The old woman rummaged in her apron pocket and produced a flood of little coins, then splashed the tea, hissing-hot, from her kettle into an earthenware cup and offered me a straw of some dimly silver metal. I waved it away.

“It’s clean. I rinse everything after each customer.”

“I’m not used to them.”

“Watch the rim then — it’ll be hot. Have you looked by the judging? There’ll be a lot of people there.”

“Where the cattle are? Yes.” The tea was maté, spicy and a trifle bitter.

“Does she know you’re looking for her?”

“I don’t think so. Even if she saw me, she wouldn’t have recognized me. I… am not dressed as I usually am.”

The old woman snorted and pushed a straggling lock of gray hair back under her kerchief. “At Saltus Fair? Of course not! Everybody wears his best to a fair, and any girl with sense would know that. How about down by the water where they’ve got the prisoner chained?”

I shook my head. “She seems to have disappeared.”

“But you haven’t given up. I can tell from the way you look at the people going past instead of me. Well, good for you. You’ll find her yet, though they do say all manner of strange things have been happening round and about of late. They caught a green man, do you know that? Got him right over there where you see the tent. Green men know everything, people say, if you can but make them talk. Then there’s the cathedral. I suppose you’ve heard about that?”

“The cathedral?”

“I’ve heard tell it wasn’t what city folk call a real one — I know you’re from the city by the way you drink your tea — but it’s the only cathedral most of us around Saltus ever saw, and pretty too, with all the hanging lamps and the windows in the sides made of colored silk. Myself, I don’t believe — or rather, I think that if the Pancreator don’t care nothing for me, I won’t care nothing for him, and why should I? Still, it’s a shame what they did, if they did what’s told against them. Set fire to it, you know.”