Three quigutl ran the market stall in Trowebridge: a youngster who clambered up the booth’s support columns and fetched additional stock from under the thatched eaves, a middle-aged female who bargained with human customers using a bulky translation engine, and the podgy old patriarch in charge of the money box. He stood upon his hind legs at the back of the booth, dressed in an approximation of Goreddi garb. Breeches were awkward, due to his tail, so he wore a skirt; his shirt frothed with lace and had large openings in back for his second set of arms—his ancestors may have had wings, like the great dragons, but modern quigutl had twiggy dorsal arms with long, dexterous fingers. An absurd little hat perched on his forehead, between his eye cones, his head spines arrayed like a fan behind it. He had more than forty spines—a sign of great age—but the reddish streaks on his throat pouch showed he could still sire children.
The sight of these creatures, even the absurdly dressed older male, sent a wave of nostalgia over Tess. She sidled closer, not to buy anything but to listen to them talk. She’d taught herself Quootla so she could communicate with Pathka. She had the wrong mouthparts to speak it, of course, but Pathka had understood Goreddi. Most quigutl in Goredd did; they didn’t have much choice.
Beside Tess, a well-to-do man in a pink doublet and a sugarloaf hat rattled a box of thniks and said, “Forty-seven is too much. The last transmission box I bought didn’t have the range you claimed. I didn’t want to buy from you again, since you seem bent on swindling honest folk, but the wife insists on supporting local industry. I’m going to be in Lavondaville next week, and I’m inclined to see what the quigs there are selling.”
Tess cringed. Quigutl didn’t like being called quigs, which was also the Mootya term for dirt, but Goreddis would insist upon being contemptuous or lazily ignorant.
The female swiveled an eye cone toward the patriarch, who licked his nose. She hefted her translation engine, like an oversized accordion, rapidly manipulated keys on one end, and squeezed the bellows. A voice wheezed: “Forty-seven, and we include a free jenny.”
From the rafters, a pole descended and a mechanical creature shimmied down, a monkey with the head of a dog, its jaws working frantically. Tess had seen jennies before; they were for fetching jars off high shelves and dusting in unreachable corners. Often they bit people.
The customer wrinkled his delicate highborn nose. Tess wondered if he’d attended her sister’s wedding; he seemed to be someone important. In any case, she couldn’t resist muttering behind him, “Ask for a door worm instead. They’re much more useful.”
The man recoiled as if Tess smelled bad, which may indeed have been the case, and furrowed his brow. “What’s a door worm?”
Tess’s eyes went big and innocent, a strategy she’d often employed to charm old ladies at court. “If you lose your key, you stick the worm into the lock and it opens the door for you.”
A door worm would also destroy the lock and sometimes the door, the wall, and the floor; it would burrow until it broke, and some of the blighters were distressingly durable. The man was considering the possibilities, though. Everyone, it seemed, had a door they’d like opened, generally one they weren’t entitled to look behind. The worm was an unsubtle means of entry, but he would come to appreciate that too late.
Of course, it was not nice to inflict mischief on an unsuspecting stranger, even if he rather deserved it. Tess had to admit she was getting a touch of anarchic joy from this. She wrestled her conscience and was about to recant her suggestion, but the man raised his chin like the prow of a ship and said, “Throw in a door worm, and I’ll pay forty-five.”
The female rolled her eye cones toward the patriarch, whose throat pouch swelled minutely in response. “Your hard-driven bargains will assuredly ruin us,” wheezed the engine, while the female hissed at the youngster in the rafters, “Toss down a worm, Athla.”
The man left with his bounty, looking smug. Only a practiced eye could discern that the quigutl looked equally pleased, their head spines at a cocky angle. “Forty-five is a lot! We could buy you a ruff, Kashth,” chirped the young one.
“It would look better on Futha,” said the female, glancing at the old male, who was drumming his fingers dreamily on the money box. “Ko has a longer neck.”
Ko was the pronoun quigutl used for each other, although Tess could never bring herself to use it. The word was hard to say correctly with human mouthparts, but more uncomfortably, it was ungendered. It, to Tess’s mind, implied a thing, or at best an animal. It seemed disrespectful.
Tess was just turning away from the stall when the translation engine blared at her: “Young maidy, what will you buy? Thniks, thnimis, toys, tools, specialty items?”
“No, thanks,” Tess said, walking backward, hands raised. “I haven’t any money.”
The two adults pursed their beaky mouths demurely, but the little one scuttled down the pole headfirst, crying, “How does she live without money? You said it was impossible!” The exclamation was delivered with an accusatory glare at Kashth.
“It’s not easy,” Tess interjected, hoping to head off a squabble. Quigutl generally had no compunctions about fighting like cats, but these two were mismatched and the booth was full of things they could break. “I haven’t been without for long, and I hope to remedy it soon, but…”
She trailed off because all three quigutl were staring at her, openmouthed.
“She understands Quootla!” cried the little one, prone to excited exclamations.
“How do you know our speech, human?” asked the female warily, without the engine.
“A quigutl friend taught me. Her name was Pathka,” said Tess.
“Pathka!” crowed the youngster, Athla. “Pathka lives with us in the Big House. You should come see ko. Kashth, can she come home and meet everyone?”
Tess’s heart leaped. She hadn’t seen Pathka in years, since before St. Jannoula’s War; the little quigutl had disappeared without a trace. When war had forced the citizens of Lavondaville into the tunnels, Tess had ventured beneath Quighole, where the quigutl had their nests (dragging a frightened Jeanne along with her). None of the quigutl had known where Pathka had gone. If she was here in Trowebridge, Tess had to see her.
Kashth, the female, was saying, “Yes, go see our house. We bought a house, you understand. In a street. The biggest house owned by quigutl in Goredd. We were clever to move here, where houses are cheap. Every quigutl in Trowebridge lives in our house, or under it. Even Pathka, who has antiquated fancies and sometimes slinks off to the sewers. Futha had to break ko dorsal arm to make ko obey.”
Futha, at the back of the booth, grunted acknowledgment.
“But now ko stays home and makes wonderful things,” little Athla piped up cheerfully, as if Kashth had not just said something appalling.
“I see,” said Tess, worried now. Quigutl could be cruel—Pathka’s mother had bitten her in the face—but this kind of violently enforced discipline was not something she’d heard of before. Tess decided to withhold judgment until she saw how Pathka was taking it; it was Pathka’s judgment that mattered, Tess had learned long ago, not squeamish human standards.
The patriarch, who’d been speaking to Kashth with hand signals, made a gesture of assent. The youngster in the eaves gave a whoop, leaped down, and took Tess’s hand in one of its pad-fingered ventral ones. “Futha says we may!”
“I’ll follow you,” said Tess, gently disentangling herself. It wouldn’t do to walk through town holding hands with a quigutl, even in these liberal and enlightened times. Also, the hand was sticky. She surreptitiously wiped her own on her skirts.
The youngster bounded ahead, looking back often as if to make sure Tess didn’t slip away. Tess wouldn’t; she couldn’t bring herself to be rude to quigutl. Dragons were one thing—the saar didn’t care—but quigutl had emotions, even if the naturalists denied it. Dragon and human scholars alike hadn’t put in the hours of observation Tess had.
The Big House was, indeed, “in a street” in the sense of being along a main road. It stood five stories tall, half-timbered with diamond-pane windows and cheerful yellow shutters. The window boxes were planted, though it was early for blooms, and swallows nested in the eaves.