“You can disparage it all you like,” said the pilot, smiling. “Won’t make it any better or worse than it is. And as to your wish to get to Fall Ford, I can’t say we’re exactly close, but come morning, if you happen to be in the middle of the river, you’ll catch a glimpse of Upsheer Cliff afar off to the south. It’s still two days on the water, and a good deal more than that afoot, I dare say. But within sight of the cliff is not very far, I think.”

“I think you’re right, sir,” said Umbo. “And now will you let me give you back this fenten, not as fare, but for you to buy a few rounds of ale for my crewmates, at a time you think it won’t interfere with their duty?”

“I will let you do that indeed, and tonight is that night, and they’ll raise a mug in your honor. I take it you don’t mean to be there yourself, or you’d do the buying.”

“My journey is long, and I’ll be setting out today, there still being many hours of light. And you see why you shouldn’t have paid me—I wasn’t there for the loading, and I won’t be here for the unloading either.”

“Now I see that you are a slacker,” said the pilot. “Now be off before I call you a generous man and other such names.”

Umbo left the small wharf with a light heart and a brisk foot, though it was strange to be walking on solid ground again. He had been so long in the company of Rigg or Loaf—or Param, who had spent the whole time before she proposed marriage disparaging him—that he hadn’t really known that he knew how to talk to a good man and be taken for a good man himself. His height explained them taking him for a man now, but as for the “good,” Umbo had earned that himself. He had been so long treated like nothing that he had started half-believing it himself.

Well, no. He knew, in some rational part of his mind, that he fully believed he was nothing without anyone having to treat him very badly at all. And he knew why. If he hadn’t fallen hopelessly in love with a princess, and spent hours noticing all the ways he was beneath her, he might not have been so prickly and taken offense at everything that could possibly be construed as looking down on him. Now he understood that. But he also knew himself well enough to be pretty sure that when and if he got back with Rigg and Param, he’d still be prickly, even if he tried not to show how easily offended he was.