"Yes—at the end. For a good reward, too. I'm not saying he's all bad, Vossik; I don't know. But so far he's gone where the gold is. How will he govern? A man who thinks he's nobly born, and has been cheated of his birthright—what will he do when we reach the Immer ports?"

* * *

They found out at Immerdzan, where the Immer widened abruptly into a bay, longer than it was wide. The port required no formal assault. It had never been fortified on the land side, beyond a simple wall hardly more than man-high with the simplest of gates. The army marched in without meeting any resistance. The crowded, dirty streets stank of things Paks had never smelled before. She got her first look at the bay, here roiled and murky from the Immer's muddy flow. The shore was cluttered with piers and wharves, with half-rotted pilings, the skeletons of boats, boats sinking, boats floating, new boats, spars, shreds of sail, nets hung from every available pole, and festooned on the houses. She saw small naked children, skinny as goats, diving and swimming around the boats. Most of them wore their hair in a single short braid, tied with bright bits of cloth.

Beyond the near-shore clutter, the bay lay wide and nearly empty under the hot afternoon sun, its surface streaked with blues and greens she had never seen before. A few boats glided before the wind, their great triangular sails curved like wings. Paks stared at them, fascinated. One changed direction as she watched, the dark line of its hull shortening and lengthening again. Far in the distance she could see the high ground beyond the bay, and southward the water turned a different green, then deep blue, as the Immer's water merged with the open sea.

Around the Duke's troops, a noisy crowd had gathered—squabbling, it seemed to Paks, in a language high-pitched and irritable. Children dashed back and forth, some still sleek and wet from the water, others grimy. Barefoot men in short trousers, their hair in a longer single braid, clustered around the boats; women in bright short skirts and striped stockings hung out of windows and crowded the doorways. One of Alured's captains called in the local language, and a sudden silence fell. Paks heard the water behind her, sucking and mumbling at the pilings, slurping. She shivered, wondering if the sea had a spirit. Did it hunger?

Alured's captain began reading from a scroll in his hand. Paks looked for Arcolin and watched his face; surely he knew what was going on. He had no expression she could read. When Alured's captain finished reading, he spoke to the Duke, saluted, and mounted to ride away. The crowd was silent. When he rounded the corner, a low murmur passed through them. One man shouted, hoarsely. Paks looked for him, and saw two younger men shoving a graybearded one back. Another man near them called in accented Common: