“Never heard of it.”
Tobas could think of no answer to that, since he had made the name up on the spur of the moment, assuming, foolishly, that the questioner would know no more about the Small Kingdoms than he did. He looked up blankly at a broad, sunburned face surrounded by thick black hair and beard.
“What are you doing here?” the man demanded.
“Uh...” Tobas was not yet sure just where he was.
“Oh, never mind; come aboard, and the captain can ask you the questions.” He pulled Tobas to this feet and half led, half dragged him across his little stolen boat to the side of the Ethsharitic ship, where several hands reached down to haul him up over the rail onto the deck.
It was a shock, somehow, to see that the ship’s deck bore very little resemblance to what he remembered of Retribution, his father’s lost ship. Retribution had been built for speed and for fighting, long and narrow, with rope catwalks and platforms from which archers could fire and boarders could leap down onto the enemy; this ship was fat so as to cram in as much cargo as possible and, instead of platforms and walkways, it had nettings hung along the sides to make boarding more difficult. Several immense hatchways took up a large part of the deck, and much of the tackle on the spars overhead had nothing to do with the sails, being intended rather for use as cranes in loading and unloading. Furthermore, the deck was not one continuous surface, but in three sections, with bow and stern higher than amidships.
Half a dozen burly, blue-kilted sailors surrounded him; what he saw of the ship he saw in glimpses between shoulders or under arms. They smelled of sweat. “This way,” one of them announced, jerking a thumb in the direction of the stern; he, too, spoke with a heavy accent.
Tobas followed silently and was escorted into a large, luxurious cabin hung with silken draperies and heavily carpeted, where a sweet scent Tobas did not recognize hung in the air. A plump, balding, red-clad man sat behind an ornate desk, two sailors standing on his right and a slender, white-gowned woman on his left. The woman stared at Tobas intently; the seated man’s gaze was less intense, while the sailors almost ignored him.
“If this is a pirate trick,” the seated man announced in the same odd accent the sailors had, “we’ll make very sure you die before anyone can save you.”
“It’s no trick,” Tobas said, He had had a moment to think as he was brought here. “My name is Tobas of Harbek; I was accompanying my master to Tintallion when our ship was rammed by a privateer out of Shan. When she heeled over, I was thrown clear and found the boat; I didn’t see any other survivors. The privateersmen didn’t notice me, I guess.”
“Privateer?”
Tobas, thinking back over the conversation, suddenly realized his error. “Pirates, I mean; my master used to call them privateers.” In the Free Lands they were considered privateers, whatever Dabran might have said, and Tobas had long ago acquired the habit of using the polite term with strangers and the more accurate description with his family. Among Ethsharites, though, it appeared they were known as pirates. “Who was this master?”
“Roggit the Wizard,” Tobas replied boldly. That was true enough.
The red-clad man glanced at the woman, then drummed the ringed fingers of one hand on the desk. “What ship?”
“Dawn’s Pride,” Tobas improvised quickly.
“And?”
Puzzled, Tobas said, “And what?”
“Where did she sail from, boy, and where was she bound?”
“Oh! Out of Harbek, bound for Tintallion.”
“Where’s Harbek?”
“In the Small Kingdoms.”
“I gathered that, boy; where in the Small Kingdoms?”
“Ah... in the south?” He wished he had given a different origin; he knew almost nothing about the Small Kingdoms.
The man stared at him for a long moment, then leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and announced, “I never heard of your master, your ship, or your homeland, boy, and no ship from the Kingdoms has any business sailing past Ethshar of the Sands, let alone so far as Tintallion, but I won’t call you a liar yet; some fool from some worthless little corner of the south might just have tried it. Let me suggest a possibility, though. Suppose that a lad in the Pirate Towns wanted to seek his fortune, and in a wider world than his one little corner. He might want to get on board a ship bound for one of the Ethshars. If he managed it, he’d have to account for himself once he was on board. Knowing little of the outside world, he would make up a story as best he could, rather than admit to being one of the Hegemony’s enemies, but he wouldn’t do a very convincing job of it. He wouldn’t even realize that he was speaking Ethsharitic with the accent of the Pirate Towns, which is nothing like anything spoken in the Small Kingdoms, not even where they think they’re speaking our tongue rather than one of their own strange languages. I think he’d look and sound a lot like you, Tobas of Harbek, who claims to be a wizard’s apprentice.”
“I am a wizard’s apprentice, or I was. My master is dead.”
“And the rest of it?”
“Uh...” Tobas fell silent.
“You had a good pair of oars in that boat, they tell me, and you look fit; why didn’t you row for shore?”
“Uh...”
“You wanted to get aboard this ship, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Tobas admitted after a moment’s hesitation, seeing no alternative.
“I thought so. And I don’t think it’s because you were afraid of what the Pirate Towners would do to you, either, not with that accent you have.” He sat back and looked up at Tobas, his hands pressed together before his chest. “Well,” he continued. “Wherever you’re from, I’d guess you’re pretty much alone in the world or you wouldn’t be here; and whoever you are, I don’t mind letting you work your passage to Ethshar of the Sands, or even Ethshar of the Spices. You will work, though. The overlords have decreed that castaways and refugees are to receive free passage; and if I’m wrong about you, you can go and complain to old Ederd the Fourth when we reach Ethshar of the Sands, but until then you’ll work. If you don’t, we’ll put you back in that boat we found you in. Fair enough?”
Tobas nodded mute agreement and did not dare to ask for an explanation of the difference between Ethshar of the Sands and Ethshar of the Spices or who Ederd IV might be.
He allowed himself to be led meekly away and assigned a hammock. He was on his way to the galley to help the cook with the crew’s dinner when it finally sank in that he had made it, despite the failure of his concocted story. They were not going to hang him as a pirate, nor throw him back in the sea. He was on his way to Ethshar to seek his fortune and find a new home!
He smiled. His bad luck was obviously past. He had needed a ship and here he was on a ship. He had needed a boat to reach the ship and he had found one. Then he remembered that he had stolen the boat, which the ship’s crew had hauled aboard and lashed down on deck, and the smile faded. Some day, he promised himself, when he was rich and powerful, he would pay those two lovers back for their boat and for the trouble he had put them through.
And for the chicken, too, while he was at it.
CHAPTER 5
The first port of call was Ethshar of the Sands, and at the sight of the city Tobas, already unsettled by the strange, flat landscape they had been sailing past, lost his nerve completely. He had not realized that a city could be so large. He had known Telven wasn’t much, but he had thought that Shan on the Sea was a good-sized town, with a population he guessed at a thousand or more.
The entire population of Shan on the Sea could be lost without a trace in Ethshar of the Sands.
Tobas had first begun to have misgivings when they left the familiar hills and patchy beaches behind,
