Honey for Celephaïs: Chapter 2
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Chapter 2
“Stop, thief!”
The shopkeeper scuttled around his fruit cart, switch in hand, and shouted after the boy. “Thief!”
Wearing only a ragged dhoti of indeterminate gray, the tow-headed boy stopped walking a few meters down the street, apparently ignoring the angry shopkeeper and instead concentrating on the ripe apple he was so eagerly devouring.
The shopkeeper’s sandals slapped down the paving stones.
“Pay for that apple, boy!” he shouted, reaching out for the boy’s arm with one hand.
“I dropped a coin in the basket, didn’t you see it?” said the boy, smiling as he stepped back to leave the shopkeeper grasping thin air.
The shopkeeper paused confusion.
“You did?”
“Of course I did! Would I be standing here talking to you if I were a thief?”
The shopkeeper thought on that, wiping his brow with a multi-colored towel.
He lowered the switch, tucked the towel away again in his voluminous sleeve, and tightened his sash, which had slipped down over his paunch. While the towel was undyed, his kaftan was covered with a tight geometric pattern in maroon on tan cloth. His kaffiyeh was checkered red, held by a black agal which was in serious danger of slipping off entirely.
“That apple costs a copper!”
“And a copper I paid you, old man. Check for yourself!”
The boy motioned at the street stall.
Seeing the boy waiting there—although still eating the apple—and making no move to flee, the shopkeeper hesitated, then turned and stalked back to his stall. He picked up the little bowl and looked inside.
“There’s no copper in here you little bastard!” he cried, and as he turned to pursue the boy, an apple core hit him in the head.
“Thief!”
The boy vaulted over a nearby cart, turning a somersault in the air, and landed in a roll, which evolved into another leap, this time onto a barrel, and onto the roof of a small shop. He paused, looked back at the furious merchant, and walked to the back of the shop, dropping to the ground and escape.
At a fruit stand nearby an older, elegantly dressed woman nodded to herself, eyes still fixed on that empty rooftop.
* * *
Sergeant Ng and the two constables walked through the market slowly. They were on patrol, but it was a quiet day and they had no place they needed to be. Most of the people there, whether they were merchants, shoppers, or just loitering, ignored them or nodded in greeting; they were more interested in the ones that hurriedly looked away or sidled into the shadows.
They knew every corner of this market, whether it was the vegetable farmers hawking tomatoes and greens fresh from the fields outside the city walls, enormous baskets of grain, or fresh-baked bread and cakes. Local spices were on display in cloth sacks, mouths gaping to reveal seeds and powders in a rainbow of colors and scents. Spices collected here from all the corners of the Dreamlands came to Celephaïs mostly by sea, arriving at the busy docks on the other side of the city, but they all ended up here, joining local herbs and spices that came from the surrounding mountains and forests via the river, or overland. They were quite some ways from the wood market, with its enormous variety of structural or beautiful lumber, transported by river boat, but even so there were a few merchants who had set up shop here, trying to sell cut lumber or exotic woods after being unable to purchase the space they had hoped for in the wood market.
The farm market was the farthest from the docks, and most of the carts brought their goods into the city via the Avenue of the Boreas or the Tanarian Way. Both gates were guarded, of course, but the city was largely at peace and there was little need to inspect anything.
Inside the market, though, it was crowded with buyers and sellers, carts of all types being drawn by a variety of beasts—some dangerous—, street stalls popping up here and there like mushrooms after a rain and blocking the streets, and of course pickpockets. It was a madhouse.
In theory anyone wanting to set up shop here had to get a permit from the Wardmaster, and anyone selling without a permit was to be fined or imprisoned, but the Constabulary had enough to do already and pretty much turned a blind eye when they could. As a result, very few of the farmers selling out of their carts had permits, and if they blocked a street (or the storefront of a permit-holding shopkeeper), the Constabulary could offer excellent motivation for them to move—or else.
The merchants sprayed water over the streets regularly to keep the dust down, but of course that just meant the carts turned everything into a fine layer of slippery mud until the next spray washed it all off again. The odors of spoiling fruit and vegetables, manure from the horses and deinos, and sweaty people combined into a stench that took getting used to.
Not surprisingly, the public fountains here were joined by a selection of alehouses, and the constables went out of their way to be sure the alehouses stayed safe, whether from unruly patrons, theft, or fire. The alehouses reciprocated with drinks to help wash the dust out of their mouths in a generally you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours relationship.
There was always turnover as the harvests changed with the seasons and people came and went, but all in all it was pretty stable. As long as they kept crime down to a reasonable level, preventing fires from turning into disasters, and looked the other way when the Wardmaster raised the rent, everything was fine.
There was a fine line between accepting a bribe, which was a sure way to get into serious trouble with the captain, and accepting a drink from an alehouse or a bit of meat or fruit from a merchant. Some constables had a habit of asking for more than usual, others gladly accepted whatever was offered.
As long as it was voluntary and stayed friendly, the sergeant and the captain both turned a blind eye.
Suddenly a paunchy, balding merchant erupted from the crowd and grasped Ng’s arm.
“Constable! A thief! A thief!”
Ng dislodged the man’s sweaty hand.
The merchant was dressed in a tan kaftan with red geometric patterning. Ng sized him up as a mid-level merchant, moderately successful, no doubt with a family shop and perhaps even a hired hand or two.
“Sergeant Ng of the Constabulary. And you are?”
“Thabouti Hamdi of Celephaïs,” replied the other, out of breath. “That boy! He stole an apple from me, and threw it at me!”
“What boy?”
“That boy, over the…” The merchant turned to point, but his hand slowed, drooped. “He’s gone now.”
“A boy? What sort of boy?” asked one of his constables, a woman named Istas. She had a shortsword on her hip and a bow on her back, unlike the third officer, a thin, tall black man armed with a cutlass.
“A boy! Like every other boy!” shouted the merchant, wiping his brow again with the towel. “Filthy, and wearing an equally filthy dhoti.”
“There are lots of boys like that,” said Jay, the black man. “I can see half a dozen right now.”
The merchant mopped his brow again, turning this way and that.
“There! That one! He’s stealing a cake!”
They turned and saw the boy, cake in hand, walking nonchalantly away.
“Halt in the name of the King!” shouted Ng, breaking into a sprint.
Istas followed closely behind, while Jay sprinted off to the side, hoping to cut the boy off.
The boy walked behind a cart of vegetables, and ducked down out of sight… and when Sergeant got there, there was no sign.
The baker walked up and stood waiting while Ng and Istas scanned the plaza.
He was gone.
“That’s Roach,” said the baker. “He showed up a few weeks ago, and isn’t afraid of man or beast. We call him Roach because he can slip into the smallest hole and escape.”
“Where did he come from?”
The baker shrugged. “Who knows? Boys like him come and go. It’s just the cost of doing business,” he said, walking back to his stall, “but it won’t go well for him if I catch him!”
Sergeant Ng nodded to himself.
“So, a barefoot boy, maybe eight or ten years old, straw-colored hair, bare feet… I’ll be looking for you…”
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Honey for Celephaïs: Chapter 3