weren’t shaved – as so much of Sanctuary’s currency was. (It was not fitting
that a priest handle his own money.) When Kul slipped the small handful of coins
into his waist-pouch, Torchholder snapped his fingers a second time and a
massively built plainsman ducked under the stall’s lintel, holding the door
cloth until the priest departed, then taking the bolt from the silent youth.
Molin Torchholder strode purposefully through the crowded Bazaar, confident the
slaves would keep pace with him somehow. The silk was almost as good as the
merchant claimed, and in the capital, where better money flowed more freely,
would have brought twice what the merchant had asked. The priest had not risen
so high in the Rankan bureaucracy that he failed to savour a well-finessed
haggling.
His sedan-chair awaited him at the bazaar-gate. A second plainsman was there to
hold his heavy robes while he stepped over the carved-wood sides. The first had
already placed the silk on the seat and stood beside the rearmost poles. The
mute pulled a leather-wrapped forked stick from his belt, slapped it once
against his thigh and the entourage headed back to the palace.
The plainsmen went to wherever it was that they abided when Molin didn’t need
their services; the youth carried the cloth to the family’s quarters with the
strictest instructions that the esteemable Lady Rosanda, Molin’s wife, was not
to see it. Molin himself wandered through the palace until he came to those
rooms now allotted to Vashanka’s servants and slaves.