death in a nasty little kingdom in the middle of nowhere, but whenever he thought he had settled on escape he kept finding himself reconsidering, thinking of what might happen to the people he had come to know in Semma. Would Princess Lura wind up starving somewhere? Might Nissitha and Shirrin be raped by their victorious enemies? Would Alder and Dogal and all the soldiers he had diced with get themselves killed in a futile defense?
None of this, he told himself, really ought to be any responsibility of his, he hadn’t volunteered to be warlord.
Still, he was the warlord, like it or not, and abandoning Semma to its fate seemed wrong.
Of course, not abandoning Semma might get him killed, and that seemed even worse.
Perhaps, he thought with sudden inspiration, he could hire his magicians, then disappear into the city streets. Semma could still win its stupid war, but he would be free and home. True, he would be guilty of treason under Semman law, but surely nobody would go to all that much trouble looking for him under those circumstances. The Semman nobility would have no very strong reason to hold a grudge against him, if he won their war for them, whether he was present at the time or not.
And if his magicians didn’t win, and given his estimate of the purchasing power of his available funds, that seemed likely, at least he would have made an honest effort and would be no worse off than if he had deserted before recruiting anybody.
He would have tried, and if the Semman princesses were still raped or murdered, if the Semman army was still slaughtered, he would have done the best he could.
He liked that approach. He would carry through on his promise, hire the best magicians he could, and then, if the opportunity arose, he would escape on the way back to the ship.
That shouldn’t be too difficult, he thought. He smiled and blinked away the tears of homesickness.
He would hire magicians, but how did one go about hiring magicians for something like this?
His smile vanished again as he realized that he had no idea at all.
To buy a love spell or a curse, to cure warts or foresee the future, he knew exactly what to do. He would take his money to the Wizards’ Quarter and pick a likely magician by reading the signboards.
None of the signboards had ever advertised “Wars won,” though. How would he know which magicians to approach? Trial and error would not work; there were hundreds of magicians in the Wizards’ Quarter, and asking each one in turn would take years. Most of them surely wouldn’t be interested.
Recruiters of various sorts always worked in the city’s markets, particularly Shiphaven Market and Westgate Market, calling out their offers to the passing crowds; anyone who wanted to take up a career as an adventurer, or any other particularly hazardous and messy job, could go to the markets and pick from several options.
But there was no market in the Wizards’ Quarter. There was Arena Plaza, but Sterren had never seen a recruiter there. The nearest true market was in Southgate, and Sterren had never been there at all. The taverns and gaming in Southgate were organized, and freelancers like himself were not welcome.
Or would Southmarket, by the reservoir, be closer to the Wizards’ Quarter than Southgate? He had passed through there once. He didn’t remember seeing recruiters, but he could not be absolutely sure they hadn’t been there.
And there was always Eastgate Market, and Hempfield Market, and Newmarket, and Newgate, he had gambled in inns and taverns near all those, at one time or another, before settling back into his home turf around Westgate and the two Merchants’ Quarters. Those other markets had no recruiters, generally, and weren’t particularly close to the Wizards’ Quarter, but should he rule them out completely?
For the first time, Sterren began to see the city’s immensity as a serious drawback.
He blinked, shook his head, and reconsidered.
None of the various markets seemed exactly right, but pretty obyiously, Shiphaven Market would be the best if he decided to go that route. It was the traditional place to recruit people interested in traveling by sea, after all, and it would be closest to the Tea Wharves, wherever they might turn out to be. That would mean less walking through the city streets, but on the other hand, Shiphaven Market was always crowded, was not too far from his old stamping grounds, and was surrounded by places to hide.
He didn’t know all those places as well as he might, since he had usually avoided Shiphaven in order to avoid drunken sailors who might be prone to violence, or ships’ officers who might stoop to kidnapping to complete their crews, but he thought he could manage to find something.
But would there be any magicians around Shiphaven Market?
The Arena Plaza was certainly much closer to the Wizards’ Quarter, and he thought he remembered a signboard there that he could post a message on, that was a second possibility that did not deserve to be discarded out of hand.
For that matter, simply asking around in the Wizards’ Quarter, or walking the streets calling for volunteers, might produce results. Perhaps he could inquire after ambitious near-term apprentices, or even journeymen. The magicians surely gossiped among themselves and would know who might be desperate enough for work to be interested in such an adventure.
And what’s more, there was no reason he couldn’t try all three approaches.
He smiled again. That would certainly be reasonable and would call for a good, long stay in Ethshar, with visits to two of the most crowded places in the city, Shiphaven Market and Arena Plaza. The Wizards’ Quarter was less crowded, but full of nooks and crannies and odd little byways where a person could easily lose sight of his companions.
That seemed very promising indeed.
As the city loomed before him, heart-twistingly familiar, his resolution to stay until he had hired magicians evaporated. He decided instead that he would take any opportunity to escape that arose, because any opportunity might be the last.
If the opportunity never came at all, he would live with that.
He was a gambler, after all. He was accustomed to accepting what the gods of luck sent him and making the best of it. If his luck let him slip away, he would; if he never got a chance, he would go through with the hiring of magicians and play out his role as warlord. He could see the docks ahead, now, and the mouth of the New Canal. Three wharves projected out at an angle, across a band of mud, a few hundred feet to the left of the canal; the ship seemed to be headed directly for them, and he guessed that these were the Tea Wharves.
That was the Spicetown side, but getting across to Shiphaven would be easy enough. Spicetown had no market square; the spice merchants did their bidding right on the docks. Shiphaven Market would still be the first stop in the search for magicians.
This expedition, he thought, might even be fun.
CHAPTER 14
Sterren stopped walking and pointed. “That’s the New Canal,” he said, speaking loudly to be heard over the wind, “And Shiphaven Market’s just the other side. That’s where we want to start looking.”
Lady Kalira glanced at the row of shops on the opposite bank and sniffed. “I don’t see any market over there,” she said, a trifle petulantly.
“It’s not right on the canal, it’s a few blocks in.” In truth, Sterren was not at all sure how far it was; he was not overly familiar with this part of the city and had never before needed to get from Spicetown to Shiphaven Market. “Are you still sure we should start looking immediately, and not find ourselves a good meal or a place to sleep?”
“We can sleep on the ship,” Lady Kalira replied, irritated, “and eat there, too, if we have to. Now, where’s this market?”
“How do we get across?” Alder asked. “Is there a bridge?”
Sterren had to think for a minute. “Well, there is on the Upper Canal, which turns off this one, or maybe it’s on the New Canal right before the Upper Canal turns off. I’m not sure.”
“Boats,” Kendrik pointed out. “There must be boats going across.”
“Of course there are,” Sterren said, although he hadn’t known there were until he saw what Kendrik had
