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Eruca woke to a pounding on her door. Weeks on the road had honed a habit she’d cultivated since Ernst’s death, and she had her gun in hand within seconds. After her father’s soldiers had dragged her from her bed down to the Ritual site that awful day, she’d sworn she’d never be taken captive in her sleep again. Not that it had helped against the slaver’s sleeping gas…
“Princess Eruca! Princess, are you awake?” The woman’s voice was muffled, and Eruca’s sluggish brain failed to place it.
“Who is it?” the princess-in-exile called warily, climbing to her feet. The firm mattress of King Garland’s guest beds made this easier than her own luxurious feather tester back home. She was wide awake now, her pulse strong and fast, her mind racing as the last traces of sleepiness were banished.
“It’s Raynie,” the voice returned cheerfully.
“And Aht!” another, higher voice added. There was a dull thud, like a hoof striking the ground impatiently.
Allies, and they didn’t sound coerced. Eruca lifted the wooden bar that secured the door and opened it cautiously.
Both her visitors wore relaxed expressions, at least at first – Aht’s half-smile fell away and she stared wide-eyed at the weapon Eruca held. Raynie’s didn’t so much as flicker, and Eruca suppressed a sigh. The mage had been good in a fight, but…
“There’s no attack or nothing, we’re just here to make sure you don’t sleep away the best parts of the day,” Raynie said, gently, and Eruca realized the other woman hadn’t missed anything. Raynie went on, more energetically. “I just wanted to take you and Aht down to the bazaar. And you gotta go early, before it gets too hot.”
Eruca hesitated. “If King Garland or Stocke needs to discuss things with me…”
“Stuff like that would be handled midday, when it’s too hot to do much outside,” Raynie assured her. “I checked with Stocke, he said it’s okay. Tried to get him to come, too, but he said he heard a rumor he wanted to check out, so.” She shrugged. “I told them both where we’d be going, anyway, so they can find us if they need to.”
Well, if her brother thought it was all right for her to take the morning off… “I’ll need time to get dressed.”
——————-
Half an hour later, Eruca found herself strolling alongside Raynie and Aht down a long, winding alleyway filled with shallow storefronts. Eruca had visited Granorg’s street markets, but Cygnus’s was much more crowded, and had far more cheerful energy. She wasn’t sure what was more colorful – the goods for sale, or the crowds. People of several shades of skin and hair of every hue found in nature (and some that weren’t, at least not for Humans) bustled about their business. Bartering, walking, chatting. Some ate as they strolled along, munching small breads like the ones Eruca had seen on a table in the front of one shop, or fruit, or other fried comestibles she could not identify.
Raynie talked easily as they walked through the crowd. “I used to live here, y’know? So I know all the best booths for food and trinkets and things. Just tell me if you wanna stop and look, or if there’s something you’re looking for.”
“I want candy,” Aht said loudly. She’d insisted on walking on the other side of Raynie, away from the Princess. “Or fruit. Do they have apples?”
“No apples, but they’ve got figs,” Raynie told her. “Or we could get sticky date rolls, you’ll like those! Or fried sugar-breads. Or halvah, it’s this candy made from sesame seeds. My treat, both of you.”
Eruca leaned forward around Raynie to watch the little shaman consider. “Okay,” the girl finally said.
“Okay to which?” Raynie asked. “‘Cause the best date rolls are right up ahead, but if you want the halvah, we need to backtrack…”
“All of them!”
“Let’s pace ourselves,” Raynie said weakly.
“I can help pay,” Eruca offered quietly as Aht asked a confectioner about the different kinds of nuts used in the sticky treats made of mashed dates, honey, and nuts.
Raynie shook her head firmly. “Absolutely no way, Princess! I said it was my treat. This place is like home to me, so here you’re my guests. And it’s not really so much money as all that.” She grinned. “But you’re on your own for buying anything besides food!”
They did pace themselves, at least on the food. Aht wanted to stop at any vendor that dealt in scarves (“I wanna get something for Liese, she’d like these for dancing”). Raynie stopped at a fancy goods stall, fingering beautifully carved ivory and bone combs. When she realized the other two were waiting for her, she seemed a little embarrassed, and tossed a copper coin to the vendor – “For luck, ‘cause I touched bone, but didn’t buy it.”
From there to the stall with fried breads, enormous braids of fried dough. Aht wanted her own, even though it was as long as one of her own horns. Worried about imposing on Raynie’s generosity, Eruca tried to turn down her own, and wound up sharing one with the mercenary woman instead.
The bread was good, sweet and chewy, but Eruca found it hard to eat as she walked – there was simply too much to watch, to look at; the winding street seemed to flow with people like water in a river, its embankments tables of trinkets and foods and, in one case, stacked cages of chickens. She let her own own pace slow as they approached a vendor of shimmering, curious-looking objects that dangled from ribbons.
“This one’s for wealth and prosperity, I think, you’d put it up in a shop,” Raynie explained when Eruca gave in to her own curiosity and stopped to examine a string of blue beads and carved wooden tokens. “And these are for safe travel.” She pointed to the red-and-gold charms hanging next to the blue ones. “Used to have one myself. Lost it in a swamp, along with a good pair of boots.” She made a face. “And about a pint of blood to the damn flying bloodsuckers.”
“You mean you’ve been travelling unprotected? Gracious ladies, this will not do!” the vendor, a thin man who’d been transforming small circles of wood into talismans as the women looked at his wares, rose to his feet. “Five crowns normally, but for you in your urgent need, only three.”
“Make it one each and I’ll buy one for each of us,” Raynie said.
The vendor clapped a hand to his chest, affronted. “Are you trying to ruin me, woman!” he demanded.
Eruca, wishing to avoid a confrontation, opened her mouth to intervene. Raynie elbowed her sharply.
“Two crowns and three birds,” the vendor said.
Raynie put up a hand to inspect the nearest charm. “Here, this one’s got a chip. You trying to sell me shoddy stuff?” she said scornfully. “One crown and five birds.”
They settled on one crown and seven birds – Eruca wasn’t entirely clear on how the local coinage compared to Granorg, but it seemed there were ten copper coins to every bronze. Raynie counted out the coins as the seller wrapped the three charms in scraps of cloth, and they made the exchange. Once Raynie received her charms, she handed one to Eruca.
“I can’t accept this-” Eruca began to protest.
“Yes you can, now shush.” Raynie offered the third to the Satyros girl. “Aht, here.”
Aht was far more interested in finishing her fried bread. She took the charm and slipped it into her belt pouch without so much as looking at it..
The vendor had stayed on his feet even after taking the money, genial once again now that the haggling was ended. “Can I offer you anything else? Blessings for the home, perhaps-” he gestured at the silver-and-red charms besides the travel safety amulets. Eruca hadn’t even realized they were different.
She quickly shook her head. Her home was Granorg palace, and protecting it would require more than the sort of trinket one could buy at the marketplace.
“No? Well, although I’m sure lovely ladies as yourselves would not need them, but you might have a friend who is less fair of face. A charm to bring love -”
Eruca did not like the way Raynie was grinning at her. “No thank you,” she said, firmly, trying to fight the blush creeping across her face.
“No? Well, then, in that case, perhaps you could use one of these?” He pointed to a carved wooden amulet hanging from red cord. He glanced at Aht, and continued in a lower voice.“Very popular, among all sensible women, and very discreet. No need to fear the unwanted increasing.”
“We’re just looking for now,” the princess said, calling on her experience at court to squash her embarrassment. It was clear that if she didn’t stand up to him, the charm-seller would talk her through his entire inventory. “Thank you. We’ll let you know if we need help.”
Raynie’s unsettling grin had dropped into a small frown. “You need something like that, ask me or Marc, we’ll help you get you something reliable,” the other woman said to Eruca in a low voice. “I’d never trust a charm made by a man for that, his magic’d be all wrong for it. Maybe Stocke could use it, but you’d want your own thing, too.”
“Thank you,” Eruca replied diplomatically, shocked by that Raynie thought she’d have a use for such things, and frankly baffled at the notion that her brother would, either. To distract them both, she pointed to the array of green glass beads and wooden badges carved with lotus blossoms, further down the table. ”What are these?”
“Fertility, you probably don’t want ‘em anytime soon,” Raynie whispered loudly, a wicked grin on her face.
Eruca frowned, her brows coming together as she tried to find the source of the other woman’s amusement. “Granorg’s birthrate has been below replacement level for the past seven years. Fertility is a major concern. Not only in humans, but livestock as well. The desertification also affects seed germination rates, which-”
“Okay, I get it,” Raynie said hastily, looking a little overwhelmed. “I’m sorry about all the… germinwhatsit business. That sounds bad. Oh, hey! Aht! You want anything else?”
The little Satyros girl had been working her way steadily through her long braid of fried bread, ignoring the adults. Now that she’d finished, she looked up at the charmseller’s wares and sniffed. “They won’t work,” she said loudly. “They’re just glass and paint and wood.”
The charmseller frowned down at her. “And what would a mere child know of the art of magic and charms?”
“I’m not mere,” Aht said, puffing out her cheeks. “I’m a Satyros shaman! And I know none of them have any magic in them at all!”
“Hey, now, Aht,” Raynie said, sharply. “Be nice! Just ‘cause his magic’s different from yours-”
“It’s not different, it’s not magic at all. You should be able to tell, too!”
“Wellll,” Raynie looked uncomfortable. “I can’t feel the magic in them either, but I’m a battle mage, not a wood-witcher.”
“I think we’ll be going now,” Eruca said hurriedly. “Aht, didn’t you want to try the sesame candy Raynie was talking about? Let’s go get some.”
Obtaining the best halvah required reversing course, heading almost to the entrance of the winding street of the bazaar. Raynie chatted rapidly, clearly trying to distract the indignant child.
“…and after this I wanna take you to another bakery, only a real one, not at the bazaar, but it might be too hot by then. I’m from here, but I know you’re not used to it, so let me know it you need to stop for a drink, or shade, or just want to go back to the palace.”
They did stop for drinks – fruit juices, chilled with an ice spell. It took quite a lot of work to dissuade Raynie from paying for those as well, and Eruca concluded that debating a Cygnan bent on hospitality was probably good practice for negotiating with Parliament.
As the morning wore on, the heat rose. Raynie and Eruca could both keep the trio cool, but maintaining it under the increasing press of the sun was draining. Eruca found herself perspiring from the effort. The last straw was when Aht abruptly sat down and refused to walk further, saying her hooves hurt and she was tired of cobblestones.
The walk back to palace was necessarily slow, and punctuated by Raynie’s frequent muttering about how heavy the Satyros girl was.
————–
Eruca had to choose her time carefully to slip away from the others as Garland’s men, Stocke, and Raynie and Marco rushed around the palace preparing for the arrival of Dias’s forces the next day. Both Aht’s belongings and her own had been left untouched in their guest quarters – it was clear that Stocke intended to leave them both in the safety of Cygnus’s walls. She would need to make her own preparations, then, and hope she could persuade him to let her accompany him. Ernst, she could have convinced of the rightness of her inclusion. Stocke, her brother and yet not, she wasn’t sure about.
It was easy to find the things Stocke and the others would take into the field, a little harder to know which pack belonged to whom. The first she tried was full of bandages and potions – obviously the healer’s bag. A flash of red when she opened the second told her she’d been successful in finding Stocke’s. Hastily, she slid her hand down the side, thrusting her handful down as far into the pack as she easily could.
Her fingertips met unexpectedly with the familiar feel of wood and glass, and when she drew it out she found herself holding twin red-and-gold charms, instead of just the one she’d brought to slip in her brother’s pack. She blinked for a moment, then returned them both to the pack’s interior. Ernst had never been superstitious, but perhaps Stocke, remembering only a soldier’s education, didn’t know better.
She was buckling the flap over the top of the pack when another flash of red-gold caught her eye. A third charm had been tied to one of the pack’s straps, hidden only because it had been tucked up against the wall. A quick check of Raynie and Marco’s belongings turned up no such charms.
The princess sat back on her heels and smiled. It seemed Stocke wasn’t the superstitious one after all.