Penric 3 Spoilers

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Penric Three (I)

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“Desdemona!” Penric breathed, awed.  “Will you look at that _light_.”
He leaned on the railing of the Adriac cargo ship coasting slowly up the
narrowing Gulf of Patos, and stared eyes-wide at the rocky shores of
Cedonia.  The dry clarity of the air made the distant granite mountains
seem as sharp-cut as glassmaker’s crystal.  The angled sun of morning
was the color of honey.  He tilted back his head to take in the
astonishing blue vault above, so deep it was dizzying; he felt he might
dive up through it as into the sea, endlessly, and never drown.
It was what he imagined enchantment should be, in some myth or legend of
personified elements, _The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky_.  Mortals,
he was reminded, did not usually come out well at the ends of those tales.
“Yes, but by noon it will scorch that pale scholar’s skin of yours to
blisters.  Keep yourself covered.  We’ll have to see about getting you a
proper hat,” his demon returned, speaking through his mouth as
prosaically as the bossy older sister he sometimes imagined her to be.
But he thought she was not unmoved by the sight, shared through his
eyes, of the light of the land of—could you call it her birth?—that
she’d last departed, what, over a hundred years ago?
“Longer than that,” she sighed.
He pressed his finger to his lips, warning her not to speak aloud in
company, and moved around to the prow, keeping clear of the crewmen
shifting ropes and sails.  Half a dozen other passengers clustered there
to catch a first glimpse of the city that lent the gulf its name.  The
ship came about and tacked toward the farther shore, climbing a slight
headwind.
A tumbled slope drew aside like a stage curtain, revealing their goal.
Spread across the wide amphitheater of the head of the gulf, Patos
seemed built of the bones of this land: stone houses with red tile
roofs, stone streets, arched and colonnaded; the familiar five-fold
shape, high on one hill, of a stone temple.  A broad stone fortress
guarded stone quays reaching out into the clear blue waters, where a
dozen other cargo ships crowded, offloading.
The grove of cranes and masts made up for what seemed to Penric’s eyes a
decided lack of trees, which was in part why his ship’s heavy lading of
cut timber was expected to be welcomed trade.  A bit slow, bulky,
boring; a ship for ordinary men with ordinary purses to make passage
in.  Such as a Lodian lawyer’s young clerk, carrying a sheaf of unsigned
merchants’ agreements and a hopeful marriage contract.  All entirely
bogus. He adjusted the strap on his shoulder and touched the leather
case that held them, plus the second set of documents that was much less
dull sewn inside its lining.
Velka, a Cedonian mercantile agent with whom Penric had made friends, or
at least friendly acquaintance, on what he had been assured was a
remarkably smooth three-day sail from the Adriac city of Lodi, and on
whom he’d been happy to practice his Cedonian, gave a little wave as Pen
joined him on the forward deck.  He smiled slightly.  “Still excited for
your first trip to Cedonia?”
“Yes,” Pen admitted, grinning back, still inebriated by the morning
light and not even bothering to be sheepish.
“I expect you will find it full of surprises.”
“I expect so, too.”
Des passed no comment, even internally, but Pen felt she watched the
harbor scene as keenly as he did.
Two oarsmen in Cedonian Customs’ tabards rowed a green-painted boat out
from the quay and swung alongside Pen’s ship.  He picked up his single
valise and followed Velka with the first batch of passengers to
disembark, making his way over the side and down the rope net without
mishap.  When it had rid itself of its human freight, the ship would go
on to another quay at the Imperial naval shipyard and arsenal to
discharge its timber.  Penric mused on the rationale, which rather
escaped him, of one country selling essentials for shipbuilding to
another country when they might, some future year, be at war or at least
in chronic naval clashes with each other.  Well, the puzzle did not fall
within the ambit of this mission.
Imperial Customs consisted of a long wooden shed housing tables, a few
agents in official tunics, some bored guards, and a dull air of
bureaucracy.  The passengers shuffled into line and turned out their
goods for inspection.

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