Castle of the Exlanders and the intricate White Cathedral of List, defining the part of the city seized by crusading knights from the Order of the Albatross. On the east bank of the wide river was a leafy green district of what seemed to be an entirely separate village below the massive and many-turreted palace of Denando the Great, the Agintan King who had extended his kingdom to this side of the Channel for a time.
Zeb pointed these sights and others out to Amatesu, and told her briefly a bit of what he knew about them. The woman nodded and looked interested, though she may have been humoring Zeb. He knew that the oldest and most storied town on Noroth was still far younger than those ancient cities of the Farthest West, but the shukenja was nice enough not to say so.
The men at the oars had struck up a cadence as they pulled into the wide harbor and the man in the foremast crow’s nest called down corrections so the barge’s course did not cross with any of the other numerous vessels plying the red-brown waters, everything from tall ships flying Miilarkian House pennons to little fishing craft from the east bank Pescadero. The barge moved for the west side of the harbor intent on a square fortress rising on a spur of natural rock, moss-covered and with the upper battlements retrofitted to sprout a number of stubby cannon barrels. The place flew a wide flag bearing the Codian emblem of an open brown chevron on a blue field representing the Book-from-the-Water, or the Code of Lake Beo. Zeb supposed that the old gray fort did as a customs house. He wondered how the band to which he was for the moment attached intended to clear Imperial customs, then noticed that the oarsmen had stopped singing.
He looked around. Uriako Shikashe stood nearby kitted out in his full-on regalia, and along with Amatesu both were looking back across the deck to the entrance to the aft cabins. So were the men at the oarlocks bolted to the gunwales. High above them the man in the crow’s nest had ceased barking. For the moment the barge was drifting under light sail.
Nesha-tari Hrilamae stood in the hatchway. Zeb supposed it was her, as she was the one person on this boat he had yet to see, though in truth he could still not see her very well even now.
The woman with the noble Zantish appellation “Hri-,” meaning “daughter of,” on her surname was ensconced in a voluminous cloak of sandy beige that looked golden under the warm noonday sun, topped by a peaked hood deep enough to shadow her face. There really could have been about anything within the bulky garment, but as she strode across the deck there was a roll to Madame Nesha-tari’s hips and the smart clacking of boot heels that could not have been mistaken for anything other than female. She moved with what a man from Wakminau would call the marsik ik tsoo-tsoo, which loosely translated into Codian as a fetching hitch in her giddy-up.
Amatesu bowed as the woman reached the prow, while Shikashe only gave a nod. Zeb did not manage either, he only stood and blinked.
“ Canharati,” Nesha-tari said to Zeb, her voice at once clipped, yet with a husky sort of inflection that lingered. It took Zeb a moment to put aside Codian, and Minauan Danoric, and to finally find the part of his brain where he left his Zantish lying around. Canharati meant good afternoon.
“ Canharati, Mahadaci,” Zeb managed, and performed what was probably the deepest bow of his life, not so much from respect as from the fact he was trying to get a peek up into the shadows of Nesha-tari’s deep hood. He got no more than a glance of chin and though it had never really struck him before, a chin could actually be rather lovely.
“You are the translator, Zebulon Baj Nif?” she asked in Zantish, and Zeb rose and bobbed his head in a nod that probably went on too long.
“I am, Madame. At your service. Totally. Um. That is…”
Zeb had taken Nesha-tari to be about Amatesu’s height as she crossed the deck, several inches shorter than himself. He was surprised as he rose to find she was actually just about his own height. She brought her long- fingered hands together in soft gloves, also beige, and from one wide cloak sleeve she withdrew a stiff leather envelope wrapped in ribbon and embossed with the Ayzant Royal seal of a crown with red dragon wings. Zeb saw a supple wrist, smoothly tanned but lighter in complexion than was typical for a Zant.
“These are our papers,” Nesha-tari said, holding out the envelope. Zeb wiped his hand on his shirt before accepting the packet, as his palms had started sweating at some point.
“They state our reason for traveling to the Empire as the diplomatic business of the Ayzant Throne. You should not be asked to explain anything beyond that to the customs functionaries.”
Zeb was having a bit of trouble concentrating, for a curled lock of dark red hair had slipped from the edge of Nesha-tari’s hood to rest pendant-like just above the swell of her breasts, notable at the moment as the stiff harbor breeze from the fore was pushing her voluminous cloak back against her frame. Zeb was a big fan of that breeze. Nesha-tari’s cloak was belted at her slim waist and had an eye-and-hook clasp at the throat, but the lower length was moving back to reveal that her brown leather boots were knee high, and had pointed toes in the Zantish style. She wore them with short trousers, baggy and with the calf-length cuffs bunched up at her boot tops. She said something else that Zeb totally missed.
“ Paerdohna?” he asked, which was more Ghendalese than Zantish, though Nesha-tari seemed to get the gist of it. She looked at Zeb evenly as the breeze, of which he was growing increasingly fond, caught just enough of the edge of her hood to move it slightly back. Warm sunlight touched a high cheekbone and played at the turned corner of a full mouth. It glinted beneath an arched eyebrow in the bluest eye Zeb had ever seen.
“Repeat this to the Westerners,” Nesha-tari said, speaking clearly as though she were addressing a young child or a very slow grown-up. “We will be examined at customs by a Circle Wizard, for the Codians monitor all magic brought within their Empire.”
Zeb switched to the Codian language and repeated the Zantish woman’s words for Amatesu, who relayed them quickly into Ashinese for Shikashe. The swordsman frowned deeply and answered the shukenja with a flurry of words, one hand on the hilt of the longer of his two swords. Amatesu nodded and spoke to Zeb, who translated for Nesha-tari.
“Uriako Shikashe-sama says that the katana known as the Breath of Winter and the…what was the second thing? Wakizashi. Wow, that’s a mouthful. The wakizashi known as the Knife of Ice are carried as a sacred trust and shall not be relinquished unto any official…”
Nesha-tari snapped her fingers several times, which Zeb took as a signal to stop speaking.
“Tell them that as long as they remain close to me no magic shall be detected about their persons.”
Zeb did so, not even wondering how exactly that was going to work for he was becoming increasingly lost in the blue depths of Nesha-tari’s left eye, ringed as it was by heavy lashes that gave the sapphire a languid coolness, very striking against the tumbling, dark red curls beside her unblemished face.
She said something else, as did Amatesu, and Zeb responded to neither as he only stood and stared, swaying gently with the motion of the vessel.
Nesha-tari turned on a boot heel and headed back for the passage below decks. Zeb had one glimpse only of her full face, of flashing eyes and a fine nose in profile with a slight upturn that was positively adorable. Then she was gone, striding away across the deck. Zeb hated to see her leave, though as the oldest joke in any language went, it was a pleasure to watch her go.
Zeb sighed, hardly realizing that he did it very loudly. Nor did he notice as the man in the crow’s nest resumed barking from above, and the surrounding men went back to pulling at their oars.
Behind Zeb’s back, Amatesu and Shikashe exchanged a sideways glance, and a single nod.
The barge moved to the docks below the old square fort, and a gangway was thrown across. Nesha-tari reappeared on deck and Uriako Shikashe, resplendent in full armor and helm, led the way onto land with the Zantish woman right behind him. Zeb and Amatesu hoisted the group’s rather scant baggage and followed the pair up a wooden stairway to street level where two Codian legionnaires in gleaming breast plates and helms, tower shields and spears, stood to either side of an open hallway giving into the fort. The legionnaires rapped the butts of their spears as the foursome passed by and one spoke a polite greeting, which Zeb returned purely by rote as he followed Nesha-tari’s mesmerizing stride into the cool hall.
The hall opened into a pleasant courtyard with two levels of arched walkways on the four sides keeping the open interior in cool shade. Great ferns grew in enormous clay pots on the balcony level, and their overhanging fronds dappled sunlight on the flagstone floor below. The place smelled like clean stone swept with straw brooms, and a working fountain in the center filled it with the burbling patter of water.
A line of stout tables stood beneath the balconies across the way, manned by clerks with rope lines before them, not busy at present as most ship captains timed their arrival off the river for early morning. Zeb wondered
