Presently I heard bustle of a different sort, far more voices than the crew possessed, a different sound to the splash, and though we still lurched and rocked I could tell we had nearly stopped because of the slackening of the wind on my eyeballs—the rest of my face and body was by now too numb with continuous wind to feel it at all. There was the creaking of ropes and the men began singing, all together, some song in a foreign language with few words and those few much-repeated in a slow beat-beating rhythm. I peeped out.

Yes, we had berthed and were unloading.

All I could see of shore was that it was a high-sided stone wharf, equipped with great metal rings for the ships’ ropes, and that it rose in stone steps which were covered with the most active crowd I’d ever seen. I could see no buildings behind them, but perhaps if I strained my neck—

Long before I was in the right frame of mind, the crates hiding me were yanked aside.

There was a split instant while I was still not-seen, and then—

“We-e-ell,” said a gravelly voice and I was looking straight ahead at a pair of wide salt-rimed boots.

This was an abrupt change from the endless crates which had been my companions, and there was yet another moment suspended before I raised my head and met the eyes of the captain himself who had been assisting in unloading. You could tell he was the captain, Gods know, not by the quality of his clothes but because he was wearing several.

He stood looking down at me with one fist on his hip, thumb hooked in weapon-belt, the other hand pulling at his lip.

“Found something, Shaj?”

“My oath, yes,” said the captain.

The other speaker came forward. He was not the mate as I had expected, but a visitor just fresh from shore, a tall, lean man in a black robe, caught in folds to one side by a plain gold belt. As the newcomer’s eyes rested on me I was sitre I had met that gaze somewhere before (always memories, after all, catching up with you, but it was not an unpleasant memory).

“Just wanting, sir, to show you the prize of our cargo,” said the captain, “and …”

“If you stand back I’ll have room to stand up,” I said.

“And I’m not sure that you haven’t found the prize,” said the newcomer.

The captain automatically stepped back and I got shakily to my feet. My ankles were for a moment too stiff to hold me up, and I put a hand to the crates behind me to support me. Before I touched them the newcomer had placed an arm round me and held me the moment I needed.

“She’s not part of my cargo, you know,” the captain apologized. “She’s a stowaway.”

“Evidently.”

“Yeah.”