“As for qunsuanen—koon-soo-ah-nen,” Daja repeated slowly, for her friends, “it’s, I don’t know, she’s been cleansed.” She felt a little sorry for Polyam. The Traders might as well have named her a plague carrier, to say she was specially privileged to deal with trangshi. “All the paint, all the runes on the charms, are to keep my trangshi luck from sticking to her. When they go, she has to follow the caravan for ten days, wash in every stream and pond and river they find. The mimanders will pray over her and do ritual purifications—”
“As they did all last night,” snapped Polyam. She hopped over to the iron vine to take a better look at it. “So let’s deal and get it over with. A gold maja and two gold astrels, take it or leave it, trangshi.”
The word was like a slap in the face. You’d think being qunsuanen would sweeten her, thought Daja, breathless with anger. No such luck!
Flame roared out of the forge, shaping a column nearly ten feet high.
“Tris!” yelled Briar, Sandry and Daja. Shriek, grooming his feathers, let out several ear-smarting whistles.
Tris closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The fire sank to its earlier level. Daja went to it to see how her iron rods had fared in the extra heat. They were useless—if she made these into nails, once they were cold they would break at the first blow of a hammer.
“You know, we may be kaqs, but at least our manners are good,” snapped Tris, glaring at Polyam. “Yours could stand a polishing.”
“I’m a wirok,” Polyam replied, returning the glare with her one good eye. “All I do is spend money among lugsha—that’s artisans—”
“I know what that one means,” retorted Tris.
“And kaqs,” finished Polyam. “I don’t need manners, only authority.”
Daja stared at Polyam, thinking she had been stupid to believe it would matter, to speak face-to-face with a Trader again. It was stupid to think her banishment from the world she had lived in most of her life would pinch less if she could pretend she was a Trader just for an hour or two.
She was about to tell Polyam to take the iron vine and keep her money when Sandry rose, smiling her loftiest young-noble smile, and shook out her skirts. She said, “Along with the manners you should use to another Trader—”
“Trangshi,” Polyam hissed.
Sandry ignored the interruption. “—you appear to have forgotten custom,” she continued. “I see none of those things that make it possible to bargain for such a priceless item. Where is the food, and the tea? I’m sure Daja will understand if there are no musicians, given our surroundings. If we were in Summersea, of course, you’d need at least a flutist and a gittern player.”
“Cushions,” Briar put in, interested. “You need proper cushions to sit on. And one of those little wood table things.”
Even Tris was smiling now. “A gift of some kind, as a mark of respect,” she added. “Back home in Capchen, the bigger the sale, the more important the token.”
Polyam looked at Daja. The black girl was just as surprised as the Trader, but she quickly hid it with a casual shrug. At that moment, Daja thought, she would cheerfully die for any of her three friends, who defended her without being asked.
“Sorry you got all done up in yellow for nothing,” commented Briar as Daja put more iron rods into the fire to heat.
“Come back when you are ready to do business,” Sandry told Polyam, looking down her small nose at the woman.
Someday I’ll have to get her to teach me that trick, Daja thought, watching the uncertainty in Polyam’s face. You wouldn’t think it possible, but she can go all noble in the wink of an eye.
Without a word, Polyam swung around and left the small courtyard.
Sandry frowned at Daja. “Don’t let them walk over you,” she ordered sternly. “You’re not one of them, so make your own status. If they push you around now, they’ll keep doing it, and making you feel bad.”
“And they’ll try to cheat you when they buy,” added Tris, who was a merchant’s daughter to the bone.
“If you don’t let us push you around, you oughtn’t let them,” Briar added, practicing a handstand. “We saw you for your own self before they ever did.”
Daja sighed. “I don’t know who confuses me more,” she told her friends at last. “You or them.”
“Nonsense,” retorted Tris, pumping the bellows gently, since she wasn’t supposed to use magic to bring air to the fire. “We make sense.”
“That’s what confuses me,” said Daja.
“Here,” Rosethorn said to a servant behind her. She entered the courtyard carrying a basket full of pointed, spiny-edged leaves. Behind her trooped castle servants burdened with various jars, bowls, knives, ladles, bundles, pots, and a portable stove. A pair of footmen brought up the rear with a long worktable.
Briar screwed up his face. “Awww, Rosethorn,” he whined.
The table was placed on a section of the courtyard paved with flagstones, and the other supplies dumped on it. A number of matching blue jars were taken from baskets and lined up: eight of them, all alike, sealed with wax and cord.
“Don’t ‘awww’ me,” Rosethorn said, placing the basket of leaves beside the table. “After yesterday I don’t want you near the crocuses, but you can still make yourself useful. Those jars—” she pointed to the blue containers “—contain the same aloe-and-oil mixture we make at home. I need you to start turning the liquid into burn salve. You have wax—” She patted a heap of paper-wrapped bricks. “Cheesecloth for straining the liquid, and pots for heating it to blend with the wax. Someone will come with containers for the finished salve in a moment.” She settled a lumpy bag with a long strap over her shoulder. “You know the proportions of wax to oil, or you ought to—”