Polyam was very carefully staring at the table. “It is a poor effort, I know, but my mother’s sister would be shamed to tears if I returned this uneaten.”
Daja picked up one of each thing, arranging the food on her plate. When she finished her choices, Polyam followed suit. Carefully Daja lifted a tiny pickled onion to her lips and bit down, savoring the tart juice and the vegetable’s crispness.
Little Bear whined. Daja glanced at him: he was still in the same position at the edge of the dropcloth, but his tail waved slowly. He whined again.
Something made her look past him. Briar and Tris watched her with nearly the same expression on their faces as the dog. Sandry was too well-behaved to be caught staring. Lark’s back was to them as she helped Sandry to pull the sticks and threads of the new loom taut.
Daja looked at Briar and Tris again; her face twitched. Polyam twisted so she could see what was going on. Tris cut furiously at aloe leaves as the boy stirred bubbling seaweed.
“It would be kaq’s manners not to share,” Polyam muttered. “Will you join us?” she invited the others. Briar walked over immediately. Little Bear sat up, tail thumping.
“This is very kind of you,” Lark said as she and Tris came to sit with them. Sandry joined them once she’d rolled up the loom.
“The people bargaining in Deadman’s District never shared,” admitted Briar, his mouth full of pastry. “They’d let us watch, though.”
“Let us say I have a soft spot for dogs, then,” replied Polyam, scratching Little Bear behind the ears. “And children.”
“Your mother’s sister must have enough zirok in Oti Bookkeeper’s ledgers for the next three generations, if she cooks like this for a trade,” said Daja. “Even my clan leader didn’t cook so well.”
“The head of your clan had to cook?” Tris wanted to know. “Why not make someone else do it?”
“Traders prize cooking as highly as the ability to negotiate better prices,” said Lark. “That’s why formal bargaining includes gifts of food, isn’t it, Polyam? People let down their guard if they’re well-fed.”
Polyam made a face. “It’s not right that a kaq knows so much of Tsaw’ha ways,” she muttered. To Daja she added, “Or that you are teaching them our ways.”
“I was taught your ways by other Traders, when I was just a sprightly young thing,” said Lark.
“She was an acrobat,” Daja told Polyam.
“And a dancer,” added Sandry.
“And she passed the tambourine for coins after they performed,” Tris put in.
“I learned what I know traveling with my parents and my nurse,” remarked Sandry.
“Then where are they now, your mother and father?” Polyam wanted to know, her eye bright with curiosity. “Would they be happy to see their child in the dirt, associating with commoners?”
“They’re dead,” Sandry replied flatly, tracing the embroidery on a cushion with her finger. “Both of them, in the smallpox epidemic in Hatar last fall.”
“When the gods balance the books, mortals weep,” Polyam said gravely. “I am sorry for your loss.”
Sandry looked at her, small round chin thrust out stubbornly. “Besides, Uncle likes my friends. And he doesn’t seem to mind dirt.”
“Gods know we rode through enough of it these last two weeks,” muttered Tris.
“What of you, boy?” Polyam asked Briar. “Where did you learn Tsaw’ha things?”
“In Hajra, in Sotat,” replied the boy, taking another stuffed vine leaf.
“Don’t look at me,” Tris said hurriedly. “My family never associated with anyone other than fellow merchants.”
“You all live in the same house, at a Living Circle temple city?” inquired the Trader.
The four nodded.
“And you are all xurdin?” she continued, using the word for mage.
“Niko found us,” explained Sandry. “Niklaren Goldeye. Daja was shipwrecked, and he found her; I was hidden from a mob in a cellar in Hatar. Briar was being sentenced to—” She blinked, trying to remember her friend’s one-time destination.
“The docks,” he said. When Polyam looked at him, he showed her his X tattoos. “Caught thieving three times—but don’t worry. Anyone that nicks Trader—Tsaw’ha—” he changed the word with a mocking grin—”things gets bad magic on them.”
“And Tris was at another Living Circle temple,” Sandry finished. She didn’t add that Tris’s family had given her away, being too frightened to keep her. Even now Tris hated to hear it mentioned. “Niko saw our magic, that no one else knew we had, and brought us to Lark and Rosethorn—”
“And Frostpine,” interrupted Daja.
Sandry beamed at her. “I wasn’t going to forget him. How could I? They had magic like ours,” she told Polyam. “Well, and he brought me there partly because Duke Vedris is my great-uncle.”
“It’s quite a story,” admitted Lark. “And it grows every day.” She grinned. “Sometimes it’s very tiring to be a part of it.”
“Ack!” cried Briar. Now that the food was nearly gone, he realized his current pot of what he called “oil stew” might burn. Getting up, he ran over to tend it.
“So you were Blue Traders?” Polyam asked Daja.
Seeing Tris open her mouth to ask for an explanation of the term, Daja quickly said, “Those who travel the seas and rivers are Blue Traders. The ones who ride snow or sand are called White Traders.” Answering Polyam, she added, “Blue Traders, on the Pebbled Sea.”