I made my way seaward. The jetty was both a stony barrier between land and sea, and a long avenue running along the shore. It linked the old city with the districts that had sprouted up outside the original walls. I set my path east past the squat clock tower and toward the airship towers and the ships in the main harbor, which lay perhaps a league away. It felt good to stride. Because it was early, the heat hadn’t grown too thick.
I bound threads of magic around me, not concealing myself so much that a cart might ram into me but shifting myself into that space of things no one much notices: I was nothing more than the cobbled street, or a dog curled up in the shade of a mango tree, or a burgeoning of weeds down a disused lane where four soldiers were taking a piss against a wall.
Trolls passed in small groups and never, ever alone. Often they glanced my way as if they could sense me, but I felt it safest to ignore their glances. I sidestepped a dog-cart whose driver had not seen me, and hurried out of the way of a wagon pulled by one of those sleekly astonishing dwarf mammoths. Its stubby trunk swayed in my direction, and the trunk’s lip delicately brushed me as it lumbered past. An earthy scent washed over me. I hurried on, heart pounding.
I crossed in front of a huge boardinghouse with an open deck and bar overlooking the bay. Beside it lay a raised plaza and a batey court whose length was lined with raised stone seats in the manner of a Roman amphitheater. A team of young women was practicing. They wore sleeveless bodices and short skirts dyed green to mark their affiliation. I drifted to the side of the road so I could watch, a wistful longing rising in my heart. They were astonishingly good, bouncing the ball off legs, arms, shoulders, and even their heads and never letting it touch hands or feet, as they sought to claim a goal through stone rings.
Onlookers sat in clumps on the stone seats, watching the practice. A slender man with flame-red hair and suntanned white skin stood toward the rear among a retinue. I lost track of my breath, clenched my hands, and backed up so quickly I almost collided with five trolls. They parted around me with admirable agility. One looked at me and said, as Caith had that long-ago day in Adurnam: “Ooh! Shiny!”
I tugged the edge of the pagne over my cane. When I glanced back toward the ball court seats, seeing the man from a different angle proved him to be not Drake at all. He sauntered down the risers with a coterie milling admiringly around him. The way he carried himself, expecting a degree of deference as cold mages did in Europa, reminded me of Vai.
“Whhh!” whistled a passing woman to her companion. “Isn’t that Jonas Bonsu?”