“Well, those signs look old. Let’s make sure.” The prince set off down the muddy road.
Fie gritted her teeth and followed. She couldn’t blame him, not truly. The idea of slogging up stair after limestone stair, all the way up to Second Market, made her want to vomit. The water-lifts used the force of the reservoir’s water channels to move cargo and citizens between Cheparok’s tiers with considerable less effort.
The lift attendant looked up from a cotton-heaped cart only long enough to snap, “No.”
For a moment Fie wanted to stand there anyway and relish the faint relief of mist and water splashing down from Fourth Market. Then she remembered that same water had traveled from the Fan, into the city reservoir, and down four tiers of canals and bathing steps, carrying whatever those tiers’ citizens felt like throwing in it. Likely it was as clean as the grime on her arms.
“Come on,” she said, wincing, and headed back toward the stairs. This time Jasimir kept his mouth shut.
Hangdog split off once they’d climbed the three-score steps to Fourth Market. “Luck, cousin,” he muttered to Fie, and gave her a half grin. She briefly debated pushing him back down those three-score steps, but it seemed like an awful lot of work in this dreadful sun.
Instead she looked for a Crow mark for the stairs. One was carved into a signpost nearby, pointing to the opposite end of Fourth Market.
“Do they even know how hot it is?” gasped Tavin, staring at the crowds packing the market. Fie could scarce hear him over the lowing of disgruntled cattle, shouts of vendors, wailing children, and high-pitched warbling from some unholy horn busker.
Holy texts said the Covenant disposed of irredeemable souls in one of twelve hells. Fie wasn’t sure what she’d done to deserve this one.
A mother shoved past, dragging a child on each arm. It gave Fie a notion equal parts distasteful and effective. She snatched one hand from each of the lordlings. “Hold fast.”
Then she plunged into the crowd. It was chaos and cacophony, a crush of sweat and flesh and salt-stiff cotton. She lost count of how many people trod on her feet, but she was dead sure that the nails in her sandals repaid that in triple.
At last they reached the end of Fourth Market. Fie staggered to a quiet place between stalls, and the prince yanked free of her, shaking his hand out. She let go of Tavin and swayed in place, catching her breath.
“Let’s never do that again,” Tavin said, tone dark.
Fie shook her head, wheezing. “The way … back.”
“I’d rather throw myself down the water-lift.” Jasimir started to pull his hood back, then thought better of it. “What now?”
Fie looked at the next hundred stairs and winced. “Third Market.”
This stairway led past a set of bathing steps, where one of the green-tiled reservoir channels spilled out over limestone blocks larger than those Fie climbed. People of the fourth tier splashed in the milky water, rinsing laundry or stripping down and bathing as they pleased. Fie and the boys stopped a moment to scrub down their arms; it took more will than she’d admit to not wash up head to toe.
Third Market was mercifully less crowded than Fourth, giving them a moment to catch their breath in the shade of a cool stone wall. An uneven brick street wound between stalls and tents, where merchants dubiously promised the coolest palm screens, the fattest lambs, the brightest lamp oil in Cheparok. Crews of Gulls poled their cargo barges down the canal at market’s edge, shouting for buyers in the spice-laden air as they wiped sweat from deep brown faces. A distant smear of orange roof tiles marked a Magistrate’s Row, where Crane witches called truths out of witnesses and petitioners alike.
Fie’s eyes landed on a pair of Hawks lounging near a water-lift. One squinted back at her and mumbled to his partner. The other Hawk turned to look as well.
“We need to keep moving,” Fie said, and stepped back into the sun.
“We’re being followed?” Tavin asked, falling in beside her.
“Maybe. Point at the stall on your right.”
He did, gesturing to an altogether spiteful-looking sow. A bemused farmer raised his eyebrows. Fie feigned a moment’s consideration, then shook her head and moved on.
“Don’t look back,” she hissed, winding toward a glassblack vendor. The woman’s tent glittered with samples of her work, strings of discs fluttering in the breeze. Glassblack only showed through on one side, reflecting the other in nigh every hue imaginable. Fie had seen whole panes of the stuff in the windows of the wealthy. Crows just dealt with the plainest kind, black, to cover the eyeholes in their masks.
The discs spun lazy on their wires as Fie neared, flashing fragments of the marketplace: a reflected tapestry, a slip of an Owl scholar, a brass lamp perched on a windowsill. A blue disc twirled and showed her the two guards, still watching from the water-lift. She stopped, reaching for a disc of black.
“Keep your filthy little hands off,” the vendor spat.
Fie flashed her empty palms and stepped back. “Just looking.”
The black disc spun to show her the guards again. They’d been distracted by the water-lift’s wheels churning into motion.
“Come on.” Fie jerked her head toward a signpost. To her annoyance, once they reached it, she found that any Crow signs had long since worn away, if they’d been there at all. Her ears burned. “Can … does it say where—”
“This way.” Tavin set off across the market.
This time, the steps rose past grand mosaics, their vivid tiles painting the deeds of dead gods and heroes. In one, Lovely Rhensa danced above a field of vanquished foes; in another, Ambra, Queen of Day and Night, stood astride the sun, wreathed in gold Phoenix fire. Jasimir grimaced at that one for a breath before moving on. Most of Cheparok fell below them once they reached the top of the stairs, dropping tier by tier until the last plateau bled into docks and canals. Smaller barges flocked in the shallow bay like litters of puppies, their mothers the great trade ships moored at a crest of islands between Cheparok and the sea.
Fie didn’t realize she’d stopped until Tavin tugged at her shoulder. “The view’s even better from the fortress.”
Second Market was quieter than Third. Fie hesitated to even tread on the flat sandstone slabs, the nails in her sandals grinding in protest. A few stalls flapped banners for imported rarities and the crests of renowned Crane merchant houses, but for the most part actual storefronts made up the tranquil street. Posh silk-gauze billowed everywhere in the breeze, from layered wraps sported by Cranes and Peacocks to drapes tacked over windows and tent frames. Swan courtesans of every shade and gender drifted by in head-to-toe white, trailing filmy veils of their own from wide-brimmed hats meant to hide their faces from the jealous sun. Heads swiveled as they passed. Swans commanded the Birthright of desire, and even the plainest could gather attention like folds of silk, wielding charisma sure as Hawk steel.
One Swan man glanced sidelong at Fie and wrinkled his nose. She wrinkled hers back, reminded too much of Queen Rhusana.
“Well,” she said, wiping her brow, “your Markahn lout shouldn’t have much trouble spotting us.”
“He said he’s stationed by an apothecary.” Even Tavin seemed reluctant to venture into the market.
Fie peered down the street and saw a banner with a mortar and pestle. “There’s one.”