The group took up their meager luggage, alighted and left the raft where it had landed.
At the edge of the compound Anacho made inquiries of a dung merchant and received directions to the Grand Continental, the best of the town's hostelries.
Coad was a busy town. Along the crooked streets, in and out of the ale-colored sunlight, moved men and women of many casts and colors: Yellow Islanders and Black Islanders, Horasin bark-merchants muffled in gray robes; Caucasoids such as Traz from the Aman Steppe; Dirdirmen and Dirdirmen hybrids; dwarfish Sieps from the eastern slopes of the Ozanalai who played music in the streets; a few flat-faced white men from the far south of Kislovan. The natives, or Tans, were an affable fox faced people, with wide polished cheekbones, pointed chins, russet or dark brown hair cut in a ledge across the ears and foreheads. Their usual garments were knee-length breeches, embroidered vest, a round black pie-plate hat. Palanquins were numerous, carried by short gnarled men with oddly long noses and stringy black hair: apparently a race to themselves; Reith saw them in no other occupation. Later he learned them to be natives of Grenie at the head of the Dwan Zher.
On a balcony Reith thought he glimpsed a Dirdir, but he could not be certain.
Once Traz grabbed his elbow and pointed to a pair of thin men in loose black trousers, black capes with tall collars all but enveloping their faces, soft cylindrical black hats with wide brims: caricatures of mystery and intrigue.
"Pnumekin!" hissed Traz in a something between shock and outrage. "Look at them!
They walk among other men without a look aside, and their minds full of strange thinking!"
They arrived at the hostelry, a rambling edifice of three stories, with a cafe on the front veranda, a restaurant in a great tall covered arbor to the rear and balconies overlooking the street. A clerk at a wicket took their money, distributed fanciful keys of black iron as large as their hands and instructed them to their rooms.
"We have traveled a great dusty distance," said Anacho. "We require baths, with good quality unguents, fresh linen, and then we will dine."
"It shall be as you order."
An hour later, clean and refreshed, the four met in the downstairs lobby. Here they were accosted by a black-haired blackeyed man with a pinched melancholy face. He spoke in a gentle voice. "You are newly arrived at Coad?"
Anacho, instantly suspicious, drew himself back. "Not altogether. We are well-known and have no needs."
"I represent the Slave-taker's Guild, and this is my fair appraisal of your group. The girl is valuable, the boy less so. Dirdirmen are generally considered worthless except in clerical or administrative servitude, for which we have no demand. You would be rated a winkle-gatherer or a nut-huller, of no great value.
This man, whatever he is, appears capable of toil, and would sell for the standard rate. Considering all, your insurance will be ten sequins a week."
"Insurance against what?" demanded Reith.
"Against being taken and sold," murmured the agent. "There is a heavy demand for competent workers. But for ten sequins a week," he declared triumphantly, "you may walk the streets of Coad night and day, secure as though the demon Harasthy rode your shoulders! Should you be sequestered by an unauthorized dealer the Guild will instantly order your free release."
Reith stood back, half-amused, half-disgusted. Anacho spoke in his most nasal voice: "Show me your credentials."
" 'Credentials'?" asked the man, his chin sagging.
"Show us a document, a blazon, a patent. What? You have none? Do you take us for fools? Be off with you!"
The man walked somberly away. Reith asked, "Was he in truth a fraud?"
"One never knows, but the line must be drawn somewhere. Let us eat; I have a good appetite after weeks of steamed pulses and pilgrim plant."
They took seats in the dining room: actually a vast airy arbor with a glass ceiling admitting a pale ivory light. Black vines climbed the walls; in the corners were purple and pale-blue ferns. The day was mild; the end of the room opened to a view of the Dwan Zher and a wind curled bank of cumulus at the horizon.
The room was half-full; perhaps two dozen people dined from platters and bowls of black wood and red earthenware, talking in low voices, watching the folk at other tables with covert curiosity. Traz looked uneasily here and there, eyebrows raised in disapproval of so much luxury: undoubtedly his first encounter with what must seem a set of faddish and overcomplicated niceties, reflected Reith.
He noticed Ylin-Ylan staring across the room, as if astonished by what she saw.
Almost immediately she averted her eyes, as if uncomfortable or embarrassed.
Reith followed her gaze, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He thought better of inquiring the cause of her perturbation, not wishing to risk a cool stare.
And Reith grinned uncomfortably. What a situation: almost as if she were cultivating an active dislike for him! Perfectly comprehensible, of course, if Anacho's explanations were correct. His puzzlement regarding the girl's agitation was now resolved by the sardonic Dirdirman.
"Observe the fellow at the far table," murmured Anacho. "He in the green and purple coat."
Turning his head, Reith saw a handsome young bravo with carefully arranged hair and a rich mustache of a startling gold. He wore elegant garments, somewhat rumpled and well-used: a jacket of soft leather strips, dyed alternately green and purple, breeches of pleated yellow cloth, buckled at knee and ankle with brooches in the shape of fantastic insects. A square cap of soft fur, fringed with two-inch pendants of gold beads, slanted across his head; an extravagant garde-nez of gold filigree clung to the ridge of his nose. Anacho muttered,
"Watch him now. He will notice us, he will see the girl."
"But who is he?"
Anacho gave his fingertips an irritated twitch. "His name? I do not know. His status: high, in his own opinion at least. He is a Yao cavalier."
Reith turned his attention to Ylin-Ylan, who watched the young man from the corner of her eye. Miraculous how her mood had altered! She had become alive and aware, though obviously twitching with nervousness and uncertainty. She flicked a glance toward Reith, and flushed to find his eyes on her. Bending her head she busied herself with the appetizers: dishes of gray grapes, biscuits, smoked sea-insects, pickled fern-pod. Reith watched the cavalier, who was unenthusiastically dining upon a black seed-bun and a dish of pickles, his gaze off across the sea. He gave a sad shrug, as if discouraged by his thoughts, and shifted his position. He saw the Flower of Cath, who feigned the most artless absorption in her food. The cavalier leaned forward in astonishment. He jumped to his feet with such exuberance as nearly to overturn the table. In three long strides he was across the room and down on one knee with a sweeping salute which brushed his cap across Traz's face. "Blue Jade Princess! Your servant Dordolio.
My goals are won."
The Flower bowed her head with an exact modicum of restraint and pleased surprise. Reith admired her aplomb. "Pleasant," she murmured, "in a far land to chance upon a cavalier of Cath."
"'Chance' is not the word! I am one of a dozen who went forth to seek you, to win the boon proclaimed by your father and for the honor of both our palaces. By the wattles of the Pnume's First Devil, it has been given to me to find you!"
Anacho spoke in his blandest voice. "You have searched extensively, then?"
Dordolio stood erect, made a cursory inspection of Anacho, Reith, and Traz, and performed three precise nods. The Flower made a gay little motion, as if the three were casual companions at a picnic. "My loyal henchmen; all have been of incalculable help to me. But for them I doubt if I would be alive."
"In that case," declared the cavalier, "they may ever rely upon the patronage of Dordolio, Gold, and Carnelian. They shall use my fieldname Alutrin Stargold." He performed a salute which included all three, then snapped his finger at the serving woman. "A chair, if you please. I will dine at this table."