Music carried by a cooling autumn wind settled down into the quiet nooks and crooks of Arachridge, the winding jaunty melody of a herdy-gurdy ambling almost in time with the thumps of Spring’s cart as she guided it down a row of lean-together shacks. When she closed her eyes and listened, Spring could almost hear the distant hum of a violin whispering sweetly as its notes escaped crooked alleyways. The smells also drifted with the music, though she could only really smell them while her eyes were closed. The pleasant snap of spice and smoke, the nip of onion and wild garlic, gone the moment she opened her eyes, though the hunger was slower to leave her.
The sun had almost reached its apex by the time Spring had guided her cart off the rough cut stone of a lower residential district and onto the well worn cobble of the Mercher’s Quarter. She turned to an inn her father and her had used many a year, and by the time she had her horse and cart quartered the sun had found its apex. There was merchandise on that cart she would need to move, but that was a tomorrow sort of problem, instead Spring slid into her room for as long as it took to wash her face in the basin and exchange her traveling leather for an airy silken blue dress that would catch the air with a satisfying amount of swish when dancing. She also only took enough coin to cover the evening’s expenses from her purse, lest she tempt the nimble fingers of a pickpurse by looking like the frivolous sort of rich.
With a wave to the kindly woman who ran the inn, Spring was back onto the street and letting herself be pulled along by the bustle of the crowd.
The Merchant’s Rowe was choked by silks and stalls, the shops that normally lined the street usurped for the week by a clot of craftspeople from near and far all come to tempt a coin in exchange for a piece of work. Glittering jewelry with stones of polished rock and glass to one side, a pile of Lady Dawn carved from wood sat atop a barrel for catching rainwater, and, the one Spring found amusing, a watchmaker who had dared to block easy passage into a clockmaker’s shop with his sprawling rug. There were other fascinations on display, Merchant’s Rowe was a long street after all, but Spring was letting her stomach draw her instead to the Old Town Square.
Here many of the offical entertainers gathered, a collection of musicians sitting on the edge of a fountain, a puppet show that had claimed the stage set for the evening’s dance, a weaver who sat with her fat and happy spiders demonstrating the process needed to produce a fine finger of silk, and to Spring’s great joy stalls of young men frying skewers of meat and vegetables. She purchased one that had just enough char to wet the appetite and Spring was off again, down to the Mozaic Plaza in the lower town where the unoffical entertainers gathered, for she had long ago learned that during the day their performances were far superior to those gathered in the Square.
A great old tree sat in the heart of the plaza, its roots disturbing the mosaic depicting the Gods of the Unseason, and its branches decorated with ribbons of silk that flared like fire in the wind. Here Spring found a place to sit and eat, with a good view of a storyteller’s booth. She plucked off a piece of carrot from her skewer and relaxed back against the twisted old tree to watch.
The sun had almost reached its apex by the time Spring had guided her cart off the rough cut stone of a lower residential district and onto the well worn cobble of the Mercher’s Quarter. She turned to an inn her father and her had used many a year, and by the time she had her horse and cart quartered the sun had found its apex. There was merchandise on that cart she would need to move, but that was a tomorrow sort of problem, instead Spring slid into her room for as long as it took to wash her face in the basin and exchange her traveling leather for an airy silken blue dress that would catch the air with a satisfying amount of swish when dancing. She also only took enough coin to cover the evening’s expenses from her purse, lest she tempt the nimble fingers of a pickpurse by looking like the frivolous sort of rich.
With a wave to the kindly woman who ran the inn, Spring was back onto the street and letting herself be pulled along by the bustle of the crowd.
The Merchant’s Rowe was choked by silks and stalls, the shops that normally lined the street usurped for the week by a clot of craftspeople from near and far all come to tempt a coin in exchange for a piece of work. Glittering jewelry with stones of polished rock and glass to one side, a pile of Lady Dawn carved from wood sat atop a barrel for catching rainwater, and, the one Spring found amusing, a watchmaker who had dared to block easy passage into a clockmaker’s shop with his sprawling rug. There were other fascinations on display, Merchant’s Rowe was a long street after all, but Spring was letting her stomach draw her instead to the Old Town Square.
Here many of the offical entertainers gathered, a collection of musicians sitting on the edge of a fountain, a puppet show that had claimed the stage set for the evening’s dance, a weaver who sat with her fat and happy spiders demonstrating the process needed to produce a fine finger of silk, and to Spring’s great joy stalls of young men frying skewers of meat and vegetables. She purchased one that had just enough char to wet the appetite and Spring was off again, down to the Mozaic Plaza in the lower town where the unoffical entertainers gathered, for she had long ago learned that during the day their performances were far superior to those gathered in the Square.
A great old tree sat in the heart of the plaza, its roots disturbing the mosaic depicting the Gods of the Unseason, and its branches decorated with ribbons of silk that flared like fire in the wind. Here Spring found a place to sit and eat, with a good view of a storyteller’s booth. She plucked off a piece of carrot from her skewer and relaxed back against the twisted old tree to watch.
