They slept under the wagons again that night. There were boarding houses available, but they cost money that Tak's father was reluctant to part with. Also, he was unwilling to leave their valuable cargo. "We'd come back in the morning to find them picked clean as a troll's skull," he said, and indeed most of the other farmers were doing the same thing. "The ground's good enough for honest folks like us."

     Some of the townspeople laughed at the country bumpkins as they spread their blankets, but Tak ignored them. His father was his one and only role model for proper behaviour.

     The next morning, Tak's father threw the canvas covering off the wagons and open one or two of the hessian sacks to let their contents spill out onto the wooden boards of the wagon's floor. Those sacks had originally held seed grain for young homesteaders starting out in the borderlands and had passed from one owner to another with contents varying from sugar beet to potatoes to tobacco leaf. The Gods alone knew how old they were now, with holes and tears carefully mended and those that finally became too worn for further use being cut up to make patches for others.

     He had barely finished arranging it for best visual effect when someone was there looking at it; a professional trader dressed in rich clothes who wrinkled his nose in distaste as if he were looking at the mouldy leavings from the back of the shed. Tak felt himself growing angry at his contemptuous attitude but, as his father explained to him later, it was only the posturing of an experienced haggler. An attempt to push the price down. He was experienced with dealing with such people, his father said, and he wasn't fooled. He recognised the subtle body language that told him the trader liked what he saw and wisely kept his mouth shut, letting his goods sell themselves. Eventually the trader wandered off, but Tak's father told him that there was a good chance he'd be back. He wasn't worried by his departure. It was far too early to expect him to make a purchase yet. He'd want to have a look at everything that was available first. People wouldn't start any serious buying until probably around midday.

     Some local merchants were also beginning to circulate, seeing what was on offer. Hoping to supplement the produce of the local farmers gathered around the town. Jalla was almost self sufficient in food, but not quite. Too many of the town's permanent population were uninvolved in food production, being guardsmen, builders, smiths, weavers, potters, thatchers or any of a dozen other professions essential for the smooth running and maintenance of any community, and so they were dependent on the outlying homesteaders if they didn't want to go hungry before the end of the winter. Tak's father was guaranteed a buyer for his goods, therefore, even if none of the city traders were interested, and he could even play them off against each other to drive his price up, but only to a point. If he drove too hard a bargain the townsfolk would simply put their own prices up and he would lose everything he gained. Prices tended to settle at a steady level, therefore, and those who tried to upset the balance were actively discouraged from doing so.

     Tak's mother left her husband to handle the selling while she took the children with her to browse around the other stalls and wagons. They couldn't actually buy anything until Tak's father had made a sale and gotten his hands on some money, but if they waited until then all the best stuff from the other vendors would have gone. Her job, therefore, was to 'finger' what they needed. Tell the other homesteaders that they wished to buy some of their stock and would do so as soon as they had the money. She and the vendor would then haggle over the price just as if she were buying it there and then, and the vendor would set it aside, to be paid for and collected later.

     He had no fear that she might not come back, leaving him with unsold stock at the end of the day. Breaking a finger, as it was called, was a serious crime and was punished by the removal of one of the offender's fingers. The offender could choose which one. This was civilisation, after all. The proceedings were opened by both parties opening their hands to each other, therefore, showing that they still had all their fingers, that they hadn't been caught offending in the past. The big danger, of course, was that she might overfinger, that she might finger more than they were able to pay for, so she had to keep careful track of how much she'd committed herself so far and balance it against the price they eventually hoped to get from the sale of their own stock.

     This, and her careful examination of the fruit and vegetables on offer, took all her concentration and Tak and Laira were able to slip away into the crowd, eager to explore. The market was in full swing now, and Laira kept a firm hold on Tak's hand as they threaded their way between sweating, smelly bodies. Tak stared around in wonder, hardly able to believe that there were so many people in the whole world. And such a variety of people! Not only were there grimy farmers and the grim faced soldiers that he was used to, but there were richly dressed merchants and traders. Filthy beggars crawling on the ground for whatever scraps fell from the wagons. Bare breasted whores flaunting their painted and perfumed bodies from the windows of adjacent buildings and even a couple of entertainers.

     A shifty looking man in a multicoloured quilt outfit sneered at the small crowd gathered around him as he performed the three shell trick for them, and Tak stared in fascination as he won small coins from one bewildered punter after another. Tak fixed his bright blue eyes on the shell containing the pea and kept them fixed on it as the man switched them back and forth, uttering a constant spiel of commentary to keep the crowd distracted. Then he stopped and invited his victim to guess which shell held the pea. Tak knew where it was. He'd followed it with his sharp eyes very carefully, and he felt a glow of satisfaction as the fat, bearded farmer chose the same one. The conjurer lifted the shell with a flourish, and...

     The pea wasn't there! Tak gaped in shock and amazement. But it had to be there! He hadn't taken his eye off it! Not for a moment!

     Laira tugged at his arm impatiently, eager to be away to look at a stall of fashion clothing set out by one of the city traders, but Tak remained stubbornly rooted to the spot. There was something going on here that he didn't understand. Something unlike anything he'd ever seen before. It was the first time he'd ever encountered anything truly mysterious. Everything else in his life was easy to understand. The sun and rain made the crops grow. He hoed out the weeds. They gathered in the harvest. They tended the livestock. The sun rose and set and the seasons passed. It was all simple and predictable. But this... This was...

     Wonderful!

     Laira gave up and left him staring in rapt wonder while she wandered off, and Tak continued to watch as the trickster won more and more money, occasionally letting someone win so the crowd wouldn't lose interest. Tak noticed that he did something different with his right hand when he let someone win, though, or, no! He did something different when he didn't let them win! When someone guessed correctly, the pea was always under the shell Tak expected it to be. The rest of the time... Then he saw it and cried out in delight, overjoyed at having figured it out. "The pea's in his hand! It's in his hand!"

     The conjurer gave a start of alarm, noticing the little boy for the first time, but then the farmers were closing in angrily, looking under all three shells and finding no pea under any of them, then finding it held under his palm by his little finger. The trickster gabbled frantic words of explanation and apology but Tak was already slipping away, eager to try the trick for himself.

     A vendor with a brightly feathered parrot on his shoulder was selling walnuts, and cracked open shells lay all around his feet. Tak picked out three half shells and searched around on the floor until he found a small, smooth stone. Then he ran back to his father's wagon and jumped up onto the back to practice on the wooden boards.

     He lost the stone down the cracks between the boards three times before he got the hang of switching the shells around, but it took him longer to figure out the trick of removing the stone quickly and smoothly so no-one would notice. When his father saw what he was doing, however, he chased him off angrily.

     "You want people to think we're a family of cheats and trickymen?" he roared, casting his gaze around anxiously to see if anyone had noticed. "I've built up a reputation as an honest dealer, but you'll have us all in the stocks if you're not careful! Now go and explore. Go find your sister and tell her I told her to look after you."

     Tak ran away, hurt and unable to understand his father's anger. It was only a game! Where was the harm in it? He didn't go looking for Laira, though, but sat on the steps of the beerhouse where he continued to practice. After an hour he'd become pretty good at it, aided by his naturally supple and dextrous fingers, and he attracted a small crowd of admirers of his own.

     Word of the conjurer's trick had spread, though, and one man after another grabbed his hand and spread his fingers to extract the stone, grinning as they waggled a finger at him. "You want to join your friend?" asked one man, indicating where the conjurer had been manacled naked to a post and was having rotten fruit thrown at him. "Find another way of earning your pocket money."

     Tak gave up, baffled and confused. He hadn't been asking for money! He was simply thrilled by the new trick he'd learned and wanted nothing more than to keep fooling people with it. Perhaps if he changed it a little, tried a different way of hiding the stone...

     Finding a secluded spot in which to practice, a dark alleyway behind the whorehouse, he experimented with one idea after another, ignoring the strange noises coming from the window above his head. Soon he'd perfected a technique he thought would work and returned to his spot to try it out. This time, after shuffling the shells, he offered his right hand to be examined. The stone was in his left hand, and while his suspicious audience turned his right hand this way and that, spreading his fingers and rolling his sleeve up to the elbow, their attention fully focused on it, he slipped the stone into his lap. Then he offered his left hand for examination while his right retrieved the stone.

     Even when they demanded that he show both hands at once the stone was safely hidden between his knees, ready to be retrieved the moment he distracted their attention by laughing at one of the men's bulging stomach or bulbous red nose. Slipping the stone under a shell as he lifted it so that it appeared to have been there all along came so naturally to him that he couldn't understand how they failed to see it. It was such a simple, obvious trick! His audience laughed and gaped in wonder every time, though, and Tak's heart swelled with joy and delight. This was the most fun he'd ever had! Ever!

     From three thousand years in the future, Thomas Gown smiled fondly at the memory.