19. Merchant
Merchant
Kain woke with the first bird in the trees and lay still a moment with his eyes open on the ceiling. Then he sat up and swung his legs off the bed, and stayed there a breath longer than he needed to, listening to the house and the morning.
His clothes lay folded by the bed where he'd left them the night before, and he pulled them on.
In the kitchen he made a small breakfast, no more than enough to take the edge off, since there would be more food than he could eat once he got to the festival. The cooking wouldn't be done for a while yet, though, so he ate what he had and was glad of it.
Out on the porch he pulled on the boots, oiled the night before and dry now, while Ghost slipped past him and ran off into the trees and was gone.
Hoofbeats came up the road, and Jeremiah rolled by with a wave and a whistle, no time to stop, his wagon loaded down and his wife waiting on the rest of it.
Kain went out to the barn to see to Roan.
He took his time with the brush, working the tangles out of Roan's tail and mane until the horse stood clean for the day. Then he swung the saddle up onto his back and drew the girth tight, waited for the horse to let his breath go, and drew it tight again.
He mounted, and Roan stamped under him, never one to stand still, and they set off.
They went out the gate and up the road, and Roan stretched into an easy canter as the way rose toward town. The morning was clear and warming fast under the climbing sun.
The dew burned off the grass, the flowers came open along the verge, and the first bees were already working them.
They came up the last of the rise into the town, and it was already full of people, the whole of Tillamore turned out for the day. Kain walked Roan past the first of the booths to the stable, which stood near full, and got the horse into one of the last open stalls.
He left Roan with the stable hands and went back out to walk the street on foot.
The festival ran the whole length of the street, tables down both sides the way he and Carol had set them out. Up on the stage at the end of the street a fiddler tried out a few bars of a reel, warming the strings for the dancing that would come after dark.
Folk were already carrying out the breakfast food, plates of it coming from every kitchen in town, and Kain saw he'd had no cause to eat at home at all.
At the far end of the street a wagon came rumbling up behind two horses, and it pulled his eye the moment it appeared. It was a booth on wheels, painted so bright it was hard to look at straight on, reds and oranges and yellows thrown against muted blue and green.
It had no sooner stopped than the shutters along its side banged open on racks of bottles in every color.
A great hulking shape swung down off the back and set to raising the stall, and it was out of his line of sight before he got a clear look, but the size and the set of its shoulders put him in mind of an ogre, or something part one.
The woman who leaned out of the opening was dressed as loud as the wagon, layer on layer of mismatched color, with earrings that flashed when she turned her head. From across the street they had the look of charms, but as Kain came nearer he saw they were glass baubles and nothing more.
A few folk from the town drifted over and began handling the wares, and she passed bottles across the counter, pulling corks and letting them sniff. Kain drifted closer and settled in near enough to listen.
"Genuine Stamina Potion, straight from the Dungeons of Dusk. One swig and you'll work twice as hard as ever you have, and not feel it till sundown."
Kain squinted at the bottle, blue glass marked at fifty copper. A true stamina potion ran amber and cost two gold at the least, the kind of thing that turned a hard fight, and any warrior worth the name would pay it gladly.
What she had was dye and water with a few herbs stirred in to give it a smell. The interesting part hung on the wall to her right, packets of herbs sold as sleeping powders, lavender and chamomile by the look of them, real and worth the asking.
She had the sense to salt the false goods through with true ones, and he could admire the craft of it.
The man at the counter paid, and the woman behind him bought a bottle sold as a love potion, and Kain watched the whole of it without much concern. It was entertainment, near enough, and no great harm done.
The markup was a crime, but folk came to a festival meaning to spend, and they went home happy. When the woman with the love potion had gone, he crossed his arms and walked up to the counter.
She looked up at him, and something in his face made her think better of whatever she had meant to say. She ducked down and rummaged under the counter, and came up with a small jar sealed in real beeswax, which she set in front of him.
"You've the look of a discerning sort. Field balm." She slid it toward him. "Wound salve. Heals everything short of a broken bone. Go on, open it."
Kain cracked the wax and worked the lid off, lifted it to his nose, and tilted it toward the light. Yarrow and honey, over a base of rendered fat.
Darien had mixed much the same for the company when one of them took a wound, a plain recipe and a good one, and this was honest work.
"How much?"
"Two gold."
Kain set the jar back down on the counter. "The makings run sixty copper, and an hour's work to cook it down. Sixty copper."
The woman laid a hand over her heart. "You wound me."
"The salve'll mend that." Kain left the jar where it sat. "Sixty copper. Or I keep walking, and you spend good wax sealing it up again to sell to the next soul who can't tell dye from a potion."
"One gold."
"Fifty copper, and I keep it to myself that half your shelf is colored water." Kain held her eye.
Her voice took on the wounded note of a woman robbed in broad daylight. "Sixty copper, and I'll throw in the sleeping herbs."
The herbs were worth having, and he didn't always sleep easy. "Done."
"You're a terrible person."
"I've been told."
He counted out the coins, tucked the jar and the packets of herbs into his coat, and moved off into the crowd. He took a wooden plate from the stack at the first table and worked down the row, taking a couple of fruit tarts, a pastry, two of the buttery rolls.
He was halfway along when he caught sight of Carol up ahead, going back and forth at a near run.
"Kain. Here."
She caught him by the arm and towed him past a row of pies he had been meaning to try, over to her own table, where she'd laid out jars of jam in a long line with baskets of crackers to spread them on.
"Try this." She took a jar from the end of the line and held it up. "First batch I've ever made of it, and it came out perfect. I thought of you the whole time I was making it."
Kain took the jar and spread a little of the jam onto a cracker. While he did it, Carol reached over and lifted a strawberry tart clean off his plate and put it away in a single bite.
"That's good," Carol said, around the last of it. "Who made it?"
"Elizabeth, I think. She's been at the baking since yesterday." Kain nodded down the row of tables.
"I'm getting one of those for myself." Carol licked the last of his tart off her thumb. "Go on. Try the jam."
Kain spread it and ate the cracker down. The jam was sweet, with a tang under it he couldn't place, like nothing he had tasted before, and he was frowning as he swallowed it.
"Know what it is?" Carol asked.
Kain shook his head. "Can't place it. It's not sand plum, and it's not mulberry. Closest thing to it is a peach."
"Persimmon."
"Never heard of it," he said, and turned the jar to read the lid.
"They don't grow up here, mostly south of here.
" She wiped her hands on her apron. "Went down to see my grandmother in the fall, and the things grow wild as weeds.
Nobody plants them, they just come up everywhere, along the fence rows and the old pastures.
She had a batch of the jam put by, and I picked all I could carry and made my own once I got home. "
"It's good." Kain set the empty cracker down. "Mind if I take another?"
"Take the whole jar." Carol came around behind the table, lifted one out, and pressed it into his hands. "I set this one aside special, for you."
Kain took it and worked it down into his coat pocket, and Carol reached straight over and pulled it back out.
"You'll smash it carrying it about like that. Leave it here on the table where it's safe, and take it home when you go."
"Mind keeping the rest of it, then?" Kain dug out the salve and the packets of herbs, and Carol took them and set them behind the table beside the jam.
"You bought off her?" Carol looked down the street toward the painted wagon. "She's a swindle on wheels if ever I saw one."
"Oh, she is." The corner of Kain's mouth moved. "But she keeps just enough real goods on the shelf, if you know what to look for."
"Anything I'd want?" Carol asked.
"I doubt it."
Carol stepped back behind her table and held the jam out to the next person going by. Kain left his things there with her, the jar she'd set aside and the rest, and turned back down the row of tables. There was another of those strawberry tarts down at the far end with his name on it.