23

CITY OF GAYJUR:

SECOND NA'ALPA

VILLAGE OF KASHAN:

SEVEN WEEKS AFTER CONTACT

Supaari VaGayjur profited from the presence of the Jesuit party on Rakhat before he knew of its existence. This was both characteristic of him and unusual. Characteristic, in that he had recognized a potential Runa fad before anyone else and took steps to capture the market just before the trend took off in Gayjur, Unusual, in that he was not in command of the facts underlying the market before he moved. It was unlike him to risk so much without investigating first. The gamble paid off handsomely but even as the profits were totaled, it left him feeling uneasy, as though he had just missed being killed in a ha'aran duel undertaken while drunk.

Moving through the warehouse with Awijan, his Runa secretary, who took down his orders and noted his inquiries, Supaari had spotted one of the Kashan villagers, a woman named Chaypas, standing at a doorway, waiting for permission to speak to him. She was wearing a cascade of ribbons worked into the circlet worn around her head: a waterfall of color, arrayed gracefully down her back. Lovely, Supaari thought, and it would quintuple the number of double-length ribbons desired by anyone who took the fashion up. He turned to Awijan. "Call the runners. Buy ribbon and take possession. Get contracts for all the deliveries available—" Supaari hesitated. How long would it last?

"Someone suggests that the contracts go no further out than Eighth Na'alpa."

Supaari VaGayjur knew better than to second-guess Awijan on a decision like that. "Yes. When you get back, have Sapalla clear out some merchandise to make room for the shipments, even if we have to take a loss on the berinje. Delivery after redlight, understood?" One of the many advantages of working with Runa, Supaari had found over the years, was that Jana'ata couldn't see well in redlight but Runa could. It imposed a secrecy that his competitors, sleeping away the red and black hours, didn't even suspect.

He watched as Awijan entered the courtyard, gathering the runners. Having set the transaction in motion, Supaari himself moved smoothly toward the VaKashani woman Chaypas and greeted her in her own language, holding out both hands to her. "Challalla khaeri, Chaypas." He leaned forward and breathed in her scent, mingled with that of the fragrant ribbons.

An unusual villager, willing to travel alone and to deal directly with Supaari VaGayjur in his own compound, Chaypas VaKashan returned the greeting without fear. Apart from their attire, they were alike enough to be sisters or near cousins, seen with a casual eye, from a distance. Supaari was more heavily muscled, slightly larger overall, facts enhanced by the padded gown, quilted and stiffened with embroidery; the pattens, which gave him a hand's width of extra height; the headpiece, which provided another measure of stature and identified him as a merchant and, by implication, a third-born child. His clothing today emphasized the differences in their lives, but, when he wished, Supaari could pass for Runa, wearing the trailing oversleeves and boots of an urban Runao. It was not illegal. It simply wasn't done. Most Jana'ata, even most thirds, would rather have died than be taken for Runa. Most Jana'ata, even most thirds, were not nearly so wealthy as Supaari VaGayjur. It was his stigma and his comfort, that wealth.

Supaari coaxed Chaypas indoors, away from the foot traffic, so that her ribbons would not be noticed by others of her kind before he had a chance to jump the market. Chatting, he walked ahead of her through the warehouse, showing her the way to his office as though she were not already familiar with it, allowing her to rearrange the cushions to her comfort as he prepared a yasapa tea he knew she liked. He served her himself, even pouring it, to show respect: Supaari VaGayjur went his own profitable way.

Taking a place across from Chaypas, he reclined comfortably on the cushions, careful to mimic her own posture as closely as possible. They talked amiably about the outlook for the sinonja harvest, the health of her husband, Manuzhai, and the prospects for resolution of a potential dispute between Kashan and Lanjeri over a new k'jip field. Supaari offered to mediate if the elders couldn't agree. He had no wish to impose himself on them and he did not relish the long tedious trip out to Kashan, but it would be worth the trouble to keep his scent fresh in everyone's nostrils.

"Sipaj, Supaari," Chaypas said, coming to the point of her visit at last. "Someone has a curiosity for you." She reached into a woven pouch and pulled out a small packet made of intricately folded leaves. She held it out to him but he lowered his ears regretfully: his hands were incapable of unwrapping the object carefully. Her own ears flattened abruptly in embarrassment, but Supaari took her gesture as a compliment. The VaKashani villagers sometimes forgot he was Jana'ata. In its own way, in context, it was high praise, Supaari thought, although his eldest brother would have killed her for it and his middle brother would have had her jailed.

He watched as Chaypas picked the strands of wrapping apart gracefully, with a Runao's lovely long-fingered dexterity. She held out to him seven of what he took at first to be beetles or unusually small kintai. Then, leaning forward, Supaari inhaled.

It was the most extraordinary thing he'd ever encountered. He knew he was getting esters and aldehydes, and the smell of burnt sugars certainly, but the scent was staggeringly complex. All this from a few small brown objects, oval, incised with a longitudinal line. Supaari covered his excitement with the ease of a man who has made a living of concealment. Even so, it came to him with a jolt that here, at last, was something that might interest Hlavin Kitheri, the Reshtar of Galatna.

"Someone's heart is glad," he told Chaypas, raising his tail with mild pleasure, not wanting to alarm her. "A remarkable scent, full of curiosity, as you say."

"Sipaj, Supaari! These kafay were given to someone by foreigners." She used a Ruanja word meaning "people from the next river valley," but her eyes were open very wide and her tail was twitching. There was some delicious joke here, Supaari realized, but he let her enjoy the amusement at his expense. "Askama is interpreting!" she told him.

"Askama!" he cried, throwing his hands up in delight, elegant claws clicking. "A good child, quick to learn." And ugly as white water in a narrow gorge, but no matter. If Chaypas's household was interpreting for the Kashan corporation, Supaari would have an exclusive trading relationship with the new delegation, by Runa custom if not by Jana'ata law and, in cases like this, Runa custom was all that counted. He'd based his life on that understanding and if it brought him no honor, it nonetheless provided much of what he savored: risk to stalk, intellectual challenge and a certain grudging deference among his own.

They chatted a while longer. He established that these small kafay were only a sample of a much larger store of unusual goods brought by the foreigners, who were staying in Kashan in Chaypas's own household. And Supaari heard with growing interest that they seemed to have no notion of profit, giving their goods away for the food and shelter that was theirs by right, as sojourners. Cunning, he wondered, or some nomadic remnant group, still bartering in the old, clean ways?

Supaari laid the little packet aside and, disciplined, did not allow himself to trail and capture the idea that he had scented in the distance: posterity and a way out of the living death he was born to. He rose instead and refilled Chaypas's cup, asking after her plans. She told him she would be visiting trade partners in the Ezao district. She was in no hurry to return home. All the other VaKashani would be leaving the village soon to harvest pik root.