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lantern-bearing shape loomed up out of the night, the fragrance of whitherb wound about it. A bearded man with a short pipe jutting from his mouth, and eyes black as bubbles of pitch in the lantern-light. He took his pipe out of his mouth and spat on the whitened stone of the mole. “When’d you get in, younker?”
    “Just now. Just this moment.”
    “Berthing fee to be paid. Five minims a day, unless you’re kin to one of the fisherfolk. What’s the name?”
    Rol rubbed his face. “I’m a friend of Michal Psellos. Would you know where to find him?”
    The man’s pipe paused on its way back to the reeking hole in his beard. He glared. “Ten minims a day for such as you, then, and make it quick or I’ll have the Harbor Watch impound that cockleshell o’ yourn.”
    Rol stared at him, smelling the dislike. A few short days ago he might have been cowed, but not now. He stood up, hand on the dirk in his belt. “You’ll have your money and more if you tell me where Psellos is to be found.”
    He was eyed narrowly. “You’re not of Gascar. There’s a tang of Dennifrey in your accent, and something else maybe. What would you be wanting with a creature like that? Do you know Psellos at all?”
    “I was to look him up here.”
    The man seemed to study him closely. “You didn’t sail from Dennifrey in that thing, did you?”
    Rol shrugged, too tired to elaborate.
    “You want my advice, then set sail for home again. You don’t want to go mixing with folk such as that. You’re only a boy—I see now. Ascari’s no place for a youngster alone.”
    “I’ve nowhere else to go.”
    The man hesitated, and then: “Go to the top of the town, up the hill. There’s a gray tower there in the eaves of the wood. Psellos is there some of the time at least.”
    “What about the ten minims?”
    “Pay me tomorrow, if you see tomorrow. If you don’t, I’ll take your boat.”
    Rol was too weary to argue further. He nodded wordlessly. The man gave him a last stare, spat over the side of the mole, and walked away shaking his head.
     
    The life of Ascari, even in winter, seemed to take place on the streets. Everywhere along the narrow cobbled ways, braziers burned outside open shopfronts, and men sat drinking by them. Once a drunkard lunged for Rol, and he whipped out his dirk, eyes blazing. The man’s companions reeled him back in, laughing and bowing mockingly. Women called to him from upper windows, blew him kisses, promised him all manner of carnal services. Urchins pawed at his waist, eyes bright in wasted faces. He thrust them aside, loathing and pitying them at the same time. He passed fevered knots of copulation in wet alleyways, and once a group of feather-capped men bending over a body sprawled on the cobbles. Music eddied out into the night, cooking smells brought the water into his salt-tainted mouth. He was famished and parched, but knew better than to enter any of the dank taverns he passed. He walked his slow, obstructed way up the hill upon which Ascari sprawled and felt that he was being assaulted by a whole new range of experience, a different world that his mind struggled to take in. This beetling hive of humanity was at once fascinating and repulsive. He wondered how men could live like this—piled atop one another—without going mad.
    Farther up the hill the town became less congested, the houses larger and better made. Trees were planted in stately avenues and banners flapped atop the spires of tall towers. The streets became wider, and Rol began to breathe more easily, though with his travel-worn clothes he was more remarked by the better-dressed strollers who passed him by. When he paused and looked back he was able to see the lights of the port strung out down the hillside and along the shore to the northwest and southeast. He realized that the hill and harbor made up only a portion of the entire town; it extended in haphazard fashion for thousands of yards along the coast with no order or design to