust head first into sacks and pressed into the arms of buyers. Here a metalsmith dangled bright earrings set with gaudy stones, there a woman displayed a swirl of scarves on her arm. Past eggs stacked in unstable heaps on mats, past piles of hides both raw and cured, past shadowy folk who urged them to venture closer and see secret and mystic wares, the two tottered on. Jace finally caught sight of a stall hung with herbs both green and dried and festooned with strings of onions and roots. Just past it a gnarled old woman crouched on a mat among heaps of variously withered vegetables.
Jace battled her way to this backwater of the market and then hesitated, torn with indecision. She had only the one item to trade. She wished she had a better idea of its worth. Vandien had held it in high regard, but that gave her no indication of what she should ask for it. Ornaments of cold metal she did not know or desire, but she equated them vaguely with carved wooden beads for a child, or the garlands of sweet herbs the young men sometimes wove into their hair. She decided on the old woman with her heaps of vegetables; not only did she offer a greater variety of what Jace recognized as food, but there was a homely, familiar air to her in the way she crouched on her mat. Her long greying hair hung loose to her shoulders. She wore a simple sleeveless garment that would hang to her feet when she stood but now bunched about her on the mat. Jace was hopeful at the sight of the pale metal bangles on her wrist. Perhaps she favored these metal ornaments.
As soon as she paused before the old woman's mat, she was fixed with eyes as bright as stream pebbles. 'Fresh greens?' the woman creaked hopefully. 'Plump juicy root plants, pulled just this morning? Calms the stomach and soothes the bowels!'
'I wish to trade, yes,' Jace replied artlessly to the woman's chant. 'What will you give me for this?'
She opened her hand and dangled the tiny hawk before the woman, who scowled at it. This was not honest coin! Her old eyes darted suspiciously over Jace's strange garb and pale eyes.
'Don't need no fancy trinkets!' the old woman declared. 'Get along now!'
'Please!' Jace begged in confusion. 'It's all I have. Vandien said we could trade it for food. Please!'
But the old woman wouldn't even look at her. 'Fresh greens!' she cawed hopefully at a passing man.
'Please!' Jace begged again, proffering the tiny hawk. Both hand and voice shook. The old woman folded her lips and shifted on her mat so that Jace and Chess were out of her line of vision. Chess tugged at his mother.
'May I see what you have there?'
The soft voice fell on Jace like warm rain on a dry garden. A young girl leaned on the wooden counter of the herb and onionstring stall. She was smiling at them, her white teeth gleaming in the darkness, a slender hand extended to receive the hawk. Jace breathed out in relief and stepped quickly up to her. The girl's dark eyes widened and then narrowed again as she held the tiny bird aloft so that it hung from its chain. Her free hand pushed thick chestnut hair back from her eyes. She touched her full lips, then pursed them speculatively. 'It's not very big, is it?' she commented in a carefully neutral voice.
Jace shook her head. 'But it's all I have. Please, we have come to trade for food.' 'Why did not you take it to the jeweller's stall, to see what he would give you?'
'I am not familiar with the custom of coins. I would rather do my own trading in my own way.'