Halani nodded. “They’re roaming through the market now. Word is their leaders are honored guests of the Goban chief who controls this territory.”
She considered climbing onto the table for an overhead view of the crowd and possible glimpse of the new arrivals but settled instead for standing on tiptoe and craning her neck to see over the crowd.
A piercing whistle whose modulations Halani instantly recognized cut through the marketplace’s dull roar. A summons from Hamod, one that never failed to make her bristle. She wasn’t a dog, and her uncle’s assurances that the whistle was simply more effective than trying to shout didn’t soothe her indignation. She was tempted to ignore it, but Hamod used the whistle judiciously. He needed her.
She spotted him through a gap in the crowd, standing with a group of traders. One held something wrapped in a scrap of violet silk.
Halani groaned and silently cursed. She offered Gilene an apologetic smile. “Probably another statue Uncle wants me to look at. I’m better than he is at spotting a fake. I’ll have to leave you again for a moment.”
Gilene returned Halani’s smile with a thin one of her own, gaze sweeping the crowd as she replied. “It’s all right. See to your uncle. We’ll switch places when you return.”
Halani hesitated. She’d known Gilene for less than a year, nursed her through two bouts of illness, and shared a wagon with her. Life had not been kind to Gilene. She’d almost died in the grotesque Flowers of Spring ritual and ended up separated from her husband, Valdan, still not knowing if slavers had killed him. A quiet, reserved woman who worked hard and rarely laughed, she was unfailingly kind to Asil and grateful to Halani for her aid. Her dark eyes cached a hoard of secrets, and she minded her own business so well even Hamod felt comfortable enough offering her a place among his free traders. But Gilene’s response to Halani’s revelation regarding the Savatars was strange. The air around her practically vibrated with a kind of harrowing anticipation, as if she half expected the Savatar to charge in on their horses and attack the market.
Were Hamod’s whistles not growing more commanding, Halani would have stayed at the table. She gave a pained sigh and left the stall to shoulder her way through the throng.
The Goban marketplace’s already lively atmosphere turned frenetic as rumor spread of the Savatars’ arrival. To those who had lived in the shadows of the destroyed garrisons, they were heroes. To the free traders gathered here, the Savatar clans were the hammer that broke the Trade Guild’s hold on the Golden Serpent. Gossip and retellings of the siege at Kraelag had reached epic proportions, until it was no longer a battle between the Empire army and barbarian steppe clans, but a clash between gods. A true goddess did make an appearance, one who left destruction in her wake, a city burned to the ground, and an empire shaken to its foundations by what she’d wrought. The Savatar called her Agna and, according to rumor, beseeched her aid in their bid to crack open Kraelag’s defensive walls. The goddess had done so and more, leaving nothing to pillage and an empire that lost its sense of identity along with its corrupt capital.
Hamod’s caravan had stopped several leagues away from the city, away from Kraelag and the invading armies. Halani had seen the black smoke billowing skyward in the distance. Only later did they get details of the siege, and those were recounted by an ill, traumatized Gilene, who told of a fortuitous escape from the terrible fate of a Flower of Spring thanks to the Savatar invaders, whose goddess had made a Flower of Spring of everyone who didn’t flee Kraelag, immolating everything in holy fire.
Even Halani, a storyteller who understood how the most mundane events achieved grandiose proportions with time and numerous retellings, wanted to see a Savatar clansman, majestic on his horse, who didn’t wait for the rapacious Empire to attack his homeland but brought the battle to the Empire’s very gates himself. Unfortunately, it was time to play the guessing game of “real or fake.” Halani had not lost yet, and her uncle counted on it.
The cluster of men standing with him was a motley lot. She recognized one, a free trader from Okeshen Flat Nose’s caravan. Halani couldn’t remember his name, but she remembered his hands, quick to grope any woman unfortunate enough to walk within reach. The one time he’d tried it with Halani, she’d broken his fingers with a pair of iron tongs. He caught sight of her striding toward them, went wide-eyed, and abruptly abandoned their group.
Conversation among the remaining four men stuttered to a halt as they watched the man flee before turning to see what had sent him racing away like a scared rabbit.
She didn’t recognize those who stayed with Hamod. One wore the garb she’d seen on many of the Goban men attending the market gathering here: vests with three-quarter-length sleeves over ivory shirts whose hems were almost as long as a woman’s frock. Wide sashes cinched the two garments close to the waist. The shirt and tunic had split sides that revealed loose breeches tucked into boots strapped to the legs with leather ties.
Halani’s attention moved to his compatriots. Their garb was rougher, stranger, proclaiming them outlanders. Nor did they look like merchants. More like mercenaries who’d found another way to earn a coin or two beyond sell-swording. Their cheap hunting armor had seen better days, and they didn’t bother concealing the weaponry they carried. She ran a practiced eye over the sheaths that covered their knives as well as the bow and quiver one wore across his back. Hamod and his folk dealt in all manner of goods, and while Halani wasn’t an expert in sharp steel and armor, it didn’t take a great deal of expertise to tell her these men either scavenged the dead on a battlefield or bought their garb and weapons from a vendor who traded in goods Hamod turned his nose up at and refused to sell.
One of the men held a square of the purple cloth she’d glimpsed earlier, within its folds a piece of ivory. She resisted rolling her eyes. If she had a silver belsha for every bit of bone she’d examined to determine its value, she’d be a rich woman. If this went like previous transactions of its ilk, she was about to get an earful of boasts and lies regarding the bone’s origin. Which was no doubt of far humbler roots than what these two planned to tout.
Most bone traders dealt in common ivory bits they tried to pass off as something more exotic. Dog, cat, and snake skeletons were sometimes fused together in twisted new incarnations and peddled as remains of rare or mythical beasts worthy of the high price the bone merchants charged for them.
Hamod was a wily trader and taught everything he knew to his niece. Charming, sly, and armed with a repertoire of half-truths, he could sell a beggar his own rags back to him given enough time, and spot a costly trinket in a midden heap at a hundred paces. Never an easy mark, he still deferred to Halani on some things, like determining the authenticity of an artifact. Hamod graced her with a jovial smile that didn’t reach his eyes or hide the avaricious gleam sparkling in his pupils—a telltale sign that whatever these men had told or shown him, it had caught his interest in the worst way. The Goban merchant seemed more a curious onlooker, while the two mercenaries—and she grew more certain of their profession the closer she got to them—appeared ready to bolt at the first sneeze, their gazes never settling for long on one person or one spot, shifting constantly to scan the busy market’s bustling crowd as if searching for someone.