Departures

Some-not all-of that boredom fell away as the traders drew near. Even though humans had been going in and out of Shkenaz since the Enrico Dandolo landed, they were still strange enough to be interesting. The guards came forward and down onto all four running legs, held spears across the entranceway to block the traders’ path. “With whom have you business in the city?” one of them demanded sternly.

Carver studied the male as if seeing him for the first time. Centauroid was only a vague description of the locals’ body plan; the guard’s hindquarters were not much like a horse’s, and his upthrust torso even less like a man’s. His face was most alien of all, with a wide toothless beak of a mouth, twin nostril slits, and insectile compound eyes.

The trader wondered how strange he looked in those eyes.

Michaels said, “We meet today with the mighty lord Baasa, representative in Shkenaz of the Araite Emperor, may his reign be long and prosperous.” The guttural local language was made for sounding arrogant.

The guard swung up his spear. “Pass, then, into Shkenaz, and may our governor’s graciousness shine upon you.”

Change the style of architecture and the shape of the inhabitants, Carver thought, and Shkenaz was much like any other primitive town on a preindustrial world. Intelligent beings needed places to live, to trade, to worship, and arranged those places in fairly standard patterns.

Differences, though, counted, too. Because of the way the locals were made, Shkenaz seemed spacious to a biped like Carver, although the townsfolk probably would have disagreed. Few animals shared the streets with the natives, who were strong enough to do their own hauling.

On a street corner, a greenskin scribe wrote a letter for a blue; another blue waited his turn. Carver pointed. “They’re polite enough now, but I wonder how many wolf packs they’ve run in after dark.”

“As many as they could, I have no doubt,” Michaels said.

By now, most of the locals were used to seeing humans in town, and gave them no more than casual glances. The trumpet-shaped ears of a farmer in town with a piece of scrap iron on his back, though, rose in surprise and his head whipped around to follow the traders as they walked toward the main market square. The junk shop owner with whom he was dickering, a greenskin, took advantage of his surprise to close the deal on the spot.

Carver, who was in earshot when he did, felt like cheering. “We got that fellow some extra silver there,” he said.

“So we did,” Michaels agreed. “We also may have got him in trouble some time down the line for cheating a poor honest yokel who had come into Shkenaz to cheat him. When you’re a blue here, you can afford a long, selective memory for such slights.”

Black skin, as Carver had discovered, had its uses. He felt his cheeks go hot, but his companion could not see him flush.

Shkenaz’s central agora had the air of barely controlled chaos usual to marketplaces. Sellers loudly sang the virtues of six-legged meat animals, knives, perfumes, fruits, grains, pots of clay, and brass. Would-be buyers just as loudly named them liars and thieves. Business got done all the same.

A bookseller waved a three-fingered hand to draw the humans’ attention. When he had it, he held up a leather-bound codex. “Illuminated by that painter from the eastern provinces whose work you like,” he called cajolingly.

“Do you want to stop?” Carver asked.

“Not with Baasa expecting us. Keep the powers that be happy first.” Michaels turned to the waiting greenskin. “Another time, Harhas. We go now to an audience with the august governor of your great city.”

Harhas dipped his head. “May it be prosperous for you.”

Temples and Shkenaz’s town hall fronted one side of the agora. Before the town hall, as before public buildings in every town of the Araite Empire, stood a statue of Peleg. Peleg was the ancient king of a city-state somehow (Carver was not sure how; no human was) connected with the rise of the empire. More than three thousand years before, a greenskin had assassinated him. Greenskins had been paying for it ever since.

A servant was waiting outside the hall. “I am to take you to his Excellency.”

The humans followed him up the ramp. A mosaic that ran the whole length of the wall showed in gruesome, imaginative detail what had happened to Peleg’s murderer. Golden tesserae gave the work its title: Justice.

An artisan was replacing a few tiles that had fallen out of a particularly lurid scene. The artisan was a greenskin. “Nice to be reminded of where you stand in the public’s esteem, isn’t it?” Michaels murmured. Carver grunted, too mortified for the greenskin’s sake to say a word. Baasa’s servant glanced back at them. They did not translate for him.

Locals, most of them blues, bustled by, too intent on their own affairs even to notice the craftsman at work. To Carver, somehow that was the worst part of the whole business.

The servant ducked into a chamber and emerged a moment later. “His Excellency will see you now.”