“Don’t know as I’d want to, then,” Kharl replied.
“That is often the way. For it, the world is a better place. Our hopes go with you.”
As Kharl walked back down the wide and straight stone street, through a city far cleaner and better-smelling than Brysta, he pondered the magister’s words, especially those about people not wanting to accept who they were. Hadn’t he always accepted he would be a cooper? The magister had told him bluntly that he was more than that-but had not said what he was, only that Kharl had to discover it, and that it would be hard. Hard? Kharl laughed to himself. He’d already discovered that.
Kharl looked up, sensing something. On the other side of the street were two figures in black, one man and one woman. Both wore silver insignia on their collars, one that looked like a cog crossed with a staff. Like the magister, they held the unseen blackness, if not so deeply or warmly.
The man glanced sharply at Kharl, but the woman leaned toward him and whispered something. Then she looked to Kharl and smiled, saying, “Order always be with you.”
What could he say back? After a moment, he replied with the only thing that came to mind, “And with you.”
The two both nodded and continued onward, past Kharl and up the hill.
Kharl wondered why the woman had gone out of her way to offer the strange greeting, and what she had said to her companion.
Rather than going straight back to the Seastag, Kharl looked for somewhere to eat. He still had silvers left, and a handful of coppers, and after the ship’s food, he wanted a good meal, perhaps the first one in a season.
The first inn-the Copper Kettle-he approached, while looking neat enough, and smelling clean enough, did not appeal to him, for reasons he could not have explained. He walked westward along a slightly narrower street, although one still broad by the standards of Brysta, and stopped abruptly at a smaller place, more like a tavern really. He went inside. The public room was not large, holding fewer than ten tables, with only two occupied, but that wasn’t exactly unexpected in late afternoon.
A tall woman, broad, but not fat, wearing a dark green shirt and trousers with a spotless white apron, smiled at him. “Any table that’s free.”
Kharl moved toward a table in a corner, one that was bright from the late-afternoon light slanting through the unshuttered windows, but not painfully so. He leaned the staff into the corner, trying to keep it out of the way, and settled into the armless chair that allowed him to survey the room. In one way, there was nothing at all remarkable-nine round tables and chairs, wooden floors, white-plastered walls, bronze lamps in brackets on the walls. In another, it was all astounding. The tables were well crafted of red oak, covered in a hard finish, and they were clean. The same was true of the chairs. The floors were of wide golden oak planks, also finished with a smooth sort of varnish, Kharl judged, and without a speck of dirt or dust on them. The windows had glass, and the glass had been kept spotless. He’d never seen what might have been called a common eatery so clean.
“Do you know what you want?” asked the white-haired woman who had greeted him. Her eyes flickered to the staff, then back to Kharl.
“I don’t even know what you have,” he admitted.
“Not everything we usually do. Let’s see. White fish or red fish, battered and fried. Always have a fish chowder. Also, we’ve got a quarter fowl, and chops. Chops might be a bit tough. All comes with mashed potatoes and fried pearapples, except the chowder, of course. Just bread. Fish is two coppers, fowl and chops three. Ale or wine is two, redberry one.”
“What’s the best?”
“Today…the white fish.”
“I’ll try it, with an ale.” Kharl fumbled in his belt wallet.
“Pay when I bring the ale.” She smiled and slipped away.
Kharl just watched her go, admiring her grace, even though he knew she was years older than he was.
She returned with the ale almost immediately, and Kharl placed the silver on the table. “Need some change.”
“Where are you headed?” she asked as she deftly swept up the silver, then looked strangely at the Brystan coin, then at Kharl, before shrugging. “Silver’s silver.”
“It is,” Kharl agreed. “Some things don’t change. Lydiar, I think.”
“Better there than Hamor.” She smiled politely. “Do you know when you leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You’ll have good weather.” With another smile she was gone.
Kharl sipped the ale, far better than any he could recall. Then, that might have been because it had been so long since he’d had good ale. As he took a second swallow, he thought over the servingwoman’s questions. There was some sort of honest misunderstanding, he knew, and it centered on the staff. Did she think he was a blackstaffer, being sent out?
Jenevra had been young, but the woman hadn’t seemed surprised at all. Did that mean that the Brethren or whoever ruled Recluce could send people out as blackstaffers at any age? He frowned. He should have asked more questions of Trelyn, but he just hadn’t thought of them. He’d always been like that, not fully understanding things until much later, if then. That didn’t seem to have changed. He took another sip of the ale, enjoying it.
When the server returned with his meal, set on a new-looking crockery platter, accompanied by a small basket of bread as well, she slipped six coppers onto the table.
“Thank you.” Kharl left two coppers on the table. He hadn’t even thought about coinage. He’d just discovered that silvers converted one for one, but coppers? Who knew? He supposed Tarkyn or the captain did, but he thought he ought to find out, before he ordered anything in Lydiar or anyplace else. He wasn’t so sure the Lydians would be as accommodating as people in Recluce.
As the woman had promised, the fish was good-light and flaky under the crisp golden batter, and the potatoes were rich and filling, the pearapples a pleasing combination of tart and sweet. He left nothing-except the coppers.
When he stood to leave, the server smiled from across the room. “Best of fortune.”
“Thank you.”
Kharl didn’t want to return to the ship, not immediately. So he kept walking. In time, he came to a square, except it wasn’t a square, but a park, with trimmed hedges, and yellow and orange flowers, and stone walks amid the green grass, grass that was trimmed short. The trees were all evergreens, some of types Kharl had never seen. He stood on the street side of the black stone wall and watched as two boys and a girl played some sort of tag, with two adults looking on from a nearby stone bench.
After a time, he walked farther downhill toward the piers on the western side of the harbor. He was curious, because even with the sun about to set, and the light falling across the westernmost set of piers, a sort of shadow lay across them. Kharl could not make out any of the vessels, although he could see the ships at the other piers clearly, and there were no clouds in the sky.
When he neared the piers, he discovered several things. First, the street ended at a black stone wall, with a guard post in front of the open iron gate manned by two soldiers or marines in black uniforms. Second, the guards had weapons in racks that had to be rifles. He looked again. No, they weren’t rifles, exactly, and their barrels were far too large. Third, he could see through the gate the late-day sunlight falling on the piers, yet there was a darkness that blocked any view of the ships.
Kharl knew that there was at least one vessel there; he could almost sense its solidity, but no masts extended above the ten-cubit-high wall. He immediately turned east, because the cross street in front of the piers also ended just to the west, with another black stone wall. He could sense the guards watching him, and he did not look back until the black wall ended-or rather made a right-angle turn harborward. He walked on another fifty cubits before turning.