When you leave 'Knife Alley', which frankly is a terrible name for the area just past the gates, into the Dealer's Market? Conversation is all but impossible, as barkers for market stalls start shouting and trying to sell you anything. Including themselves, at one point, though the woman who'd made the offer to you and Natasha had merely pouted and blown a kiss at your flat refusal to engage. Here, men of Nippon, of Ind, of Cathay, intermingle with one another as well, though it is the foremost than any others. Seven thefts occur in front of your very eyes, and only five of the acts are stopped, the other two thieves escaping into the crowds. A Cathayan man and a Nipponese man…as best you can tell…have a knife fight that ends with both of them dead or dying, their bodies swallowed by the crowds in a single eyeblink.
This, one of the Knights Mariner informs you, is the Dealer's Market.
You pass through it quickly, and upon reaching the Palace District the noise is instead that of music, equaling the now significantly thinned crowds. Outright orchestras, balls, parties, and more fill the sound with the noise of extravagance. Street musicians play, their clothes and instruments of far finer make than their counterparts literally only thirty feet away past the gates of the Palace District. There are a handful of poets, even, who recite their works whilst standing atop boxes. Several gazebos feature single man or two man plays, thespians acting their hearts out for fun, for funds, for exposure. Fine works of statuary line the streets here, as do fountains that pulse and spray crystal clear water in clear contrast to the scummy waters in the canals. The jumbled cobblestones become sheets of marble and smoothed out rock, not paved with gold but clearly a damn sight higher quality.
