For she did not glow—not precisely—but she moved through a cloud of light as if it were dust. Her footsteps kicked up motes of brilliance. The light roiled around her feet and trailed behind her, refusing to settle. She carried a severed hand in her right hand. Her left wrist ended in a stump, not bloody, simply there. The motes of light seemed to gather near it, briefly forming fingers, then falling back to the ground again.
“Saint,” muttered someone behind Marra in a tone of disgust.
Perhaps Marra and the dust-wife had not pulled back far enough in the crowd. Perhaps it was simply the brown hen, who refused to be intimidated by anyone, who let out a grumpy errk and fluffed her neck feathers. The saint turned her head.
Her face was as serene as the statues of the convent. She was not Our Lady of Grackles—Marra was almost certain of that—and yet it seemed perhaps the two might know each other. Did saints communicate? Was there some place that they all went and spoke together, putting their feet up and shaking their heads over mortal foibles?
For a moment the eyes of the saint looked into hers, as deep and wise as a good dog’s eyes.
The sisters at the convent had never prepared her for what to do if you met a saint. It was not assumed that the issue would ever come up. Marra sank down to one knee, almost genuflecting, as she looked into the saint’s eyes.
Did the serene lips curve up a little? Marra could not say. It took an effort to drag her gaze away. The world was dark and seemed to throb in the corners of her vision, as if she had been staring into a fire. She blinked away tears.
The dust-wife said something that Marra couldn’t quite make out and pulled her to her feet as the crowd closed up behind the saint. The brown hen errked again.
“Where did the moth go?” asked Marra. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear the dazzlement from them.
“Not sure … there! End of the aisle.” She plunged ahead. Marra hurried after. The strangeness of the market seemed less somehow after the saint’s passage, or perhaps strangeness did not quite measure up to glory.
The moth circled overhead, spun too close to a light—Marra held her breath—and then dropped down into a stall. Marra inched closer to it and saw velvet cloth laid out with dozens of small white objects. Jewels? Ivory? Shells?
Teeth.
Of course it would be teeth, her mind said, while her skin tried to crawl off her body and run away screaming. It was never not going to be horrible. Teeth. Yes.
The apparent owner of the stall had brilliant yellow eyes like a lizard. He lounged against one of the poles holding up the awning, watching the crowd. Ivory clicked softly on his chest from a necklace made of teeth.
I can’t possibly need a tooth. Where is the moth?
The white moth had landed on the arm of a broad-shouldered man wearing the remains of a coat and tabard. There was a delicate silver collar around his neck, more like lace than metal. He was stacking boxes near the back of the stall, his face expressionless.
Marra didn’t know what to do. Did she just go up to the man and say, “Excuse me, I need you”？ That seemed like it could be misinterpreted in a great many ways. She tried to catch his eye, but he did not look in her direction, or at anything but his work.
The dust-wife bent over the teeth, making occasional appreciative noises. Eventually the yellow-eyed man drifted over, keeping a wary eye on the chicken. “You looking to buy, mistress?”
“Maybe. Not quite seeing what I need.”
“What do you need?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll know it when I see it.” She prodded a particularly large molar, the size of a shoe. “Hmm. Maybe.”
“Cyclops. You won’t find another like it.”
“I will if I check in an elephant’s mouth.” She gave him a narrow look. “I wasn’t birthed yesterday, my lad.”
The yellow-eyed man grinned. “Ah, well, can’t blame a man for trying.”
The dust-wife’s expression indicated that she could indeed blame him. She leaned back, eyes sweeping over the stall.
“The big one back there,” she said, sounding bored. “Is he sound?”
“Sound enough. Fool enough to sleep in a fairy fort. I pulled him out before something worse got him.”
“He available?”
“Might be. Not sure you want him.” He leaned back against the pole again. “He’s a killer. Had blood on his hands when I found him.”
The man had stopped and was looking toward them. His eyes were too shadowed to make out their color.
“What do you want for him?”