“There,” he said gruffly. “You should heal with no problems now.”
“Um…thank you,” Harper murmured uncertainly. “For uh, licking me—I mean healing me! Thank you for healing me.” Her face felt so hot she thought her hair would catch on fire. God, how embarrassing. “I, uh, feel much better now,” she stumbled on, trying to sound casual and failing miserably. “I’m sure I’ll be perfectly all right.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better. Here—I almost forgot.” He pulled out her shoe—apparently he’d been carrying it since he’d lost her to that damn winged snake—and gave it back.
Harper slipped it on.
“How did you find me?” she asked, wanting to change the subject as they left the water tent and started walking again.
He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. I was able to follow the slidy’s path visually and saw it was heading for the market. After I got here, I followed my nose.”
“You what?” Harper frowned. “What are you talking about? You mean you literally sniffed me out?” It seemed impossible but Shad nodded.
“Kindred have a much sharper sense of smell than humans.”
“You do? Okay, well I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that you can pick out my scent in the middle of a huge market filled with alien smells and odors.” She laughed nervously.
“It’s a good thing,” Shad said in a low voice. He cleared his throat. “I would know your sweet scent anywhere, Harper.”
“You…you would?”
For a moment his opalescent eyes held hers, rainbow colors swirling in their depths. Then he nodded and looked away. “Yes.”
“But if—” Harper started to say but he cut her off.
“Come on.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the road. “We have to get to the forger’s tent quickly if we want to get Master Yll-no. He’s the best life-forger in the entire Thieves' Market.”
“Master ‘you’ll know?’” she asked, frowning.
“Yll-no,” Shad corrected her. He frowned. “We’ve lost enough time already. So come on—this way.”
Harper felt confused at his sharp attitude. It was almost like he regretted giving her the compliment about her sweet scent. Then why had he said it in the first place? And why had he bothered to heal her small wounds? What was going on in that enigmatic Kindred head of his?
Having no answers, Harper followed the big Kindred along the green cobblestone road running down the middle of the Market.
What else could she do?
Chapter Eight
Harper stared all around her as they passed through the crowded market. It was amazingly colorful and it seemed everywhere there was something to see. After leaving the water tent, they passed through a long narrow corridor of food vendors, each selling stranger looking food than the last.
Harper saw a basket full of brown, prickly, spiny things almost like sea urchins about as big as her hand. Beside them were smooth, shiny orange pebbles about the size of large marbles.
“Hey—what are those?” she asked, tugging on Shad’s elbow.
He glanced at them briefly.
“Shugga nuts. The prickly ones are unpeeled. The orange ones are peeled. Naturally, they cost less if you peel them yourself but you have to wear special gloves. The spines are poisonous.”
Harper, who had just been putting out a hand to touch the spiny things, drew her fingers back quickly.
“What about those?” she asked, pointing at a display of rainbow colored wedges in red, green, blue, and purple spread out on a wobbly looking table.
The vendor behind the table saw her interest.
“My lady, these are the finest Bleeka-milk cheeses available,” he called eagerly, motioning her over.
“Bleeka?” Harper frowned.
“A type of ruminant common to Juno,” Shad told her. “Looks like a cross between a llama and a dog.”
“A dog?” Harper made a face. The vendor was offering her a sample of a bright blue cheese but the idea of eating anything made from llama-dog milk didn’t sound at all appealing. She’d had enough strange milk to last her a lifetime at the nursing tent, thank you very much.
A stray thought flashed through her head—Hope I got that all out of my system!
Harper pushed the worry away and smiled at the vendor as she shook her head, refusing the sample.
“No thank you,” she murmured.
After that, they passed by what looked like an open-air vegetable stall with some of the strangest produce Harper had ever seen. There was a fruit twice as big as a watermelon with a pale yellow rind and a bright blue inside. It was cut in half, showing the tiny red seeds that dotted its vivid flesh. Beside it were triangular vegetables in an improbable shade of neon green. They looked like tiny pyramids and oozed purple juice.
And then Harper saw something even stranger. To her right, lying in a bin together, were round, dusky black fruits as big as grapefruit and long, crooked stick-like things about the size of her forearm with white, papery skin. Among the other multicolored offerings, the black and white produce really stuck out.
“Those are retich fruit and kren,” Shad told her when she asked. “You shred the retich fruit with a sharp blade and slice the long kren into flat disks. Then you serve the shredded black retich on the white kren slices. It makes a very visually appealing dish. However, I believe it tastes very strongly—like limburger cheese and sauerkraut if I’m remembering correctly.”
“Ugh!” Harper exclaimed. Her stepfather liked limburger cheese—maybe because he didn’t have much sense of smell. It was so awful her mother made him eat it on the back porch and didn’t allow it in the house. As for sauerkraut, Harper had tried it once on a hotdog and she didn’t care for it at all. The idea of combining the two foods sounded disgusting.
Dog’s milk cheese…sauerkraut and limburger fruit…Did they make or grown anything on this planet that was fit to eat?
Stop it Harper, she chided herself. You’re being judgmental again. Remember, they have a whole alien culture you’ve never even heard of—of course it’s going to seem strange and different to you.
But she couldn’t seem to help it—any culture which thought it was okay to kidnap women via flying snakes and feed them sex-milk until their breasts swelled to gargantuan proportions already had at least two strikes against it in her opinion. Under the circumstances, it was damn hard to give Juno and its people the benefit of the doubt.
“Here is something you might find more appealing,” Shad said. He had stopped by a stall where a bored looking girl with pale blue skin was standing over a kind of fire pit, filled with glowing gold and red coals. She held a long black metal rod with a thick wooden cylinder at one end. As Harper watched, she dipped the cylinder into a barrel of pale, cream-colored liquid.
The vendor pulled out the cylinder, now coated in the creamy stuff, and twirled it expertly over the fire pit. She worked quickly, the bored expression never leaving her face. Clearly she did this same monotonous job over and over all day.
To Harper’s surprise, a warm, sweet smell like baking bread and fresh pancakes began to rise. The creamy liquid was evidently a kind of batter. Once it turned golden brown from the heat of the glowing coals, the girl dipped it into a vat of pale pink syrup and then rolled it in a shallow pan of crushed nuts—at least, that was what the crunchy little golden-brown nuggets looked like to Harper.
As they watched, the food vendor tapped the cylinder on a spread piece of blue and white striped paper until the cooked batter slid off. Rapidly, she wrapped it in the paper and handed it to Shad, who paid her by pressing his thumb to a small silver cube.
“Many thanks.” He nodded at the vendor and then handed the crispy, warm cylinder of cooked dough wrapped in the white and blue paper to Harper. “Here,” he said gruffly. “This should taste better than retich and kren would.”
“Thank you.” Just half an hour ago, after puking up the sex-milk, Harper would have sworn she never wanted to eat or drink
anything from this alien world again. But the cylinder of cooked dough—which was about as long as her forearm and as big around as a roll of paper towels—actually smelled and looked appealing.
Tentatively, she took a nibble. The taste was amazing—a cross between French toast and a fresh-baked, buttery croissant. The sweet syrup and crunchy nuggets it was rolled in made the snack sweet and nutty and just a little bit salty too. It seemed to melt in her mouth and soothe her stomach as she ate.
“Mmm…this is really good,” she said, taking another bite and chewing blissfully. “It’s probably got about a million carbs that will go straight to my hips but I don’t even care right now.”
Shad gave her a look from the corner of his eye.
“You always say something like that when I offer you anything sweet.”
For a moment his words startled her—then she remembered about the multiple times he’d tried to rescue her before. It was strange being with someone who was mostly a stranger but who knew her so well.
I guess I’m not a stranger to him, she thought, taking another bite of the sweet dough cylinder. I wonder if he cared for me in any of those other paths or if it’s just business as usual with him?
But though Shad’s words were rough, his actions told a different story. If the big Kindred truly disliked her, would he have shielded her with his body from the awful tongue lashing of the Controller? And would he have gotten angry enough to want to kill her attackers when he rescued her from the nursing tent? Also, would he have bought her the sweet dough cylinder for a treat?
It was confusing—so confusing Harper didn’t know what to do. She settled for answering his statement without commenting on its context.
“Well, I love my curves but I do need to lose a little—that was one of the New Year’s resolutions I was making on the beach when you came and grabbed me,” she said lightly. “In fact, Auntie Bru-bru and her awful son were complaining that I hurt their snake’s tail when he had to carry me.”
She tried to laugh but it came out sounding forced. It was still too soon to joke about the awful nursing tent and what had almost happened there, Harper decided.
Shad shook his head. “I don’t know where you got the idea that you need to be thinner,” he growled. “You’re perfect just as you are.”
Then he strode ahead quickly, not giving her a chance to answer. Harper had to nearly run to keep up with him but his words echoed in her head. Perfect just as you are… Was he serious? And why would he say such a thing?
There didn’t seem to be any answers so she trotted along behind him, admiring the sights of the market as she finished the hollow cylinder of dough.
Soon they passed through a long row of cloth vendors, with colorful squares of every kind of fabric stretched from poles outside their stalls. Some looked like silk, some like fur, some like nothing Harper had ever seen before.
One in particular caught her attention—a piece of fabric which appeared to be made out of exotic, rainbow colored porcupine quills. The quills were long and sharp, shading from deep indigo at their bases to green, purple, and red along their shafts, ending at last with orange and pale yellow at the very tips. The effect was colorful but it certainly didn’t look very comfortable. How could you use a fabric that pricked you painfully every time you touched it?
But when she ran her fingertips over it very lightly, she found that the “quills” were as soft as rose petals. In fact, the blanket smelled a little like roses or some other kind of flowers too. Leaning closer, Harper pressed the side of her face to the fabric, inhaling the fragrance.
Mmm—really nice! It was amazing that something which looked so forbidding could be so inviting once you got close. Speculatively, she looked at Shad. Could the big Kindred be the same? Prickly on the outside but sweet underneath? If so, she wished he would show his sweet side more openly. It would be nice if he’d talk to her a little and hold her hand willingly instead of being so gruff all the time.
Suddenly a dark green face with wide yellow eyes popped up from behind the porcupine quilt.
“You like, beautiful lady? You like the cloth of thorns? The royal fabric?” a person who was apparently the vendor for this stall demanded. “You must like, for you have touched it. Now it is only for you.”
“Oh, uh…” Harper backed away quickly. “Sure. It’s…very nice. Surprisingly soft.”
“Soft only for you, fine lady! Only five hundred credits. You pay now—I wrap it up.”
“No, thank you.” Harper wasn’t sure about the monetary conversion but five hundred credits sounded like a lot of cash. Plus, Shad was the one with the magic thumbprint for paying—not her.
But the vendor wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“Five hundred too much? For a beautiful lady like you, I knock it down to four hundred,” he exclaimed. He had pulled on a pair of elaborate gloves which reached up to his elbows and was already unpinning the rainbow porcupine fabric from its pegs. “You touched it, so now it is yours. You pay—I wrap it up!”
“What? No! No, I don’t care how much it costs—I don’t want it,” Harper edged away from him. She looked to Shad to see what the big Kindred would say but he was striding ahead, almost out of sight further up the green cobblestone road.
“Yes!” the vendor insisted. “See—I wrap it up for you!” He folded the porcupine fabric and put it in a thin cloth bag. “Just for you. You tell me what you want to pay.”
“I don’t want to pay anything—I don’t want it!” Harper could see that her words weren’t getting through to him. She began to walk quickly away but the vendor followed her.
“You want!” he insisted. “A beautiful lady like you must need the royal fabric! And already you touched it so it is yours! It will behave for no one else.”
Talk about a hard sell! Harper thought distractedly as she hurried away, hoping the vendor would give up. Instead, he kept coming after her.
“You pay,” he was insisting. “You touched it—you pay now!”
“Just because I touched it doesn’t mean I have to buy it!” Harper protested, looking over her shoulder.
“Actually, it does. Or rather, it means I have to buy it for you,” a familiar voice growled in her ear.
“Shad?” She skittered to a stop, almost running into his broad chest.
“Is this lady your woman?” The cloth merchant had caught up with them, the rainbow porcupine quilt wrapped in a protective bundle under his arm.
“She is,” Shad said gravely. “Did you say that she touched that—the royal fabric?”
The vendor nodded his dark head eagerly.
“Indeed yes—the cloth of thorns. Once it touches the skin of a beautiful woman it refuses the touch of all others.” He looked at Harper reproachfully. “So you see, my lady, it truly cannot be for anyone else.” He held the rainbow bundle out to Harper who drew away quickly.
“Touch it,” Shad said to her.
“What? Why?” she demanded.
“To prove the fabric really is attuned to you.” He nodded at the prickly-looking bundle again. “Go on—touch it.”
Reluctantly, Harper put out a single finger to touch the fabric. She was halfway convinced that she would be pricked this time. Instead, the harsh-looking spikes twined caressingly around her fingers, almost as though they had a life of their own.
“Very nice,” Shad murmured. “And now I’ll try.”
He put out a hand to touch the rainbow daggers and the fabric actually hissed at him. Harper couldn’t believe it.
“What in the world?” she demanded. “Why would it do that? And how did it do that? Is it alive?”
“Semi-sentient.” Shad withdrew his hand. “The merchant is right—it has imprinted on you, Harper. It will resist the touch of anyone’s hand but yours.”
“But…that’s crazy.” Harper shook her head. “Who ever heard of living fabric?”
“Actually, the Kindred have had something like it for centuries,” Shad told her. “It’s a semi-s
entient garment called a tharp which imprints on a single owner. But a tharp can become many different garments. I don’t think the cloth of thorns can be cut or sewn to change its shape in any way.”
“It is most often used as a cloak, good sir,” the merchant said quickly. He had tucked the rainbow fabric, wrapped in a protective covering, back under his arm and he was still wearing the long gloves he’d used to handle it earlier, Harper saw. “When your lovely lady wears it, nothing can harm her. It will be as strong as plasti-steel armor, repelling a knife or sword—even the blast of a plasma rifle cannot penetrate it. Yet to her, it will feel as soft as flower petals caressing her skin.”
“Most intriguing.” Shad nodded thoughtfully.
“Is it true?” Harper asked doubtfully. It was obvious the rainbow porcupine fabric would be protective. But was it really that strong?
“Yes, if I am remembering correctly, it is.” Shad nodded again. “Actually, this is a good thing, Harper. Just think if you’d been wearing a cloak made of cloth of thorns earlier—the slidy would never have been able to grab you.”
“Well, that’s true,” Harper admitted reluctantly. “But it’s going to make me awfully conspicuous if I wear that.” She nodded at the sparkling rainbow fabric. “And I thought we were trying to keep a low profile.”
“Its bright colors warn others away, my lady,” the merchant said earnestly. “It is why the cloth of thorns is also known as the royal fabric. The ones who wear it are important people. Wealthy royals from distant systems who are to be seen but not touched.”
“And I believe you offered to sell it to Harper for four hundred credits?” Shad raised an eyebrow. “It would seem that such a valuable and protective item would be worth far more. Why the reduced rate?”
The merchant shuffled his feet uneasily.
“This particular cloth of thorns is…somewhat bad-tempered,” he admitted at last. “It has bitten and pricked me more times than I can count. At last I hung it outside as a punishment—hoping that it would take a liking to someone—anyone. I will be pleased to get rid of it.”
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