Plain Kate

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.”

“Objarka, not charms,” Kate corrected. “They’re not magic. I don’t have a blanket, but my sleep roll is in my pack.” She hated to put the clean fur down on the dung-smirched cobbles, but she did. She spaced the carved faces evenly, and when that was done, she looked up. There was no gathered crowd, but a few passersby gave glances, pursing mouths and raising eyebrows. That was enough to tell Kate, who had spent her life in a market, that her work would sell.

Plain Kate felt her mouth widen toward a smile, and to hide it she looked down at the horrible faces of the objarka arrayed before her. “It will be all right,” she said softly, almost to herself.

“I told you!” Drina grinned and flipped over into a backward handspring. Taggle jumped up and rebounded off her boots. The cat flew, twisting through the air like a ribbon of silver, and landed neatly on his feet. Someone cheered. And they did it again.

Drina paused to spread out a begging scarf and kilt up her skirts, and then she and Taggle danced and flipped, bright as a pair of dragonflies. Drina was far from the only tumbler in the market, but Plain Kate would lay money that Taggle was the only and the best tumbling cat in the world. A crowd gathered. Among them, some stopped to look at the objarka. Plain Kate fell into the easy push-pull of haggling, which was like a two-man saw, and for a little while she was as happy as she had ever been.

When Drina stopped dancing, she was flushed and panting. Taggle preened in her arms. Kopeks lay on the scarf at her feet. “Look!” she said. “And you?”

“Three,” Kate told her, and shyly opened her hand, letting Drina see the silver coins her three sales had garnered her.