Nettle & Bone(33)

“Here,” said the dust-wife, handing her a tiny square of fabric. “Felted cobweb tobacco. Put that in the hole. It’ll keep it from going bad.”

She pushed the fabric into the gap in her teeth and nodded.

“Better?” asked the large man holding her. He spoke quietly, almost under his breath. Perhaps he, too, had learned not to show weakness.

“Better,” she said.

He got to his feet and helped her up. The corded, effortless strength of his arm might have been alarming under other circumstances, but in the goblin market, she was glad of it.

“You want the collar?” asked the yellow-eyed man.

The dust-wife sniffed haughtily. “Take it off.”

“As you wish.” He reached toward the man’s neck, and Marra watched the man very obviously not flinch away and wondered what not flinching cost him. The yellow-eyed man flicked the collar three times with his thumbnail, and it fell apart into cobwebs and dust.

The man inhaled sharply. The yellow-eyed man said, “Your problem now,” and turned back to his wares, fondling Marra’s tooth.

The dust-wife walked away and turned a corner. The man waited for Marra to move before he followed. His eyes were brown in the twisting light of the market, but there were still shadows on them.

“There,” said the dust-wife. “We’ll talk later, young man. Stay close, and we’ll get out of here in a few moments yet.”

“Are you human?” he asked, looking from the dust-wife to Marra.

Marra nodded. The dust-wife shrugged. “My parents were, anyway. You able to walk out of here under your own power?”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

“One more thing we need,” said the dust-wife, patting Bonedog’s skull. “Then we’re done.”

“Not another tooth,” croaked Marra. The dust-wife shrugged again.

She walked away through the crowd, one hand on Bonedog’s collar. Marra moved to follow.

“May I take your arm?” asked the man.

Marra blinked at him. The formality of the gesture seemed to come from a world a long way off, a world where she was a princess instead of a nun. Did he think that she needed his support?

You did just collapse in front of him …

Then it occurred to her that he had been a prisoner in the market while she walked free. Perhaps he wanted to be sure that no one tried to imprison him again. “Yes, of course,” she said, slipping her arm through his. She tugged him forward, following after the dust-wife.

The dust-wife backtracked down one of the aisles they had passed, and stopped before a stall that seemed to be divided in half. One side groaned under the weight of gems and gold, piled up and carelessly spilling over a silken runner. A bird with feathers made of fire watched over them, in a cage with bars that shone like moonlight.

The other side of the table barely registered to the eye. River stones and dried leaves, on an old burlap feed sack. There was a birdcage there, too, with a little gray finch perched inside it. As Marra watched, the finch opened its beak and sang two small, twittering notes, then pecked at a scatter of seed on the floor of the cage.

She looked at the caged phoenix on the pile of treasure, then back to the finch and the burlap and the stones, and began to realize what sort of stall this might be.

“I need a glamour,” said the dust-wife. She picked up a river stone and set it down in the pile of treasure. It acquired facets and blazed like a ruby under her hands. She picked up a coin, stamped with the face of an ancient king, and moved it to the other side of the table, where it was a dried leaf with the edges turning to powder.

The person behind the stall nodded. Their appearance shifted every few seconds—old and young, short and tall, male, female, neither, both. “What do you wish disguised?”

The dust-wife clicked her tongue to Bonedog, tugging him forward.

“Nice work,” said the glamour seller, coming out from behind the table. Their appearance settled somewhat, into a nondescript person with enormous donkey’s ears. “Yours?”

“Mine,” said Marra.

The glamour seller’s ears swiveled in her direction and they nodded. “What would you like?”

“Sight and touch,” said the dust-wife, “so that bystanders don’t notice her dog is lacking in the flesh department.” She thought for a moment, then added, “I suppose sound is expensive?”

“Sound’s expensive,” agreed the glamour seller. “People expect to see or feel certain things. Their minds do half the work. Play with sound and you have to convince the world, too, or else the echoes don’t come out right. And don’t ask me for something that will fool other dogs. I’m good but not that good.”

“If it fools human onlookers, that’s enough,” said the dust-wife. “What does it cost me?”

The long gray ears flicked. “Is your demon for sale?”

Everyone looked at the brown hen. The hen said, Errrrrrk, in much the same tone that the Sister Apothecary used to pronounce someone dead.

“No,” said the dust-wife. “She’s my best layer. Could give you a demon’s egg, though.”

“Done,” said the glamour seller. The dust-wife fished the day’s egg out of her pocket, and the glamour seller went back behind the table and began digging through a basket. The contents of the basket looked like so much junk to Marra, but then, so did the contents of the dust-wife’s pockets. She poked the hole in her jaw with her tongue and found that the bleeding had stopped and the little square of felt had settled into the empty socket as if it belonged there.