Men within earshot all agreed, quite vocally and with a great deal of amusement, about my cursed hair. I could not imagine why I had not braided it back.
I had no trouble keeping track of Drake in the press of bodies, for his red-gold shock of hair stood out like fire. Men stepped out of his way, not making a scene of it, but it was clear Drake need not ask for passage. They knew what he was. And he was glad they knew.
We stepped onto a vastly wide, stone-paved avenue slimed with a thin layer of mud and oil churned by sun and yesterday’s rain and the constant trammeling of the exceptional amount of traffic coming and going. A high-wheeled cart driven by a bored-looking man and drawn by a hairy but quite small mammoth—if that was not a contradiction in terms—trundled past as I stared gape-mouthed. A four-winged bird feathered in bright colors reminiscent of a troll’s crest glided overhead, a white tube clutched in its fore-talons. Four soldiers casually carrying rifles over their shoulders strolled along the jetty, now and again pausing to speak to young men as if recruiting.
Two men uniformed in red tabards hurried along the avenue, each carrying a long staff and wearing a stiff black cap. Drake dropped at once into a crouch, head bent to conceal his face. He fiddled with his sandals as if he had caught a pebble until the men walked out of sight past a company of women who were striding along with laden baskets on their heads.
“Come along, Cat.” He rose and began walking east, in their wake, toward the distant city walls.
I caught his wrist and pulled him to a stop.
“What’s that?” I pointed to a wide dusty open work area set off behind a low fence and rimmed with long thatch-roofed shelters with no walls. Men worked at beams and planks. In truth what had drawn my eye was the rear view of a young man stripped to the waist and plying an adze along a beam. I could not help but admire his muscled back.
“That’s a carpentry yard. Strange you should need to ask, as they have the like in Adurnam.”
He tugged, but I held my ground.
His gaze narrowed. “Didn’t you see the two wardens? They can arrest me. I’m taking you to the Speckled Iguana. You’ll stay there in hiding until I sort out if the general is back in the city.”
I ripped my gaze away from the carpenter’s decorative back and stared at Drake as if he had sprouted two heads. “You’re abandoning me here?”