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"Take these," Inya
"Well done," Liloyve told her. "We'll drink the golden tonight, in your honor!"
"And the dragon-milk?"
"Keep it," said Liloyve. "Share it with Calain, the night you are invited to dine at Nissimorn Prospect."
That night Inya
7
She stole often and she stole well. That first tentative terrifying venture into thievery was followed by many more over the days that followed. She roved freely through the Grand Bazaar, sometimes with accomplices, sometimes alone, helping herself to this and that and this and that. It was so easy that it came to seem almost not like crime. The Bazaar was always crowded: Ni-moya's population, they said, was close to thirty million, and it seemed that all of them were in the Bazaar all the time. There was a constant crushing flow of people. The merchants were harried and careless, bedeviled always by questions, disputes, bargainers, inspectors. There was little challenge in moving through the river of beings, taking as she pleased.
Most of the booty was sold. A professional thief might keep the occasional item for her own use, and meals were always taken on the job, but nearly everything was stolen with an eye toward immediate resale. That was mainly the responsibility of the Hjorts who lived with Agourmole's family. There were three of them, Beyork, Hankh, and Mozinhunt, and they were part of a wide-ranging network of disposers of stolen goods, a chain of Hjorts that passed merchandise briskly out of the Bazaar and into wholesale cha
Because Inya
The dangers in her work came not so much from the shopkeepers, though, as from thieves of other families. They did not know her either, and their eyes were quicker than the merchants' — so that three times in her first ten days Inya
To make such arrests herself was troublesome. At first she had no way of telling the legitimate thieves from the improper ones, and she hesitated to seize the wrist of some who, for all she knew, had been pilfering in the Bazaar since Lord Ki
Nor did the thieving itself trouble her conscience, after the begi
In time she took as her lover Sidoun, the older brother of Liloyve. He was shorter than Inya
In Sidoun's company she roved farther and farther through the great city. So efficient were they as a team that often they had their day's quota of larceny done in an hour or two, and that left them free for the rest of the day, for it would not do to exceed one's quota: the social contract of the Grand Bazaar allowed the thieves to take only so much, and no more, with impunity. So it was that Inya