Stone returned, slipping past a noisy party of furred groundlings. He shoved a packet of greased paper at Moon. “Hold this.”
It was full of fried dumplings. Moon scented sugar dough and his stomach growled. Stone took another packet out from under his arm and poked at it tentatively. “What’s that one?” Moon asked, hoping it was meat.
“I don’t know, I asked for some of everything they had.” Stone tasted it and shrugged. “It’s bug paste.” As he tucked it away in his pack, he tilted his head toward the far side of the walkway. “Did you see that?”
Moon spotted the little turret. It extended out and up from the other structures, with a distinctive muzzle sticking out of the top. It was an emplacement for something like a Kishan fire weapon, part of the port’s defenses against the Fell.
They started off again, following another party of assorted groundlings, and shared the dumplings. A few were filled with more bug paste, the shell fragments and tiny wings scratchy in Moon’s throat, but the others had spicy sweet root centers or chopped fish.
Then Moon spotted a round peaked roof with a blue light atop it. A number of skylings of different sizes and shapes slept on the roof and the web structure above it. Stone had stopped to taste the air speculatively at the walkway to another food place. Moon nudged him. “There.”
They made their way to the little bridge that led to the portmaster’s house. It was a couple of levels tall, with open galleries allowing a view into the dimly lit interior. A few figures moved around inside and a dark blue groundling guarded the bridge, along with something wearing a lot of clothes and a shell over its head. Hoping it might be possible to skip meeting with a figure as official as a portmaster, Moon said, “We’re looking for a Kishan flying boat from Hia Iserae, with a Hian crew. We were told to ask here if one had been in dock.”
The blue groundling turned to consult the shellhead, who gestured for them to follow it and started across the bridge. Moon groaned under his breath and followed with Stone.
They stepped onto the lower gallery. The high ceilings let the cool breeze off the sea sweep through. The outer portion was occupied by smaller versions of the tall slim groundlings with the elongated curving heads. They all fled inside at Moon and Stone’s approach. The shellhead ignored the effect they were having on the house’s inhabitants and led them up a ramp to the second level.
A sling chair hung from the roof and sitting in it was a curved skull groundling, only this one was tall, probably a few heads taller than Moon when standing. Moon wasn’t sure if it was female or male or some other gender. The concealing robes, all in different shades of blue, didn’t reveal any hint. Moon was guessing this was the portmaster. Smaller versions of it were seated around on multi-colored cushions, apparently partaking of something that looked like smoke in glass bowls.
The shellhead addressed the tall groundling briefly in a deep voice, using a language Moon didn’t recognize. Then it turned and said in Kedaic, “Be seated, the portmaster will speak to you.”
Moon really didn’t want to sit down, he just wanted to ask their question, get an answer or not, and get out of here. His hesitation wasn’t obvious to anyone except Stone, who elbowed him hard in the ribs. They both sat down on the bare wood floor, and Moon pulled the pack off his shoulder in order to look like they had all the time in the Three Worlds.
The portmaster said, “What are you?” Its voice was light and high, and it spoke the Kedaic so fluidly and musically that it sounded like a different version of the language.
In some cultures, the question would have been offensive to the point of being a tacit invitation to violence, while in others, it might be the normal way to open a conversation with strangers. There was no way to tell which, so Moon just said, “We’re from the east, from the far end of the Abascene Peninsula.” This was true in one way, at least. It was where the Indigo Cloud court’s old colony had been, and where Moon had lived most of his life before Stone had found him.
The portmaster tilted its head in a way that Moon wanted to read as predatory. “But you look for Kishan craft?”
This close to the Imperial Kish borders, with ships from all along the coast passing through, the portmaster had to know they didn’t look much like the groundlings from the Jandera cities. But lots of different kinds of people, groundling and otherwise, lived in Kish. Again, it was hard to tell the portmaster’s attitude. “We were traveling with friends from Kish-Jandera. Hians traveling in a Kishan flying boat stole something from us, and we were told they came here.”
The others tittered and whispered to each other. On a Raksura, the portmaster’s expression would have been described as arch, except Moon would have slammed a Raksura across the room by now. It said, “Stole what?”
It clearly didn’t believe them, and Moon could understand why if not sympathize. He and Stone looked like people who traveled on foot and slept in the dirt, not like people who traveled on flying boats with cargo valuable enough to steal. But there was nothing else he could do but keep trying. He took a deep breath to weave a better lie, when Stone said, “People. They stole people.”
The room went silent. The sudden focused attention made Moon want to twitch. Stone continued, “From our friends, they stole a father and a grandfather. From us, a grandson and a granddaughter.”
Everyone looked at the portmaster. It held up one graceful hand. One of the little ones jumped up and Moon braced himself to move. But it went to a doorway into an interior room and returned almost immediately with what looked like a stack of thin plates of wood. As it carried the stack to the portmaster and held it up, Moon realized it was a record keeping system.
The portmaster leaned over the stack, turned the first plate over, and ran a finger across it. It said, “A ship listing its origin as Hia Iserae docked at stalk gal-alan, in the fourth position from the top, two days ago. They left the same night.” It made an open-handed gesture. “That is all we know here. If you go to that stalk and ask, there may be more information to be had.”
Stone was already standing and Moon shouldered his pack again and pushed to his feet. Stone said, “Which one is gal-alan?”
The one with the record stack handed it off to another helper and said, “I’ll show you.”
It walked with them down to the bridge back to the main walkway, and pointed. “Three stalks to the north, facing out from the sea.”
It darted back into the structure before Moon could say thank you. He followed Stone back to the walkway. “How did you know that would work?”
Stone glanced at him. “You mean telling the truth?”
Moon nodded. Stone just looked at him. “What?” Moon demanded.
Stone sighed and slung an arm around Moon’s shoulders. “Nothing.”
They made their way over the walkways toward the gal-alan stalk, and Moon tried to make plans. They should have enough metal trading bits to buy more food before they left. It would have been nice to buy lodging too, and sleep somewhere not covered with sand or mud for a few hours, but he didn’t know if they had the time to lose.
That was assuming they could find someone to confirm the direction the Hians had left in. If they couldn’t, they would have to wait for the others and see if Lithe had a new direction, or if a real horticultural had been found to trace the Hians.
They reached the stalk, having to shoulder their way through a loud, excited gathering of spindly skylings with what looked like flowers sprouting from their heads who were all apparently intoxicated. Moon gently moved a flower antennae out of his face and squeezed past onto the bridge that led over to the stalk. There were two flying boats docked in the upper portions, one made of the same mossy material as a Kishan boat, but much smaller, and the other resembling a spindly ball of spider web. Below them, docked as far from the others as possible, was an air bladder-style boat.