“Maybe not meant so,” he said. “Best the soldiers be seen accepting the gift.”

She gestured to Chief Tuvi. He strolled back to inspect the dumplings and the girl, who wasn’t more than ten. He indicated she should eat one first, and when she popped one promptly in her mouth, he allowed the soldiers to share the rest.

“Even so, walking through the market is more than your sister can do,” said Mai, mouth watering as she watched the soldiers devour the moist dumplings. She couldn’t bring herself to taste them when Eliar was rejected in that way, but if he meant to let the slight pass, she would not mention it again. “She wasn’t allowed to accompany me.”

“She’s unmarried. She’s not allowed to walk in the market until she becomes an adult.”

“Which I am, although I’m younger than she is? Just because I’m married? That doesn’t seem reasonable.”

Like his father, Eliar might smile and charm but there were things he would not joke about. “That isn’t our way, verea.”

“Forgive me. I had no intention to offend. I grew up selling produce in the market in Kartu Town. It seems strange to me that your sister lives so restricted.”

“Let’s move on,” he said.

Even Miravia’s absence could not ruin the delight of walking through the bright day and enjoying the sight of a city so rich they could build with wood as much as with stone and brick. So many colors and smells! Vendors sold oil by the ladle. At food stalls you could buy noodles, or mounds of colorful spiced and pickled vegetables.

A girl sat on a blanket under the shade of a canvas awning, fruit mounded in neat piles before her, crying her wares in a cheerful voice: “Sunfruit! Best and sweetest! Ghost melon for the new year! Strings of redthorn.”

Mai wiped away unexpected tears.

Priya cupped Mai’s elbow under an arm. “Mistress, are you well? Perhaps we should return?”

“Just remembering when I used to be that girl, selling fruit in the market in Kartu Town.”

She bought several sunfruit, making only a cursory effort to bargain, and shared out the segments with the others. The moist flesh cooled her mouth, but it tasted a little sour.

The smell of fried fish made her stomach turn, so they walked on, past carpenters raising walls where a hall had just days ago burned, past roofers shifting broken tiles, past folk hauling water and pushing wheelbarrows piled with bricks, past men and women calling out their wares in a singsong that grabbed and held the ear. The rhythm of the marketplace truly was the same anywhere. And today she had no need to feel hurried, to grasp at trinkets in passing, to wonder if the coin she’d been given as a sign of favor by Father Mei might be pried from her hand by Grandmother Mei in a fit of pique. She could wait, see what appealed, how prices compared, and she could come back whenever she pleased, because she and Anji were wealthy. Anji’s troop of Qin soldiers had saved Olossi. Acting as negotiator for their services, she had pinched the Olossi council for so much coin that she couldn’t imagine how she’d had the audacity just days ago to manage it.