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was determined to live. But Father couldn't tell her how to live those better ways, any more than he could
explain the difference between made and born.
    So Mahtra disobeyed him, then, and kept the shawl as a treasure. It warmed her as she walked
between the hut and the high templar residences and it was softer than anything she'd felt before or since.
She didn't think about the merchant; neither he nor the mottled blotches mattered enough to remember. Her
skin always turned white again, no matter how dark a night's handling left it.
    And the shawl would hide her no matter what color her skin was.
    Hiding; hiding was why Mahtra kept the shawl pulled tight around her. The stares of folk who were
only slightly different from each other hurt far more than the hands that touched her at the high templar
gatherings. Children who looked up from their street games to shout "Freak," or "Spook," or "Show us your
face!" hurt most of all, because they were as new as she was. But children were born; they could hate,
despise, and scorn. She was made; she was different.
    Mahtra clung to her shawl and the shadows until she reached yesterday's market. Early-rising folk and
nightfolk like herself were dependent on the enterprising merchants of yesterday's markets: collections of
carts that appeared each sunrise near Urik's most heavily trafficked intersections. Yesterday's markets
served those who couldn't wait until the city gates opened and the daily flood of farmers and artisans surged
through the streets to the square plazas where they set up their stalls and sold their wares. The vendors of
yesterday's markets lived in the twilight and dawn, buying the dregs of one day's market to sell before the
next day's got under way.
    Yesterday's markets were very informal, completely illegal, and tolerated by Lord Hamanu because
they were absolutely necessary to his city's welfare. And as with all other things that endured in Urik,
yesterday's markets had become traditional. The half-elf vendor who laid claim to the choice northwestern
corner where the Lion's Way crossed Joiners' Row sold only yesterday's fruit, as his father had sold only
such fruit from the cart he wheeled each dawn to that precise location, and as his children would when their
turn came. His customers, sleepy-headed at either the start or finish of their day's work, relied on his
constancy and he, in turn, knew them, as well as strangers dared to know each other in Urik.
    "Cabras, eleganta," he said with a smile and a gesture toward four of the husky, dun-colored spheres.
"Almost fresh from the Dolphiles estate. First of this year's crop, and the best. A bit each, two bits for the
lot."
    The fruitseller talked constantly, without expecting an answer, which Mahtra appreciated, and he called
her eleganta, which Father said was a polite word for improper activities, but she liked the sound of it.
Mahtra liked cabras, too, though she had almost forgotten them. Seeing them now on the fruitseller's cart,
she remembered that she hadn't seen them for a great many mornings. For a year's worth of mornings,
according to the half-elf.
    Years and crops confused Mahtra. Her life was made up of days and nights, strings of dark beads
following light beads, with no other variations. Others spoke of weeks and years, of growing up and
growing old. They spoke of growing crops, of planting and harvesting. She'd been clever enough to piece
together the notion that food wasn't made in the carts of yesterday's market; food was born somewhere
outside the city walls. But growing was a more difficult concept for someone who hadn't been born, hadn't
been a child, couldn't remember being anything except exactly what she was.
    Staring at the cabras, Mahtra felt her differences—her made-ness and her newness—as if she were
standing in an empty cavern and her life were a meager collection of memories strewn in a spiral at her
feet.
    When she concentrated, Mahtra found six