“I would have to look at the posternkey’s data coordinates more carefully to know that. Actually,” I admitted, “that might be too advanced even for me. We need Gitrin.”

“Well, here’s hoping we find her, then,” Isaak said.

The noise of the marketplace was deafening. People jostled against one another, voices shouted to be heard above the cacophony. I tried to push forward quickly, but Isaak hung back, stopping in front of almost every stall to see what was inside.

“What kind of meat is that?” he asked, staring at a tray of smoky-hot kebabs with ravenous eyes.

“Kela,” I said.

“Is that some kind of bird?”

I sighed pointedly. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘bird.’ A kela is a kela.” Honestly, how could he be so ignorant? But I supposed in his time, the species were more varied and diverse. Maybe kela was extinct in Isaak’s time, or called by another name. Forcing a diplomatic smile, I asked, “Would you like to try it?”

He stared at the tray a few moments longer, as if debating whether his hunger was strong enough to risk trying an unfamiliar meat. Finally he moved his head up and down, something I had figured out was his equivalent of tugging one’s earlobe. I fought the urge to smirk and ordered two skewers of kebabs from the merchant.

Beyond the marketplace were the insulae of the plivoi. As an esotoin, Gitrin ordinarily would have resided in the underground part of the city; and as tutor to two future geroi, she had even been offered lodging within the geroi’s villa itself. Yet she’d chosen to live among the plivoi, in one of these mudbrick structures. She’d insisted upon it, as a sign of solidarity with the lower castes. I’d never quite understood why she’d voluntarily put herself at risk in that way—even though her apartment was on the ground floor of the building, living aboveground at all was still risky due to the ultraviolet radiation. Plivoi’s lifespans were drastically shorter than those of most esotoi and patroi because of it. But the geroi had admired Gitrin’s dedication to the creed of the Progression. That dedication was part of the reason the gerotus had selected her as my tutor in the first place.