The dock rats went hurriedly back to their tasks.
As Tavi passed Isana on the way to the gangplank, she asked him, "What did he say?"
"That he's glad to get off this ship," Tavi said. "He says it smells like wet people here."
Isana blinked. "I... I didn't realize." She glanced at the Cane. "Was he making a joke?"
"I'm not really sure," Tavi said. He gave Varg a wry glance. "I don't think I'm supposed to be. Excuse me." He paced down the gangplank to stand near the Cane.
Kitai climbed down from the ship's rigging and dropped the last several feet to the deck. Over the course of the journey, her hair had begun to grow in again and was now a short, fine brush of white offset by her longer mane. She gave a brilliant smile to one of the crewman, a brawny young sailor with a fresh cut running across his chin. The man visibly flinched and seemed to remember urgent duties requiring his attention elsewhere on the ship.
Kitai murmured to Isana, "I take my shirt off once, and it is as if these Aler-ans think I have invited them all to mate with me."
Isana glanced at the retreating young sailor. "Oh, dear. Why didn't you say anything?"
Kitai shrugged. "There was nothing to it. He made advances. I objected."
Isana arched an eyebrow. "I see. At what point did your objections draw blood?"
"Here," Kitai said, drawing a finger across her chin. "And another you can't see, right about..." She started untucking her shirt from her trousers.
Isana sighed and put her hands over Kitai's. "Later, dear. For the time being, let's just get off the ship." She turned to Kitai and offered her one of the traveling cloaks she had folded over her arm.
Kitai took the cloak, evidently well pleased with herself, and threw it about her shoulders, covering her distinctive hair with the hood. "Though I hardly see the point of wearing any kind of disguise," she said. "Not with the Cane with us."
Isana donned her own cloak. "Humor me."
"Easy enough," Kitai said agreeably.
Araris, now cloaked and hooded, came up to Isana, a satchel over his shoulder. He offered it to her, and she took it, her fingers brushing his. His eyes shone for a moment, and he bowed his head to her. "Ready?"
Isana felt a sudden flutter of amusement mixed with realization from Kitai, who murmured tartly, "Why, I expect she is."
"Kitai!" Isana whispered fiercely, her face heating.
"All that fuss about the men in a separate room. I should have shared a room with my Aleran and you with yours. We all would have been happier."
"Kitai!"
"Though I suppose we might not have gotten things done quite as quickly," Kitai said. She tilted her head and gave Araris a frank appraisal. "How is he with his mouth?"
Araris looked considerably more shaken than he had when he'd received his hideous belly wound. "Urn, ladies," he said. "Excuse me." He hurried down the gangplank to move to Tavi's side.
Kitai laughed, a merry, silvery sound. "Alerans make this easy."
"You're shameless!" Isana protested, but she felt her mouth turning up into a smile.
"Of course," Kitai said. "It's obviously a side effect of being an unlettered savage." She pursed her lips thoughtfully and glanced at Tavi, who was speaking intently to Ehren. "My Aleran does not know."
"Correct," Isana said.
"You would prefer that he did not know."
"Yes."
Kitai smiled faintly. "There were times when Doroga would meet with a woman, after my mother died. I was much younger. I thought he was betraying her memory. It was painful."
Isana shivered a little at the sudden sense of hollow loss and loneliness she felt in Kitai. The loss of her mother must have affected her deeply, still to bring up such intense emotion years and years later.
"I know better, now. My mother was dead. Doroga should not be expected to spend the rest of his life alone. But it was a difficult thought to hold between my ears."
"I'll tell him," Isana said. "When he doesn't already have so much on his mind."
Kitai nodded. "Then I will not bring it up. I will not lie to him should he ask me, but I will not draw his attention to it."
"Thank you, Kitai."
She inclined her head, and said, "But tell him soon. The next time we stay in an inn, matters can be better arranged."
They descended from the ship to join the others, and together walked through Fellcove to see this man Ehren had mentioned, Ibrus.
It had been sundown when they made port, and it was well on toward full darkness now. Fellcove had very few furylamps on its streets-in fact, the town itself seemed to have none at all. The only lamps in evidence were outside of homes and businesses, doubtlessly personal property. The streets were crude mud tracks, utterly lacking the properly furycrafted stone, or even the ruder, more common cobblestones. Fellcove's filth ran through garbage-choked gutters on either side of the street, and the whole place smelled awful.
Indeed, as they proceeded into the town, Varg seemed to shrink a few inches, his shoulders hunching up even higher, his head lower and often turned aside, as if to seek some respite from the stench.
There was only one street, and it wound back and forth from the ocean up the steep side of a hill. Ehren led them to its very last winding, and to an enormous house that may at one time have looked respectable, perhaps as a residence for a magistrate or a minor Count. Now, its white stone had been stained by years of weather and sun, and most of the windows were out. What had once been a small garden in front of the house had become a patch of weeds and brambles so thick that it had strangled itself to death.
Ehren walked up to the front door of the house, drew his knife, and banged the pommel of his dagger several times upon the door. The door was cheap and weatherworn, clearly a relatively recent addition to the house, and it was marked with the shallow, round indentations of what Isana assumed had to be thousands of other people banging on it with a dagger's pommel.
For a long while, nothing happened.
"Should we let ourselves in?" Tavi asked.
"Oh crows no," Ehren said quickly. "Bad idea." He pounded on the door again. "Ibrus!" he shouted. "I need to talk to you, and I've got cash!"
Footsteps thudded on floorboards inside the house and grew louder. Shortly the door was opened by an enormous man in a food-stained shirt. He had a heavy brow, a thick neck, and something had removed an entire section of his upper lip, leaving his teeth bared in a perpetual snarl.