They go sightseeing

"Alright," Teysa said, "We shouldn't waste any time. We probably need to find lodgings. Aliara, why don't you and El'keth--" she was interrupted by a sharp nudge in the ribs. Aliara waggled her eyebrows and jerked a thumb at El'keth, who was staring in round-eyed wonder. A heavy lizard-drawn cart trundled past piled high with strings of sausage and great wheels of cheese. On the other side, a gaggle of brightly-dressed human pilgrims wended their way through the crowd in single file, chanting loud devotions. Everywhere around them were people-- dwarves with beards down to their knees, rakish young drow in frilled jackets and long gowns, crying children and hectoring parents. Above it all was the dull roar of the great bazaar. In between the buildings Teysa could see glimpses of the colorful market tents and smell roasting meat and savory spices.

El'keth clearly could as well. She weaved her head this way and that and slowly circled around on all eight legs, her attention jumping from place to place. Teysa watched her for a moment and sighed. "El'keth," she said, "would you like to look around a bit before we get to business?"

El'keth's head whipped around. "Oh, Teysa, can we? Please? This place is, is, is just..."

"That it is," Aliara said. "Come on, let's go to the market. You'll like it."

"Stay close to us," Teysa cautioned. "You don't want to get separated."

"Yeah, with all of the seven-foot-tall spider-women around here we'd never find you again," said Aliara. El'keth giggled at that, but gave Teysa a solemn nod. "I will be careful, Teysa, I promise."

The crowd parted around them as they made their way to the market. A drow mother and child passed by hand in hand; the child stared up at El'keth with eyes as big as saucers. El'keth returned the stare with one equally astonished until the child's mother, with a frightened expression on her face, tugged on its arm and disappeared into the crowd.

"What was that?" El'keth asked. "A dwarf drow?"

Teysa was momentarily nonplussed. "No, El'keth, that was just a child." Understanding dawned. "Oh! Like the spiderlings." She made a face. "But she was half the size of her mother! How could she carry an egg that size, let alone give birth to--"

Teysa cut her off, trying to ignore the sniggering Aliara. "It's different for us. Babies are born a lot smaller than that and they grow up fast." El'keth nodded, as though accepting a profound truth. "I see, Teysa. It seems very complicated. Isn't the drider way easier?"

Aware that she was treading on dangerous ground, Teysa chose her words carefully. "It's... just different, I expect. I haven't had a baby the human way, so I don't really have a point of comparison."

"Well, do you want one?" The question was delivered in the same innocent tone as always, but it stopped Teysa in her tracks. "A human child, I mean," El'keth continued, oblivious. Teysa took a moment to think before answering. "I don't know, El'keth. I never thought I would have one. It just wasn't important to me. Now I have the spiderlings, and..." she pursed her lips. "I think that's probably the closest I'm going to get, and I'm ok with that. It's not really the same as having a child, but maybe one of them will become a drider, like you. Life is full of surprises. You never know how you're going to feel about something until it happens."

El'keth took all this in in silence. "And you, Aliara?" she asked. "You have borne spiderlings too. Do you feel the same way?"

Aliara's grin disappeared. Her face clouded, and it was a long time before she answered. "El'keth... I'm a half-elf. That means I'm half something else. I lived with my mother when I was small. Then there was the raid, and..." she sighed and threw up her hands. "I'm a mixture. There aren't that many of us, so I never expected I'd marry another half-elf. If I ever had children they were going to be mixed-up too. I knew they would live their whole lives as half-breeds. I guess I just never expected they would be half-spider." She laughed mirthlessly.

"But there is nothing wrong with that!" El'keth exclaimed. "The spiderlings come from mothers of all nations. That makes the warren strong. So my mother taught me." She looked down, then added in a quiet voice, "I would like a child of my own one day."

Teysa rested a hand against one leg. "Well, you probably will, right? Spiderlings, at least." El'keth nodded, still staring at the ground. "Yes, but that is not the same as a child. A drider. My mother-- when I ascended, she was overjoyed, and she told me that she had been waiting a long time for an heir. But I also think she was lonely. I know that I have to rule the warren someday, and I accept that burden, but I should not like to be as lonely as that."

Aliara broke the awkward silence. "Well, let's get to the market, then! More people than you've ever seen in one place!" She tugged at El'keth's leg, and then set off without waiting to see if they would follow. Teysa had to hurry to keep up. They turned one more corner and then, all at once, the market was there in front of them, sprawling like an overturned anthill.

Vast pavilions dotted the bazaar, rising above the lesser merchants like turreted mountains. Between them were hundreds of smaller tents, stalls, and simple mats where merchants of every conceivable size and shape hawked their wares. A wizened woman with tufted fur around her ears and a ratlike snout sat in the middle of a display of candles, all of them in unappealing shades of brown and drab. Opposite her a dwarf was arguing at full volume with a jabbering pair of lizardmen. At issue seemed to be a metal helm: it lay on the anvil between the disputants. As Teysa watched, one of the lizardmen made a grab for it. The dwarf's hand shot out lightning-quick and brought his smithing hammer down down on the offending limb; the lizardman screeched and pulled it back, and the argument redoubled in volume.

The party made their slow way through the market, hampered both by the press of bodies and by El'keth's apparent desire to stop and examine every single stall they passed. She cooed appreciatively at bolts of fine silk, and sampled a tiny cup of rice wine. None of the merchants seemed fazed at serving a drider. Looking through the crowd, Teysa saw humanoid races of every description, even a hulking shape that could only be an ogre. Drow guards patrolled the edges of the market, but they seemed content to allow arguments within its bounds to play out naturally. Only once did they intervene-- when a pack of gnolls pulled out daggers and descended on a hapless group of halflings, the guards waded in, bludgeoning the combatants and pulling them apart.

"Earrings! Fine adornments for miladies!" One of the tallest humans Teysa had ever seen danced out in front of her, a stick-thin apparition swaddled in particolored silks. His face was long and horsey, with a patchy goatee and rosey cheeks. "Madam!" he said, performing an exaggerated bow before Teysa, "Your ears are like the finest shells on the shore of the Sithrahi Sea! It is criminal that they go barren!" He held up a pair of tiny gold earrings in the shape of starfish. "And you!" he said, whirling on Aliara, "Your beauty needs no help, but with my meager trinkets, you would outshine the Lazreen Opal!"

Teysa rolled her eyes, but El'keth was staring down in wonder. The merchant noticed this and shifted his focus. "Ah, what a beauty! It is so rare to see one of Lolth's blessed daughters, my dear!" He took her hand and made a great show of kissing her fingers. "So elegant! Those eight perfectly formed legs, that gorgeous face... I cannot waste baubles on you, oh lovely one." He hurried back to his tent and rummaged among his stock.

"That's quite all right, we were just-" Aliara began, but was cut off as the merchant practically leapt in front of El'keth, artfully insinuating himself between her and the half-elf. "Please, look at these!" he begged, his hands opening to reveal a tiny cherrywood box. He pulled back the lid to reveal a pair of white-gold hoop earrings. A delicate spiderweb filled each hoop, bearing an onyx cabochon spider. He tilted his hand back and forth, making the spiders glitter in the torchlight. They almost seemed to be moving. Teysa's breath caught in her throat. Even to her unpracticed eye, the fine craftsmanship in these earrings was apparent. El'keth looked down at them as though entranced. "May I?" she asked timidly. The merchant nodded, so she picked one up carefully, as though afraid it would break, and clipped it on her ear. "How do I look?" she asked, turning her head to and fro.

"Beautiful, milady, beautiful!" the merchant clutched at his heart. "Ravishing, gorgeous, perfect, alluring..."

"They look good, El'keth," agreed Teysa. "Aliara?"

"Very nice." Aliara gave the merchant an appraising look. "How much?"

He waved a hand as though swatting the question away. "For such a beauty? A trifle. A few gold coins, that is all... just for my materials and labor, you understand. If I could live on your beauty, dear heart, it would sustain me, but a man must eat..."

El'keth reached a hand into her skirt and pulled out a velvet bag. She opened the drawstring and tipped a handful of golden coins into her palm. "Will this do?" she asked. The merchant's eyes bugged out for a moment, but he rapidly regained his composure. "Mistress! I suppose, for one of your luminous beauty, I can accept such a price, though surely my wife will strike me dead tonight for my generosity." His hand closed around the coins and they disappeared into the folds of his silk. He bowed again and pressed the cherrywood box into El'keth's hands. "Enjoy your visit to our city, my dear," he said, and kissed her fingers once again before drifting back to his stall.

El'keth stared down at the box in her hands for a moment, then looked up brightly. "I did it!" she said. "I conducted business with an outsider! You both saw it! I gave him coins, and he gave me his goods!"

"He sure did," mumbled Aliara under her breath. Teysa stepped on her toes and smiled up at El'keth. "You did very well, El'keth. I'm proud of you." If El'keth's grin had been any wider, the top of her head would have fallen off. "Those coins," Teysa added. "Where did you get those?"

"Oh, my mother told me to take some," El'keth said. "She has a lot of them. All shapes and colors. I don't know where she got them."

Teysa and Aliara shared an uneasy look. "I think those came from the broodmothers," said Aliara carefully. "You should--"

"Monster!"

The cry came from the crowd a few yards away. Teysa looked around, trying to spot the source. A female drow was elbowing her way through the crowd towards them. She wore a black leather tunic and breeches and her hair was pinned up in a tight bun. "Demon!" she yelled, and pointed one accusing finger at El'keth. The drider swiveled around, her mouth an O of astonishment. "Child-killer!" screamed the drow as she emerged from the crowd. Her face was twisted into a hateful grimace. "Begone from our City! You've come to steal our babies!"

The crowd was thinning around them. El'keth seemed rooted to the spot, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly, so Teysa stepped forward. She held her hands up palms outward and spoke slowly and calmly. "I don't know what you've heard, but El'keth has never hurt anyone in her life. We are guests in your city, but--"

"They kill children, you know!" the drow shouted, ignoring Teysa. She turned and addressed the crowd. "They scrape them from their mothers' wombs. I saw it myself. They kidnapped a pregnant woman, and ripped her child from her to make room for their demon spawn. They ate it alive!"

An angry murmur arose in the crowd. Some of the observers were heckling the drow woman, but others were nodding along. Out of the corner of her eye Teysa could see a guard patrol watching the tableau, but they did not seem eager to intervene. "You've got it wrong!" she said. "They don't do those sorts of things!"

The drow rounded on her as if noticing her for the first time. "Oh, they don't, do they?" she hissed. "What would you know about it, surface dweller?"