“Does the lady know how to handle a plain knife?” the old man at the booth asked me in Shotet. He wore the heavy gray robes of a Zoldan religious leader, with long, loose sleeves. Religious Zoldans used plain knives because they believed currentblades were a frivolous use of the current, which deserved more respect—the same basic belief as the most religious Shotet. But unlike a Shotet religious leader, this man would not find his religious practice in the everyday, reworking the world around him. He was likely an ascetic; he withdrew, instead.
“Better than you,” I said to him in Zoldan. I spoke Zoldan poorly—a generous way of putting it—but I was happy to practice.
“That right?” He laughed. “Your accent is horrible.”
“Hey!” A Shotet soldier approached us, and tapped the tip of his currentblade against the old man’s table. The Zoldan man regarded the weapon with disgust. “Shotet language only. If she talks back in your tongue . . .” The soldier grunted a little. “It would not turn out well for her.”
I ducked my head so the soldier wouldn’t look too carefully at my face.
The Zoldan man said in clumsy Shotet, “I’m sorry. The fault was mine.”
The soldier held his knife there for a moment, puffing up his chest like he was displaying mating feathers. Then he sheathed his weapon, and kept walking through the crowd.
The old man turned back to me, his tone now more businesslike: “These are the best weighted ones you’ll find in the square—”
He talked to me about how the knives were made—from metal forged in the northern pole of Zold, and reclaimed wood from old houses in Zoldia City—and part of me was listening, but the other part was with Akos as he stared out at the square.
I bought a dagger from the old man, a sturdy one with a dark blade and a handle built for long fingers. I offered it to Akos.
“From Zold,” I said. “It’s a strange place, half covered in gray dust from fields of flowers. Takes some getting used to. But the metal is strangely flexible, despite being so strong . . . what? What is it?”
“All of this stuff,” he said, gesturing to the square itself. “It’s from other planets?”
“Yeah.” My palm was sweaty where it pressed against his. “Extraplanetary vendors are allowed to sell in Voa during the Sojourn Festival. Some of it is scavenged, of course—or we wouldn’t be Shotet. Repurposing the discarded, and all that.”
He had stopped in the middle of everything and turned toward me.
“Do you know where it’s all from just by looking at it? Have you been to all these places?” he said.
I scanned the market, once. Some of the vendors were covered head to toe in fabric, some bright and some dull; some wore tall headpieces to draw attention to themselves, or spoke in loud, chattering Shotet I hardly understood, because of the accents. Lights erupted from a booth at the end, showering the air in sparks that disappeared as quickly as they came. The woman standing behind it almost glowed for all the fair skin she showed. Another stand was surrounded by a cloud of insects so dense I could hardly see the man sitting at it. What use did anyone have for a swarm of insects, I wondered.
“All nine Assembly nation-planets,” I said with a nod. “But no, I can’t tell where it’s all from. Some of it, though, is obvious. Look at this—”
Standing on a nearby counter was a delicate instrument. It was an abstract shape, different from every angle, composed of tiny panes of an iridescent material that felt like something between glass and stone.
“Synthetic,” I said. “Everything from Pitha is, since it’s covered in water. They import materials from their neighbors and combine them. . . .”
I tapped one of the tiny panes, and a sound like thunder came from the belly of the instrument. I ran my fingers over the rest, and they left music in their wake like waves. The melody was light, like my touch had been, but when I flicked one of the glass panels, drums sounded. Each panel seemed to glow with some kind of internal light.
“It’s supposed to simulate the sound of water for homesick travelers,” I said.
When I looked at him again, he was smiling at me hesitantly.
“You love them,” he said. “All these places, all these things.”
“Yeah,” I said. I had never thought of it that way. “I guess I do.”
“What about Thuvhe?” he said. “Do you love it, too?”
When he said the name of his home, comfortable with the slippery syllables that I would have stumbled over, it was easier to remember that though he spoke Shotet fluently, he was not one of us, not really. He had grown up encased in frost, his house lit by burnstones. He probably still dreamt in Thuvhesit.
“Thuvhe,” I repeated. I had never been to the frozen country in the north, but I had studied their language and culture. I had seen pictures and footage. “Iceflowers and buildings made of leaded glass.” They were people who loved intricate, geometric patterns, and bright colors that stood out in the snow. “Floating cities and endless white. Yes, there are things I love about Thuvhe.”
He looked suddenly stricken. I wondered if I had made him homesick.
He took the dagger that I had offered him and looked it over, testing the blade with his fingertip and wrapping his hand around the handle.
“You handed over this weapon so easily,” he said. “But I could use this against you, Cyra.”
“You could try to use it against me,” I corrected him quietly. “But I don’t think you will.”