Kaye did her best to ignore the gnces thrown her way as she strolled through the market. She could clearly see the shopkeepers hesitating for a moment whenever she approached and Rair had almost been right, people were asking how she dyed her hair, though it took more than a day for that.

  Asking around brought her to a couple of different shops, some of which were outside the market square, until she decided to spend everything she earned from the st few days of sales and odd jobs on a leather-bound notebook, charcoal and a wax tablet she couldn’t use yet, as she had to pretend to not know numbers — counting, yes, but not the symbols for numbers. She was, however, looking up to learning a written nguage and knew she would have a much easier time at it than anyone else. In all her time among the Nanur she only wrote a couple of times with a stick on the ground, before deciding it was too risky to do it again.

  She left the market after those purchases and turned southeast. It took her father a few days to feel comfortable allowing her to leave alone; Kaye didn’t push him, preferring to avoid another argument. The most important thing was that she finally had an opportunity to check the port.

  The piers came into view long before she reached it. Five ships were docked below and there were a couple of smaller boats out in the water—fishermen, she presumed. Beyond them there was the harbor, a natural riff formation where a ship was sailing past just now, leaving Kakinse behind.

  Pulling her hood up, Kaye approached the docks. There were men working in almost every pier, loading and unloading cargo. The pce smelled overwhelmingly salty and fishy, though she also caught the scent of spices and oils.

  After watching for a moment, she noticed a bald man resting on a wooden crate. From his sweat and sun-burnt skin he was likely a sailor, and no one was speaking with him.

  When he noticed her, she spoke, “Sorry to bother you, but are you from this ship’s crew?”

  “Yas,” he answered with a heavy accent.

  “Who do I ask about paying for passage with you?”

  “Cap’n, if you can find him. Or with the big man,” saying that, he pointed.

  It took her a moment to notice with the crowd in the way, but there was a stall in the port. No walls to speak of, just wooden staves holding the four corners of a rge, dirty cloth over a set of tables and workers. An office. Now that she thought about it, it made sense that someone ran the pce instead of every crew doing their own business.

  “Thank you,” Kaye said to the bald man before walking away.

  “Yas,” he answered back. It hadn’t been a yes?

  Finding a line in front of the stall, Kaye walked to the end of it. It moved slowly, and the docks were noisy enough for her to catch little of what they were saying, which left her without anything to do as she waited. At least one conversation a woman had with one of the port officials was in a nguage that sounded unlike anything she had ever heard; a white-haired man she only saw from behind had a long conversation with one of the workers while another started a heated debate about taxes; there was even a child waiting in line who asked for work and was quickly chased away. Kaye thought of him as a child, but he couldn’t be more than two years younger than how she looked.

  When it was her time, an official gestured for her to approach while flipping through documents. “Need anything, Nagra girl?” The man showed no reaction to indicate he’d seen her green hair, but anyone could tell she was a Nagra from her clothes.

  “I’m looking for passage in the ships docked now.”

  “Anywhere in particur?”

  Kaye thought about the few pces she knew by name. “Odanas, to begin with.”

  “There’s Eruin this side of the Rift. Captain Yale is scheduled to leave by midday two days from now, let me just—”

  “Captain Yale retreated his posting earlier today. The ship’s full already,” another worker cut in.

  “Well, you heard the man. Captain Janiss leaves six days from now, but he’s heading for the other side of the Rift, if that’s fine by you. He’s asking for thirty silvers.”

  That was thirty times more than she had saved, and definitely more than she could gather in six days.

  “Are there other ships scheduled to arrive?”

  “There are, but I can’t guarantee any prices before our staff has a meeting with their captains or whoever the captain sends our way. Prices might go down by the end of winter, but I wouldn’t expect to find anything for less than twenty silver.”

  “What if I work for them?”

  He lowered his gaze to the pages. “None are asking for that at the moment, all spots in the crews have been filled already, but other ships might in the future. You will have to check again for that.”

  “What about the others?”

  “The others?”

  “The other ships. Where are they going?”

  His answer was deyed. “Well… Captain Takalin is sailing straight for Geshin. Captain’s Coser and Mavis have a couple of stops in Saldassa’s coast, though Mavis’ route will take you to Erash if you stay with them long enough—they’re not stopping here again on their way back and they haven’t decided on the departing date, but it probably won’t be any time soon, and it will be more expensive the farther they take you. Captain Loshi, on the other hand, just arrived and hasn’t posted his prices.”

  Kaye nodded as he spoke, though she had no idea where Erash was. “How much is Captain Takalin asking for?”

  “Twenty-four, and he also sails in six days. Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”

  Kaye thanked the man and left the line.

  It was going to be harder than she expected. Even with some ships still to arrive in the city, Kakinse didn’t strike her as a busy enough pce for vessels to be coming and going every other day, and Rair had said that in past years the influx of ships had slowed down. If she saved everything she earned from now onwards, maybe she’d have enough for a passage in a month or so, but luck might not be on her side after that. She could end up with enough coin but no ship. Then, there was also the fact she would need to come up with excuses for holding onto so much money and that she had to be careful to not come to the docks too often, otherwise someone could recognize her and Gairin or Rair would hear about it.

  All of it would have been much easier and faster if she didn’t need to keep it a secret.

  Kaye sighed, deciding to try and forget about it for now and do the other thing she had pnned for the day.

  Before reaching the docks there was a series of paved sidewalks that led up to the city in a way not unlike the leveled steps of Korok’Kan, though in a much smaller scale. Kaye looked for an empty pce in the lower one, found a spot that was far enough from the crowd where she was unlikely to bother any passerby, then sat with her legs hanging down over the edge.

  It gave her a good view of the port, enough to make out some details from the closest ship’s figureheads, though the fgs were indistinguishable.

  Kaye pulled out her notebook and charcoal, then started scribbling for the first time since elementary school. She had no practice, knew none of the fundamentals and wasting paper in that world without proper instruction was far from optimal, but she wasn’t looking for greatness. She drew with repetitive lines, unsure at first of what exactly she was going to portray before deciding it was going to be the farthest ship from where she was. Feeling brave, she created the pier leading to it in one single stroke. It occurred to Kaye that if anyone was watching her, seeing the speed with which she spread the charcoal on the page with too-hard lines, they’d likely think she had a good idea of what she was doing.

  She had unknowingly made the scale too rge for the rest of the port and had to flip to the next page to keep drawing it. Her lines left little room for detail, but that did not stop her from repeating some until she was satisfied and leaving others as they appeared. Kaye wasn’t too worried about it, she doubted she’d find a harsh critic here.

  Someone slumped to her side. With a start she dragged the charcoal across the page, letting the notebook slip to her side as her hand approached the dagger on her back.

  “Woah, woah, don’t kill me for that, Kaye. What were you doing?”

  She sighed. Her heart rate had picked up. “Where were you, uncle?”

  “Here and there. Mostly there.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Somehow, I found myself helping out at a farm outside the city. The owners were gd to have me, so I told them a bunch of lies about our customs.”

  “You shouldn’t do that.”

  Hogog’s eyebrows arched, “Why is that?”

  “Because they will believe it, will tell other people who will do the same, and someone studying the region in the future will have the wrong idea about us.”

  “You’re starting to sound like how Taya used to.”

  “I have to get my wisdom from somewhere.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry too much about it. I only said one or two little lies. Now, can you show me what you were doing?”

  Kaye showed him the notebook, making sure that he noticed the streak cutting across the second page he startled her into making, which he completely ignored.

  “Is this your first try?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have an eye for it.”

  “I do?”

  “I only saw some of it, but it was quick. You wanted to capture the image, remember where everything was before you draw the real thing. I’ve seen that.”

  “I didn’t pn it to be a draft.”

  “Oh,” Hogog stared at the page again, scratching his beard. “Then there are some things we can work on, but I don’t think I should tell you any of it yet, only that you should be aware those things exist. Tell someone too much too fast and they’ll lose interest. Once you think you have learned on your own, then I can help you. Anyway, try to get into the habit of getting the shapes in pce, then start drawing what you actually see. That way, you can capture some things that are too fast to finish in one go. It’ll also make your lines more confident, once you’ve practiced enough. See how you retraced here?”

  For a long moment, Kaye simply stared at him. Hogog’s expression slowly changed, his cssic smirk showing. Somehow, she could tell this wasn’t one of the lies he talked about. What he said sounded basic, but still…

  “And where would you ever have drawn, Hogog Nanur? I’ve never seen it.”

  “I didn’t, but when you spend as much time going from here to there as I do, you end up learning some things. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard, in a… not impressive way.”

  “Less eloquently.”

  “What you just said.”

  He handed her the notebook before standing up.

  “You’re staying at Rair’s?”

  “We are. Father must be there now.”

  “Good, because I’m hungry.”

  Hogog disappeared almost as suddenly as he’d appeared, leaving her with the notebook in hands. Staring at the bck line across the second page and at the scenery in front of her, Kaye realized she could slightly twist what she was seeing to turn that line into the horizon.