Holy Day Fritters

Well, I hope that is the last we will see of those Yajiqwa for a good long while. They only come this far south when they are allowed to, papers stamped and escorts watching, and they act like that should make us grateful for the sight of them. Everything they bring is tied in oilcloth and marked in charcoal, like that makes it honest.

They drift through the market like a bad smell and pretend not to notice how stalls close early along their path. You would think that would teach folk something, but a Holy Day makes people careless. Bright cloth, strange accents, and suddenly everyone forgets that trouble can smile while it counts your links. As my mother used to say, to the unwary goes the worry.

I would rather keep my wares for locals, a Guardsman or two if they wander past. They do not pay what they once did for sugared bakeries, the sort I made when I was younger, but they pay fair, and they do not handle what they have not bought.

I do not know how the Yajiqwa stand the heat down here. By midday they look half-melted, skulking in the shade, wrapped in travel cloth that smells like cold stone and old smoke. You would think folk who live in wind and frost would think twice before coming this far south, but coin makes people ambitious.

I have heard what people say about them once they are out of sight. What their women do, how they live when no one respectable is watching. Stories grow legs once they leave the mouth, so I keep my thoughts to myself. Still, I do not like them lingering near my table.

The royals are spoken of differently. Upright folk. Proper. I always thought they might like fritters, if they ever came down, but they never come this far into the market. That is the way of royals.

“Hariken, you’ll burn those if you keep staring,” Mera called from the next stall.

When I was younger, Holy Days meant more foot traffic from the Tower. I used to carry baskets of fritters up the path and sell them off before the bells finished ringing. Guardsmen, captains even. You learned faces. Learned who liked honey and who preferred them plain. It felt like the Guard was part of the town then, not something posted just beyond it.

I nearly married one of them. He was sent north later, to one of those quiet fights that never quite become peace and never quite become war. They said it was against tribes from the Expanse. Which ones hardly mattered in the end. Names blur. What stays is the waiting, and then the not waiting anymore.

Someone told me later that the Yajiqwa passing through this week were kin to the same people. Maybe that is true. Maybe it is just the sort of thing folk say when they want a shape for their anger. Either way, I do not care to serve them.

Still, a Holy Day is a Holy Day.

I think I will make up a small batch of fritters and take a walk toward the Tower. There are always a few old graybeards on duty, and some habits are worth keeping.

Yes. That will do.