Stepsons and the rabble-again. And something dead or deadly moving along the
White Foal. But nothing to disturb our fish-eyed masters.”
It was Ilsday for the Ilsigi, Savankhday for the Rankans and Belly’s-day for the
Beysin (who demonstrated their barbarism by giving days to their bodies rather
than to the gods); but, most important, it was Market-day. Civil war would abate
for one day while partisans and rivals rubbed shoulders in disorder of another
kind. The Path of Money, like every other thoroughfare in town, was filled with
the intense activity of commerce-legal and otherwise. The pair was separated
near the Processional when a food stall erupted in flames. Walegrin, the soldier
and representative of such order as the town possessed, went to the merchant’s
aid and Molin, in the disguise of a merchant himself, found his journey
redirected into a tangle of streets.
Here, where a rainbow of painted symbols proclaimed which gangs and factions had
been paid off by each household, there was no amnesty and a well-fed man on a
well-fed horse was only a moving target. Torchholder shed his merchant’s
demeanor: straightening his back, holding the reins in one hand while the other
rested on his thigh ready to wield whatever weapon his cloak might conceal.
Ragged children gauged his ability to defend himself by shouting epithets
combining anatomy and ancestry with an originality a soldier could admire-never
guessing that they cursed Vashanka’s Hierarch in Sanctuary. He ignored them all
as he turned down a sunnier alley.