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Show everywhere; so were carts, wagons, drays, JackPonies, and EarthOxen. Clumps of mummers performed on every street corner, competing with the boys selling tarts and JackApples-on-a-stick. Lutes and horns were playing, maidens were singing. What a cleaning-up for the robot street cleaners on the morrow! What a scraping and dumping of manure! There were men in yeofolk leather with quivers of arrows on their backs, dress swords over tunics clashed against broadswords hung over bronze alloy chain mail-all the weapons properly blunted and buttoned, NewOxbridge style. They were all set for the NewOxbridge Tourneys. There were women sweeping along in silks and conical caps with veils, too- mostly Merchants, and women in bright tights and tunics wearing their best side arms sheathed prettily in tooled leather. There were Doctors of both sexes dressed in their ceremonial black with snowsquirrel-trimmed purple copes and black birettas. In short, every class was well represented-save the Manager class, the Bauercrats. In faith, they had no time for such tomfoolery: excepting a few like the redoubtable Manager Jensen, of whom we shall hear more anon. Dr'Anya looked up through this crush with little hope at every corner landing court, but there was no way to get an airvan to touch down for her. She'd had to walk-or rather joust-the entire three kilometers. Dr'Anya lifted one foot up discreetly and rubbed it tenderly through the metatarsal. To be sure, she was getting along on this quest of hers. She had passed through StageOne before the drawbridge lifted the previous day and rested overnight at the hospice connected to the BAABattlements. Then she started at StageTwo promptly at nine on the morrow, after a breakfast 34 |
