“Hmm.” The image had finally come clear; he could count the nagals chewing at the wood of a building, so many of them the wall looked plated in black iron. He smiled. Another day and all they’d leave would be rotten shards.
His smile vanished before it had fully bloomed.
A nagal whose shell was big as his thumbnail shuddered and fell away from the wall, then another and another; an instant later the wall was clear. He shifted the field of the ocular, fought down the dizziness and nausea the disorienting motion produced. “Interesting. Wonder if they’ll sell that effect.” The nagal were lying belly up, the black threads of their legs pressed against their pale pink underbellies.
He clicked his tongue, slid the viewpoint over the house bubbles, slowly this time so he wouldn’t trigger the vertigo, and scanned the dealing tables on the paved flat area outside the enclosure’s main gate.
“Ihoi!”
The mesuch were doing a brisk trade. Maorgan saw three barge Kabits he knew, half a dozen merchants from Dumel Alsekum, and a handful of farmers. The chaffering was intense, though all in sign, the mesuch taking produce from the farms, vials of perfume, bottles of distilled liqueurs, lengths of embroidery-in fact, all the things Bйluchars were accustomed to using in their barter with the occasional smuggler or free traders who set down on Bйluchad. What they accepted in return were mostly small devices and the batteries to keep them running.