“You don’t!” I held out my arm, and he landed heavily just below my elbow, nearly knocking me off-balance. “I’ll be fine.”
Not safe.
“Just leave him,” said Mieka. “We won’t be long.”
I rubbed my finger against the sparse feathers at the base of his beak, which he usually liked, but he snapped at my hand. I shook him off, irritated.
“I’ll be back soon,” I promised.
Mieka took me by the arm, and together we started to descend the steps that led to the Undermarket. Baldbeak perched on an iron bollard by the entrance andraark-ed at me desolately until we were out of earshot.
The staircase was only dimly lit by small glims spaced far apart on the stone walls, and I had to concentrate to keep my footing. Thankfully, the steps were dry, and although the dust in the air made me cough, I didn’t have to worry about slipping. All I could hear was the rasp of our boots against the rough stone and Mieka’s even breathing near my ear. A small greenish glow grew larger and larger as we walked and then became the shape of a doorway, lit by a single, rather dim and flickering, glim above its lintel.
“How do we get in?” I hissed.
Mieke turned her wrist over. In the dim light, I saw a dark blue glyph inked into her brown skin. When she held it to the door, it swung open.
“A tattoo? That seems awfully … permanent.”
“And painful. But it works.”
With every day away from the Tower, it seemed, I learned more and more about how much beauty was in the world. At first, the rail of hanging cloth I had seen at the dressmaker’s shop had seemed the most sublime and dazzling array of human-made colors and textures that I had ever seen. Then thevigorous, vivid stitchery of the great tapestry had shown me how a story could be told in color and line … And now there was the Undermarket.
In a way, it was a little like the Plague tapestry come to life—vibrantly, almost aggressively colorful and crowded, bright and luminous and dazzling. Unlike the tapestry, though, it was as full of movement as an anthill. I had to stand still for several minutes just to let my eyes and ears adjust to the swirling color and noise.
The glims here were of all shapes and shades, as if they had been taken from a hundred different places and cobbled together haphazardly to create a chaotic bouquet of color and light. It had the effect of making the whole place look rather like a stained-glass window, and of shedding rainbow light on the bones embedded in the walls.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
“All the Corpse Roads had bones set into their walls,” said Mieka. “The Temple collapsed those it could, but they ran all across Virelith. Some mages of our … profession, a long time ago, persuaded them to overlook this one.”
“Persuaded with …?”
“Magic,” said Mieka. “And coin. The two most powerful forces in the kingdom.”
Some of the stalls looked temporary and haphazard, but others were set into the bone walls. A skeletal hand with its fingers dangling on wires hung outside one of the stalls near us, the bones click-clacking against each other like macabre wind chimes.
“All right,” said Mieka, rubbing her gloved hands together. “We’ll split up and ask around about the Book Man. The deeper you go, the more … unique the wares. So start here and move back.”
I nodded. I felt a bit overwhelmed.
“Is this where you know Patrick from? The Undermarket?” I was still curious about the strange man I had met on the road,who had appeared like a sardonic fairy godmother just when I needed him and guided me to Mieka’s workshop.
“In a way,” she said vaguely. “Look, there’s someone I have to talk to. You start wandering around, and I’ll catch up when I can.”
My heart thudding, I made my way through the crowd, putting my hand up to the knitted cap every few steps to make sure my Hair remained contained. It would have been convenient to bump into a rare-book dealer right away, but unlikely. Instead, I wandered the market, gradually pressing deeper, pretending interest in one gewgaw or another. It wasn’t hard. In fact, it was hardernotto become absorbed in the array of items for sale. I did notice, though, that there were no spellbooks.
“Excuse me.” I stopped a friendly looking woman with a profusion of ginger curls. “Where would I find spellbooks?”
She recoiled. “I beg your pardon?”
“I mean …”
“I heard you.” She dropped her voice. “There’s nothing of that sort here. It’s far too dangerous, even for the Undermarket.”
“But there’s a book dealer I’m looking for. He’s known as …”
She had already turned away.
