"No, things don't change, do they?" He set his tankard down and shrugged out of his coat then turned around, settling his strilling back against his shoulder. "All right, Rana, you want a song?" He rubbed his bow against the strings of the strilling. "Here's one I learned in Suzail, all the way west in Cormyr-"
"No fussy western songs!" Rana pounded her fist on the table. "Play us a proper Altumbel tune! Something we can sing along with!" More shouts joined hers. lycho smiled.
"Fine with me, Rana. If you sing, people will throw me coin to drown you out!" Laughter washed around the room and Tycho sang out. "Old Raren had a daughter fair, a pretty maid with golden hair, and her heart was full of good until she met-"
"— the king of piiiirrates!" bawled the crowd. Tycho laughed and began to play.
Partially obscured by a veil of cloud and silvery streams of snow blowing down from on high, the moon cast pale light across the shacks, storehouses, and tenements of the Spandeliyon waterfront. The silhouettes of taller houses and a solid fortress stood a short ways inland, away from the stinking docks, but the town was quite obviously an unplanned jumble. Its buildings were like driftwood cast up on shore by the near-constant sea wind, ready to be scoured away by the next storm.
How Spandeliyon managed to survive storms was, in fact, almost puzzling-from farther out on the Sea of Fallen Stars, the whole of the peninsula of Altumbel presented a profile not that dissimilar to a barely submerged reef.
Kuang Li Chien drew the heavy quilted wool of his waitao coat more tightly around himself and watched the docks of the town draw closer. The small crew of the fat little ship on which he had taken passage scrambled around him, making the ship ready for docking. Up near the bow, the captain was shouting at the shore. After a moment, a door opened in one of the shacks on the dockside. A stout figure emerged in a flood of warm light and stumped up to the edge of the dock to squint into the dark and shout back. Li narrowed his eyes and listened, picking out the foreign words.
"Steth? Steth, is that you, you old-" The trade language of the west was simple enough, but some of it still gave Li difficulty. He couldn't quite understand the phrase that the dockmaster used, but he guessed that it was not very flattering. "What are you doing? Daylight not good enough for you or have you gone back to your old habits?"
The ship's captain replied with a rapid string of curses, most of which Li also missed. He understood the captain's final words well enough, though. "-passenger who wouldn't let me rest until we docked!"
"A passenger for Spandeliyon? " asked the dockmaster. "At this time of year?" Captain Steth's response was another incomprehensible rattle of blasphemy that sent the dockmaster running into his shack. He emerged with a torch, shouted back at the captain, and began lighting lanterns at the dockside. The ship turned, slowing to a glide in the icy black water. Li swayed with the heavy bump as it nudged against the dock. A rope was thrown down to the dockmaster, who looped it around a mooring post, and the ship swayed out then shifted back, restrained. More ropes were thrown down and made fast, and slowly the ship settled into a gentle rise and fall beside the dock. A port in the ship's rail was swung open and a gangplank run out. Li picked up his pack and made his way over to the plank and down onto the dock. None of the crew got in his way.
Steth was already down and talking to the dockmaster. Both men looked up as Li stepped into the lantern light. The dockmaster's eyes went wide then narrow, and he shot a glance at the captain. "You didn't say he was an elf! Bringing an elf-blood to Spandeliyon? You are mad!"
Li's jaw tightened. His smooth skin, fine features, and tapered eyes had earned him this reaction elsewhere in the west, though not with this hostility. The captain saved him from having to explain himself-he dealt the dockmaster a sharp blow to the back of his head. "He's not an elf!" he hissed. "Haven't you ever seen a Shou before, Cul?"
The dockmaster managed to look startled once more. "From Thesk? Like one of those eastern Tuigan horde riders?"
Li drew a sharp breath, stood straight and returned the dockmaster's gaze. "I am not a barbarian," he said, forming the thick syllables carefully. "I come from the Great Empire of Shou Lung." More eastern, he added silently, than your uncivilized mind could possibly comprehend and far greater than you could believe. "I require directions. I need to find a wine shop."
"What?" Cul glanced at Steth once more, but this time the captain shrugged and shook his head. The dockmaster looked back to Li and licked his lips. "No wine shops here," he said slowly and with great volume as if that would make him easier to understand. "No wine shops. There is a wine merchant in-"
The dockmaster used a word Li didn't recognize, but pointed in the direction of the tall houses and fortress Li had seen from the ship. The wealthier part of Spandeli-yon. A wine merchant for the rich people, Li guessed. He frowned.
"No," he said. He spoke clearly, but kept his voice at a normal pitch. Let this old goat sound like a backward fool if he insists, he told himself, but I will not! "Not a wine shop." He searched his memory for the proper word. "A taven."
"A taven? " The dock master blinked. "Oh, a taverril The man tried to hide an unpleasant smile and failed miserably. Li frowned again. He swept the wide sleeve of his waitao aside and undipped the scabbard that hung at his belt. He held it loosely, casually, but making certain that Cul could see both it and the protruding hilt of the heavy, curved dao within. If the man's empty eyes had gone wide before, they practically bulged out of his head now. His hand twitched for a knife sheathed at his belt, but Steth caught his arm.
"Yes," said Li calmly. "A tavern."
The captain answered for the dockmaster. "You could have asked me," he growled. Li just gave him a blunt glance. Steth grunted. "Fine." He nodded to his left. "Go that way and you'll find the Eel." He nodded right. "That way is the Wench's Ease."
There was an unspoken warning in his voice: both taverns were dangerous places. Li wouldn't have expected any less. "Which one is most close?" he asked. Steth shrugged.
"Both about the same."
A cautious man lets his weapon precede him, Li thought. He gestured with his sword hand-to the right. "This one, this 'wencheese'-how will I find it?"
"Wench's Ease," the captain corrected him. "Walk until you find a tree. It's the only one in dockside. There's a sign."
"I don't read your language."
Cul found his voice. "Don't need to. There's a picture of pretty wench on the sign," he said in a greasy tone. "You'll see that."
"If I don't," Li told him, "I will come back and you can guide me yourself." He turned right and began to walk.
Behind him, he heard the dockmaster mutter, "Arrogant bastard, isn't he? "
"Cul, you don't know the sweet chum half of it," answered the captain.
Li didn't look back, but just stared into the shadows ahead and let their voices fade behind him. His scabbard he kept out and ready. The cramped streets seemed empty, but that could change all too quickly. Spandeliyon was so far proving itself to be nothing more than he had expected-nothing more than he had been warned to expect. He clenched his teeth. The surface of the street under his boots was barely frozen mud, treacherous in the thin moonlight. He should, he supposed, be grateful for the cold. It killed whatever stench might have oozed out of the mud in warmer weather and kept the people of the town indoors by their smoking fires.
In that, at least, he actually found himself envying them. A fire would be a blessing. As, he thought, would a torch. He should have demanded one of the sniveling dockmaster. But then again, he should also have asked more about the picture on the sign he sought. "Wench," he murmured to himself, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the word.