Now it was no game, and Arwa knew it, but she also knew that she was very good at it. She had dressed to match the part, and she walked into the strange town’s market as though it was her second home, while I hung behind her by several measures and watched her work.
Her veil was another advantage in these situations. With half her face covered, men and women could not assume she was a stranger, because it was possible she was someone they should know. As long as no one asked her to fetch her parents, she could pretend to be local, and no one would suspect otherwise. I followed her as she made her way up one line of stalls and then back along the other, never lingering for very long at any one shop, but carefully figuring out which of the people she would go back to, and press for information.
Deciding she was safe enough, I retreated to the long tables that had been set out for taking lunch. It was early yet, and so no one else was seated there. I couldn’t see the whole market from where I sat, but I could see enough of it. The selection was quite poor. There was no cloth for sale at all, only finished tunics and trousers, robes, and veils. These were more expensive than plain cloth, which might be made into whatever the buyer wished. I was not sure how anyone in this town could afford such luxury, but that stall was the most crowded, for all the shoppers at it had an uncomfortable desperation in their bearing.
I looked away, both to see what else the market had to offer, and because the finished clothes made me sad in a way I could not explain. There was a woodcarver across the way, and I watched him work with his apprentice while they waited for customers. Though their stall was full of utilitarian items like stools and sturdy cupboards, the carver and his apprentice made little frivolities while they sat. I watched the master produce a bird whose wings actually moved from a block of wood no larger than both my fists held together. The apprentice’s work was not so fine, but the sheep she carved looked so real you might have shorn it.
Other stalls sold nails or potatoes or dried heather. The breadmaker’s stall was nearly empty already. The butcher was busy, as was the candlemaker. I saw Arwa admiring a set of finely tapered candles at his stall for a moment. She smiled at him, and I knew she would compliment the work to see if he would bite. He must not have been too forthcoming, because she quickly moved on. I knew that busy stalls were less helpful ones for Arwa, because if a merchant had customers, they were not likely to waste time talking to her for longer than it took to figure out that she had nothing to offer for their wares.
After an hour had passed, Arwa appeared at the table with two figs in her hand. I didn’t bother wondering how she’d got them. She passed one to me, and tucked the other one away. I knew she would give it to Tariq later, because he had missed the market entirely; unlike Saoud, he would be sad about it.
“I think the candlemaker’s wife is the best chance,” she said. “But they have been too busy all morning, so I haven’t been able to get close to them again.”
“We aren’t in a hurry,” I reminded her. “If it takes you the whole day and you learn something we can use, then it will have been time well spent.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s only that I can feel the pull of the spindle again, and I want to be well away from here before—” She paused. “You know.”
I did know. What I said instead was: “It is better to forget it while you’re in the market.”
“Of course,” she said, shaking her head to regain the sense of it. She hadn’t coughed in a while, at least. Neither had I. “This is very strange.”
“It is,” I told her. “I am sorry I can’t be more help.”
“I am glad to be any help at all,” she said. “You and Saoud would have had a much easier time of this journey without me.”
Arwa had been a part of us for so long that sometimes I forgot how much younger she was. I thought, instead, that she was only very small. But it was six years that separated us, not just height, and we hadn’t spared her very much thought when we’d dragged her through the mountain pass. The last time she had done it, she had been a babe on her mother’s back, one year old and never alive before her people were cursed.
“Remember who it was that climbed the tree and distracted the demon bear for us,” I said to her.
She smiled. I passed her the half of the fig I had not yet eaten, and she took a bite.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go and see if the candlemaker’s wife can spare us some time.”
The crowd around the candlemaker’s stall had thinned. Only two old women stood there, looking at the cheapest and stubbiest candles that were available for sale. They would not burn particularly clean but they would burn long, and a clever person might save the wax and make a new candle with some of their own string.
“But where will you get it?” said one woman to the other. “There hasn’t been yarn in the market for months, let alone heavy string for candles.”
The second woman scowled, but put down three small coins for the candles anyway.