With that thought, he fell asleep.
In the morning, when he came up on deck after cleaning the breakfast dishes, he almost changed his mind.
Ethshar of the Spices was, if anything, even bigger than Ethshar of the Sands. The coastline here was fairly clear-cut and rocky, and the land comfortably hilly and broken, rather than an eerie dead-flat expanse of sand jutting out into a maze of sandbars, as the land around Ethshar of the Sands had been, but once again the city covered at least a league of the shore. And although no Great Lighthouse towered above everything else, no palace dome soared to incredible heights, and no towers guarded the harbor, the city was, in general, built taller than Ethshar of the Sands. There, save for the great civic structures, nothing had been higher than three stories, at most; here, four and even five stories were commonplace. Instead of a single immense lighthouse, there were two smaller ones; instead of harbor towers, Tobas glimpsed immense guard towers in the city wall; instead of a palace dome, he saw warehouses, tenements, and shops jammed together in truly unbelievable numbers. The waterfront in Ethshar of the Sands had been awesome, but almost two-dimensional; the mere length of it had been daunting. Here the length was just as great, and the slope of the land allowed him to see depth as well; the city reached well inland, covering hills and ridges as well as the waterfront.
And the smell that reached his nose was even less familiar than what he had encountered at Ethshar of the Sands; smoke and crowded streets mingled here with spices and a strange mustiness, as if the entire city were perfumed to hide underlying mildew.
Still, he told himself, he had to get off the ship eventually. And the captain had said the next journey would probably be back around the peninsula and westward again; this was, therefore, probably as far east as he could get on this vessel. If he stayed aboard, he would merely be retracing his steps and he had no desire to do that.
The Small Kingdoms, the sailors had told him, were just the other side of the Gulf, and beyond them lay the eastern and southern edges of the World; surely he would find no better spot to make his fortune out there than he would here in this city of wonders, on its reassuringly familiar, hilly terrain. A city of this size would certainly be fraught with wizards, and he needed only to find one who would part with a few spells. Once he knew a reasonable amount of magic, he was sure he could establish himself in business and make himself a new home, perhaps not in Ethshar of the Spices, but somewhere.
With that in mind, once the ship was securely tied up at Long Wharf, which the sailors told him was in the Shiphaven district of the city, for whatever that might signify, he wrote a quick note to the captain explaining that he had stolen his boat and describing as best he could its proper owners, so that the captain might, if the whim took him, return it. That done, he gathered up his belongings, took a deep breath, and walked down the gangplank, leaving Istram’s Golden Gull behind forever.
CHAPTER 6
Long Wharf, Tobas discovered, was indeed very long; it wound its way in from the deep waters of the Gulf, across the shallows and rocks around the western lighthouse, and split into two diverging causeways just short of the high-water mark. He chose the more traveled route and turned left, toward the southeast.
The smell of the sea and the constant splashing of wavelets against the stone piers were quickly buried beneath the thick odor and steady clatter of the city. Ethshar’s smell was compounded of fish cooking over charcoal in a thousand kitchens, the wood of a thousand homes slowly decaying in the harbor’s damp air, and a myriad of other human activities, leavened with spices and perfumes that gave it a strange and exotic tang, and blessedly free of the outhouse aroma that clung to most human settlements; the city boasted an efficient sewer system.
The causeway Tobas followed curved to the east and quickly became a street along the water’s edge, lined with shops and taverns and brothels on the right and open to the sea on the left, with an occasional dock or wharf jutting out into the water; he wandered along aimlessly at first, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells.
The brothels caught his eye immediately; where the shops and taverns relied on signboards and window displays to attract customers, the handful of brothels, although they also had signboards, were distinguished by balconies above the doors, where comely young women, and sometimes young men as well, leaned over railings, occasionally calling suggestions to potential customers. They wore attire not quite like anything Tobas had seen before, tunics cut low across the breast, skirts that clung to the hip enticingly, hems cut at a slant to display one ankle, all of expensive-looking fabrics, soft and shiny, or filmy, or glittering with golden threads.
Telven had no brothels. Although Tobas had heard that Shan on the Sea had half a dozen, he had never come across them in his few brief visits there. He had never given such establishments much thought before, but here they were hard for a newcomer like himself to ignore. Some of the women were very tempting, but of course he had no money.
He noticed, also, that some of the women were older, than they had appeared at first glance and that no customers were to be seen going in or out; business was obviously not good.
By the time Tobas paused to consider his destination, he had lost sight of everyone he knew from aboard ship. Overawed as he was by the city’s unfamiliarity, he could not bring himself to ask passing strangers for advice. Even strangers were in fairly short supply; this was obviously not a thriving neighborhood. Most of the spaces at the docks were unoccupied, and maintenance of the port facilities was clearly not what it should be. He wondered whether the actions of privateers back in the Free Lands had anything to do with the empty slips and shuttered shops, had trade suffered that much from their depredations?
He shivered. If the pirates were to blame and anyone here recognized him as a Freelander, his life would probably be short and unpleasant.
He considered going back to the last brothel and asking the women on the balcony for directions, but could not quite get up the nerve. Instead, when he came to a particularly large wharf that did not seem as badly decayed as the others, he turned right, onto the street leading directly inland from the docks. He did not care to stay on the waterfront, under the circumstances; sailors would be far more likely to recognize his accent, if they heard it, and to do something about it, than would people who remained safely ashore.
He walked silently along two long blocks lined with warehouses and shipfitters’ shops, marveling at the size and splendor — and age! — of the buildings and at how very straight the street was, then found himself emerging into a market square.
Unlike the waterfront shops, the market was far from deserted; shipping might be poor, but the difficulties did not appear to have reached two blocks inland as yet. Knots of men — and a sprinkling of women and children — were scattered thickly across the hard-packed ground, and the air around him was awash in their conversation, as loud and constant as a heavy sea breaking on rocks. A good many wore the blue kilts of sailors, and most of the others had on tunics and breeches no different from the everyday garb in Shan on the Sea, but a few were clad in strange and fantastical gowns, robes, jewels, furs, odd caps, or leather harness. Tobas was not sure what to make of these.