Necquer had spotted him after a few minutes and jostled his way over.
"Rhenford! It was good of you to come!" The merchant was almost as tall as Liam, but far broader. Almost forty years old, in many ways he was a typical Freeporter, dark of hair and skin, easygoing and unpretentious. He clasped Liam's hand and shoulder, smiling broadly. Over his shoulder, he called out: "Poppae! Poppae! Come over here! There's someone you should meet!"
An expensively dressed young woman separated herself from an obviously painful conversation with a weaving girl and threaded her way through the press. She was beautiful in a quiet way, finely formed, porcelain features framed with a mass of curling, glossy black hair. She was young, barely into her twenties, and she looked almost childlike compared to her husband. Necquer watched her make her way towards them, and it struck Liam as he bowed over her hand that the merchant was carefully scrutinizing their introduction.
"Poppae, this is Liam Rhenford, the gentleman who drew the maps that have made us rich! Rhenford, my wife Poppae."
"Sir Liam," Poppae murmured, a slight smile playing over her lips.
"I'm afraid I'm not a knight, Lady Necquer," Liam corrected politely. He had grown used to the southern habit of indiscriminately applying titles of respect. In the north, where he was raised, the degrees of rank: were carefully delineated and scrupulously denoted with countless specific names, each signifying a slight difference in class. Southerners, on the other hand, tended to use whatever title came to mind, as long as it broadly approximated the subject's position.
Necquer suddenly breathed hard, as though disappointed in the conversation, and turned away abruptly. Liam watched him go, slightly surprised. Lady Necquer showed no interest in leaving. In fact, she gazed at him curiously.
"I suppose I owe you my husband's long absences, Sir Liam?"
He let the honorific pass this time. She spoke the southern dialect, but not as thickly as most he had met in Southwark, and her eyes were disturbingly enormous, sad and blue.
"I am afraid you are correct, madam. I did draw some maps for your husband, but had I known they would cause you pain through his absence, I'd never have done it." He had, in fact, given her husband a secret few others knew about. Alyecir and the Freeports, the main trading destinations of ships from Taralon, lay to the west. But to the east and south a number of cities existed on coasts undreamed of by Southwark's merchants, unvisited because of a Taralonian superstition about sailing the Cauliff Ocean. Liam had reached them by traveling overland, but he knew they could be reached from the sea. Late in the summer, it had occurred to him to sell the maps he had made, and he had chosen Necquer primarily because he was a Freeporter, and might not share Taralonian superstitions.
As hoped, Necquer had no objections to trying the Cauliff, and on Liam's assurance that the journey would be short, had departed as soon as he could ready four ships, even though the fall storms were approaching. That had been a little over six weeks before, and already he was back, and if the size of his feast was any indication, the trip had been very successful.
Lady Necquer looked at him with new respect, and edged a little closer, giving in to pressure from the ever-growing crowd.
Liam let his eyes rove over the crowd, nervously refusing to meet her eyes. It had been a long time since he had had to deal with anyone of even Lady Necquer's station, and the social pitfalls their conversation presented loomed large in his mind. On the other hand, he had noticed the discomfort with which she spoke to Necquer's more common employees. He supposed that, clean-shaven and well dressed as he was, he represented a far more interesting companion than longshoremen and tars straight off a three-month voyage. And bowing over her hand had probably not hurt his image.
"You speak passing fair, Sir Liam, and with a Midlands tongue, 'less I'm mistaken."
"You are not, madam. I was born in the Midlands." He could not help feeling that he sounded stiff and stilted to her, but it had been a long while since his breeding had been required of him.
"My husband's tongue was schooled Midlands," she said with a smile, "though a very Freeporter he is. He learned in Harcourt and the other western ports. But tell, how does a Midlands tongue come to speak so far south? And to draw maps of lands even further south?"
Liam dropped his gaze to his boots, taking in the tooled leather, uncomfortable speaking about himself. "When I was a youth, certain ... family problems forced my departure from home. I have traveled widely since," he finished lamely.
"No first son's legacy for you, then?" she said sympathetically. "You were a second son?"
"Yes," he lied. It was far easier to claim the anonymity of a lesser position than to explain to the curious woman that he was an only child, and that his birthright had been stripped from him in war. And far less painful.
"And so you traveled. But not as a sailor?" she asked, and he detected a note of hope in her soft voice.
"No, madam. Sometimes as a surgeon, or navigator, and twice as captain. Most often merely as a passenger. The charts I drew your husband were taken from my notes."
"Navigator, captain, surgeon, e'en? You are a man of several parts, Sir Liam, though you are no knight." She laughed brightly. Liam caught on only after a moment, and then laughed with her.
"It would very much agree with me to hear further of your travels, Sir Liam."
"Even in a Midlands tongue?" he asked with mock humility, beginning to warm to Lady Necquer's sad eyes and gentle manner. She smiled at him.
Necquer suddenly loomed up behind his wife, smiling as though he had heard the joke.
"Eh, Poppae, we seem to be ready for the minstrels, don't you
