“What did he put in the drink?” I asked of an elderly gentleman in a powdered wig. He peered at me through spectacles perched on the end of his nose with amused scorn.
“Gold,” he said. “Obviously.”
My mouth fell open. “Now that’s what I call stylish,” I said. Judging by the discreetly worded sign over the door, they brought their own gold to be ground on the premises.
“Would you care to sample some?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to pass,” I said. He apparently thought this predictable. Another disdainfully minuscule smile twitched his thin lips.
“Quite,” he remarked, turning away.
In other circumstances, this might have irritated me, but the place was so awash with color and splendor and, well, money, that I couldn’t muster the appropriate indignation. On my right someone was selling ruby-studded hat pins and was making a fortune despite the fact that no one seemed to wear hats. Next to him was a jeweler selling delicate little cloisonné coats of arms filled with garnets, sapphires, and emeralds. It seemed that the buyers ordered them in advance according to the emblem of their house and then wore them on their collars. Another sold decorative badges shaped like flowers, made out of gold and silver wire and set with pearls like spots of dew. On the other side of the street, courtly lords and ladies gathered to watch portraits being painted of their acquaintances, who were dressed regally in fur and heavy gold chains. The jeweler next door was making a mint selling to those who would then have their pictures painted. I had never seen so many diamonds in my life: trays and trays of them in every size, cut, and carat you could imagine.
“Mined in the mountains not ten miles from here,” said the jeweler, handing me a little magnifying lens and a velvet-lined box full of stones the size of buttons. “Cut expressly to the most discerning taste of our most demanding customer. Name the tincture, carat, purity and my staff can deliver what you want to the smallest detail.”
“What I can pay for, more like,” I said, giving him what was supposed to be a matey we’re-all-men-of-the-world kind of grin.
“Indeed,” he said, his obsequiousness curdling a little about the edges.
I wondered vaguely about buying something for Renthrette, but I couldn’t afford even the diamonds you needed the magnifier just to see. I walked away, thinking derisively about Sorrail, who seemed to have bunches of the things lying around and could thus throw necklaces and pendants at her when she stepped into the palace. I remembered getting her a silver chain back in Graycoast and wondered if she still had it. Probably not.
Parked close by was a pair of wagons painted cream, ornamented with a purple trim, and hung with brass and gold fittings. Beside the wagons stood a stall where two men, one dressed in a full, velvet cloak, the other in a buff leather jerkin, sold scented soaps.
“The finest way to cleanse the softest skin,” announced the man in the cloak in a high, nasal drawl. “Release the delicate fragrance of rose petals and jasmine as you bathe. Suffuse yourself with the aroma of luxury as you rinse the cares of the day from your hands. The highest quality natural ingredients made by the best perfumiers. . ”
A cluster of women in taffeta conferred and began opening their purses. Soon they were sniffing admiringly and discussing how these were all the latest colors and featured a new range of shapes. A glance down the street, however, showed me that these two were only a small part of a convoy of such wagons all offering slightly different variations on the same theme, each proprietor attesting to their delicate perfumes, soft bubbles, and a dozen other qualities which left my head spinning. For someone whose approach to soap had been a reluctant encounter with a block of carbolic once a month, this was all pretty strange. But, as Garnet had told me, people here were pretty keen on soap.
Straight in front of me was a trim little stall where a trim little lady was selling trim little chocolate birds with what looked like real feathers in the tail. At first I was merely intrigued, but the elegant crowd who had already purchased her wares and now stood with rhapsodic looks on their faces and little poems of praise on their lips could not be ignored.
“How much?” I drooled.
“One silver piece,” said the girl, with a doubtful look at my attire.
I paused, temporarily stunned. “A piece of silver?” I asked. “For a chocolate pigeon the size of a wren?”
“Vermilion hedge sparrows,” she remarked with dry condescension. “Very rare. There are cheaper ones available from other vendors, but they are of inferior quality.”
“They are indeed,” agreed a lady to my left, who was daintily nibbling on a tiny area of wing tip. She was swathed in courtly, ultramarine satin fringed with lace and studded all over with pearls. Over her heart was a gilt-edged miniature of the king, which she wore as a broach. “Therahlia’s were quite the thing last month, but these are so much finer,” she said, then added amiably, “There is simply no one at her stall these days. It is thought that she will have to leave the market within the week! Ah, well, supply and demand, you know. Look at the detailing around the little creature’s eyes! Superlative.”
“Madame has exquisite taste,” remarked the vendor. “These are specially handcrafted for the more discerning palate. Of course, if yours. .” she began, turning to me.
“I’ll take two,” I said, fishing in my pocket.
“How very extravagant,” said the courtly lady, catching me off guard with an admiring look that was almost erotic.
“I like the finer things in life,” I managed.
“Indeed you do, sir,” said the vendor, all trace of contempt evaporating like spit in a hot pan.
“Aren’t you one of those Outsiders?” the lady asked, now sidling close to me provocatively and giving me a disarmingly direct look. She was a radiant creature with a sultry gaze that belied her pale skin. Large diamonds hung from her earlobes and her hair was gathered up to expose them.
“Well,” I began, nonchalantly biting the head off one of my delicacies. I chewed for no more than a second and then it hit me. “Oh my God!” I spluttered, spitting feathers and chocolate onto the pavement. “What the hell is this?”
“Sparrows dipped in chocolate,” she answered. “I thought you were familiar. .”
“Real sparrows?”
“Naturally,” inserted the vendor indignantly. “Did you expect some kind of substitute?”
“Oh, God,” I repeated, spitting again, and trying to suck up the bits of dried bone and tissue already halfway to my gut.
“Really!” said the courtly lady, backing away from me rapidly, “your behavior is really quite inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate?!” I spluttered between coughs that left dribblings of brown phlegm down my tunic. “Inappropriate? You give me chocolate-covered real dead birds and you think that vomiting them back at you is inappropriate? That is the single nastiest thing that has ever been passed off as food! God, I think I have a teeny piece of beak stuck in my tooth. What the hell are you people thinking?”
“My first instinct,” said the vendor to the lady, “was that he lacked the refinement to appreciate sweetmeats of this quality. . ”
“Mine, too,” agreed the other, whose eyes had frozen over as if caught in a blizzard. “I don’t know why they allow these people in.”
And with that, she stalked pointedly away, though I was too busy hacking up bits of dirt-colored sparrow to take notice of her or the others who were looking me up and down with their noses wrinkled in distaste.
It’s funny how one’s enthusiasm for shopping can be dampened by a mouthful of chocolate-covered bird. The stores, whose excesses had formerly seemed so fresh and sparklingly inviting, a sumptuous feast for the eyes, a glorious display of wealth and good taste, were now merely excesses: grotesque and ridiculous. I traded my second sparrow for a thumbnail-sized tart with what looked like wafer-thin slicings of strawberry on the top. It was a beautiful little thing assembled with the skill of a goldsmith and the eye of a painter, and it tasted of absolutely nothing. I would have thrown it away but it had gone down in one swallow. Odd, really. The way everyone else was nibbling on them and extolling the “simply darling” subtleties of flavor, I began to wonder if I’d gotten a bad one. Maybe I hadn’t paid enough.