“A jolly lot, these Crathians.” Already the place had started to feel like home. Any wanderlust had wandered off the moment I smelled cheap wine and cheaper perfume.

A ruddy-cheeked peasant reeled backwards across our path, somehow maintaining his pint mug at an angle that spilled no ale, though he stumbled as if at sea on a stormy night. Snorri shot me a grin, the black mood Aslaug had left him with now lifting.

A crowd of men on the nearest beer-barge broke out into the chorus of the “Farmer’s Lament,” a bawdy ballad detailing in seventeen verses what amusement one can and can’t get up to with livestock. I knew it well, though in Red March it’s a Rhonish man who’ll have no peace till he grabs a fleece, not a Highlander.

“Must be a festival day.” Snorri breathed in deeply; the air came laden with the smell of meat a-roasting. That’s a scent that will set your belly growling after a long day’s travel. Snorri’s stomach practically roared. “It can’t be like this every night.”

“The lost prince is back. Didn’t you know?” A woman in her cups, passing by and reaching up to paw at Snorri’s thigh. “Everyone knows that!” She reversed direction and walked alongside Sleipnir, hand still exploring Snorri’s leg. “Oh my! There’s a lot of meat down here!”

A husband or suitor managed to snag the woman’s hand and pull her away, frowning all the while but hardly in a position to blame Snorri. Which was probably for the best, all things considered. I watched her go. Tempting as the roast in her own way, well fed, fat some might say, but jolly with it, a twinkle in her eye. She even had most of her teeth. I sighed. I had been entirely too long on the road.

“Lost prince?” Hadn’t Baraqel said something about a prince?

Snorri shrugged. “You’re a lost prince. They always seem to turn up again. Some prodigal son has returned. If it puts the locals in a good mood, then that makes life easier. We get in, take what we need, leave.”

“Sounds good.” Of course, we weren’t talking about entirely the same things—but it did sound good.

We crossed the Sane by the Royal Bridge, a fine broad construction sitting on great piles that must have survived the Thousand Suns. Crath City rose from the docks on the opposite bank, sprawling over gentle hills and reaching up to the walls of the Old City where the money lived, looking out over what it owned. The Tall Castle waited in the middle of it all, high above us. I let the gradient guide the way. It took us into an ill-lit quarter where the sewers ran rank and drunks staggered narrow paths along the middle of the alleyways, not trusting the shadows.

“We’ll find a place down here tonight,” I said. “Somewhere unsavoury.” Tomorrow I’d be a prince again, knocking on Olidan’s doors. Tonight I wanted to take full advantage of my anonymity and enjoy the benefits of civilization to the full. The benefits of a decadent civilization. If Baraqel was going to wake me up at cockcrow for a lecture on morality, I might as well make it worth his while. Besides, if I found a low enough dive and woke amidst as much sinning as I hoped to, he might just decide not to show.