Heirs of Prophecy - Lisa Smedman [23]
Though Ordulin was smaller than Selgaunt, its streets were more crowded. Nobles rode past in gilded carriages, with servants holding parasols to shade them from the blaze of the sun. Merchants in elaborately patterned hose and quilted doublets walked the streets, their only concession to the muggy heat being their lace-sleeved shirts, designed to allow the non-existent breezes through. The common laborers had no such pretensions. A gang of stonemasons setting the foundations of a house sweated bare-chested in the heat, while serving women gathering water from a well in the street splashed water onto their reddened faces and bare arms.
High overhead, the tressym wheeled and circled, occasionally disappearing from sight behind a building. So far, no one had noticed her, perhaps thinking her a hawk or an eagle. Larajin hoped it stayed that way.
Throughout the five-day journey to Ordulin, Larajin had remained in the crimson vestments of Sune, but now she wore what she thought of as her "adventuring garb": serviceable boots, her trouser-skirt, and a lightweight shirt. She still wore the crimson scarf of Sune in her hair, however, and the brass heart hung from her wrist. She might be trying to look nondescript, to blend in, but she would not forsake her devotions to the goddesses-both of them.
As she walked along, Larajin's ears were filled with the noise of the streets: the clatter of carriage wheels on cobblestones, the calls of merchants from their shops, and the clip-clop of horse's hooves. She stopped to ask a driver who was lounging on his carriage, waiting for his master, tjie way to Thread Street, the four-block-long collection of tailor's shops where Habrith's friend had his shop. The driver pointed at the next street and indicated she should turn the corner to the right. Thanking him, Larajin walked in that direction.
As she drew closer to the corner, she could hear a commotion. There was laughter and shouting… and the sound of heavy thuds and breaking glass.
Rounding the corner, she saw a knot of people at the side of the road, in front of one of the tailor shops. Its window had been smashed, and a burly man was kicking the front door with a heavy boot. The door crashed open, and the crowd surged inside. A moment later, several heavy bolts of cloth came flying out through the broken window. Laughing, the people outside scooped them up and staggered away down the street, carrying as many as they could under their arms. In front of the shop, two women each grabbed an end of the same bolt of cloth-a green fabric heavily embroidered with the outline of gold leaves-and began squabbling over it like a pair of angry chickens.
Shocked, Larajin realized these people were looting the shop. She looked around, searching for the city watch. She spotted three of them just up the street, lounging on
their horses. Not one of the chain-mailed guards made a move for the bow at his pommel, however, or for the mace that hung from his belt. Instead one pointed at the looters, and the other two chuckled.
As she skirted around the mob, crossing to the other side of the road, Larajin noticed a symbol, painted on the door of the looted shop in a blaze of red: a vertical oval, with triangles jutting out of the top of it, like a face with horns. She wondered what it signified. Surely not a symbol of disease, with all of those people so willingly entering the shop. Perhaps the tailor had been convicted of a crime, and this was his punishment?
From inside the shop came the sound of blows and grunts of pain. Larajin hesitated, wondering if she should intervene, then she reminded herself that this was not her quarrel-that she was a stranger in Ordulin with trouble enough of her own. She didn't need to go shouldering someone else's burden, especially if the recipient of the mob's wrath was a criminal. Wincing, she tore herself