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Lin sighed. She couldn’t lie to Mariam, who knew she always, always returned to see how her patients had responded to her care. “I won’t be going back,” she said. “Mayesh brought me there because they were desperate. But Prince Conor has been clear that I cannot return.”
“Because you’re Ashkar?” Mariam looked as if she’d been slapped. Lin hurried to reassure her, hating that she could not be more honest. But to tell Mariam that the Prince had forbidden Linfrom entering Marivent because hedislikedher would puncture the fantasy that her friend was enjoying so much.
“No, nothing like that, Mari. Because they have their own chirurgeon, and they do not wish to cause him offense.”
“I heard one of my ladies on the Hill talking about him,” said Mariam crossly. “She said he was dreadful—” She broke off as the city clock, which adorned the top of the Windtower, loudly chimed the hour of noon. “Oh, dear. We’ve been here an hour and I haven’t bought anything.”
“Because you keep botheringme,” Lin pointed out. “Didn’t you say you needed rose silk?”
“Yes, for Galena Soussan. It won’t suit her at all, but she’s determined. She’s got her eye on impressing someone at the Festival, but I don’t know who…”
Lin tugged on Mariam’s left braid. “Darling. We can gossip all we want when we get back home. Go get what you need.”
They agreed to meet in an hour’s time at the foot of the Windtower, the great spire that cast its long shadow over Fleshmarket Square. (It was one of the few bits of Castellani architecture, along with Marivent and the roof of the Tully, that Lin could see from her house, rising above the Sault walls. Its shape had always reminded Lin of the silver spice boxes that adorned most Ashkari tables.)
As soon as Mariam had hurried off, Lin reached into the pocket of her blue dress and drew out Petrov’s stone. Approaching the jeweler’s stall, she asked the spectacled man working there whether it would be possible to have it set inexpensively, perhaps into a ring or bracelet?
He took the stone from her, a flicker of what looked like surprise passing over his face. But, “A fine specimen,” was all he said, first raising the stone to the light to peer at it, then measuring it with a pair of engraved calipers. He pronounced it to be a sort of quartz, flawed with what he called “inclusions,” which Lin took to mean the odd shapes inside the stone. It wasn’t worth a great deal,he said, but it was pretty, and he could set it in plain silver for a crown. A brooch, he suggested, would be most practical, and he could do the work now if she was willing to return to the stall in half an hour to retrieve the finished product. Lin agreed, and sallied forth to wander the square while the jewel was set.
Lin loved the weekly market. The great tower with its beautiful clock rose above Fleshmarket Square, and in its shadow stalls and tents sprouted each Sunsday morning like colorful mushrooms. One could find just about anything here: ivory fans and cotton tunics from Hind; black pepper and brilliant feathers from Sayan; dried medicinal herbs and rosewood carvings from Shenzhou; pickled cabbage and rice wine from Geumjoseon; fruit paste,calison,and toys from Sarthe.
The thought of marzipan made Lin’s stomach rumble—a problem very easily addressed in the market. The smells of food filled the air with rich and clashing scents, like a dozen heavily perfumed aristocrats rubbing elbows in a small room: sizzling butter, noodles frying in oil, the spice of chili and the bitter tang of chocolate. The greatest difficulty was in choosingwhatto eat—pork dumplings and candied ginger from Shangan, or rice-cake soup from Geumjoseon? Coconut pancakes from Taprobana or smoked fish from Nyenschantz?
In the end, she decided on a paper cup of honey-sesame sweets, studded with dried raisins. She nibbled on them as she wandered into the part of the market devoted to small animals meant as pets. Silver cages stacked outside a blue tent held sleepy-eyed cats, their engraved metal collars proclaiming names likeRatslayerandMousebane. White-faced monkeys on embroidered leashes darted in and out of the crowd, sometimes tugging on the clothes of passersby and begging with wide eyes. (Lin passed one of them a sesame sweet while the monkey-seller was looking the other way.) Peacocks waddled in enclosures, spreading their fans. Lin paused to visit the abode of a white rat she’d always been fond of. He had pink eyesand a whippet tail, and when let out of his cage, he would crawl up her arm and nuzzle her hair.
“If you want him so bad, you ought to just get him,” grumbled Do-Chi, the grizzled old man who owned the stall. His family had come from Geumjoseon a generation back and, according to him, had always been trainers of small animals, having once owned a hedgehog circus. “Three talents.”
“No chance. My brother would murder me when he gets back. He can’t stand rats.” Lin stroked the rodent’s head through the cage bars with a regretful finger before she bid Do-Chi farewell and moved on to her favorite part of the market—the bookstalls.
Here was all the knowledge in the world—maps of the Gold Roads,Magna Callatis: The Book of Lost Empire, The Book of Roads and Kingdoms, A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, A Journey Beyond the Three Seas, The Mirror of Countries, An Account of Travel to the Five Hindish Kingdoms,andThe Record of a Pilgrimage to Shenzhou in Search of the Law.
There were also the sort of travelogues written by nobles when they returned from time abroad filled with a desire to show off to the populace. Lin stopped to look with some amusement throughthe pages ofThe Admirable Adventures and Strange Fortunes of Signeur Antoine Knivet, Who Went with Dom August Renaudin on His Second Voyage to the Lakshad Sea.It promised to be “A Tale of Sea-Faeries and Seafaring” but Lin knew she had neither time nor attention to devote to it now. She checked, as she always did, for any new medical texts that might have turned up since she’d last come, but found only the anatomies and remedy books she was already familiar with.
On her way back to the jeweler’s stand, Lin looped around the far side of the market to avoid the area where red-and-white-striped flags (red for blood, white for bone) advertised Castellani chirurgeons plying their trade. Armed with knives and pliers they would yank out abscessed teeth and sever gangrenous fingers while blood sprayed and onlookers applauded. Lin hated it; medicine wasn’t theater.
Her detour took her past the Story-Spinners, each with a crowd around them. A man with a grizzled beard held a group captive with tales of piracy on the high seas, while a green-haired woman in shocking-pink skirts kept an even larger group spellbound with the tale of a girl who fell in love with a dashing soldier only to discover he was the prince of a rival country.It’s always princes,Lin thought, drifting closer.No one ever seems to fall into passionate, forbidden love with a lamp-maker.
“He laid her milk-white body down upon the sands,” declaimed the woman in pink, “whereupon he did make love to her,all night long.”
The audience broke into applause and demands for more and filthier details. With a giggle, Lin disposed of her now-empty paper cup, and hurried to the jeweler’s stand. He presented her with the stone, set in plain silver with a pin in the back. She professed herself delighted, paid, and set off for the Windtower to meet Mariam.
She examined her new brooch as she went. She was not entirely sure what had compelled her to have the stone set. She could still see shapes in it, despite its new setting: It seemed almost as if smoke were coiled within it, waiting to rise.
As she neared the tower, she saw Mariam, waiting beside a hired waggon that she had piled with bolts of shimmering cloth in every color from bronze to duck’s-egg blue. Lin fastened her new brooch to the shoulder of her dress and started toward the waggon when a woman stepped in front of her, blocking her way.
She felt a sharp flash of fear—irrational, but instinctive. Most Castellani were indifferent to the Ashkar, but some went out of their way to bother them: to make jokes at their expense, to trip them or knock into them in the street.At least it never rises beyond the level of bother,Chana Dorin had said to Lin once.It’s not like that everywhere.
But the woman in front of Lin was looking at her without hostility, and what seemed to be a mild curiosity. She was young, perhaps a few years older than Lin, with jet-black hair and equally darkeyes. Her padded brocade jacket was the unusual color of violets. Her hair was pinned up neatly at the back of her head with combs carved of semiprecious stone: red jasper, milky pink quartz, black chalcedony.
“You are Lin Caster,” she said. “The physician.” Her voice rose slightly, giving the statement the air of a question.
“Yes,” Lin said, “but I am not working now.” She glanced reflexively toward the red-and-white flags in the marketplace, wondering if she should warn the stranger off, but the girl only made a face.
“Ugh,” she said. “Barbarians. They would be laughed out of Geumseong, or beheaded for defiling the art of medicine.”
Geumseong was the capital of Geumjoseon. Indeed, Lin could imagine that the blood-splattered carnival of surgery practiced in the market would horrify someone used to Geumjoseon medicine, where care and cleanliness were prized.
“I am sorry,” Lin said. “If it’s an emergency—”
