by Sharon Shinn
Next she had to have at least one change of clothes, a sleeping mat, and a carrying bag. She knew she wouldn’t find what she needed in the shop district, since most of these merchants catered to the wealthy. But since she had to travel past the shops to get to the Plaza of Women, she let herself idle as she strolled by the open storefronts and eyed the merchandise inside.
The shops were like a beggar’s children, crowded shoulder to shoulder along the sidewalks and shouting for the attention of the rich passersby. Most were about the same size, maybe thirty feet by thirty feet on the bottom story, and built of a sandy brick or mortared stone. Most of them featured a second story—sometimes a third—where the owners lived. Almost every shop had a colorful awning that stretched from the front window to the edge of the street, so that even on rainy days, patrons could travel a whole block and not feel a drop.
Boys and girls, young men and young women, stood in the doorways or perched on the sills of the open windows and called out to the steady stream of traffic. Fine wool! Fine silk! Best prices in the city! Or, Shoes made of the softest leather! Fancy boots for men and women! Or, Watches! Bracelets! Rings for your loved ones! Shop here, best quality!
Zoe eyed the fine bracelets, sighed over the apricot silk, but her feet rarely stopped for long. These wares were too dear for her circumstances. On to the Plaza of Women.
In shape and size, it was nearly identical to the Plaza of Men, but there was an entirely different feel to it. Where the Plaza of Men possessed a buzzing kind of energy, a sense that at any point someone might start shouting or jostling or brawling, the Plaza of Women was at once more purposeful and more playful. First, there was more commerce—this was the place everyone came when they needed an item and couldn’t afford shop prices—so there were dozens of little kiosks crammed together, selling cheap fabric, secondhand clothing, and worn but serviceable shoes.
Second, there was more camaraderie. Mothers and daughters strolled through the marketplace together, picking out flowers for a dinner party or a family wedding; friends and neighbors gossiped as they shopped, and vendors and patrons shared stories and recipes and news. There were very few men at the Plaza of Women. Zoe remembered that her father claimed he never felt so out of place as he did there. I’m too big, too loud, too awkward, too mute. How is it that women always know what to say to each other? But it had been the place that Zoe and her mother most liked to visit together, back when her mother was alive.
And that had been more than twelve years ago . . .
Zoe shook her head and began a slow, pleasurable stroll around the Plaza. It was Quinncoru, and before long it would be Quinnahunti; she could probably make do with a couple of pairs of lightweight trousers, two or three tops, and an overrobe in some neutral color. She spent a long time picking through an assortment tumbled together on three short tables, holding the items up to her neck or her waist to see how they would fall, debating how practical each piece was. Would the dye run out the first time she washed the black trousers in the cold waters of the Marisi River? Could she wear the loose blue trousers with both the pink tunic and the cropped red top? Should she choose the sensible overrobe of gray or the prettier one in patterned blue?
In the end, she was only a little frivolous, buying just one item that wasn’t eminently practical. The shirred, close-fitting top of purple silk was not the sort of thing she would wear as she made camp on the river flats, yet it was so pretty and so cheerful that she could not pass it by. She supposed that, after the nineday she had just had, she deserved to buy something simply because it made her happy.
Or perhaps she was still operating under the blessing of surprise.
A sleeping mat, a blanket, and a carrying sack were much quicker purchases to make, and then she paused at food booths to pick up staples that would last a couple of days. She didn’t have cooking utensils, so she had to buy ready-made meals—bread, nut butter, strips of dried meat, and a bag of apples.
And, again on impulse, a bag of sugared candies, flavored with almond and citrus. Zoe popped one in her mouth before the vendor had even tendered her change. She couldn’t remember the last thing that had tasted so good.
That final purchase completed, she made one last circuit in case something else caught her eye. A sight claimed her attention; she came to such an abrupt halt that two women bumped into her. She apologized, then stepped out of the way of pedestrian traffic, still staring.
She had forgotten about the blind seers.
There were three of them, all women of indeterminate age—sisters as they claimed, maybe, or possibly an aunt and her nieces—younger women replacing the older ones as the generations turned over and no one could tell the difference. They were all large-boned and soft-skinned, with dark and rather ragged hair curling around their moon faces. They sat on a little dais at the center of the Plaza, their backs to each other so that they formed a sort of triangle. Yet there was enough space around each of them that they could have low-voiced, private conversations with clients, and none of the others would overhear.
It was said that the three of them knew everything about everyone who lived in Chialto. You could ask any question and receive the true answer. Is this man honest? Is this woman faithful? Who bought the house that used to belong to my uncle? It was not that they had any occult powers to divine such matters; it was that all information regarding the workings of the city inevitably passed through their hands. You could ask a question and pay for the answer with gold—or with information the seers did not already possess. They traded in knowledge, and they were the richest women in Chialto.
Zoe stood for a long time, watching the seer who was most visible to her. The woman’s smooth face could have belonged to a thirty-year-old or a sixty-year-old; her blank eyes were rolled back just a little as she listened to whatever story a well-dressed matron whispered in her ear. The seer nodded slightly every time the woman paused for breath. At the end of their session, Zoe saw the seer hand back the coin that the customer had deposited in her hand. Apparently whatever information the customer had had to share was worth the knowledge she had come to seek out.
After the matron descended from the dais, no new customer immediately came forward, ready to hear or relate news. Zoe took a step forward, hesitated, stepped back. There was certainly a great deal she would like to know, and she had enough money to buy almost any information. But she was not quite ready yet to sort through what she needed to learn and what no longer mattered. And she was still too tired, too sad, too lost to try to figure out how to piece her life back together. The three seers would be here the next day, or the next year, or whenever Zoe was ready to ask her questions. She would come back then.
The afternoon was fairly far advanced as Zoe wended her way back toward the river flats. A rising wind turned the dry air chilly, and she was glad she had invested in the blanket as well as the mat. If it continued to rain, she would have to investigate the possibility of a small tent as well. Something to think about for another day.
Just like yesterday, she was cheered by the sight of the colorful community laid out before her on the stone apron at the river’s edge. Aiming for the same general area where she had slept last night, she handed a few more coppers to the guards, then picked her way carefully past tents and campfires. When she had found the spot—as best as she could figure—she unrolled her mat and set out her bag of candies and waited.
It was nearly sunset before anyone came calling, and then it was a reedy old man, pale-skinned, white-haired, smiling. Instead of wearing trousers and a tunic, he wore an overrobe so long it fell to his ankles; it had been sewn from a garish fabric that had softened over many washes in hard water, but it still looked like the sort of thing few people would choose to own. His smile was wide enough to display several gaps between his teeth.
“Welcome!” he said in a raspy voice. “You’ve come back for a second night.”
“I have,” she said. “I find the river pleasant, and I have no other home to go to
just now.”
“The river is happy to have you back,” he said. “My name is Calvin.”
“I’m Zoe,” she said, not having any reason to hide it. “Are you the one who left me food this morning?”
“My wife,” he said.
She offered him the bag of candies. “May I repay you with something equally delicious, though hardly as nutritious?”
He laughed and happily took two pieces. “No repaying necessary, but I do love sweets,” he said. “Would you like to join us tonight for dinner? We eat simply, but there’s enough to share.”
She offered her bag of apples, lighter by the three she had reserved for herself. “Only if you will let me bring something.”
“Gladly,” he said and waved her to her feet.
She had so few possessions that she just bundled them all into her carrying bag before she stood up. The jingling shawl she tied tightly around her shoulders, since it was the thing she could least afford to lose. “The nights can be so chilly,” she explained, and he nodded.
“My wife wraps herself in piles of covers so deep I can’t even tell if she’s there under all the layers,” he said. “Some days I wonder if she’s crept away to amuse herself with a handsome young man, while I make conversation with a stack of blankets!”
His silly words were so charmingly uttered that Zoe actually laughed aloud.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had done that.
Calvin’s wife was not, in fact, swathed in blankets, though she was snugly wrapped in a heavyweight wool robe that covered a worn and faded set of clothing. She was as thin as Calvin, with a seamed brown face and black hair so short it was scarcely more than a fuzz of color along her scalp. She moved efficiently through a campsite that had the faintest air of permanence about it, as if it had been set up in this exact same spot for years, though it was obvious it could be dismantled in minutes. The low tent, barely big enough to hold two people, was stretched over a couple of sleeping mats. Two enormous soft-sided bags were half-open at the front of the tent—one holding Calvin’s possessions, Zoe guessed, and one holding his wife’s. A small round brazier was surrounded by a tattered collection of seating mats. None of those items was so valuable that it could not be abandoned if it became necessary to leave camp very quickly, or if it was stolen. Calvin and his wife had accumulated a few luxuries, but it was clear they were not weighed down by them. Zoe guessed there was nothing here they could not walk away from with very little regret.
“Zoe, my wife, Annova,” Calvin introduced them. “Annova, our guest has brought apples to complete our meal.”
Annova looked over and smiled, but did not step away from the brazier, whose small grill was crammed with two pots and a few potatoes, baking over the heat. “Excellent. I have cinnamon, so we can flavor them.”
Her accent wasn’t from any of the regions Zoe was familiar with—Chialto, the northern provinces, or the far western villages. She guessed Annova was from one of the southern cities near the ocean where the Marisi ended its journey. “Thank you for inviting me to share your meal,” she said.
Calvin stepped closer to his wife and tapped her lips. She opened her mouth and he dropped the second piece of candy onto her tongue. “Zoe brought us another gift,” he said. “Isn’t that delicious?”
Annova closed her eyes in a mock swoon. “Very! You must have been at the Plaza of Women today. I know the booth where you bought this.”
Zoe felt herself smiling again, just a little. “I was. I bought a lot of things there, but the candy might be my favorite.”
Calvin waved his hands toward the mats on the ground. “Sit, sit, sit! Everything is almost ready. Did you bring your own cup with you?”
“I don’t have one.”
Annova gave Calvin a reproving look. “We have extras,” she said. “But it is common, along the flats, for people to carry their own.”
Because there was so little room for anything except the barest necessities. Because it would be rare for people to have enough for anyone but themselves. “I’ll get one tomorrow,” Zoe said.
Soon enough they were all seated and sipping water. Annova served a simple dish of seasoned rice sparsely flavored with small chunks of meat. Potatoes and spiced apples completed the menu.
“What impulse brings you to the city, Zoe?” Calvin asked when they had all had a few bites and complimented the cook. “And when did you arrive?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” she said. And I did not come here on any whim of my own. Impossible to say that, of course. “It seemed like time to look for a new life. My father died a little more than a nineday ago, and the grief seemed too great back in the house I shared with him.”
Annova nodded sympathetically. “It is best to turn your back on tears,” she said, “once you have shed enough of them.”
“Still, to arrive in the city without a plan—and with no friends to advise you—that can be a tricky road,” Calvin said. “You are lucky you found your way to the river. There are parts of the city that are much more dangerous for a young woman alone.”
“Not luck so much as memory,” Zoe said. “My father and I lived in Chialto years ago. Part of that time we spent down here on the flats.”
That intrigued Calvin. “How long ago? Perhaps I remember you from that time.”
She hesitated, but, really, would it matter if this man remembered her—or her father? Would it matter if he knew she was Zoe Ardelay? Did he have acquaintances up at the palace to whom he could sell the information? Would he even recognize the Ardelay name, if she was foolish enough to pronounce it?
“Ten years ago,” she said.
He shook his head. “No, that was before we took up residence on the flats.”
She didn’t ask what reversal of fortune brought them here; she didn’t want to be asked for her own story in return.
“I was only thirteen then,” she said. “I thought it was a marvelous place.”
Calvin laughed. “I still believe that, and I’m no child.”
“But now that I’m here,” she said, “I’m not sure what to do next.” She gestured at the dented metal plate lent by her hosts. “How do I earn enough money to eat? I don’t require much, but I must live on something.”
Calvin nodded. “Some of the people on the flats go begging—you’ll see them at the Plazas, or the shop district, or along the Cinque. But many of them work. Some travel with the caravans for a season or two before returning here until their money runs out again. Some take day jobs at the warehouses. Some work at the factories south of the city. The Dochenzas have been hiring a lot of people to build those new smoker coaches you might have seen driving around.”
Zoe took the last bite of her rice. “You mean some of those vehicles that don’t need horses?” she said. “I saw some on the Cinque. I’d be afraid to ride in such a thing.”
“I’m not,” Calvin said, so earnestly that both Zoe and Annova laughed. “I’m not! I ride one every chance I get. Stick my head out the window and grin like a fool.”
“I think they seem dangerous,” Annova said. “There was an explosion not long ago at the well where they get their gas. One of these days there will be an explosion in one of those factories, too, just wait and see.”
“I don’t think factory work is for me,” Zoe said.
“Sometimes there are jobs in the shops,” Annova said. “You have a cultured voice and a soft way about you. You could probably hire on as a salesgirl.”
“I would have thought those positions were taken by family.”
“When there’s family to be had,” Annova said. “When the sons and daughters don’t run off, wanting a more exciting life.”
“I might be able to do that,” Zoe said cautiously. “Work in a shop.” She liked the idea, actually. It sounded friendly and productive. Something that would occupy her mind and her hands so the days didn’t seem so empty.
“Let me know when you’re ready to look for work,” Annova said. “There are one or two p
eople I could introduce you to.”
Zoe felt her smile returning. “I’ll bring you another bag of candies if you find a job for me!”
“Then I hope you want to work soon!”
They finished the meal and parceled out some of the sweets, Calvin taking two at a time and chewing them with exaggerated ecstasy. Annova gathered the dirty dishes and laid them aside, scoffing when Zoe offered to take them to the river to wash.
“I’ll do it tomorrow. Something to make me get up in the morning,” Annova said.
Zoe gestured at the Marisi, just now sparkling with glints of garnet and amethyst as the fading sun scattered it with jewels. “It seems much lower than it did ten years ago,” she said. She remembered that Darien Serlast had complained about drought here in the eastern half of the country, though they’d always had plenty of rain in Zoe’s village. “Smaller.”
Calvin nodded. “It is. You see that dip there, along the river’s edge?” There was a shelf that dropped a couple of feet below the flats where most of the squatters were camped. Zoe nodded. “That’s how high the river used to be on an ordinary day. Of course, when it flooded, this whole area would be underwater.”
“I can remember a night or two when we all had to pack up and scramble out with barely an hour’s notice,” Annova put in. “Sometimes the water kept rising, anyway—one summer it covered the streets a half mile inland.”
“You never saw such a mess when the water went down,” Calvin said. “Of course, we didn’t lose anything. We didn’t have anything to lose.”
“Did everybody down here get out safely?” Zoe asked.
“Oh, we had plenty of warning,” Calvin said. “It had been raining the whole quintile, so everyone was watching the river, to see what it would do.”
Annova turned to him. “And none of us were here the second time it flooded, remember? They’d already cleared us out.”
“That’s right, I’d forgotten.”
“Cleared you out? Who did? Why?” Zoe asked.