A frowning woman strode forward, dragging a young woman pretty enough except for the splotchy red mark across her right cheek. “This is my daughter. I would be happy to see her wed without any bride-price—”

Tuvi leaned down to speak in Mai’s ear. “With that demon’s mark on her face, none of the men will take her.”

The girl saw, and interpreted, his expression, and hid her face with a hand.

“What will happen to her, verea?” Mai asked the mother.

The woman’s disappointment was easy to see in the way her hand had tightened on the poor girl’s wrist, as if the girl had been rude. “Some of the clan have suggested selling her labor as a slave, but it would shame our family to have it known we’d been forced to do so. We haven’t the dowry for her to go to the temple.”

Mai fished in her sleeve and pressed a gold cheyt into the woman’s hand. The woman stared, too shocked to close her hand over it. “See that she goes to the temple, for the sake of your clan’s honor.”

An audible murmuring rose from the crowd of hopeful women. They shifted, moving back as Keshad pushed through and trotted up to the pavilion ahead of the next supplicants. He mounted the steps with a handsome frown on his face as he sketched a greeting to Mai. He did not even look at Avisha, but why should he? She was nothing to him! Nothing at all.

“Greetings of the day, verea.” A woman addressed Mai with the confidence of a person whose position is secure. She was dressed in a taloos of elaborately embroidered silk that proclaimed her wealth and station. “I am Bettia, of Seven Fans House.”

“Greetings of the day, verea,” said Mai politely. Her gaze drifted to the young women standing behind Mistress Bettia. “Who are these?”

The prettier girl was staring at the ground, but the other, eyes wide with shock, gaped at Keshad as her lips moved, forming his name. Avisha glanced at him, but he was fiddling with his factor’s staff, a short wand about the length of his forearm whose narrow end was crowned with a band of ribbons and a pair of seals fixed to leather cords. He looked like he wanted to lash something, or someone.

“I’m a merchant, as you are, verea,” said Mistress Bettia in the manner of a confidant, “but in the recent troubles two of my house’s warehouses burned down with our stock inside. I find we cannot afford to keep the number of slaves we’re accustomed to. I thought you might wish to purchase the remaining debt of these two. They’re hard workers. They would make good wives.”

Avisha was pretty sure that Bettia was thinking, “good wives for outlanders.” She wanted to knead her heel into that proud merchant’s gold-slippered foot until the woman squealed for mercy.

Keshad bent down between them, a faint aroma of cloves wafting from him. Probably he washed and dressed his hair with an infusion of clove oil and other herbs. She wondered what it would be like to wash those lustrous curls.