Chapter 5 The Old Market
On the third day of her illness, Leena cursed St. Silas to every imaginable hell.
He’d lied. He’d given them the wrong medication. It was not working. They were dying.
On the fourth day, Leena’s fever broke completely.
The rash that was spreading across her body changed to a faint pink color and the first signs of hunger began to assault her.
She stood without fainting. And she cursed St. Silas once more, for now she was certain he’d fulfilled his end of the bargain.
Leena took no joy in her own recovery, however, when Rami’s was much slower. He stayed in bed, asleep most of the time, although his temperature had finally broken as well and color had returned to his cheeks.
It was on this day that Leena made her first venture to the Old Market.
Leena had never once stopped to consider the varying smells of the bazaar, but the odor of frying fish mixed with the pungent smell of human flesh pressed close together was like a fist to her stomach.
Leena had seen the market grow ostentatiously since its foundation nearly twenty years ago by the first Algaraan immigrants; now it was even frequented by the most reluctant of Mors.
She remembered that when she was a child, the market had consisted of only a few tents and wares placed on dusty sheets on the ground.
Now it snaked along the coast, starting at the harbor and moving inward, with multicolored tents, caravans, shop fronts, and people of varying wealth and class thronging together.
Over the years, Leena had seen every form of merchandise being traded and haggled over—herbs and medicines that were said to be able to bring about children, handmade clothes with intricate stitching that would far outlast any factory garment made in Morland, and even imported artifacts from across the world that held prestige and grandeur.
The crowd today was far thinner than usual, most people barricading themselves at home until the current wave of Sweeper’s Cough had settled.
Of those who were out, most wore scarves on their nose and mouth to ward off the infection.
Leena had also covered half her face to avoid spreading the contagion further.
She was not surprised to find a growing line by the medicinal tents.
Leena herself had stood there not long ago, spending precious coins on Mr. Martin’s Medical Cure for Contagious Diseases and Sweeper’s Cough.
Yet, in spite of its popularity, it had not worked for Rami, forcing her to seek the Saint of Silence instead.
Leena weaved through the familiar caravans, dodging both the overzealous shopkeepers waving her in and the insistent ghosts that always trawled the market calling for her attention. She kept a steady pace, avoiding eye contact with mostly anything that moved.
Yet she could not avoid the pamphlet that was forcefully shoved into her hands.
Since the rapid boom of the printing press, flyers had become commonplace in Leena’s life.
Every other day was an advertisement for the unreal and fantastical.
It was the same ruddy-faced man she’d seen all the times before, who often stood at the corner between the tents that sold rugs and the chai stall.
Leena glanced at the paper, taking a moment to decipher the smudged black ink.
The Saint of Hunger Spotted on Mount Syke!
Expedition to Explore Such Sighting to Take Place on the Morrow.
Join Us at Daybreak at Ankler’s Inn.
“The demons are stirring again,” the man whispered to her, his eyes wide and twitching in his face. “And the Saints have returned to banish them back to their hellish world.”
Leena thanked him with a polite nod while pocketing the pamphlet carefully, wanting to preserve the paper as intact as possible. Later on, she could write in the margins rather than spend a precious farthing to purchase new paper to practice her translations.
Her thoughts shifted when she passed a girl no older than her, with short blond hair hidden by an overworn bonnet and a scarf over her nose, handing out flyers. She wore a red twine of rope pinned to her lapel—a sign of the Morish rebels.
This pamphlet Leena did not take, for she had already kept one concealed at home, reading it at night when the candle was at its dimmest. She had the words memorized by now:
King Edmund is powerless.
The country is ruled by the aristos sitting in Parliament who do not represent our interests, but only seek to advance theirs.
More than ever: The poor are poorer, and the rich are richer.
Look across the sea: The Algaraans have paved our way.
The Algaraan Malik will fall.
So will our King.
So will our Parliament.
Take arms. Struggle. Resist.
Keep a lookout.
Further instructions will follow.
Long live the People.
Long live the People.
Leena remembered how desperately she had wanted to fling those words at the Warden when he had cornered her, hissing in her face: Long live the King.
What he had really meant to say was: Long live the corruption that lined his pockets with bribes and coins from desperate families begging for a word from an imprisoned loved one. All made possible by an infirm King who did not, ironically, have long to live.
Leena was startled out of her dark reverie by the ghost of a Morish boy that she recognized. Last she’d seen him, he was alive, handing out pamphlets in the same determined manner as the girl. Even now, he still wore the twine of rope on his chest.
Yet the ghost bore the marks of his death.
The sinuous muscles of his back lay in tatters; it was clear he had been flogged without reprieve until the bloody whites of his ribs showed—each slash of skin a punishment for his supposed treason. Leena muffled an exclamation, averting her eyes, the hunger disappearing suddenly from her stomach.
It was a jarring reality to see the ghost standing beside the girl.
To Leena, it looked as if she was watching an inevitable future play out—that one day she would return to this street and it would be someone else handing out the flyers, and the girl nothing more than a whispered echo of a call to rise.
No. Leena’s chest was already filled with all the things she could not change. She would not allow this feeling of helplessness to settle inside her, taking root and breeding complacency.
Leena, who had seen the blue-uniformed soldiers enter the market at the same time she had, slowed her steps before passing the girl, warning her in a low voice, “There are soldiers coming your way.”
The girl gave a curt nod and discreetly tucked the papers into her cloak before blending back into the market, lost within moments. The ghost of the flogged boy followed closely at her heels. Leena knew that she would be back tomorrow.
Leena wished she could come every day to warn the girl when trouble followed, just as she wished someone had warned her father, but she knew that it would be impossible, especially now that she was contracted to the Saint of Silence.
It took a few more minutes before Leena arrived at the small stall she was used to visiting whenever her pockets could spare it.
She bought herself and Rami two rolls of bread each, freshly baked, with butter and jam.
The small jug of milk was a luxury she was willing to indulge in; Leena could not remember when they had last had fresh milk.
When she returned home, it was to find Rami taking slow steps from his bed. Seeing his growing energy, Leena tried to suppress her excitement, especially when he allowed her to feed him a few morsels of bread and butter.
Rami never liked to be fussed over.
On the next day, which marked the fifth day since starting the medication, Rami all but growled at her to leave him alone so that he might recover in peace.
This led Leena to leave the house with a sense of relief that he was, albeit slowly, on the mend.
She found her way to the lending library, a much-frequented address.
—
The lending library held a sense of tranquility that was hard to come by in the endless bustle of the New Algaara District.
A once heavily frequented church, the abandoned building had been transformed into a book room sometime in the last decade.
Its dome still arched proudly over the texts, the pews turned into a sitting area for the readers.
Windows, large and magnanimous, shone colored light onto the columns of books, creating a world that, to Leena, looked like a painting belonging to another century.
Even the ghosts that frequented the library were different from the ones in the market.
Leena did not venture to find out their stories and avoided them whenever possible, but a few she guessed to be scholars—though one or two phantoms still confused the place for a church from a time gone by, moving in an unhurried manner, as if in endless prayer.
Today, Leena wasted no time in beginning her search for any information about this Wake that her mother had spoken of in her dream. Perhaps it was a mad notion, but she could not shake off the heavy feeling that her mother’s appearance was more than just the manifestation of her fever and anxiety.
That it held a meaning.
Leena began her search by rifling through old newspapers, journals, and any stored archives from the last decade. But there was nothing to be found there, and after hours of fruitless searching, she left depleted and hungry.
Perhaps, Leena thought with some trepidation as she made her way to the district’s most disreputable pub, her answers were not to be found in old texts.
Here was a place that was frequently visited by guards finishing their shifts at Newtorn Prison, where information was traded for a price and criminals held more knowledge than judges.