by Patty Jansen
Like Geonan Takumar wanted a young girl and her father would have been looking for an opportunity to get an entry into the wealthy and conservative Takumar family. No one in the Endri ever did anything that didn't benefit themselves in one way or another. Sending your wife or daughters to do unpaid work in the hospital was just another way of increasing one's standing.
Around her, the group debated where they were going. Mikandra wanted only a bed and something to eat.
Jocassa said he'd come with her, Dalit said nothing and seemed to go wherever Jocassa went, but the others wanted to go to some other place where apparently there was a party. Maybe one of the other guesthouses, she didn't know.
So the three of them made their way down Market Street. After falling away completely, the wind had again picked up and occasional squalls blew clouds of pink petals from the trees. The wind was oddly warm.
Jocassa peered into the sky, at the orange-tinged clouds that scudded over the city.
"'s gonna rain soon."
Dalit nodded. "Better hurry up."
Even this late at night, the markets were a hive of activity with vendors yelling for attention, people cramming to get the best deals. Under the cover of the huge trees, there were people selling spike-finned fish, people selling strange types of bread, or the most unusual types of fruit.
Others sold fabric and even furniture. There was a barber doing brisk trade combing and plaiting the hair of middle-aged men.
There was clothing in varying styles, fabrics, carpets, cooking pots and utensils. Beautiful glass-stone bowls. Woven cane chairs, engraved mirrors, baked and coloured pavers like she had seen in the mosaics being restored in the exchange building. Everything was a riot of colour and nothing like she'd ever seen before. Were these wares locally-made?
Who again in Miran said that Barresh produced nothing?
While they walked through the crowded aisles, many people greeted Jocassa with handshakes and claps on shoulders. He talked a lot, and laughed a lot and introduced her as Eydrina to a lot of merchants, some local, some Kedrasi or Damarcian. A stocky Coldi woman behind a food stall gave her an icy stare after having smiled to Jocassa. Her stall boasted a large vat of smoking oil in which she and a few helpers, most of them Indrahui, fried a variety of unidentified things. The smell was heavenly and the stall was doing a brisk trade from all different kinds of people.
At this stall, Jocassa bought a dish wrapped in folded leaves. There were chunks of something in a sauce with red strips of some vegetable over the top. The sauce was dark brown and smelled of strong spices.
"It's fish," he said and tucked in.
Even so, Mikandra couldn't bring herself to buy from a Coldi vendor. She bought a couple of rolls of fish bread at a much less busy vendor, because they were cheap, she gave as excuse.
It was true, they were cheap, but tasted doughy and she had to work hard in trying to swallow the bread. They were nothing like Rosep's freshly-baked bread. Or Gillay's. Or the bread at the Guild headquarters.
"I should have warned you that the fish bread is no good," Dalit said while the three of them sat eating on a bench between the trees, overlooking the square. "To bake the bread requires an oven and you can't make fires in Barresh." He was still squinting at her and by now she wondered how much he saw and if poor eyesight was the reason he'd been discharged by the army.
Mikandra vaguely remembered something about not being able to make fires in Barresh. "Because of the oil from those trees—whatever they are called." Megon trees, that was it. They exuded a fine mist of oil that settled on everything and made it pretty much impossible to light a fire.
"Yes, the oil gets sold to makers of aircraft and firefighters." Dalit licked his fingers. "There's a merchant who makes a bit of money doing that."
That left her to wonder how the Coldi woman heated her oil, and where she got the ingredients. If they came from outside, there would be Traders involved, yet she had seen no sign of Traders in all the time she'd been in the city. It seemed to her that if a Trader decided to set up business in Barresh, there would be a great demand. However, those decisions were in the hands of the Trader Guild, because they had to release new licences.
She finished as much of the bread she could stomach and stuffed the last bit into her pocket. "Where do they get all this?"
"What d' youz mean?" Jocassa asked around a mouth full of food.
"All this food, all these things for sale. Where does it come from?"
"Most of it, around here. Other stuff 's imported. There's a lot of foreigners in town. Damarcians want Damarcian stuff. There's not so much Mirani stuff here these days, 'n' whatever th' stalls have, they mostly can' give it away. Most of us don' want Mirani food anymore."
"Barresh is a free market," Dalit said. "There are no restrictions on imports, unlike in Miran." There was a political undertone to his comment and he met Mikandra's eyes while he said this. Fishing what her opinion was.
She was tempted to ask why he cared, and why he was ex-army while he belonged there just as much as she did. He might look like a Nikala worker with his curly hair, but he sure didn't speak like one. A merchant's son?
A spy?
She shivered. This was no time for such thoughts.
"So," Jocassa said while scrunching up the leaves of his food empty parcel. "What about this guy youz s'pposed t' marry?"
Mikandra cringed. Was there no end to his innocent curiosity and his endless ability to recall her lies and repeat them to her at any inopportune moment? She shrugged. "He's old and ugly."
"Old 'n' rich's not so bad. At least youz only need t' keep him occupied fer a bit until he carks it." He laughed at his own joke.
Dalit glared at him. There was an expression in his eyes that chilled her.
Jocassa's laughter faded. He looked away and shrugged. "Oh man, can't you let off?"
"No, I can't." Dalit's voice was intense.
Jocassa sighed and shrugged again.
An uneasy silence followed. Mikandra stared at her hands folded in her lap. She was about to ask if they should perhaps go to the guesthouse so that she could have a bath when she remembered that she had no spare clothes and no soap or towels or any other toiletries and then she was about to propose to go back to the stalls so that she could buy them when Dalit said, "You promised."
Jocassa spread his hands. "It wasn't so easy, right?"
"You promised to bring my mother back." Dalit punctuated each word with anger.
"I gave youz back th' money."
"This isn't about money. It's about my mother's life. They threatened to kill her. My sister is missing. Mother sits inside that house too afraid to set foot outside the door. She needs to leave Miran."
Whoa. Mikandra revised her estimate of Dalit. He might be ex-army, but someone whose family attracted that sort of attention had to be somewhere high up, someone who had fallen foul of the upper command.
Jocassa's shoulders slumped. "I said I's sorry 'n' I meant it. I tried, man, I really did, but th' house is guarded all th' freakin' time. I couldn' even get close enough t' it t' throw a rock into th' yard."
Another uneasy silence.
"I really tried, man. I said so many times. I mean it."
Dalit's face mouth twitched. He did not meet Jocassa's eyes.
After another tense silence, Mikandra asked, "Your mother?"
Jocassa began, "Dalit's pa's a nasty piece of work. His ma din' agree with some of th' stuff that th' council's been doing. She was telling people t' vote against—"
Dalit said, "For once, hold your mouth."
"But I's only explaining."
"And do we know what connections she has?"
Jocassa swallowed visibly. "But Eydrina's only—"
"We don't know. She could be a spy for all I know. As long as my mother is alive, I won't trust anyone with the full story."
Jocassa shrugged again. "Fair enough, man, but give a fellow a break, right?"
Dalit sighed.
A squall of wind blew his hair to one side. A flurry of petals drifted past. There was a rumbling noise in the distance.
Mikandra frowned at the part of the sky she could see. "Was that thunder?" It was an unusual growling sound, different from the echoing rumble of thunder in Miran.
"Sure is," Jocassa said.
Dalit pushed himself to his feet. "Let's go, before we get wet."
In fact, a few big drops already splatted on the pavement.
At the markets, merchants were running around with ropes and sheets of cloth, bringing in exposed wares. More drops of rain fell, big and wet on the pavement, releasing a smell of earth.
A rushing sound came towards them from the dark side of the square. Mikandra thought it was the wind, but Jocassa said, "Uh-oh, run."
The wall of rain hit.
Chapter 17
Mikandra had never seen rain like this before. Water came down in solid sheets. It was as if someone threw buckets of water from the sky.
People ran for cover. A merchant shouted at a woman—his wife?—who was dragging baskets of wares under cover.
Mikandra and Jocassa ran for the relative shelter of the leaning wall that surrounded the Exchange building. Dalit tripped and fell. Mikandra ducked out of her shelter to help him up. Rain pelted on her back and head. Her hair dripped water into her eyes. Within moments, she was soaked to the skin.
Dalit said something, probably thanks but his words were lost in another clap of thunder, this one so close that the flash and the sound arrived at the same time, and the ground trembled with the noise.
They made for the guesthouse at a run. Every time Mikandra thought it couldn't possibly rain any heavier, the rain found new intensities. It was hard to see. Gutters overflowed in huge waterfalls. Now Mikandra understood why each street was shaped like a gutter with a depression in the middle. Water collected in yards and gushed out into the street taking with it a collection of leaves and fallen flowers and discarded food wrappers and other rubbish. The middle of the street turned into a raging torrent. The stairs into the guesthouse had become a water feature and the entrance hid under a waterfall that cascaded from the roof two floors up.
Under the arched entry a number of sodden refugees from the weather stood huddled together. Mikandra wondered if she needed to register as guest, but there was no desk, and Jocassa didn't seem to worry about it. He led her through the hall.
Like many of the buildings she had seen in the city, this one centred around a courtyard, which seemed to be used as a dining area. Sets of mis-matched tables and chairs stood in the rain while their occupants had sought refuge under the overhang of the upstairs gallery. They had dragged some of the tables there, but most people sat on the ground, leaning against the pillars that supported the floor above.
Several of them greeted Jocassa. There were cries of "Pull up a chair." Someone ducked into the rain to pass three chairs into the covered area.
Mikandra sat on the chair a Mirani youth gave her. The seat was wet, but couldn't possibly be any wetter than she was. Something squelched in her pocket. When she checked it, her fingers met a soggy mass. Oh yes, the fish bread. Wonderful.
"What are we waiting for?" Jocassa asked. "Where's th' party?"
Another man said, "Thasep was gonna get supplies, but he's probably got distracted."
"What, youz trusted Thasep with th' money?" another said.
"He offered t' go out."
"Yeah, because all of youz 're afraid of a bit of rain?"
One of the Mirani men went to sit on a table, carrying a battered lute which he proceeded to tune while others talked and laughed. Mikandra wondered if it was polite to ask where the bathroom was.
The lute player launched into a popular folk song about men serving in the army. His playing was moderately competent, but he was so drunk that he didn't remember half the song's lines. She was neither Nikala nor soldier, but even she knew that the line was and I give my life if fate decides, for freedom and for better tides but he sang I give my life for better tides, to serve the man and get free rides.
One or two people thought it was funny.
Then she got it, and felt disgusted.
She was cold and tired, and wondered where she would sleep and if someone could lend her any clothes while these ones dried, but she didn't want to draw attention to herself. In this town, if you were Mirani, you were ex-army, and if you were ex-army, you came here to party.
The lute player meanwhile had started a Mirani ballad. It was a beautiful piece that she had never heard before and would have sounded much better if he hadn't been so drunk.
His mates laughed.
One yelled, "What're youz tryin' t' be, singing that song? All primmed up 'n' noble?"
Another added, "Comb out yer hair 'cause it's gone curly."
The man put down his lute, walked into the rain to the middle of the courtyard while undoing his pony tail and dunked his head in the overflowing fountain. Dripping wet, he smoothed his hair. "This better?"
Everyone laughed.
He went to one of the potted bushes, broken off a slender branch and wove the twigs around his fingers, then snipped off some flowers, stuck them in his "rings". Like the ornate Trader's rings.
The men laughed harder.
He straightened his back, stuck his chin in the air and strutted back to his lute, dripping water, all the while his friends were doubled over in hysterics. He picked up the lute and continued the song, trying to mock a very deep voice and failing miserably.
The giant Thasep entered the courtyard, carrying two bottles. He gave them to the keihu girl who had come in with him, and she plunked both bottles on one of the tables. Several men cheered. One lunged for a bottle and unstoppered it.
The singer put the instrument aside, and, still holding his back straight, bowed before the keihu woman and made a movement like he took a cloak off his shoulders to drape it over hers.
Mikandra's heart thudded. They were making fun of Traders.
Offering the cloak was how Traders asked a partner in marriage. Mikandra had seen it a few times with her friends and had often dreamed of Lihan doing this for her. The official offering of the cloak was usually a pre-arranged occasion and performed before an as-large-as possible crowd for maximum impact. But there were the occasional surprise marriage proposals.
The young woman also straightened her back, falling into her role. The lute player remained bowed, trembling and pleading, still trying to mock a deep voice. The young woman took the pretend-cloak off her shoulders, flung it down and left the courtyard.
The crowd's squeals of laughter hurt her ears.
Mikandra didn't where to look. This was a re-enactment of something that had happened. Iztho had come here to sing. He had offered marriage to a local woman. She had refused. Was it the same woman he had told her he would marry?
Jocassa held a bottle under her nose. The glass was brown and the liquid inside looked slightly darker, but by the oily way in which it stuck to the side of the glass, she knew what was inside.
Mikandra shook her head.
"Ow, c'me on, everybody drinks. Don' spoil th' party. Jus' a bit."
"No, I'd rather not."
"Why not?"
Mikandra grasped for reasons. Because I've seen people drink themselves to death in hospitals? Because when I smell that stuff, I remember old Leitho and his orange eyes and orange piss, and his hallucinations. And I think about how he's probably dead by now But she said, lamely, "I'm not used to it. I . . . never had any."
"Youz never had any? Youz kidding? They don' have it in Bendara? Youz gotta try this. C'me on, pass us a glass." He held out his hand and someone else passed him a chipped glass. He poured—
"Not so much."
—and handed her a good glass full of the bright orange oily brew. "Here ye go."
Mikandra took it from him. It was not entirely a lie that she hadn't had any, but not entirely true either. She had tried the brew, but didn't like how it made her fee
l strange and lightheaded. She had been at one of those parties with her old friends who had all moved onto businesses, quite inappropriate companions for her now they were all considered adults, but she had still hoped to hear news from Lihan in Kedras. It had been a rather awful occasion because one of the boys had been trying to chat her up, and she spent most of the night fending him off. Someone had put a glass of brew in her hands and she was trying to work out how not to embarrass the party's host while drinking as little as possible. Her father would be furious if he found out that she'd been drinking.
That horrible party was about a year ago and she hadn't tried drinking brew since. Nor had she ever been to similar parties again.
By now everyone near her was watching so she could do nothing but take a sip. People cheered. The brew tasted sweet and made the inside of her mouth feel warm. She remembered that feeling. It made the hairs on the back of her arms stand up. As if Father was watching.
Jocassa smiled. "See, there ye go. 's not so bad, is it?"
No, it wasn't so bad. It was kind of naughty. By far the majority of people who drank brew handled it well and did not slide into addiction. Endri drank brew, but mostly men, as it wasn't considered a thing for ladies to do. They might drink a little bit, and giggle a lot afterwards, but not in public places. Father didn't approve of those "tea parties", but Father couldn't see her here. Father might never again look over her shoulder and tell her what to do. She took another sip. As long as she didn't drink too much, right?
The bottle passed further into the courtyard. Jocassa took a big swig from his glass and leaned back in his chair.
"Why would a man want t' be anywhere else but here? We's got all th' good things 'n' none of th' bad things. Ye know, sometimes I jus' need t' go back t' Miran 'cause I forget how good th' life here is."
He took another swig from his glass, closing his eyes.
"Jocassa, that man who was just playing the lute, what was that about?"
He opened his eyes. "Oh, sorry I's already forgotten that youz are new here. 's about this stuck-up Mirani Trader, Iztho Andrahar, youz know him?"