He plodded along beside Jace unresistingly. He spared a single glance for the horse, who didn't comprehend his freedom. He was grazing quietly on the grass in the alley. His tail gave a long, slow switch.
As soon as Vandien had left them the night before, Jace had brought him straight back to the hovel. They had nibbled dry bread together and huddled in the hut, talking little but comforting one another. When the dawn began to poison the night sky, they had hastened within, to shut the door and stuff the cloak into the crack. At least now we know how long the darkness will last in this world,' Jace had told him.
In spite of last night's vigil, neither really trusted the darkness of this world. The very fact that it could be eaten by the day made it a treacherous thing, not the kind eternal dusk of home, but a turncoat friend that would lure them from shelter to betray them. 'First we shall go to the market,' Jace was saying to him. 'Then we will go to the Gate.' He could hear the light tremor of her voice and knew she was telling her plans aloud to make them more firm in her own mind. Chess cast his mind back to home and market time. He frowned in the hot darkness as he trudged along. It seemed so long ago; memories of that time seemed foreign and hazy, as if dust-covered. He remembered the market meadow by the darkly flowing river and the high calls of farmers greeting one another as they converged there. The rush baskets strapped on their backs were heaped with the specialties of their farms. Kallen, his uncle, would spread out a woven grass mat at his regular place, and from his deep basket he would spill a heap of ripe red quorts, their skins as hard as tree bark. Always he saved the largest and sweetest one for Chess. His big thumb would pop a hole in the skin, and he would hand it to him. Chess would sit on his own mat, sucking the cool juice and soft pulp from the quort as he tended to trading. Heaped about him would be the bundled produce of their farm; radishes, turnips, and rutabagas, their roots scrubbed to gleaming and their leaves crisp and green. The produce left on the mat at the end of market time, Chess would press upon their friends, laughing at their mock refusals and receiving from them their own excess. Market time was a time of plenty and sharing. The thought of a market, even in this barren world, cheered him. He hurried to match Jace's stride.
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.