He didn’t haggle so hard in Hassocki as he would have in Narbonese. My knowing one of the local languages made me seem less foreign to him. I wasn’t someone who existed only to be gouged. We got a cabin for a pretty good rate.

The sailor who led us to the cabin spoke some Hassocki. “Is crowded space. You two fit?” He sounded genuinely anxious for our comfort, no matter how villainous he looked. I don’t know if he was, but he sounded that way.

“If I don’t break my skull on these cursed beams beforehand,” Max grumbled. The Keraunos’ corridors and passageways were not made for a man of his inches. In fact, they weren’t made for a man of my inches, and I own fewer than Max. He had to walk stooped over whenever he was belowdecks, and the crossbeams or whatever you call them were a special hazard. No matter how careful he tried to be, he banged his head two or three times before we got to the cabin.

“Is all right?” The sailor opened the door. We ducked inside.

It was crowded. No room to swing a cat, I’ve heard sailors say. Why anyone would want to do that to a poor harmless cat is beyond me, but never mind. Next to the room we don’t have in a circus wagon, though, that little cabin might have been a palace. As a matter of fact, it was nearly as grand as the Shqipetari royal palace, but I didn’t know that yet.

I reached into my pocket and gave the sailor the two coins I pulled out: a piaster and a semilepta. He bowed like a folding jackknife. “Zibeon’s blessings upon you, my master!” he said, and scurried away. I would rather have had Eliphalet’s, but in that part of the world you take what you can get.

You also do your best to make sure other people don’t take what they can get-or, rather, that they can’t get it. I had the lock that kept light-fingered strangers (and, no doubt, light-fingered acquaintances, too) out of my wagon when I wasn’t around. I wasn’t worried about taking it. Whoever Dooger and Cark hired to replace me would have a lock of his own. I put it on the cabin door now. It was cold iron, so I hoped it would be proof against wizardry as well as lockpicks.

“Do you suppose it’s the fourth hour of the afternoon yet?” I asked Max.

He looked out the little round window-all right, the porthole; I’m no sailor, and I don’t pretend to be one-to gauge the sun. “Getting close, anyhow,” he answered.

“Does it seem we’re about to leave the harbor?”

He shook his head. A ship’s crew always goes a little mad when they set sail or weigh anchor or do whatever they need to do to start. I don’t know why they need to weigh the anchor; isn’t knowing the bloody thing’s heavy enough? But when they do it, people run every which way and shout like men possessed. If the wind isn’t favorable, and it usually isn’t, the weatherworker stands at the stern to call it into the sails.

In the old days, you just sat there if the wind wasn’t favorable. You could sit there for weeks if luck went against you. And if the wind died while you were at sea, at sea you’d stay. Weatherworking is one of the marvels of the modern age, but most people take it for granted. It’s a good thing the Two Prophets lived long ago; nowadays, everyone would yawn at the miracles they worked.

No weather was being worked at the stern. Sailors weren’t running back and forth above our heads. I know the sound-it puts me in mind of a herd of shoes. Nobody was shouting. As if to prove the point, a tern a gull had robbed of a fish screeched furiously.

“Maybe we ought to see what’s going on,” I said.

“I can see what’s going on,” Max said. “Nothing, that’s what.”

Sometimes Max can be annoyingly literal. “Maybe we should find out why nothing’s going on,” I said. Max only shrugged. I asked him, “Do you really want to get stuck in Lakedaimon for days?”

He jumped to his feet-and banged his head. After rubbing the latest bruise, he said, “Lead on-carefully, if you please.”

I carefully locked the cabin door behind us. We made our way to the steep stair that led us up on deck. Max hit his head once more, but only once. Considering how low the ceiling was, that amounted to a triumph of sorts. By then, though, Max was thoroughly out of sorts. He breathed a sigh of relief when he could unfold himself on deck.

The captain was drinking coffee and smoking a pipe with a long stem and a bowl carved into the shape of a leaping dolphin. It looked very nautical. Anyone who didn’t know better would think he’d got it from some clever, grizzled Lokrian craftsman who’d taken weeks to shape it especially for him. Unfortunately, I did know better. Any Schlepsigian would. We use the law of similarity to turn out those pipes by the tens of thousands for home use and the export trade. About every fourth man in Schlepsig smokes one. So it goes.

He seemed surprised to see us. “Is something amiss, my masters? Your cabin does not suit you? It is the best we had left.”

I daresay it was, too: a judgment on the Keraunos, I fear. But that, for the moment, was beside the point. “Our cabin will serve,” I said. “Is it not yet the fourth hour of the afternoon, however?”

He set a languid glance toward the hourglass set in front of the wheel. As languidly, he dipped his head in agreement. “Why, yes. I do believe it is.”

“And is not this ship scheduled to sail at the fourth hour of the afternoon?” I asked with such patience as I could muster. A Schlepsigian ship would have sailed when scheduled, come what may. To my people, schedules are as sacred as if Eliphalet and Zibeon wrote each and every one. The wagons roll on time in Schlepsig, let me assure you.

Other folk, I fear, have other notions. “Oh. The schedule,” the skipper said, as if he’d forgotten such a thing existed. He probably had, too. He shrugged one of those elaborate shrugs that are only too common all over the Nekemte Peninsula. What those shrugs say is, You’re cursed well stuck, sucker, and you can’t do a thing about it, so scream as much as you please-it won’t do you any bloody good. He waited, no doubt hoping I would start screaming. But I’ve seen those shrugs before. Indeed I have. I waited, too. He sighed, balked of his sport. “Well, my master, we will sail-pretty soon.”

Pretty soon, in those parts, can mean anything from a couple of hours to a couple of months. “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked.

“Oh, this and that.” He gave me another shrug, even more melodramatic than the first. “You are so anxious to be gone from Thasos?”

I knew what that meant, too. He wanted to know if soldiers or gendarmes or an outraged husband with a blood feud were on our trail. If he could soak us for more silver to make a quick getaway, he would. But he couldn’t, not this time. “No, by no means,” I said truthfully. I have paid for a quick getaway or two in my time, but not that day. Max and I were honest-or no one could prove we weren’t. I went on, “I just wanted to make sure you understood.”

His bushy eyebrows came down and together in a frown. “Understood what?”

“You’re going to be late.”

He didn’t laugh in my face, but the look on his said he was about to. Around a yawn whose studied insolence he must have spent a long time practicing, he asked, “And so?”

“Well, if you’re late, I’m afraid you’ll make my friend here very unhappy.” I nodded toward Max. He was standing extraordinarily straight, no doubt in relief from being doubled over belowdecks like a pair of trousers in a small carpetbag. It made him seem even taller than usual-an obelisk with ears, you might say.

The captain of the Keraunos looked him up and down and then up again. “And so?” he repeated-he had style, in a reptilian way.

Max drew his sword. The captain stiffened. So did I. Murdering the man before we set sail might get us talked about. But Max didn’t slice chunks off him, however richly he deserved it. Instead, he examined the blade and then took two steps over to the rail. He began carving strips from the wood. The strips were very long and very thin-so thin, you could almost see through them. They came off effortlessly, one after another.