Chapter 12 Episode 3 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Alleine fell silent for so long Adewole wondered if she'd run out of ichor at last, until she began again. "But I spose Maria Kyper's dead, huh? I can't really figure it, their all bein' dead."
"I am afraid so, my dear," said Adewole, trying to keep her thoughts more cheerful for the moment. "Tell me now, what else did they sell in the marketplace, and how big was the place?"
Alleine prattled on about dresses in soft cottons and warm wools she wished she could have bought for her Mam, tin lanterns, copper pots, bright carpets from Dumastra--Cherholtz knew of far-off Dumastra but not of Jero. Always she returned to the food: sweet pickles from great big barrels, sausages wrapped in flat bread, little grilled river fish on sticks, roasted chickpeas in paper cones. "Sometimes at end of day a stallkeeper'll gives me a leftover fish or somethin', especially if it's burnt. Usually they just kick at me, but that's all right, I'm faster'n they are," she said cheerfully. "And when they don't miss, well, it's worth the askin'. Some days that's all there is to eat. I never ask the sausage man, though. Once he held out a sausage and then he took it away and fed it to his dog right in front of me. Never ast him again, the bastard. Oh, I'm sorry, Ollie, I shouldn'a said that word."
"Never mind, child, go on," he said, smiling into his notebook as he wrote.
