Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [134]
But more than the tapered walls or the odd-shaped homes, it was the people of the bazaar themselves who kept Cauvin from feeling comfortable in their midst. Bazaar-folk looked on outsiders as prey, and anyone whose parents and grandparents hadn’t lived within the old walls was an outsider—even a sheep-shite stone-smasher from up on Pyrtanis Street. Besides, Cauvin never had enough money to take advantage of what the bazaar offered those who visited it.
The bazaar was not the market for purchasing a cooking pot or a pair of boots. New or secondhand, ordinary goods could be gotten for less in other quarters, particularly in the Shambles, south of the bazaar, where a handful of merchants sold a steady stream of castoffs. Food was more expensive in the bazaar, too—unless you were an insider or were looking for delicacies.
Bilibot and Eprazian at the Well spoke of hundred-camel caravans and a wharf crowded with merchant ships from ports whose names they couldn’t remember. These days a ten-mule caravan was the start of rumors, and the wharves might stand empty for weeks at a time. Still, when foreign goods arrived—exotic delicacies and luxuries—the bazaar was the place to find them.
Just inside the open arch that funneled traffic from Governor’s Walk into the cobblestone alley that led into the bazaar proper, Cauvin spotted vendors selling dark green eggs that stank of brine, sweet oranges with bloodred pulp, a purple powder from Aurvesh that was so pungent it made his eyes water, and dried lizard feet. Cauvin would sooner catch himself a mangy rat than pay a single padpol for a froggin’ green egg or a lizard foot, but rich folk were different.
And there were rich folk in Sanctuary.
A litter-borne woman in gaudy brocades—almost certainly purchased elsewhere in the bazaar—directed her flock of servants and bearers to shove everyone else aside so she could sample the gods-forsaken eggs.
“Ten padpols each,” the vendor chirped as she ladled up a selection from a bucket at her feet.
“How much for the lot?” The eager woman licked her fingers like a snake.
“Fifty soldats.”
“Pay the man,” she told her purse-bearer.
Fifty soldats, just like that—without even a token round of haggling. Fifty soldats for a sloshing bucket of delicacies a froggin’ dog wouldn’t eat! Give Mina fifty soldats and she could put festival meat on the table every meal for a month.
Cauvin wanted to spit in the bucket as it passed from the vendor to one of the servants, but that would have bought him more than fifty soldats’ worth of trouble with the guards—and separated him from Soldt, who’d taken the opportunity to study the Torch’s map. The dark-dressed man was already off the cobblestones and striding deeper into the bare-dirt bazaar.
Point of fact—Cauvin didn’t need to follow Soldt. The Torch’s stranger had let on that they were looking for a blacksmith’s anvil. There were five blacksmiths in and around Sanctuary. They all knew one another, and Cauvin was close friends with one of them, which meant that Davar’s forge, tucked up against the bazaar’s northern wall, was one of the few places Cauvin could find with ease. He could have taken the lead, or struck out on his own (and gotten to Davar’s forge first, judging from the direction in which Soldt was headed), but it served Cauvin best to stay a half step behind the Torch’s stranger, trying to measure the man.
Soldt was a mystery. Sanctuary was large enough that Cauvin didn’t claim to froggin’ recognize, much less know, everyone he passed, yet between the Hill and the bazaar arch, he’d been hailed several times by familiar faces. Soldt spoke Wrigglie well enough that he couldn’t be a complete stranger to the city’s streets, yet no one had hailed him. No one had even seemed to notice Soldt, which struck Cauvin as froggin’ odd since Soldt was a memorable sort with his brushed-leather cloak and fancy boots.
No point in stealing those froggin’ fancy boots. With their steel studs and catgut laces to keep them snug, they’d clearly been made to fit Soldt