much worse the city was, exactly.
On the farm, you pretty much knew what you were getting into, or how to avoid it—as long as you wore your clogs in the farmyard. You knew what season to plant things, and when to put the chickens to bed. The way to the pasture didn’t change, and the cows had worn a deep, clear rut over the years between it and the barnyard where they came to be milked.
The city, though, had streets tumbled about in no particular order. If cows had laid out the streets that wandered and crossed each other, Micah hoped never to meet them. And then there were the buildings, with their different shapes and sizes and ornaments: One was a house where people lived and one was a shop where people sold things and another was a place to get beer and another to get grilled meat, but because the shop had once been a tavern it still had those little windows taverns have, and somehow you were supposed to know what was what by the pictures hanging on boards over the doorway, though why a place with a horseman on the sign sold wine, while a sailing ship sold cloth . . .
Micah did make a map of the streets in her head. She added new ones to it every time she went anywhere in the city. But she couldn’t do anything about the houses.
In the city you couldn’t always see the sky, and there were no trees at all. And underfoot lay all kinds of garbage that people tossed, not just dog- or cow-poop, and nobody saved it to put on the fields. Because there weren’t any fields. Just a big open square where Micah and Cousin Reuben came every week to sell what the family grew, alongside lots of other farm folk from miles around, people who lived close enough to the city to make it there and back between sunrise and sunset. Micah’s family was a little farther out, so they brought blankets to sleep in the cart overnight and leave for home the next day.
Weather-wise, Micah put the city at about four times worse than the country. In terms of the number of people, though, shouting and crowding, it was easily one hundred and ten times worse. So Micah kept her eyes on the stall, where all the bunches of sweet little turnips were arranged in the most beautiful patterns. By her. By Micah. Five on the bottom, then three, then two, then one. Eight rows like that.
And every time anyone bought some, she had to rearrange the whole thing. It kept her busy.
• • •
Kaab had convinced the agent to run her a little up the river in a skiff under the bridges, just to get oriented. Maps were all very well, but they didn’t really show the details of a place: the height of a wall, the width of an alley. As it gave him a chance to show off his city and his knowledge to the exotic foreigner, the agent was happy to do it. A boatman did the rowing, of course, moving them northwest against the slow current.
Kaab pointed to the river’s west side, on the opposite bank. “What are those funny—those pretty little roofs? With all the little chimneys?”
“Oh, that?” He looked away. “That’s nothing.”
“Nothing? But people live there . . . ?”
“Pay it no mind. It’s called Riverside. A lawless place.”
“Do you say so?” But Kaab knew all about Riverside. Her friend the sailmaker had many stories of the little island in the middle of the river, old in stone and old in mischief, the haunt of—
“. . . thieves and pickpockets,” the agent was saying, “fences and forgers, card sharps and keen beggars, and, ah, very bad women.”
Kaab shook her head sadly. It amused her no end to play the innocent stranger with him. “And swordsmen?” she asked doucely. “Are these famous fighters of yours there, too?”
“The worst of them are,” he said darkly. “These Riverside swordsmen are desperate men. Some do use their talents to move up to a better life, working as guards or duellists for the nobles. But the worst of them . . . well, they kill each other on the street just to try their blades.”
“I did not know this city was so perilous.”
“Oh, only in Riverside, lady,” he hastened to assure her. “Don’t you think of setting foot there! Why, the City Watch doesn’t even go there. But anywhere else, you’re safe as houses.”
She let the funny phrase pass; his tone and his earnest face made the meaning clear. Like everywhere else she’d ever been, it was a nice city, they said, a good city, run by decent people. You’d only get in trouble if you did something stupid. Or failed to follow the seven hundred and thirty-three unspoken rules of conduct that of course anyone should simply know. Fortunately, Ixkaab Balam was a quick study.
“But must we all cross this terrible Riverside to get to the Middle City on the other bank?” she asked. “The very fine shops are there, no? And then one may climb to the Hill, with its stunning houses of the great nobles of the land.”
He chuckled. “Never you fear, milady! You need never set foot in Riverside. There is a modern bridge upstream, just past the University, that will take you to the new side of the river, where the shops and the people are very fine, indeed. It is a bridge so wide, mark you, that two carriages may pass each other on it!”
“Stunning,” Kaab murmured. It seemed to be the right answer to everything.
She wondered how quickly she could shake this fool and get to Riverside.
• • •
“Micah!” Cousin Reuben wanted her. “C’mere, boy!” She had to let him call her boy when they were in the city, because that way people wouldn’t bother her. She even wore boys’ clothes, and had her hair cut short. Aunt Judith had put a big bowl over her head, and cropped around it. Once she got used to the feel of nothing covering her neck, though, Micah liked it; long hair was a big nuisance to take care of, and sometimes tickled you when you didn’t want it to.
A woman with a basket was buying turnips, and Cousin Reuben was trying to count change. He wasn’t very good at it.
“It’s clear as the nose on your face!” the woman with the basket was saying. “I give you a quarter-silver for these, and you give me seventeen brass minnows back.”
“Eighteen,” Micah said.
Reuben didn’t seem happy. “You don’t even know what she bought!”
“Yes, I do. A bunch of the little ones. Right there. I’ve got them in order, so I know. It would be seventeen minnows,” she told the woman, “but you took the littlest ones, so we owe you eighteen instead. Did you want bigger? It would be seventeen, then.”
The woman smiled. “You’re an honest lad. Not like some of them kids. Yes, give me the bigger ones.”
Carefully, Micah rearranged the stall to get the right bunch and put the wrong ones back. The woman stamped and blew on her fingers. “Hurry up,” said Reuben, but the woman said, “No, take your time, honey. I know you’ll pick a good bunch out for me.”
“They’re all good,” said Micah, “but these ones cost more.” The woman didn’t say anything else. But Cousin Reuben gave her the right change.
“Well, she was a prize,” Reuben grumbled. He looked at the sky. “Sun setting in a bit. Get ready for the ‘Oh-no-I-forgot-dinner’ rush.”
“If we sell everything,” Micah asked, “can we go home tonight?”
“Naw, sugar. Too dark to see, this time of year. You don’t want old Rhubarb breaking her leg, do you?” He patted the head of the roan plough horse, who doubled as wagon-puller. “That would make you sad.”
“Yes, it would. I love Rhubarb. The horse, that is, not the plant. I like rhubarb pie, but that’s about it. Sally likes fresh rhubarb dipped in honey, but—”
“Dear God! Turnips!” A voice like a trumpet sounded in their ears. “You don’t know what this means to me! You saved my job—possibly my life. Yes, my life for sure.” The speaker was a big man with a beard tucked into his belt, who hardly paused for breath. “How much? See, I’m not even bargaining. I’ll take everything you’ve