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“I don’t know either. I just want to think about it.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Ten creds is a bit much.” We continued down the aisle. Around the next corner was a booth selling powdered dyes and it reminded me of a conversation I had with Pip on Margary.

I nudged Brill with an elbow and pointed. “You were looking for trade goods?”

“Yeah.”

“Back on Margary, Pip and I were thinking we should buy dyes as private cargo and bring them to St. Cloud. We thought there might be a market because of all the yarn producers here. But when we did a little research, we discovered that St. Cloud dyes are kind of a cottage level export.”

“Makes sense. If you have the yarn, you’ll find ways to dye it.”

We drifted into the dye booth and examined the dye packets. The couple behind the counter, a woman and her husband, were pleasant and business-like. The dye was packaged in paper packages from a few grams up to a quarter kilo. Each packet had a small sample of yarn attached to it showing the color the particular dye would produce.

Brill asked, “Do you have these in larger packages?”

The man laughed, but the woman shook her head and grinned. “The quarter kilo packets will dye ten kilos of wool to full saturation,” she explained. “That’s a lot of wool. For most normal uses, the hundred gram packets are preferred.”

The packets were spread on the table in a color wheel pattern with the purples on one end arching around to red on the other. There were no white dyes, of course, but blacks took up space in the center of the curve. I took out my tablet and snapped a digital of the display and sent it off to Pip.

“We’re crew from the
Lois McKendrick
,” I explained. “We’re looking for things to take with us out of the system. I’m interested, but I’d like my partner to come see.”

“Please, take a card,” the man said, offering a small item. “We’re happy to offer wholesale prices.”

I took the data-card and thanked them before Brill and I moved on.

“What do you think?” she asked as we turned a corner to head down another aisle.

“I’m not sure. The dyes are a good idea in practice, but I’m thinking of what they’d look like on the co-op table. As a trade good, they lack something.”

“Yeah, I see what you’re saying. It does seem like a specialty kind of item. Either you want it or not.”

It was just about then when we came to a section that was dedicated just to yarn. There were dozens of vendors, and as we worked our way through them, we found Sean Grishan about halfway down the aisle. Sean was a short guy with a pug nose and sandy hair, a spacer apprentice in the deck division. He carried several skeins of a soft-looking yarn in a wide variety of colors. As hard as it was to believe, he spent quite a bit of his downtime on the ship knitting and crocheting. Back on Margary, his handmade lace earned him a pile of creds in the booth. Judging from the skeins in his bag, I suspected he had some new projects in mind. He waved when he saw us and had a kid-in-a-candy-store grin plastered on his face. “Hey, shippies,” he called.

“Hi, Sean,” Brill returned. “You look like you’re gonna be doing some knitting. How much yarn do you have there?”

“About five kilos worth, but I’m not knitting with these.”

“What then?” I asked. “Five kilos is a lot of mass.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “but I’ve got a lot to spare. I unloaded almost everything I had between Margary and here. I’m going to use this stuff to make afghans!”

Brill laughed delightedly. “Afghans?”

“Yeah, I’ve had a bunch of patterns for crocheted afghans for nearly a stanyer. This is the first time I’ve had enough creds and mass allotment to actually get enough yarn to try them out.”

“So? This is good yarn?” I asked.

“There’s just about anything you want here. It ranges from good to excellent. It really depends on what you want to do with it. You looking for trade goods?”

“Thinking about it. Any suggestions?”

He pointed down the aisle in the direction we were heading. “Second booth from the end on the left side. Middle aged couple there has big bundles of really good, general purpose wool yarn. The best deals are in the hundred gram, worsted wool skeins. Excellent texture and she dyes it herself with local dyes. Real artisan class work. You can probably buy it for about two creds a skein.”

“Thanks, Sean,” I said.

“No problem. Thank you for getting the co-op going. If it hadn’t been for you and Pip, I wouldn’t be able to afford this.” He hefted his big bundle of yarn.

I did my best,
aw shucks ’tweren’t nuthin’
impression.

“Well, I gotta get this stuff stowed. See you guys on the ship,” Sean said and he headed out.

“Thanks for the tips, Sean,” I called to his back.

As we wended our way onward through the crowd, Brill asked, “So, how are you going to handle this?”

“I’m gonna grab a digital and flash it over to Pip. Sean knows his yarn, so if he says this is good, I’ll take his word for it. Pip and I will put our heads together between now and tomorrow to decide if we want to buy it and, if so, how much. We don’t have any other good prospects right now, and since our mass allotments went up we’ll probably pick up at least a few kilos.”

The couple was, indeed, amenable to bulk purchases and I made arrangements for Pip to visit the next day. I bought a few skeins to take back to show him and the man put them in a carry-sack for me. Brill fell in love with some extremely soft yarns in warm earthy colors. I excused myself while she dickered. “I’ll be right back,” I told her.

I left the booth and headed in the direction of the head, but at the end of the aisle, I doubled back. It took me just a few ticks to find the booth with the carvings again, and the man beamed when he saw me coming back.

“You thought it over, young sir?”

“Yes, I don’t know what these are, but I’d like to buy some to take with me to Dunsany as trade goods,” I confessed. “Would that be acceptable?”

“The price is still ten creds,” he said, without changing the expression on his face. “They are what they are, and you may do with them as you see fit.”

I quickly selected ten of them. I let my hand choose without worrying about picking any particular piece. I sorted my selections onto a corner of the table.

As I picked them out, the man nodded with each piece as if he was pleased with my choices. When I finished, he wrapped each in a small piece of soft cloth and placed them gently into a carry-sack for me. I started to transfer the credits but he gave me an odd look with a raised eyebrow. “Are you certain you are done, young sir?” he asked.

I started to nod, but one figure caught my eye. With a smile, I gave a small bow to the man. “Thank you for reminding me, good sir. I seem to have missed the most important piece.” I picked up the heron and handed it to him to wrap.

As I left the booth, I stashed the sack of figures in the bundle of yarn.

When I got back, Brill was waiting for me, her purchases complete. “I was just about to send out the search dogs,” she said playfully.

“I got sidetracked,” I told her. “There’s a lot going on here.”

“Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?” she asked as we started off again.

“You mean for myself? Or to sell?”

“Either.”

“I’m always on the lookout for trade goods, but those I just kind of stumble on. It’s not like I’m looking for something specific but I know it when I see it.”

“Yeah,” Brill agreed. “It’s the excitement of the hunt that makes it fun as much as anything else. But what about personally? Anything in that department?”

“Well, I’d like to upgrade my wardrobe. These were my
going out
clothes back on Neris.” I indicated my civvies. “They seem a little—tired.”

“It’s hard to find clothes that fit at the flea market,” Brill said wistfully. “Not just for me. I’m impossible to fit no matter where I go, but flea market items tend to fall into the one-size-fits-all category to appeal to the most people. Finding anything that is really good is basically luck.”

“That makes perfect sense, now that you said it.” I sighed. “Well, maybe in Dunsany I can find a tailor and a boot maker.”

“Maybe you won’t have to wait that long,” Brill said with a grin. She could see over the heads in front of us, and when the crowd cleared a bit, I saw what she was referring to.

A large banner hung on the drape behind a booth that proclaimed:
Bresheu et Fils
. An impeccably dressed, portly gentleman with a bald pate surrounded by tufts of brown hair dominated the space with his presence. He held court, directing a small platoon of boys and girls in their tasks. Some measured. Some cut. But all moved with a common purpose. A table set up in the back of the booth held several machines, all humming merrily under dexterous fingers and sharp eyes. The booth—and I realized that it was actually a triple—boiled with activity.

I laughed out loud at the sight and Brill clapped her hands girlishly in delight. The chrono said we had less than a stan before closing, so this had to be our last stop. It was going to be memorable. I flashed a digital for Pip.

Brill touched my arm and murmured into my ear, “My turn to find the head. I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be here,” I said, distracted by the commotion. I turned back to the booth and tried to figure out where to begin.

As I started thumbing through the racks, a voice in my ear said, “How can we help you today, young sir?” I turned and found the man himself smiling at me. He held out a hand. “Bresheu,” he introduced himself, “at your service.”

I shook his hand and said, “Call me…that is…my name is Ishmael Wang, Monsieur Bresheu. And I am in need of a better jacket.”

He beamed a smile back at me. “Just Bresheu, Mr. Wang. May I call you Ishmael?”

“Of course.”

“What kind of jacket would you like, then, Ishmael?”

I pulled at the lapel of my glorified windbreaker. “I’ve outgrown this,” I said. “While the size is adequate, I find that it no longer fits me.”

Bresheu nodded knowingly. “I understand completely. If you would slip off your garment and try…” He snapped his fingers, and a girl hung an exquisite black sport coat on his hand. “This one?”

I stripped out of my jacket and Bresheu slipped the coat on for me. A boy immediately began tugging and straightening. A girl, who could not have been more than eight stanyers, plunked down at Bresheu’s feet and started writing the measurements as fast as a different boy could read them out. A tape measure flashed as he read numbers for neck, sleeve, length, chest, and waist. Bresheu tsked and shook his head. “No. This will not do.” Before I could even see whether I liked it or not, the jacket was gone.

He snapped his fingers again and a different girl, I think, hung a brownish, waist length jacket on his outstretched fingers. He slipped it onto my shoulders while the little girl with my measurements scrambled out from under his feet and the boy with the measuring tools stepped back, his eyes alert for the next command. Bresheu hmmed once and said, “Possibly.” This coat stayed on long enough for me to realize that it fit as if it had been cut for me before Bresheu said over his shoulder, “Marc, the hip length frock,
s’il vous plait!
” He stripped the jacket off my shoulders in a single fluid movement.

A boy hustled from behind a rack, took the offered jacket from Bresheu, and replaced it with another, this one in a dark olive green. Before I even had a chance to see it, Bresheu had it slipped into place and a boy had buttoned the bottom three brass buttons. Bresheu tugged the shoulders gently and pulled down on the back before walking slowly around me in a full inspection. It molded to me and had an uncanny feeling of rightness.

“How does that feel, Ishmael?” Bresheu finally asked me.

“Incredible,” I told him. “But, how does it look?”

Bresheu snapped his fingers again, and two girls wheeled a large mirror over. Looking into the glass, I did not see myself right away. Thinking that they must have it turned slightly, I shifted to get a better angle and saw the figure in the mirror mimic my movements. The dark olive-green coat sported a single row of small brass buttons offset down the right side and rich chocolaty-colored leather trimmed the collar and sleeves. The cut resembled a military academy tunic and fell to just below my hip, much longer than the waist length jackets I was used to wearing.

“What do you think, Ishmael?” Bresheu said to me in the mirror. He smiled over my shoulder.

“It’s beautiful,” I said and then sighed. “But is it me?”

Bresheu gave a little shrug. “It could be. But I’m not sure the fit is perfect yet. Please reach straight ahead.”

I did as he instructed and I could feel the material bind across my back.

Bresheu tsked. “As I feared. You are a runner?” he asked.

Confused at this I answered without thinking, “Yes. How did you know?”

“Your chest is larger and that’s what causes this binding here.” I could feel his fingers trace across just under my shoulder blades. He sighed. “This is just one half size too small for you. It needs a bit of fitting to be perfect.” He glanced at the chrono and tsked again. “I could have it ready by tomorrow…” he suggested.

I was still gazing at the
me
in the mirror. The coat seemed like it was the right one, but so much more dramatic than anything I had ever worn before. The flashy buttons and the leather trim seemed oddly theatrical. I blinked and noticed Brill had returned and was eyeing me critically. “What do you think?” I asked her. “Is it me?”

She smiled. “It’s spectacular, certainly. But, is it you?” She shrugged. “You’re the only one who can answer that.”

Then Bresheu’s words sunk in. “Tomorrow? No. I have duty tomorrow. And we leave for Dunsany Roads the day after,” I told him.

“Pity,” he said with a downward twist to his lips. “The coat is spectacular on you, Ishmael, but it needs just that bit of tailoring to make it perfect. Could I tailor it and have it sent to the ship, perhaps?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him peering once more in the mirror. “This is a fantastic piece, but I wonder if it’s perhaps—I don’t know—
too
dramatic?” I sighed. “I don’t know that I have the presence to pull this off.”