Slowly and with great care, Inos climbed to the noisy road above. She peered back and forth, shocked and dismayed. Now what? Zana had explained nothing, saying only that she would be taken care of. Despite the early hour, crowds bustled: porters and sailors, mules and horses, wagons and even strings of camels, all wound back and forth between bales and crates and racks of nets. A hundred voices clamored in orders and oaths and the rhythmic chant of work gangs.
Inos felt absurdly unsafe, teetering on the edge of the seawall and in danger of being knocked off, yet to go forward was to risk being trampled under a caravan of camels. The meal sack was an absurdity—she must look as if she were in the eighteenth month of pregnancy at least, although perhaps nothing smaller would have shown under the accursed tent she wore. The hood restricted her vision horribly, and if she fell back one step she would drown. For her own sake, as well as that of the pestilential Charak, she must move to safety, yet if she left this spot she might miss whomever she was supposed to meet. Then she would be hopelessly lost, with no option but a walk to the palace and a humiliating surrender. She decided to take refuge beside a high rack of smelly nets, but before she could move a voice spoke the password: “God of Pilgrims!”
With a gasp of relief, Inos spun around and found herself facing a pair of long, gray ears. Beyond them, holding a bridle, stood a short, dirty, and ragged man she had never seen before. His weatherbeaten face wore a coating of mahogany stubble and an unfriendly scowl.
Inos and the donkey regarded each other with mutual disapproval. She dislodged Charak’s grip and held him out for the man to hold. The scowl became a glare—in Zark babies were strictly women’s problems. Wishing that she were at liberty to express her opinions, Inos somehow contrived to hoist herself up, sidesaddle, with baby and meal sack still in place. The man hit the little beast with a stick and set off along the road, tugging repeatedly at the rope.
In a few minutes she had managed to adjust her seating, adapting to the sway of the bony little back under the blanket. She began to take stock, peering around under her hood, being careful not to look at nearby faces, lest the owners glimpse her alien green eyes.
The ships were unlike any she had ever seen in Krasnegar, the crews more varied. Most common were the ruddy-hued djinns, but she saw swarthy imps and some diminutive men with grayish coloring, whom she thought must be gnomes; dwarves would be thicker and wider. Here and there, tall and flaxen and inevitable in any large harbor in Pandemia, were undoubted jotnar. She heard much shouting, both humor and invective, and just to have identified all the odors could have kept her busy for hours: fish and spices, the livestock and the people, hot coffee and the strong salt tang of the sea; plus many less agreeable things. Had her mind not been largely occupied with the baby and with not falling off the wretched donkey, she would probably have been enthralled.
Her guide began edging into and through the traffic, finally reaching the buildings that flanked the landward side of the dock. He stopped beside a grubby and tattered little coffee stall, tended by a woman as anonymously garbed as Inos herself. “God of Pilgrims?” she said, and held out her hands for Charak. Apparently Charak did not know her, and had come to trust Inos, for the last she heard of him was a long, despairing howl. Serves the little monster right!
Now her guide reversed direction, heading back the way they had come, still tugging the rope and periodically whacking the imperturbably ambling donkey. At a mysteriously dark doorway smelling strongly of spices, he handed the tether to a larger, bearded man and disappeared. The newcomer did not even glance at Inos. He set off at a slower pace, in the same direction.
Ten minutes later, a third man took his place. Slumped impassively on the donkey, Inos did not look at him. She wondered what her father would have said about all this.
Sudden insight whispered that she had never really known her father. At their last meeting he had been dying; at their farewell in the spring she had been a mere child. They had never spoken as adult to adult. A child could not comprehend a parent as a real person. So she had no way of knowing what her father would have thought and she never would have. She might try to behave in ways she believed would have pleased him, but she could never be truly certain. That was a crushing sorrow, and she wondered why she had not seen it before.
Another five minutes, and the third man stopped the donkey at the bottom of a public staircase that wound off up a narrow canyon between buildings. He leaned close to Inos and breathed fish at her. “Climb. Turn left at the minstrel. ”
With great relief, Inos slid from the saddle, wincing as the ropes bit into her shoulders. The meal sack had taken on a definite sag to the left. Triplets, maybe. Keeping her head down, she set off up the steps, staying close to the wall as a gang of boys came pelting down, waving their arms for balance and shouting noisily.
The alleyway bent; stairway became a steep slope, and then steps again, more gently pitched. Obviously all this deception had been planned in advance. Azak must not only have laid plans for his own escape, he must have been confident that Inos would want to accompany him. She wondered whether she should be flattered by that tribute to her courage or insulted that he thought so little of her brains, for all these precautions were merely emphasizing what a very long shot this escapade really was.
Hiding from a mundane was a fairly straightforward matter. Everyone knew how to do that, avoiding movements where they might be seen and sounds when they might be heard. Earshot and line of sight were easily comprehended; but no one knew how to avoid a sorceress, nor what the limits of her range might be. Her powers could well make all this subterfuge completely useless. Perhaps all she need do would be exclaim “Inosolan” to her looking glass and it might, perhaps, show the fugitive at once. All these changes of guide and appearance—baby and then no baby, donkey and no donkey—would make the task more difficult only if Rasha must somehow scan for her prey, or follow its trail. Obviously none of these accomplices was in on the plot; none would know any of the others, and each had been hired to perform one small task only. The organization was impressive. It might well be totally useless, and Rasha might well be screaming with laughter as she watched the mummery.
At first the walls of the alley held alcoves where artisans and merchants displayed their wares. Weavers wove and tailors stitched; goldsmiths tapped and potters threw; all of them at the same time chattering and arguing with the onlookers. Face averted, angry that she dared not linger, Inos pushed by the knots of haggling bystanders. One of the stalls was a bakery, and her stomach informed her there that it had repented and was ready for business again; she shuffled past with her mouth watering.
The steps grew steeper, the alley narrower. The little stores disappeared, and only forbiddingly massive doors broke the sweep of lime-washed masonry walls. All the windows were stoutly barred. Porters and veiled women, children in rags and laden donkeys—Inos was jostled repeatedly, and at times forced to stop and wait until the way had cleared. Krasnegar was steeper, but she had never carried a sack of meal up the hill there, and the ropes were cutting into her skin.
Even the ever-present Arakkaranian breeze could not penetrate the canyon; the air was stuffy and yesterday’s heat still radiated from the walls. Krasnegar had many passageways such as this, but most of them were roofed, and none was so filthy or so thickly inhabited by insects. Every crevice in the walls and every crack between the cobbles seemed to form part of a separate subsystem of alleys for the use of ants and beetles.
From time to time the way divided or crossed over other ways, but always her instructions to climb gave her one obvious choice of route. Strange noises and smells drifted in from the side streets: the hammering of coppersmiths, the odor of boiling goat, or onions, the crowing of poultry, or the scent of the inevitable coffee. Dark, sinister archways led off into mysterious courtyards, which she had no desire to explore. And there were many little alcoves and nooks fitted with benches or seats where a line of men would be taking their ease and gossiping-never women. They sometimes exchanged loud comments on her size and shape.