Jallin was quite good at moving through crowds. He had a feel for them. He could look at a face, or watch a mouth move, see a wave of a hand, and know which direction a person would move and when they would start.
Kir-Tuko was not as good at it, or at least he wasn’t trying as hard to just get through. He walked along the side of the road like everyone else and if Jallin wanted to stay with him, he had to slow and wait. It made Jallin feel like someone’s pet, and that bothered him. It also made him realize just how different he was from all the legitimate people, the ones who traded money for things. He was, compared to them, very like a rodent, something people knew was there in the corners, if they looked to see him, but most tried to pretend didn’t exist.
He decided to try it Kir-Tuko’s way for once. After he lost him once, Jallin came back and stood by him. Since he’d offered to feed Jallin, like he always did for the noonday meal, Jallin thought himself being a little rude to just wander away from him. Besides, he didn’t really know where they were going.
But Jallin knew Chu-Kabra street. He knew his favorite places to stay and just smell things. The fruit was always good here, so colorful red, orange, yellow, green, everything bright and perfect it seemed. Chu-Kabra street was a place where wealthy people’s servants came to pick up the choicest of produce, because it was bought and sold first here from the Deshik vin Sluska. By the time it made it to some of the shops and inner markets, the inner-most restaurants, it’d been picked over by all these merchants, lined up in glistening rows in the boxes and crates and barrels that seemed to never move.
A Mercelian passed on Jallin’s left-hand side, a healer by the look of her flowing robes and the jewelry around her neck. She only briefly looked at Jallin. Were the Mercelians looking for him? He’d been one of the more annoying of the street urchins in this area, probably. He’d stolen for almost a year. But she wouldn’t recognize him now, nor would the putrights and narg guards, because he’d changed. He stood up and walked like a human now. He didn’t scramble and dodge and weave. He wore proper clothes, not the assortment of rags and tatters he used to. He’d bathed once, actually been told to bathe and given the opportunity at the well in Master Tho-Noshó’s house.
When no one tried to cut off his hand, or grab his elbow, or shout at him, Jallin’s head felt it would float off his shoulders. Kir-Tuko, if he had any idea what it was to be hungry, alone, and without help, he didn’t show it to Jallin, and instead eyed some of the displays they passed and continually sniffed the air.
“Here,” was all he said, when he turned from Jallin and walked into the shadows under a canopy. Between two buildings was this place, an entire inn in a tent, it seemed, that grew like a mushroom at the fringe of the Deshik.
It was like nothing Jallin had ever experienced. Little trails of wispy smoke coiled like snakes from statue candles on every table. The canopy above his head supported by huge poles, likely the masts of old ships long since retired, made everything look like night had never left to go home.
The incense made Jallin feel warm and smothered and sleepy, but his stomach rumbled. Spiced food smells, the slightly acrid smell of fish, the light, smokiness of roasting fowls, the richness of mef, of pig, of nern, and even molms.
Kinto-shah sat around the tables in little clusters, leaning forward as though trying to get their long noses in the smoke from the candles. Here and there one of them laughed a squeaking laugh, but mostly they whispered. Their ears flicked and tucked, went back and forth, in various degrees of interest. Here, Jallin could really see the difference in faces between them. Long snouts, short snouts, big round ears, short pointy ears, gray fur, reddish fur, brown fur, black fur, white fur.
Kir-Tuko pulled him along behind until they found a table with no one sitting there, something Jallin was surprised to see. He thought surely he was going to have to meet a few new people from the market today if they were to eat here. The tables were arranged in a circle around a large middle space. Ropes were tied to the tent-poles marking this central area off and keeping it clear of the eaters. Other than that, there was nothing special about it, and Jallin wondered what it was for. He soon found out.
A few kinto-shah dancers came parading from somewhere beyond Jallin’s sight. All of them were females dressed in bright-colored pants and jangling, golden-colored bangles and bracelets, necklaces and anklets. They wore nothing to cover their snow-white chests and bellies. They timed their hops into the center area so that one of them would be in the air, while the other was on the ground, and each one had her left or right hand up in the air tied to a long piece of silk.
As they came into the center area, the crowd applauded and cheered in piercing shrieks. Ears waggled.
The five dancing shayas all gathered in a circle, hopping along and still holding the long piece of silk. Then, perfectly timed with drums and stringed instruments, they separated, but each taking their part of the silk. For a moment, it appeared they would fight over the silk cord, but instead kept it as part of the dancing. They twirled and moved among each other, twisting and cavorting, but never let go of the silk. Somehow, and Jallin would never really understand how it happened, they tied knots in the silk chord that looked like things as they danced. At one point, it looked like a flower, with each petal looped around one of the dancers. At another, they made a star shape. The most spectacular part for Jallin, who may have been the only human in the entire place, was when they made the silk look like animals, particularly a sort of dragon shape. Listening to the crowd, Jallin could tell he wasn’t the only one impressed.
Apparently, these girls dancing were the waitresses, or some of them, for as the music faded, they left the center area and disappeared for a moment, but one of them wearing green pants came to Jallin and Kir-Tuko’s table. Kir-Tuko spoke to her and ordered something Jallin didn’t understand and the little, brown and white kinto-shaya went away again in a cacophony of glittering trinkets.
“What are we eating?” Jallin asked Kir-Tuko.
“Ju vill see,” was the reply. “Ju don’t ask, vecause it rude to ask jur host vhat he give to ju.”
Jallin tried to apologize, but Kir-Tuko waved at him. He leaned towards Jallin, his face lit by the burning candle between them.
“I vring ju here to talk. Good flace. Quviet.”
“Did you say ‘quiet?’” Jallin asked him. He hardly thought anything about this place was at all quiet. The crowd had only been slightly louder when they were entertained. He could barely here the kinto-shah sitting across from him at the little table.
“Yes. This flace, quviet. I mean, evryvody talking, hard to hear. No vun listening to us, see? At house, somevun hear. Don’t vant Shi-Feo hearing. Don’t vant master hearing, see?”
Jallin nodded, though he wasn’t sure speaking in a public place like this was much better.
“Besides, this flace have good feesh. You see.”
For a moment, they didn’t talk. Then, the waitress brought a bowl and put it down in front of Kir-Tuko. She didn’t put one in front of Jallin, and he wondered if it was because he was human. Maybe they didn’t serve humans here, he thought.
Kir-Tuko picked up the bowl and took a handful of something out of it, and passed the bowl to Jallin. He couldn’t see what it was Kir-Tuko pushed into his mouth and crunched, and he couldn’t see very well into the bowl, either. He peered at some sort of hard…things, quite a few of them. He picked one up and held it between himself and the candle on the table. It looked like a driggit. He peeled away some of the fried grease and found that it was a driggit. He had forgotten kinto-shah liked to eat a wide variety of insects.
“They’re good. Eat them, and fass the vowl vack to me.”
Jallin picked out two or three of them and held them in his hands like gold coins. He held the bowl out to Kir-Tuko without looking. Shrugging his shoulders, he pushed the little things into his mouth.
Crunchy, and at first he couldn’t taste them. Then, all at once, a very strange flavor appeared in his mouth. It was like a peculiarly flavored fruit, covered in honey, honey-fried. Under that, though, was a distinctly sweet flavor, like a berry. They were good; Kir-Tuko was right. Jallin wanted more, and Kir-Tuko, laughing, handed him the bowl again.
Then, the food arrived. A fish nearly as big as Jallin’s hand lay on a bed of leafy vegetables, covered and shimmering in oil, and speckled with strange spices Jallin never knew he’d see used on food served to him. Jallin reached for it, but Kir-Tuko stopped him. Again, he bowed his head.
“Thank you,” Jallin said. Again, he said it to Kir-Tuko and not to Trochaya.
Kir-Tuko took some kind of little sticks from the middle of the table. They were sharp and he used them to stick into his fish and pick it up and lay it on his tongue. Jallin, not wanting to be rude, did the same. He’d seen kinto-shah using what were called finger forks, but he didn’t see any here.
Jallin had never had such food. He was barely aware such food could be. He closed his eyes and could hear almost nothing around him. The spices jumped on his tongue like fire from one house to another. The fish swam in his mouth again, in the saliva that engulfed it. Jallin had eaten to survive before, chewed up food before it could be taken back or stolen from him, but he’d never had the opportunity to just enjoy it, to let it happen, like food should happen. He almost cried.
“You eat like this all the time?” Jallin asked Kir-Tuko.
“No. I save.”
Kir-Tuko looked at the candle. He ate more slowly now, and Jallin envied his food. He’d already finished his.
“This flace good to talk. Qu’viet. No…frivate.”
Jallin looked around himself. Quiet? Private? Hardly.
Suddenly, Kir-Tuko slid his stool around the table so he was closer to Jallin. Now, they both had their backs to where the shayas had danced.
“Ju in vad flace, Jal-lin,” Kir-Tuko said.
“What? Bad place? I’ve never been in a better place. I’ve got clothes. This is the best food I’ve ever….”
Kir-Tuko actually grabbed his ear and squeezed on it hard enough to make Jallin cry out.
“Tho-Shiko is good. He fay ju good for vork, vut ju not his slave. Ju vith Hurga, and she not his slave neither. She vashes clothes and runs errands for him, but she not his slave. Ju velong to Hurga, and Hurga belong to Dursus, and Dursus…he belong to….” Kir-Tuko flipped his ears around, then his muzzle went left and right. “He belong to Trochaya.”
“It’s just a bunch of idiots who sit around and talk about heaven,” Jallin whined, rubbing at his ear for a moment.
He picked up one of the last driggits and popped them into his mouth.
“Ju don’t listen to them? Ju don’t know vhat they doing?”
“I just go there. Auntie Hurga makes me go there with her. I sit there and wait to go home.” He liked the idea of calling Master Noshó’s house his home. “Besides, he’s always saying the same stuff. People get sick and die, so he repeats everything. He just talks about the Undying and the Long Waiting and why Trochaya lets people die.”
“But ju don’t know vhat he trying to do? Vhat he trying to…plan?”
“What do you want? I don’t know what he’s doing. He’s running a house of healing as far as I know. I thought they didn’t believe in really using medicine, but since you started making the medicine for Eja, I don’t know….”
“Vhat ju think?”
“Well, I’ve seen that blue stuff. Auntie Hurga says you make it. I’ve meant to ask you what it is.”
Kir-Tuko’s ears went back, his eyes narrowed, and his whiskers went back. “Vhat ju think it is?”
“It’s for her coughing, isn’t it? I think she’s getting better. Her coughing seems better, so I think it’s finally starting to work.”
Again, Kir-Tuko looked sick.
“Vhat she tell you?” he asked.
“She told me it would make her better. What’s it called?”
“She give ju any?” he asked.
“No. She said I didn’t need any because I wasn’t sick.”
“No. Ju no get any vecause ju a voy.”
Again, Jallin wondered if he’d heard right.
“What is the medicine? What is it?”
Kir-Tuko looked like he was in pain. He sighed, and when he did, his whole body looked like it inflated and deflated again. Jallin knew kinto-shah had great and powerful lungs.
“I tell ju, and I vetray my master. He sell to Dursus. Dursus vuy medicine for seester, not Hurga.”
“What is it? Please, what’s wrong?”
Kir-Tuko shook his head. His ears were still back.
“Medicine. It not for coughing. It not for vloodlung. It for…something else.”
“What? Please, Kir-Tuko. Is it bad? Is it poison? Is that why her stomach hurts all the time? What is it?”
“It called…Inabé.”
“What does that mean?”
“No vavy?”
“No baby?”
“It for slaves. Vhy Hurga vant me make that for seester? Vhy Hurga not vant seester vetter? I make medicine for coughing. It help, but Hurga don’t vant and Dursus don’t vant. Because they voth Trochiavites.” Again, Kir-Tuko looked around himself. “Medicine I make for them, it don’t vork on voys. Vut Hurga no vant me make medicine for ju.”
“No baby?” Jallin said to himself. “What’s it do?”
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