The building had been constructed of white marble, stretching three stories to the gargoyles that ran around underneath the lip of the roof made of curved red tiles. A pediment underneath the peak on our side of the building displayed a frieze with a center figure that looked familiar to me. The place was a temple to Agora, a goddess of shopping centers who held sway in more than one dimension. As far as I knew she didn't have any influence in Deva; maybe she'd packed up in disgust. Her centers of worship tended to be orderly, and the only thing you could say about order at the Bazaar was that it had rules of engagement that if they pertained to fighting, you'd assume you were talking about street fighting, not war. I'd never had a tussle with Agora that I could recall. I wriggled to get loose from the crowd and tried to press closer toward the building.

"Oh, no, you don't get ahead that way!" a shrill female voice cried.

I felt myself grabbed from behind by a host of hands and tossed into the air. A snarl of protest from Chumley and a shriek of surprise from Massha told me that they had been seized, too. Massha had her gadgets, so she rose over the top of the crowd as the Troll and I were tossed like water buckets in a fire brigade until we landed with a thump on the ground behind the horde. Female faces glared at us as we scrambled to our feet.

"What's going on?" I said, trying to hold on to my dignity and temper.

"A sale!" a female Dragonet exclaimed, fluttering her light blue wings excitedly.

"Is that unusual?" Massha said.

"There's one every day in The Mall," the Dragonet's pale green partner asserted glumly.

"But not at Cartok's," his mate corrected him. "Seven percent off everything in the shop!"

Seven percent didn't sound like much of a discount to me, but most of the shoppers seemed to think it was a good deal.

"How come there's a crowd out here?" I asked.