Barely an hour after the beating of drums had promptly heralded its opening at noon, the vast walled Western Market was already heaving with a mass of humanity and animals. Caravans that had camped outside the city gates all night wove their way through the crowded streets accompanied by the dull clanging of the bells around the camels’ necks and the shouts of their drivers and escorts. Officious household servants dressed in rich liveries tried to clear a path for the palanquins of their noble masters, while acrobats and dancers entertained the throng and ever-suspicious government officials flitted about here and there checking the merchandize and ownership documents.

      A man’s senses could easily be dazzled by the brilliance of colours and exotic smells, his ears assailed by a dozen languages as merchants haggled over bales of wool and silk, yellow amber from the Baltic Sea, red coral from the Mediterranean, gold and lapis lazuli from Samarkand and spices from India. Even the small lanes around the market were crowded with shops displaying the goods of various guilds and offering money-lending and pawn broking services.

      Unperturbed by the crowds, Shuai Tiao moved easily through them towards his destination. The Hostelry of the Noble Grape was a large painted wooden building on a street lined with wineshops and brothels, famously often frequented by brethren of his guild in between periods of employment. It was where merchants and their agents would go when they needed to hire armed escorts or a guide that knew the routes across the vast deserts, and the wooden doorposts were covered with fluttering scraps of parchment and paper pinned there by its patrons to advertise their services. Pausing at the threshold before entering, Shuai Tiao added his own note, surreptitiously removing several of his rivals’ in the process.

      Even after pawning his horse’s tasselled saddle, Shuai Tiao was down to his last handful of copper coins and owned nothing else to pawn except the horse itself and his sword, neither of which was thinkable if he hoped to find employment. He parted with several of his precious coppers for a small jug of light green rice wine, and settled down to make it last.

      Probably today would be like yesterday and the day before and the day before that, he reflected gloomily. There were caravans and travellers departing on the long trade routes to the west all the time, and yet even though he claimed greater knowledge of the hazardous desert routes than he really had, it seemed none of them wanted to employ a single young swordsman.