“I’m sorry I’m keeping you from spending time with friends,” I told Serru, once we were back outside.

  “Terenei will still be here,” Serru said. “And his family. Those who matter to me know that I’m restless and accept that, and Terenei’s an old and beloved friend who knows me very well.”

  “And I’m even more sorry about your great-grandfather.”

  “There’s nothing there to be sorry for. He spent his final months with his family and friends around him, and he ended his life peacefully and surrounded by love. He’ll be missed, of course, and he was sad to leave us, but it’s been a century and he was also looking forward to starting a new life.” She gnced at me and smiled. “He had no recollection of any previous lifetimes as an aquian and was hoping for that next time. I hope he gets his wish.”

  “That would be fun,” Aryennos said. “I have a handful of brief memories of an aquian life. It’s not really like anything else. Not that anything’s really like anything else.”

  Serru nodded. “I have a few fragments. I haven’t spent much time trying to unearth them, but when my mind is wandering on the road, sometimes things surface.”

  They’d both had at least one previous life as an aquian, whatever that was.

  It wasn’t impossible that it had been at the same time. Even that they’d known each other.

  Was that... could that be part of the reason why this culture was so accepting and generally rexed and kind? They knew, always, that the person who was having a very bad day right now and needed help, the person who was being irritating and frustrating, the person you were bargaining with, could in another life have been your parent, child, sibling, lover, best friend? The person grieving that a loved one had been taken by the Moss Queen might have been there for you when someone you loved was cimed by the Zombie King, in another life. Why would you ignore them or retaliate or cheat them, knowing that?

  I stepped carefully around a grey poodle with its hind end clipped fairly short and the rest of it curly; it looked up at me, and trotted on its way.

  Even the dog had presumably had earlier lives, and would have future lives, as a human, felid, centaur.

  Serru had said that obligations ended with death and it was taken for granted that one had every freedom to start over and make new choices, which was why asking about previous lives was frowned on. She’d also said that the memories most likely to bubble to the surface on their own, and the easiest to deliberately recall, were highly emotional ones. With an increasing number of lifetimes’ worth of those vivid moments, would you take the chance that the person you were about to act badly towards was the reborn self of someone who had been important to you? You wouldn’t know, not without both of you sitting down for some time and comparing whatever you did remember, and from what I’d heard, even that could be spotty.

  You could assume that the odds were against it, of course, and they probably were, although how low depended on the size of the total popution. But in a world that already had no need to compete for resources, no fear of early death, even very effective universal health care, why not just assume that everyone had probably mattered to you at some point or would in the future? They didn’t eat meat because animal souls came from the same pool as humans and felids and centaurs and cervids and saurids and whatever aquians were and whatever else existed here. It wasn’t much of a stretch from that to a generalized background compassion.

  If it weren’t for my family, my friends, my job, this would be an amazing pce to live.

  And when it came down to it, I could do my job anywhere, or at least a version of it. Serru made a decent living off gathering, and potions could, at least sometimes, sell for even more. I had more direct skills, and also my golden centaur magic. I could help people stay healthy, and do it without the night shifts, the aggravating moments when I wanted to scream at someone for wasting my time, the bad calls when a patient got violent, the heart-breaking ones when there was just nothing I could do, the nightmare-fuel ones that made me think wistfully about going out and getting thoroughly drunk but I couldn’t because I had another shift the next day and I hadn’t yet reached the point where the pain outweighed the responsibility...

  I couldn’t say the same about my family. My parents and sister were not as easy to repce.

  Besides, I could find good moments here without the worst ones, but someone needed to do the job despite the bad moments. People needed help, often innocent people whose lives had just gone out of control in a frightening way. I was experienced and good at my job. I needed to be there to do it.

  I needed to get home.

  “We aren’t done shopping yet,” Serru said, as we left the store. “We need at least one change of clothing each for a centaur, felid, and human, and Aryennos might want a change as well. We’ll need a cold-bag for food, and supplies for a felid, as well as general resupply, and I need a few things so we can make sure you can wear those earrings. I do know what I’m doing, I promise. We still have things to sell, and we should be able to get a good price here on the silk and fruit but I may need to ask a few questions to gather information. And, of course, lunch and an inn for the night.”

  “Coppersands has a library,” Aryennos said. “A good one. Given a bit of time in it, I can probably unearth some useful information.”

  “That as well. Nathan? Considering all that, are you comfortable with pnning to leave the day after tomorrow, rather than tomorrow?”

  I’d already lost a day, but she was right. Trying to cram everything into today might be possible, but it would be hectic and probably stressful. Allowing tomorrow as well would give Aryennos time for proper research, give us all time to rest and eat before getting back on the road, and give us the leisure to explore the city. Serru might be able to find time for lunch with her friend or something, even.

  “That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “Where do we go first?”

  Serru wasn’t exaggerating about knowing Coppersands.

  She led us on an efficient route through the broad streets and into multiple shops.

  We picked up a bag that was meant to preserve foods that needed to stay cold. Apparently, it was not a good idea to put containers that warped space inside other containers that warped space, because strange things happened to the world and the containers in question. If the container that was going inside was absolutely empty and inert, that didn’t happen. These had been designed with that in mind and could go safely into another bag while full and not cause spacetime to colpse or anything. I didn’t want to think how someone had invented and safety-tested those. They were comparatively small, but big enough to hold some supplies.

  Elsewhere, we got food to go in it, mostly milk and cheese and eggs and a bit of fish. Travel bars designed for felids came from the same sources but didn’t need to be cold.

  In other stores, Serru stopped to ask questions about selling things, and sometimes did so but sometimes not, and she bought a few small individual items. In a grocery store with mostly vegetables and fruits, we bought some things and Serru sold the cardinal fruits, with the bance at the end decidedly in our favour. In another shop, one that had fabric and sewing supplies and things like that, she bargained the shopkeeper into what sounded to me like a higher price for the lindwurm silk than initially offered.

  Honestly, we did enough stops that I couldn’t keep track.

  Her route, however, took us into clothing shops, and that was an education.

  Different species had different styles that tended to be associated with them. No rule, written or otherwise, said anyone had to stick with that, and there was an abundance of crossing fvours and creative expression, but often there were practical factors. This meant that in a city like Coppersands, shops specialized by species.

  We stopped at a shop that had a shirt and a humanoid outline on the sign.

  It held a wild mixture of items, hanging on racks or neatly folded on shelves. Nothing suggested that anything was categorized by gender.

  I didn’t see more than one of anything. Multiple pieces might be made to match, and were presented that way, but no two items were ever identical—if the style matched, the colour differed, although even more often, other details varied.

  I leaned down to quietly ask Aryennos, since he was closest to me, “What if everything you like is the wrong size?”

  He gave me a puzzled look. “Everything here will fit anyone human. Even the things over in the bargain corner that are probably students or amateurs will usually fit at least most. Anything made by a skilled professional has a high chance of a good fit even for someone not human, within reason.”

  Sizing wasn’t a thing.

  Even though Serru and Aryennos and human-me were, to say the least, of different builds and proportions, the same clothes would fit? And well-made ones might fit centaur-me as well?

  Like Serru’s yellow cardigan that was comfortable for her and also for centaur-me?

  “Are these all made by the person who owns the shop?”

  “That’s very unlikely. Probably there’s a cooperative group of professionals that are supplying most of it. I don’t know how many it would take to keep up in Coppersands. There are endless ways to do the business arrangement, they might all own the shop together or might be providing goods to a single shop owner or something else. Usually shops buy things that someone doesn’t want or need any more, either, so it’s avaible for someone else. And they trade stuff around, if something doesn’t take anyone’s fancy in one area, it probably will somewhere else.”

  “Old clothes don’t get thrown out... no, of course not, they eventually repair themselves back to original condition, no stains, no rips. And I bet you don’t have trends where things go out of style. Certain colours are popur this year but not next year, a specific type of jacket or boots or skirt length or something?”

  “People like whatever they like, why should they keep changing because of what someone else says they should like now instead? And how would the tailors keep up? And what would happen to older clothes?”

  “Never mind, forget I asked. Right. Goods move around. Anything fits. Everything’s always in style.” Even the phrase ‘in style’ gave me connotations of personal comfort and expression.

  “Anything fits within a species range for sure, and possibly more.”

  “Got it.”

  Aryennos wanted clothes for himself, and wandered off to look around; Serru reminded him to buy a coat, and called me over to look at clothes for our fictional human friend that we were shopping for, to get my thoughts.

  I wasn’t entirely sure what I might need, but a sweater caught my fancy. At home, it would probably have been considered more than a bit girly: the knit was soft and drapey and not bulky, and it could go over my blue shirt in pce of my grey jacket, although not easily under it. The sleeves were moderately loose but gathered at stretchy wide cuffs; the neck had a slouchy cowl. The whole thing was knitted in a gradient of chocote brown and cherry pink-red and creamy vanil.

  Had I seen it in a thrift shop at home, I’d have grabbed it immediately, in my teens or the present day, even if in the present I wouldn’t have much opportunity to wear it.

  Serru smiled and handed it to me to carry, along with a lighter top that had also made me pause: not unlike a soft T-shirt in shape, it had a deep pinky-purple fuchsia eight-armed star in the centre of front and back that faded out in soft-edged stripes to near-white on the lower hem.

  She insisted on a long hooded waterproof coat as well, and we went with the one that was a dark purply brown, with finger-wide bright-white trim along the shoulder-seams and edges. Apparently we were headed into territory that could be wet. I wasn’t sure whether the white trim was a stylistic choice, but I couldn’t help but notice that in gloomy weather and poor visibility, it would make it easier to spot someone—not exactly hi-vis, but considerably better than nothing.

  Somehow, a couple more triangle scarves appeared in the collection as well.

  While she paid for that, she asked the human shopkeeper for suggestions on clothes for centaurs and felids, and got directions. We had to wait a bit longer for Aryennos, but I could hardly bme him, considering how he’d joined us.

  While we waited, Serru suggested we stop to get waterproof boots but I stayed stubborn on that one. I wasn’t risking walking in unfamiliar footwear.

  Aryennos finally made up his mind and paid for his own purchases, and we left, en route to the next stop.

  “You’re spending too much,” I told Serru, as we walked.

  “Be grateful that I decided to avoid awkward questions and didn’t ask Terenei to join us,” she giggled, then softened. “This is minimal. It’s fine. Things happen and it’s best to have a change or two of clothes at hand. It’s a little more complex for you at the moment since in any given situation you could be in any of three forms with different needs, but since you otherwise have nothing, this isn’t really much.”

  “I could help pay,” Aryennos said.

  “Between the cardinal tree and the lindwurm silk, I’m not worried. Both of you, rex. We’ve been almost everywhere I intended and have bought nearly everything I wanted to get. At this point, we need to stop to get centaur and felid clothes, and then we can go to the inn and have dinner and take it easy for the rest of the evening. I can find us somewhere to go out, if you like. Coppersands is big and busy, there will be multiple kinds of performances, inside and outside. Taverns often have musicians, and there’s likely to be at least one theatre py. Possibly other options, dancers or jugglers or an illusionist.”

  ‘Illusionist’ gave me mental images more of stage magic than the fantasy variety. “How big is big, anyway?” I asked. “What’s the popution of Coppersands?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’s one of the rgest outside the capitals,” Aryennos said. “Something like twenty-five thousand, I think? I might be off by a few thousand, one way or the other.”

  I’d spent my entire life in a city more than four times that size, only a couple of hours’ drive from the rgest metropolis in Canada, over a hundred times as rge.

  But apparently live entertainment was thriving.

  “It sounds like a lot of people go out a lot. Did we get here on the weekend or something?”

  “What’s a weekend?” Aryennos asked. “A week’s like a cycle, there’s no start or end, it just measures a length. One day and night, starting anywhere, is a cycle, and approximately seven cycles, starting anywhere, is a week.”

  No Sabbath meant no set day of the week for everything to close. Right.

  “Never mind. We measure differently and there are a couple of days each week that people tend to go out because they don’t have to work the next morning.”

  “That sounds... complicated.”

  “Yeah, it can be. Lots of jobs don’t get weekends off, like mine. It’s left over from some historical stuff. Don’t worry about it. So the party’s every evening here. Which means I bet it doesn’t run too te.”

  “It depends,” Serru said, “on what you mean by ‘too te’ but I suspect we end earlier than you’d expect most of the time, yes. Terenei will know everything that’s avaible, but if I ask him it would be difficult to find a reason to give for not inviting him that would not hurt a friend who matters very much to me. There are other ways we can find out. The innkeeper should be able to suggest at least some.”

  I considered that, then sighed reluctantly. “I’m really curious, especially about music, but I think I’m still too tired to really appreciate even the best entertainment tonight.”

  Serru nodded. “Dinner and an early night it is.”

  I was really hoping, though, that at some point we’d be somewhere lively and I wouldn’t feel so drained.