Free Magic in Ithkar by Andre Norton, Robert Adams (ed.)

flat. Anyway, what she managed to see embarrassed her more than the dancer had and got worse as the bellows of appreciation from the crowd got louder, men and women alike urging the puppets on. She stared at hot red faces and decided this was some kind of grown-up thing she might appreciate when she was older.
    A minstrel strolled by. She sensed his interest, though he said nothing as he walked beside her a moment. He stared at Tanu, but that didn’t bother her after the first prick of fear, since she could feel his puzzlement. Then he quirked a brow at her, bowed quickly, gracefully, and passed on, the only one of them all to see she was a girl in spite of her trousers. His curiosity quickly faded as he moved away, plucking idle chords from his guitar, subvocalizing words as he sought the songs to match the mood of the crowd.
    The sense of him trickled off as she left the fringes for the area of stalls and booths where cookshops and sweet vendors turned the air as thick as stew with what they sold, where other vendors sold wine in throwaway clay cups and beer cooled by ice magicked down from the mountains. Jezeri and Tanu drifted along in an ecstasy of sniffing and staring, entranced by the glimmer of mirrors, the shimmering colors of the silks spread out on counters with folk haggling over them, the spices in pots and crocks that perfumed the air every time a customer lifted a lid to test the taste and aroma of what he or she was buying.
    A woman with a round sweaty face, her hair tied up in a linen coif, was stirring a glutinous mass in an iron pot, muscles like melons in her heavy arms. She pulled the ladle loose, eyed the brown threads dripping from it. Clucking her tongue with satisfaction, she emptied a cup of white powder into the pot, stirred a moment longer, then stepped back and watched the candy foam up until it filled the inside. She swung the pot off the fire, tilted it over a stone slab, and let the seething mass spread out into a brown puddle. There was another stone slab on the far side of the pot where an earlier batch was already cold. She took a mallet and broke this into pieces.
    Jezeri bought a copper’s worth of candy shards, coaxed Tanu from the pocket and set him on her shoulder, gave him a piece of the candy. They both crunched noisily and contentedly on their shards as Jezeri strolled on, immersed in the life around her, ignoring that little itch at the back of her neck.
    People stood in clots, talking, arguing, buying, selling, all sorts of dress, all shades of skin—from a translucent white rivaling the moon’s pallor, through shades of gold and brown, to a soft black darker than night.
    Their helmets ruddy in torch and lantern light, fair-wards strutted arrogantly through the crowd, forcing others to step aside for them.
    Priests were all over the place, like vermin infesting a granary, no two of them alike, from the one who wore an elaborate robe of black velvet thickly embroidered with gold and crimson thread to a dust-and-ash-plastered ascetic whose single garment had less cloth than a lady’s kerchief. They chanted, whirled in off dances, jingled begging bowls, or stood about looking wise if they could, settling for mystery if wisdom seemed unlikely.
    The itch got worse.
    Jezeri licked her fingers and rubbed them dry on her trousers, spat on Tanu’s hands, and used the hem of her tunic to wipe them clean. “No sticky fingers in my hair,” she told him, smiled as he sang his protest. She eased him back into the pocket, rubbed irritably at her neck, calling herself many names, the kindest of which was fool. Despite Old ’Un’s warning she’d let herself be so caught up in the pleasures assaulting her senses that she’d been slow to take serious notice of the itch. She couldn’t ignore it any longer. Someone was watching her. Worse. Someone was following her, had been following her for a long time. She began walking slowly on, letting the noise and excitement flow unnoticed around