The Wizards’ Guild might not like that. The merchants and shipwrights and ship chandlers might have reservations about it, too. And homeowners might be a bit wary about large heavy objects overhead, for that matter. He vaguely recalled hearing something about how Varrin’s Greater Propulsion, which in bygone days had lifted entire castles and ships and kept them aloft indefinitely, was considered too dangerous to be used by anyone without special Guild approval exactly because sometimes the things did fall, with very unfortunate effects on whatever happened to be underneath.
So any plans for marketing sky-craft would require caution-but still, it shouldn’t be impossible to sell a few.
Behind him he heard Alorria cooing, and then a surprisingly loud belch from Alris. He resisted the temptation to look back, and instead stared ahead over Tobas’s shoulder, looking for Ethshar of the Sands.
There, at last, he could see the conical turret atop the Great Lighthouse, and then the crenellations around the lamp itself, peeping above the horizon, still tiny in the distance. A little to the left was an almost imperceptible flicker of red that was the banner atop Grandgate. Gresh smiled.
The remainder of the journey went much more quickly. Having their eventual goal in sight helped immensely, even when Tobas insisted on taking a small detour to the north instead of flying over the central portion of the city. He refused to explain why beyond saying, “It’s not safe to fly over the palace anymore.”
Gresh didn’t think a direct path would have brought them within half a mile of the palace dome in any case, but it didn’t really matter. He watched with pleasure as they skimmed along twenty feet above the top of the city wall, looping aside to miss the guard tower at Northgate, then swinging out over the Wall Street Field and the rooftops of Northangle, before finally descending onto a street he did not recognize, a few blocks from Grandgate’s north tower.
The carpet came to a stop a yard in the air, just as it had in front of Gresh’s own shop in Ethshar of the Rocks, and Tobas half-jumped, half-tumbled off the front, then turned and stood, looking uncertainly at Gresh.
Gresh realized quickly that the young wizard was in the habit of helping his wives down from the carpet, but was unsure whether Gresh would welcome assistance. Gresh solved his problem by rising to his feet and offering Alorria a hand, then ushering her to her husband’s waiting arms. He held the baby long enough for Alorria to reach the ground, then passed her back to her mother.
Karanissa followed, and before Tobas could release his hold on her, Gresh leapt to the street unaided-where he stumbled and almost fell. His long ride had stiffened him more than he had realized.
He caught himself, though, and looked around with interest.
The houses and shops in this city were much as he remembered them from his three previous visits-unlike the taller and often narrow homes of Ethshar of the Rocks, nearly all the buildings here stood just two stories in height, or at most three, often with a steeply sloping tile roof coming down almost to the ground-floor ceilings. The limited height, despite the shortage of land within the city walls, was due to the inability of the sandy soil to support tall buildings without serious engineering; the steep roofs were to shed the heavy spring rains, as there was little snow this far south.
Wood and plaster were common here, and stone was scarce-neither wood nor stone was easy to obtain locally, given the terrain, but wood was cheaper to ship in.
To the east the immense towers of Grandgate loomed high above the rooftops, shining in the afternoon sun. The street itself was packed sand, lighter in color than the dark and stony streets of his home city, and lined with houses built wall-to-wall; perhaps one in three had a shop window and signboard to indicate that it held a business as well as a home. Gresh spotted a baker, a vintner, a tinker-the typical things one would see in any residential neighborhood.
They had stopped in front of perhaps the smallest house on the entire street, a tiny, half-timbered structure with no sign or shop-window.
“I rather expected you to live on Wizard Street,” Gresh remarked. “It’s nearby, isn’t it?”
“A block and a half west,” Tobas said. “But I couldn’t really afford it. There weren’t any vacant properties, so I would have had to buy out an existing business, and those aren’t cheap. Besides, I don’t really want to run a shop-I was never trained for it.”
“He’s a court wizard, not a shopkeeper!” Alorria said, as she collected various baby supplies from the carpet.
“Except we don’t live in Dwomor anymore,” Karanissa said. “The Guild ruined the Transporting Tapestry that came out near there. Which makes it difficult to be their court wizard.”
“Well, if you didn’t insist on keeping close to the castle…” Alorria began.
“It’s my home!”
“And Dwomor is mine!”
“And neither of them…oh, never mind,” Tobas said. “Be quiet, both of you, and let’s get the carpet and luggage inside.” He drew his belt-knife and cut one of the cords holding the baggage and handed Karanissa a valise.
“You need to open the door,” Alorria said, as she waited with the baby on her hip.
Gresh got his own bag and one other, then followed and waited as Tobas peeled a black wax seal off the door-latch-a seal very much like the one he used on his own vault back in Ethshar of the Rocks. That answered any questions Gresh might have had about how Tobas kept his home secure in his absence; the rune on the wax would explode and cripple or kill anyone else who tried to open the door. Presumably there were similar seals, or other magical protections, on the other doors and windows.
The door swung open, and Tobas held it back while both his wives entered the house; Gresh was close on their heels, and a moment later Tobas followed, with two more bags. He, Gresh, and Karanissa proceeded to fetch the rest of the luggage in, while Alorria tended to the baby’s needs and got her dressed in a fresh gown, until finally Tobas was able to roll up the carpet and bring that, too, inside, closing the door behind him.
The party and their belongings were now clustered into a small, sparsely furnished parlor; a dusty hearth filled one end of the room, while a few chairs and a small table were scattered about elsewhere. The plank floor was bare; Gresh suspected that the flying carpet currently tucked under Tobas’s arm usually lay on it. Two doors led to back rooms, and a steep staircase led to the upper story-Gresh could see the slanting ceilings that reduced that second floor to a fraction of the size of the already-tiny ground floor.
The place was considerably smaller than his own home and business; it did not look like the house of a wealthy wizard, to say the least. Even Akka and her useless husband had a more luxurious home, though it was in worse repair, and Gresh suspected they had gone far into debt to pay for it.
“Welcome to my home,” Tobas said. “You can sleep here tonight, if you like, or take a room at an inn on Grand Street, whichever you prefer. I think Karanissa can provide us with some supper, or there are the inns for that, too, as you please.”
Gresh looked around at the utter lack of a couch or any likely place a guest room might be hidden away and concluded that staying here would probably mean sharing a bedroom with three adults and a baby. The adults weren’t a real problem unless one of them snored, but the baby…
“You’ll have the place to yourself, if you stay here,” Karanissa said, as if reading his thoughts. As a witch, she very well might be reading them. “We’ll be sleeping elsewhere.”