He shivered. If the pirates were to blame and anyone here recognized him as a Freelander, his life would probably be short and unpleasant.
He considered going back to the last brothel and asking the women on the balcony for directions, but could not quite get up the nerve. Instead, when he came to a particularly large wharf that did not seem as badly decayed as the others, he turned right, onto the street leading directly inland from the docks. He did not care to stay on the waterfront, under the circumstances; sailors would be far more likely to recognize his accent, if they heard it, and to do something about it, than would people who remained safely ashore.
He walked silently along two long blocks lined with warehouses and shipfitters’ shops, marveling at the size and splendor — and age! — of the buildings and at how very straight the street was, then found himself emerging into a market square.
Unlike the waterfront shops, the market was far from deserted; shipping might be poor, but the difficulties did not appear to have reached two blocks inland as yet. Knots of men — and a sprinkling of women and children — were scattered thickly across the hard-packed ground, and the air around him was awash in their conversation, as loud and constant as a heavy sea breaking on rocks. A good many wore the blue kilts of sailors, and most of the others had on tunics and breeches no different from the everyday garb in Shan on the Sea, but a few were clad in strange and fantastical gowns, robes, jewels, furs, odd caps, or leather harness. Tobas was not sure what to make of these.
A strong smell of spices hung over everything, more heavily than in the streets he had previously traveled, though he could find no source for it; he guessed it came from the surrounding warehouses.
He saw relatively few booths or carts displaying goods, and those which he did see held not grains and produce, as he was accustomed to finding in markets, but rope samples, ironmongery, candles, or other hard goods, generally of varieties that would be useful aboard ship.
Most of the market, however, was taken up with people clustered about individuals with no visible goods at all. Some of these stood on boxes or stools; others made do with the ground.
Curious, Tobas stepped up to the back of one group, composed mostly of sailors, and listened.
“...further, you need have no fear of passing the Pirate Towns!” the man was saying, “because we will have aboard not one, but two magicians of the first order, the incomparable Kolgar of Voider, wizard, and Artalda the Fair, warlock! Either one of these mighty enchanters can easily defend the ship against the best the pirates can throw against us, and they will be sleeping in alternate shifts, so that at no time can our vessel be caught by surprise! A minimum of risk for a maximum of gain, all the wealth of Tintallion there for the taking! Who among you will sign aboard the Crimson Star for this voyage?”
“Where’s her old crew?” one aging sailor demanded.
“Ah, my friend,” the recruiter replied, “you haven’t been listening! The Crimson Star is a new vessel, fresh from the shipyards!” He waved a hand toward the west, which Tobas assumed to be the direction wherein lay the shipyards. “Who will sign?”
The old sailor turned away and saw Tobas at the outside of the crowd. “Don’t listen to him, lad,” he said. “Tintallion’s a cold and miserable place and no richer than we are here.” He stalked off.
Tobas had had no intention of signing up for a journey to Tintallion; he, too, turned away, but only to move on to the next group.
That group was listening to a similar harangue; this recruiter claimed he needed only three skilled sailors to replace men lost in a storm. The third was different, a soldier in a yellow tunic and red kilt was announcing, in a loud but bored and monotonous voice, various recent decisions of the city’s overlord, Azrad VII, that would affect the shipping industry.
The fourth group centered around a young woman in a flowing gown of white velvet, the hem spattered with mud; her hair was bound up in a manner Tobas had never seen before, held in place with jeweled clasps. She claimed to be a princess, apparently, and sought brave young men to restore her to her rightful inheritance in some place called Mezgalon, whence she had been driven by treachery and violence. Tobas stared in fascination; he had never seen a princess before. Her story sounded much like some of the more lurid tales he and Peretta had heard as children at her mother’s knee; he found it hard to take the woman seriously.
For one thing, quite aside from the difference he had always assumed to exist between fiction and reality, this princess did not quite fit the mental image he had always had of princesses; despite her finery, she was plain- faced and flat-chested, with an unpleasantly nasal voice and a singularly ugly accent. Some of the whores on the waterfront had looked more like the traditional storytellers’ description of a princess.
Well, Tobas told himself, not all princesses can be beautiful, can they?
It seemed very odd to be in a place where anyone could even claim to be a princess; he wondered if perhaps some of the old stories he had taken for mere tales were truer than he had thought and seemed like fantasy to a Telvener only because Telven was an exceptionally dull part of the World.
Tobas moved on, intrigued by the idea that there might be far more to the World than he had realized. Perhaps, he thought, he would find an opportunity here that would be better than trying to make a living off wizardry. It seemed unlikely, but it might be possible.
The next group was again recruiting for a ship, and the one after that hiring miners to work in the diamond mines of Tazmor; Tobas began to lose interest. This was all very well, but none of it was getting him anywhere. These job opportunities were not what he wanted, and he berated himself for his momentary foolishness in thinking he might find anything worthwhile here. He had no money, no food, no place to sleep, and the afternoon was already on the wane; he had done nothing about learning more spells. If he really wanted to, he could come back here later; right now, though, he had more urgent matters to attend to.
What could he do, though? He had not thought this out in advance. He cursed himself for wasting all the time aboard ship that he could have spent thinking and planning for every eventuality.
He had no money, so he could get no food or shelter save by stealing or by selling something. He had nothing to sell save himself and his single spell and he was not yet desperate enough to sell himself into slavery — nowhere near it! — and could not imagine why anyone in this vast and wealthy city would want fires lit by magic. He might find work of some sort — would have to, he supposed — but all the recruiters in this particular market appeared to be hiring for work outside the city, usually dangerous or unpleasant, and he was not yet ready to leave the city, nor desperate enough to sign up for anything that might get him killed. He would prefer to learn more spells, somehow, and become a proper wizard. To learn more spells he needed a teacher, and surely, if there were wizards anywhere in the world, there would be wizards in Ethshar of the Spices!
And that brought him to his one feeble hope of establishing himself without immediately having to undertake any hazardous or strenuous work. He could appeal to his Guild brothers, tell them his tragic tale, and hope that they could spare him enough to keep him alive until he could find a worthwhile position.
They might even teach him more spells at no charge.
First, though, he had to find them. Gathering up all his nerve, he tugged at the sleeve of a man listening in amusement to a particularly incoherent speaker.
“Excuse me, sir,” Tobas said when the Ethsharite turned, “but I’m newly arrived... ah, from Tintallion. Could you tell me where I might find a wizard?”
“Wizard Street, I suppose.” The man stared at Tobas’ rather worn and dirty clothes with obvious disdain.
“Of course, sir, I should have realized. Ah... how do I get there from here?”
The Ethsharite smiled unpleasantly. “I’ll be damned if I know,” he said. “That’s not my part of town. The Wizards’ Quarter is all the way across the city, down by Southgate.” He pointed in a vaguely southeasterly direction.
Tobas thanked him and looked about. Seven streets radiated from the marketplace: three to the north, one each east and west, one to the southwest, and one to the southeast. He chose the last and began walking.
After half a dozen long blocks of shops, tenements, and warehouses, he found himself in another market, this one a long, narrow triangle pointing to the south, with its eastern side open to a canal. This market was more traditional than the other; piles of goods were on display on all sides, and no one in the milling throng was making speeches, though a raised wooden platform stood empty on one side. The goods were obviously freshly arrived by ship, furs, fabrics, jewelry, carvings of stone and wood, and boxes, jars, and bottles of herbs and spices.
That meant, Tobas realized with a shock, that he was still in the waterfront district, Shiphaven, the sailors had called it, when he had walked a distance as great as the entire width of Shan on the Sea. The depth of the city,
