“Have the water up in a bit.”
He nodded and climbed the stairs. His feet were sore, as much for having walked in damp boots for too long as for the distance he had covered. When he reached the small room, he pulled off his boots and waited.
About half a glass later, two wiry girls appeared with a narrow tin tub less than a yard long and little more than half that wide, with a bucket. The tub barely fit between the bed and the wall, and it took the girls three trips with buckets to get enough water into it.
“Thank you.” Quaeryt smiled and gave each girl a copper.
“Much obliged, sir,” the two chorused in thick country Tellan, before leaving him.
After dipping the pitcher in the tub to set aside some of the water for shaving, and a bucket of rinse water, he washed himself, then shaved, before washing and then rinsing all the garments except the green shirt. He spread them across the wall pegs to dry, then eased the tub and buckets out into the narrow hallway, and barred the door.
He was more than ready to sleep while the clothes dried. He’d been attacked and chased by a vengeful patroller for no reason at all, lost his duffel, taken a swim in the harbor, and was spending coin faster than he wanted. The weather to the north was bad. The best ship had already left, and he still had to watch out for angry patrollers. And … he was little more than halfway to Tilbora.
Quaeryt stretched out on the narrow bed and tried not to think about all that.
12
Quaeryt sat alone in the public room of the Tankard on Mardi morning, finishing off what the serving girl had called a ham-fry-stale bread wrapped around a slice of cheese and a slice of ham and dipped in egg batter, and then fried until it was deep brown. For a breakfast, accompanied by a lager, it was adequate.
“You seen any scholars, swamp lily?” boomed a deep nasal voice from outside the public room.
“And if I had?”
“You’d tell me. If I find you’ve put up one, I’ll close you down.”
“You try it, and not even your Namer-damned uncle will save you. And that’s if you have better fortune with the next scholar than you did with the first.”
Abruptly, a crashing sound followed.
“I’m so sorry … swamp lily. Accidents do happen. Just remember that.” A cruel laugh followed the cynical words.
Quaeryt recognized the voice, and the cruelty behind it. He forced himself to finish the ham-fry and the last of the lager-and he left a copper for the serving girl.
When he did leave the public room, he paused for only an instant to glance back toward the writing stand. The gray lady was carefully picking up pieces of blue ceramic, although the silver vase appeared untouched. He concealed a wince and quickly headed toward the stairs. The patroller had destroyed a vase that was worth perhaps a hundred golds to a collector, one of beauty that could never be replaced.
Once in the small third-floor room, he folded those now-dry garments he wasn’t wearing and eased them into the canvas bag, along with the razor, strop, and soap. Then he made his way back down to the main level. The gray lady, the broken vase, and the silver one were nowhere in sight when he left the Tankard.
He walked toward the harbor and the piers with the gait, if limping, of a man who had a destination and a purpose, watching for patrollers, and then picked the third pier, because that was the one without any green uniforms in sight. Unfortunately, there were also no new ships ported there. Using his concealment shield-and transport wagons rolling onto the piers-to get past the patrollers watching the base of the other two piers, he checked the other ships in port, but the three new arrivals were headed south and east.
With no immediate transport in sight, he slipped off the pier, past a pair of patrollers, neither of whom happened to be the nasal-voiced one. In fact, Quaeryt hadn’t encountered the obnoxious and overbearing one since he’d overheard him at the inn.
The incident with the vase bothered Quaeryt, in some ways far more than the attempt by the nasal-voiced patroller to assault Quaeryt. Was that because the patroller was abusing those whom he was charged to protect? Or because he would destroy an ancient object of beauty without a second thought as a means to pursue a personal agenda?
Since there weren’t any ships going in the direction he needed to travel, his next priority was to find a place where he could image some coppers, somewhere that had copper wastes or scraps in an old building or the ground around it. With that preparation, he’d found that imaging coppers was not too difficult. Sometimes he could manage silvers. The one time he’d tried golds, he’d nearly died, and he wasn’t about to try that again.
Once he was well clear of the harborfront and the piers, he turned south, toward where the Acliano River ran northwest from the south side of the harbor, thinking that there might be some locations suitable for his imaging somewhere along the riverfront. Usually, there were some places that handled metals, or at least a ruined building or two. He kept to the streets that were better traveled, and by late morning he was walking northwest along the riverside road. While many of the buildings had seen better days, almost all were still in use, from a factorage dealing in oils to a lumber and timber yard, both with their own small river docks for unloading barges, to a newer stone building where loaders were rolling barrels off a barge.
He walked almost a mille before finally coming to a ruined and roofless structure surrounded by a palisade fence with gaps here and there, if mostly too small for him to slip through. The large square chimneys suggested it had been some sort of metalworking facility, although they were but half the height they once had likely been, and the space between the remaining walls was filled with grasses and weeds, mostly tan and dried from the heat of a long summer. He kept walking, nodding to a teamster guiding a wagon pulled by four dray horses, until he saw a wider gap in the fence.
Just to be on the safe side, he stepped behind a twisted oak in front of the battered palisade fence and raised a concealment screen. Only then did he move toward the gap in the fence. Once through, he surveyed the ruins and the hint of a path toward the nearest chimney.
He took several steps. His trousers brushed the tinder-dry weeds, and they crackled.
“Someone’s coming! Run!” The voice was low, but high-pitched, like a child’s.
He didn’t see whoever had raised the alarm, only the swaying of high grasses and weeds between the tumbled-down foundation walls before him.
Quaeryt stopped and waited, listening, but the children had apparently hurried between the walls and hidden downhill, possibly under the sagging wharf whose end barely protruded over the muddy water of the river. He stepped into another set of shadows beside a section of stone and yellow-brick wall that remained and released the concealment shield. He tried imaging a copper, and one appeared in his hand.
Nodding, he continued until he had fourteen in his wallet, and he was beginning to sweat profusely. Then he wiped his forehead and stood in the shade until he was cooler. Only then did he raise the concealment shield and retrace his steps through the fallen stone, weeds, and grass and back through the fence. He stood behind the oak once more, waiting until no wagons or pedestrians were nearby before releasing the concealment and stepping out onto the edge of the road to continue his walk.
At the next street heading north, he crossed the road, waiting for a coach and then hurrying across to avoid a collier’s wagon. After covering less than twenty yards, he could see that the street he traveled was one catering to cloth factors of various sorts.
He still wondered about the one patroller’s fixation on and hatred of scholars. Would someone at the local Scholars’ House be able to shed some light on that?
After walking another block, he saw an older man adjusting the shutters on the side windows of a small shop that looked to be a lace factorage. When he neared the graying and stout factor, he stopped and waited for the other to finish.
“What can I do for you?” The man did not smile.
“Pardon me,” Quaeryt began. “Could you tell me the way to the Scholars’ House here in Nacliano?”
The factor frowned, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re a stranger here, aren’t you?”
“From Solis.”
