SHORT STORIES

In Tatlankel once I was owed money by a grain seller. There is no less interesting profession from horizon to horizon than selling grain. A farmer vies with Ash’s trickery every day, and a cook is Neath’s welcome personified but between them is a wasteland even more dull than soldiering. So it was that the grain seller gambled, and with an unquenchable thirst. “Titi,” he wheedled when I came for my due and found him among his wares, “I am owed money myself, you see.” He could see that I did not. “In the Petty Market, there is a muruch with soil on his cheeks.  He will give you redress!”  The grain seller was not one of the great and bold, so received a cuff about his ears for my annoyance.  Slighter than I, he cringed. My own thirst had left me with fewer chains than a lame courier so I was obliged to find this muruch rather than wait for the grain seller.  The Petty Market did not favorably impress for it greeted me with a din of shouts that put me in mind of the battlefield.  I knew little of the place prior, coming only lately to the city but the muruch was well-known when I asked after him.  The soil was in fact scales of a riverine shade, speckled on his narrow face like unkempt sideburns.  He was waiting near an alley, tearing into a pork-filled tamale with sharp teeth. “Oh!” he greeted me gladly with a cornmeal-flecked smile, “just the person I hoped to break my fast with!”  We had never met before. “Come,” he gestured with the fragrant, leaf-wrapped meal, “stand.  Right there, just so.  Come now!” Joviality was giving way to urgency as I ambled over. “Here you go,” he tossed what was left of the tamale to me and of long-honed instinct my arm flew to catch or deflect the sudden missile.  At the same time, I spied movement from the corner of my eye and a man lunged from the alley to try to slip past me.  My fist was already raised and it was the simplest matter to place it under his dun-scaled chin.  The fellow was lifted out of his sandals and flopped backward on the street with bits of smashed tamale all about. The muruch hitched up his kilt and squatted to pat the insensate man’s tunic until he found a coin laden pouch.  “Don’t worry,” he saw my suspicious scowl, “it isn’t his.”  Indeed, the pouch was fine leather, with gilt studs and a silvery drawstring, and the man I’d laid out was a grubby sort. My own demand for money was forestalled by the arrival of the Flower Guard, and with them, a human whose girth and dress suggested the sort of wealth to ornament even a money purse.  The muruch smoothly explained our altercation to the guard, and returned the pouch to its puffing, winded owner.  Coins changed hands, a modest reward.  I could only watch bemused, with my thumbs hooked helplessly in my broad belt.  I was self-conscious of the lack of device on the belt, for the Flower Guard looked at it with curiosity but in the end they said nothing. I was, after all, not the criminal in this instance. The Flower Guard took their leave after delivering a few corrective kicks to the groaning larcenist and grudging pleasantries to the muruch, who they seemed to know.  With the departure of our audience, the man I had sought out extended a hand over the still-prone thief and dropped a number of silver scales from the sum into my palm.  “There,” he grinned at me, “this should cover what you are owed by our mutual friend.” “How did you know?” I asked.  Events had not slowed down since I first spied the muruch, and it was not to my liking. He brushed the back of my tunic in a familiar way, dislodging grain hulls.  He was only so tall as I, but that is not uncommon.  “Flour shows up well against red,” he further pointed out the dust on my scales.  “You visited the grain seller early this morning, driven by your growling stomach.”  The treacherous organ had earlier signaled its discontent with the fate of the tamale and spoke up once again when it was addressed. “And if you mean our new criminal acquaintance, I heard the commotion in the adjoining street and surmised I stood in the most likely route of escape.”  What had merely been an unsettling din to me had presaged something else to the attentive.  “It was lucky that you approached me just then.” This was how I came to meet Shile, known as the Busybody.  Each of us left this incident satisfied, save for the thief, and we would be even more glad of the association later.