When they had gone, he dressed hurriedly and went on his way. Nathan had told him that people wearing the orbansa were supposed to be safe, so long as they stayed out of Separated villages or enclaves in the cities. But Nathan had also said that there were those who will kill anything for no reason at all. Jaer hurried away, but the feeling of menace did not leave him All day long it grew stranger, more ominous, and finally at evening the distant rumbling came again, behind him on the road. He flung himself down behind a clump of thick-leaved herbage.
The noise grew, louder and louder, a shattering drumming as six great beasts pounded by, behind them a black iron box on wheels which rumbled and resounded. The horses were black, the driver robed in black, and overall the dust swirled in a dry, choking cloud. The sound dwindled away, slowly, and Jaer started to get up to continue his journey.
He could not move. He lay there wondering almost idly why his arms and legs would not obey him. Then he realized that his face was wet with tears and that his body was trembling. The wagon had frightened him, strangely, all at once out of nothing, and the effect would not go away at once. Eventually he stopped shaking and weeping, stood up experimentally to stumble his way around yet another village.
By evening he could see the far, hazy line of the ocean down the long slope of land, still too far to reach before dark. There was another cold supper, another bed without fire, but that night there were no hooves nor thundering sounds, no sounds at all except for the birds which called to one another from shadowed groves throughout the night. By noon of the next day he had come to the port city of Candor.
It was his first city and he did not much like it.
It smelled, It was dirty. There was nothing to see. There were only walls, everywhere. He knew he had entered the city when he found himself walking between two high featureless walls. At intervals heavy doors were set into gateways, and behind these doors robed figures peeped out at those who passed by. Occasionally a traveller, robed as Jaer was in an anonymous flow of fabric, would approach a gate, mutter to the gatekeeper and enter. More often the robed figures only scuttled by, a scant procession of ambulatory dust mops, voiceless and without identity.
Some of the wall§ were smooth, some carved, some intricately patterned with protruding brick or stucco. Some loomed into the air to end abruptly in an overhanging cornice, others sloped up to a filigree of lattice behind which dim figures could be seen moving. There were no signs or names on the walls. Some of the walkways were narrow, others wide. Jaer continued to turn his way down any slope that offered, believing that the market and inns would lie near the waterfront. In this he was correct.
The walks began to widen, to spread into plazas edged with booths and stalls. Here the robed figures were more numerous and signs appeared high on the walls over cavernous doors. There was a murmur of commerce, a creak of wheels, muted voices of drovers and the clatter of hooves on the stones. There was a faint smell of cookery, and a burst of raucous music came from a doorway which opened halfway down a twisting street toward the wharves.
Jaer was hungry for hot food, longing for a bed without rocks in it. Any inn with an orbansa hung from the door would take travellers, and he began to search for this sign. Some entries were filthy with excrement and the sour smell of vomit, some were ominously silent and forbidding. At last he found one more acceptable under the sign of the Stranger, in a narrow alley near the waterfront. There were many robes in the streets nearby, which boded well. Nathan had said that many robes made scarce pogroms, since no one could tell who was fighting whom. As he came into the inn he saw that half the people there had thrown back their hoods and sat eating and drinking with bare faces. There was a smell of food pouring through the clean-swept entry, and Jaer’s mouth watered so that he sucked in sharply and looked for a seat where he might sit against the wall and watch what went on in the room.
There was smoke from the fire, men who were variously coloured and aged, some with beards, some without, even a few females. Jaer did not feel conspicuous. He ordered noodles and sausage, which he saw others earing, in the same language he heard others speaking. Then, for a time, he forgot everything but his stomach. At last he sat back, hunger fading, to listen to the voices around him as he drank the last of the thin beer. Two sailors at a nearby table argued loudly, one scratching his lean ribs through a rough canvas shirt.
‘Annee said twas no mor’ an a twister’s tale, no truthin-nit….’
‘Ai, believe that as will.’
‘Believe it! Creetur came outta deep water….’
‘Nai. Uth horns an teeth inna tail, doubt not….’
‘Weel. Cudda done.’
Their robes were thrown carelessly over the bench. Nathan had told him that of all wayfarers, seamen and caravansers were most careless about the orbansin but were even so not often bothered by the Keepers of the Seals. Jaer could make little of their talk, and he jumped, startled, as a quiet voice said from behind
