"I know that; but even with such a correction, 'tis plain that your clocks are out of order."
"They have not run for months. Old Yiyim, the clockmaster, kept saying that he would get them fixed any day. At length His Majesty lost patience. Doctor Karadur had been pressing him to let him take over the task, and now the king told him to go ahead. So the good doctor requested His Majesty to dispatch me to fetch you to Iraz. And behold, here we are! Excuse me whilst I don more seemly garb."
Zerlik vanished into the cabin, whence he presently emerged with a complete change of clothes. He wore a silken shirt with full sleeves and over it a short, embroidered, sleeveless vest. A knee-length pleated skirt clad his legs; slippers with turned-up toes, his feet. On his head sat the cylindrical, brimless, felt Irazi cap, like a small inverted bucket.
"You had better don your more respectable raiment, also," he said. "Even though you disclaim the status of gentleman, it were well as a practical matter to look like one."
"I daresay you're right," replied Jorian. In his turn, he got out his one decent suit of shirt, jacket, hose tights, and soft boots.
"You are obviously a foreigner," said Zerlik, surveying him, "but that is no matter. Iraz is a cosmopolitan city, and the folk are used to exotic garb."
The Flying Fish came abreast of the fishing wharves, where nets spread like gigantic bats from house to house to dry. Jorian guided the little ship to within a score of yards of the first empty quay, then hove to and lowered the sails.
"Why sail we not right up to the mooring?" asked Zerlik. "It would make a better impression than laboring into shore by our oars, like a pair of base lumpers."
"If I knew the ship and the waterfront better, I might. As it is, I might miscalculate. Then we should smash into the quay and damage our ship. That would make a far worse impression than rowing."
As the Flying Fish touched gently against the quay, Jorian and Zerlik scrambled ashore and made fast to the bollards. While they were tying up, an official-looking person with brass buttons on his dark-blue vest and a short, curved sword at his side bustled up and spoke in Penembic. Zerlik answered. Although he could now make up a few simple sentences in the complex Penembic tongue, Jorian could not understand the language when spoken rapidly.
"He is a deputy port inspector," said Zerlik as the man climbed aboard the Flying Fish. "He will collect the harbor tax and issue you a temporary pass. Then you must apply at the Bureau of Travel and Immigration for a permit as a resident alien."
"Can we leave the ship tied up here?"
"I do not believe we are supposed to leave it overnight, but for a small bribe I think I can arrange it. He will not make things difficult for one of my rank."
"How shall I find Karadur?"
"Oh, I will take care of that. Instead of lugging our gear to our quarters like navvies, let you remain with the ship, guarding it, whilst I go to inform Doctor Karadur of our arrival. He will send transportation suitable for persons of our quality."
Jorian was not much taken with this plan, fearing being stranded in a strange city where he neither knew his way nor spoke the language. While he pondered his reply, the inspector sprang ashore again and chattered with Zerlik. Next, the inspector produced writing materials, including several small sheets of reed paper.
"He wants your name and nationality," said Zerlik.
With Zerlik translating, Jorian furnished the needed information,
while the inspector filled in blanks on his form in duplicate. At last Jorian was asked to sign both copies.
"Will you kindly read this to me?" he said. "I like not to sign my name to aught I can't read; and your Penembic script looks like a tangle of fishhooks."
Zerlik translated the text: a statement of Jorian's identity, the purpose of his visit, and other elementary matters. At length he signed. The official handed him one copy and departed. Zerlik shouted across the waterfront street, and a donkey boy came running with his animal behind him.
"Farewell for the nonce!" cried Zerlik, swinging aboard the ass. "Guard well our impedimenta!"
He jogged off along the waterfront street, with the boy running beside him. Then he turned and vanished through one of the huge fortified gates in the sea wall, which rose behind the row of slatternly houses on the landward side of the street.
Jorian shaded his eyes against the low westering sun and gazed out to sea, which had become an undulating carpet of golden flakes. Then he examined his surroundings.
Men came and went along the waterfront. Most were Penembians in felt caps. Some wore a pleated knee-length skirt like Zerlik's, while others encased their legs in baggy trousers, gathered at the ankle. There was a sprinkling of Fedirunis in head cloths and robes, and an occasional Mulvanian in a bulbous turban. Now and then came a black man —a Paaluan with wavy hair and beard, wearing a feather cloak, or perhaps a kinky-haired, scar-faced man from the tropical jungles of Beraoti, swathed in animal skins or in a loosely-pinned rectangle of cloth. A train of laden camels swayed past, their bells chiming.
Jorian waited.
And he waited.
He took a turn along the waterfront, peering in the doors of the taverns and lodginghouses that backed against the sea wall and looking in shop windows. He tried to ask a few Irazis the way to Doctor Karadur's dwelling. He had put together the words comprising a simple question; but each time, the native came back with a long, rattling sentence, too fast for Jorian to understand. He stopped a man in a head cloth and queried him in Fediruni, but all the reply he got was:
"I am sorry, good sir, but I am a stranger here, too."
Jorian returned to the Flying Fish and waited some more. The sun set. He prepared a dinner from the supplies on the ship, ate, waited some more, and went to sleep in the cabin.
Next morning, there was still no sign of Zerlik. Jorian wondered whether the young man had fallen victim to an accident, or to foul play, or whether he had deliberately abandoned his companion.
Jorian would have liked to stroll about the neighborhood, to learn the layout of the nearby streets. On the other hand, he durst not leave his gear unguarded aboard the Flying Fish. Although the cabin door had a lock, it was of the sort that any enterprising thief could pick with a bent pin. To prove that this was the case, Jorian took out of a leathern inside pocket in his hose one of several pieces of bent wire and opened the locked door with ease. He had learnt to pick locks in preparing for his flight from Xylar.
To find a man in a strange city, without guide or map, where one did not speak the language, was a formidable task. (If he had known about street signs and house numbers, he would have added their lack to the hazards facing him. Never having heard of them, he did not miss them.) The task was perhaps not quite so hazardous as slaying a dragon or competing in spells with a first-class wizard, but it was still one to daunt all but the boldest.
When a merchantman pulled into a neighboring berth and several travelers stepped ashore, a tout hurried up to offer his services. Jorian, however, had a profound distrust of such gentry. The more eager one of them seemed to take the stranger in tow, the more likely he was to be planning robbery or murder.
The Hour of the Hare came, and Jorian still turned over plans. For instance, if he could accost a port official with whom he had some speech in common, he could then ask advice about trustworthy guides. Of course the fellow might hand him over to some cutthroat with whom he had an arrangement for sharing the loot…
As Jorian, seated in the cockpit of the Flying Fish, thought about these matters, a familiar figure appeared in the distance, ambling towards the Flying Fish on the back of an ass. It was a thin, dark-skinned old man with long white hair and beard, clad in a coarse brown robe and a bulbous white turban. He was followed by a youth mounted on another ass and leading a third.