They ended their search in the bridge at the very top of the ship. It was round, with big windows giving a nearly panoramic view of the harbor. They had to wrap their lights up again to keep the glow from being seen from the docks, so they had to search the large area by starlight.
Not that there was much here to search. There was a brass-bound wheel for steering and other devices Moon didn’t recognize, and papers covered with unintelligible writing strewn carelessly around. Some of them had been stepped on and torn or stained with dirt.
In the center of the room was a narrow, waist-high pillar of polished wood, the top formed into a heavy glass hexagon. It reminded Moon of the mechanism that steered the Golden Islanders’ flying ships, but there was nothing inside it and there was no handle to steer with.
Stone hissed in frustration. “The damn seed isn’t here.”
“It’s the only thing that isn’t here.” Moon straightened up from peering into the bottom of the empty pillar. “They left food behind, and their books, their writings, clothing. If they left voluntarily, they meant to come back.”
“Or somebody came aboard and killed them.” Stone shook his head and paced to the window that looked out at the harbor and the misty city rising above it. “And took the seed away somewhere. Flower didn’t say the seed was on the ship, just that the ship would lead us to it.”
Moon scratched the back of his neck, thinking it over. “But somebody still pays to keep this ship here.”
Stone turned back, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“Trading ports don’t let ships dock for free.” He had heard enough captains and sailors complain about this in the trading cities along the Crescent Coast to know it was a fairly universal practice. “Somebody has to own the pier, or be paying for the ship to stay here. And what about when the monster moves? The bigger ships can’t just be dragged along, they’d get damaged. Somebody has to sail this one. Or tow it.”
Stone turned to look out toward the city again. “So somebody must come down here to keep an eye on it.”
They wanted something fairly dramatic, something that would catch attention quickly. Setting the ship on fire was the first thing that occurred to them, but that might rouse the whole harbor. So Stone climbed down the hull again, slipped underwater and shifted, and used his claws to snap the heavy cable at the ship’s bow.
Moon swam back to the docks, climbed a piling, and slunk through the dark to crouch among stacks of casks and boxes waiting to be loaded. Once his scales dried, he shifted to groundling and settled in to wait.
The ship was still attached to the pier by a few lighter lines and a cable in the stern, but without the bow cable it soon swung out from the pier and drifted sideways. It was a potential hazard to the big sailing vessel docked at the next pier, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
After some time, the groundling who guarded the deck of the sailing ship passed by that side, stopped, and stared for a moment, then hurried away. Soon he was back with more groundlings. Two of them went down the gangplank to their pier and crossed over to the buildings just above the dock.
More groundlings came out to look, then went down the pier. They brought out a small boat and readied lighter cables to fasten the ship back to the pier again. Moon cursed wearily. It looked like the dockworkers were going to deal with the situation without summoning the ship’s owner.
The lights and noise woke the crews sleeping on the ships nearby, and they started to come down onto the dock to watch. They were mostly of the dark and golden groundling races that Moon had seen in the top of the tower, though they were all dressed like sailors, in pants, shirts, and vests of rough cloth and leather. There were no blue-pearl people, and none of the sea-people with the grayish scales and head crests. Moon got up, wove his way through the forest of crates, and slipped into the crowd.
One thing Moon had wanted to find out, while it was still dark out and they were in a spot relatively easy to escape, was what the reaction would be to his and Stone’s groundling forms. It looked like the people here were used to seeing a variety of groundling races, but you could never be too certain. He had been in situations where a settlement had seemed to welcome a large number of diverse races, only to find out that his groundling form looked just enough like their hereditary enemies.
But while some of these people glanced at him, no one seemed to find his appearance shocking. Several were having an annoyed conversation in Kedaic, mostly about the stupidity of whoever had tied up the ship.
Moon took a chance and said in the same language, “Who does it belong to?”
Without looking around, an older woman with weathered golden skin said, “It’s been there a long time.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Most of the turn, I think.”
One of the dark-skinned men said, “At least. It belongs to Magnate Ardan.”
Someone off to the side said in a thicker accent, “Does it? I thought it was farcoast traders brought it here.”
Another woman shrugged. “Maybe they sold it to him. His emblem is on the pier.”
“Ah, you’re probably right, then.”
There was a pause, as everyone was distracted by two of the small boats almost blundering into each other.
“Magnate Ardan?” Moon repeated, hoping that was enough to get them started again. He didn’t want to say too much or show particular interest. They didn’t need any rumors spreading about the funny-looking stranger asking questions about Magnate Ardan’s ship. “I didn’t know he was a trader,” someone said.
“I don’t know that he is.” The gold woman turned to point. “He has that tower, right up there. The one with the gold turret.”
Chapter Nine
Once the metal ship had been secured again, the excitement died down and everyone wandered back to their ships or the dock buildings. Moon lingered, just in case the ship’s owner belatedly appeared, but finally gave in.
He took the first stair upward, where it wound up among platforms braced atop the knobs and swellings in the monster’s side. As the stairs curved inward, he saw someone standing on the platform above, under the vapor-light, waiting for him. It was Stone, radiating impatience.
“Well?” Stone asked, as Moon reached the platform.
“It didn’t work like we thought.”
“I noticed.”
Moon ignored that in the interest of not spending the rest of the night fighting. “I heard the other crews talking. They think the ship belongs to somebody called Magnate Ardan. He lives up there.” He jerked his head up toward the tower, the gold top barely visible from this angle.
Stone turned to look. Then he hissed out a breath and started up the stairs. “That’s going to be a problem.”
Following him, Moon agreed. They had a whole tower to search now, and it would probably be occupied by a large number of groundlings.
And they didn’t know for certain that the seed was there, just that this Ardan now owned the ship, so he must know what had happened to the crew.
The steps twisted up through a heavily shadowed, unlit walkway. Stone kept walking, but Moon shifted and scaled the nearest wall, then climbed up to the rust-streaked metal roof of the house that overhung the walkway.
He had a better view from here. Above the crowded buildings overlooking the dock, the walkways turned to narrow caverns, winding their way past the feet of other towers, far smaller than those toward the center of the city. It was well past the middle of the night, and many of the lights had gone out. He didn’t see much movement on the walkways and bridges in this area, either.