Once upon a time, the Lokrians were the most civilized people in the world. All the history books insist on it. And if that isn’t proof we’ve made progress over the past couple of thousand years, Eliphalet curse me if I know what would be.

Scholars go on and on about the purity of ancient Lokrian sculpture, the magnificence of ancient Lokrian poetry, the innovation and insights of ancient Lokrian drama. For some reason or other, no one talks a whole lot about the ancient Lokrians themselves. And I’ll bet I know why: they must have been just as annoying and insufferable as modern Lokrians are.

That was what I was thinking when the Keraunos finally got into Lakedaimon most of a day later than the miserable ship should have. We sailed into the harbor in fine style. The weatherworker was working again. He’d come out of his stupor, and he’d had enough anise-flavored firewater afterwards to remind him life might still be worth living. In between his spells of consciousness, we’d had to make do with fitful true breezes, but did he care about that? Care? He didn’t even know!

Even now, Lakedaimon is a pretty town. The ruins on what they call Fortress Hill remind you of what a splendid place it was in the glory days of Lokris. Back then, of course, Lakedaimon tried to lord it over all its neighbors, and the other Lokrian city-states responded by trying to stick a stiletto in its back. Typical Lokrian politics, I fear. Two Lokrians will have three opinions and four faction fights. Lokrians will ally with an enemy’s enemy even if they know that fellow will turn on them as soon as he’s settled the first enemy’s hash. They think, Well, I lasted two days longer than he did and I got to gloat while he suffered, so who cares what happens next?

Charming people.

And they’ve always been like that. Take a look at ancient history if you don’t believe me. No, not the pretty stories-the history behind them. Yes, they held off the Sassanids all those years ago. Yes, they were heroes. Some of them were, anyhow. But an awful lot of city-states went over to the Great King. They fought on his side, and some of them were heroes, too. If he’d won, nobody would remember Lakedaimon.

When Lakedaimon fought Pallas for all those years, didn’t she have a couple of civil wars, too? Wouldn’t she have had a better chance of winning if she hadn’t hated herself worse than she hated her enemies? Seems that way to me.

One more. When the Aeneans conquered Lokris, how did they do it? Weren’t the Lokrians squabbling among themselves and with the Kingdom of Fyrom to the north? (The Lokrians claim the Fyromians were really Lokrian, too-just country cousins, you might say. These days, Fyrom is split among Lokris, Vlachia, and Plovdiv. Factions again, which argues that the Lokrians might be right.) Didn’t some Lokrians invite the Aeneans in to help their side? And didn’t the Aeneans pay them back by gobbling up all of Lokris one city-state at a time? If you look at it the right way, didn’t the Lokrians have it coming?

I asked our peerless skipper where the Quay of the Red-Figure Winecup was. He shrugged, which made the gilded fringe on his epaulets bounce up and down. I asked a couple of sailors who spoke Hassocki. One pointed east, the other west. It didn’t matter. The Halcyon was bound to have sailed. Since it was crewed by Lokrians, too, normally I would have assumed it was also running late. But that would have been convenient for us, so I didn’t believe it for a minute.

Then I asked the captain how to find the Quay of the Poxed Trollop. He gave me excellent, precise, detailed instructions. Somehow, I was less than astonished. If anyone was likely to know all there was to know about poxed trollops, our captain was the man.

“The Gamemeno isn’t supposed to go out for a while,” Max said. “You should ask him to recommend a hostel.”

I didn’t care for that. “No, thanks,” I said. “I want to go to a place where I won’t need a mage to kill bedbugs and fleas-and maybe crabs, too-afterwards.” I remembered the trollop one more time, and what might go with her.

We took our duffels off the Keraunos and got away from the misnamed ship as fast and as far as we could. Two large men-and Max is almost two large men all by himself-are safe enough by daylight almost anywhere. We waved down a cab. The hackman spoke some Narbonese. “Best hostel?” he said when I inquired. “The Narbo, without a doubt. But you pay there, sir-you pay.”

“What’s pretty good and costs a third as much?” was my next question.

We ended up at a place called Papa Ioannakis’. It was three blocks away from the Narbo. The big, fancy hostel blocked its view of Fortress Hill. But it was clean, it was comfortable, and you didn’t feel a vampire sinking its fangs into your purse and sucking out your silver.

The real Papa Ioannakis was a priest who fought the Hassocki and ended up dead before his time for his troubles. I neglected to point this out to Max. If he stayed ignorant of the fine points of Lokrian history-well, he did, that’s all. I preferred ignorance to babbling about evil omens, which is what I would have got if he knew that.

“Not bad,” I said, sprawling out on my bed.

“It would be better if we had some money coming in,” Max said.

“We’ve got enough.” Odds are I sounded irritable. I felt irritable. “If you want to go stand on a street corner and swallow your sword in front of an upside-down hat, go right ahead. I don’t feel like turning backflips just so I can buy myself an extra mug of wine-thanks all the same. If this goes off the way I hope it will, I’ll never have to turn another backflip as long as I live.”

“If this doesn’t go off the way you hope it will, you’ll never turn another backflip, either,” Max pointed out. “But you won’t live long.”

I didn’t argue with him. Life was too short. As a matter of fact, I wished that phrase hadn’t occurred to me so soon after his raven’s croak of doom. I wasn’t about to admit that, though, either to him or to myself. And I was glad all the way down to my toes that I hadn’t told him the story of Papa Ioannakis.

The hostel named for the late, lamented Lokrian priest had a pretty fair eatery across the lobby from the front desk. The waiter, a fussy little man in an ill-fitting formal jacket and a cravat that looked as if a strangler had knotted it, spoke enough Narbonese to get by. He beamed when we ordered local specialties: Max chose capon cooked with lemon, while I had grape leaves stuffed with ground lamb and rice. Mine were quite tasty, and Max turned his capon into bones fast enough to persuade me that he enjoyed his. The menu offered foreign dishes, too, but the native fare was half as expensive and probably twice as good. The cook knew what he was doing with it; he wasn’t trying to imitate some other kingdom’s style.

After a much better night than the two we’d spent aboard the Keraunos, we climbed Fortress Hill to look at the famous ruins there. Yes, it’s something everybody does. Yes, practically everybody we saw up there was from Schlepsig or the Dual Monarchy or Narbonensis or Albion. (The Lokrians take their ruins for granted. They’d have a lot more of them if they hadn’t torn some down to reuse the building stone.) But when were we going to be in Lakedaimon again? If the Two Prophets were kind, never.

And, even if everybody goes to see the ruins, there’s a good reason: They’re worth seeing. Take Cytherea’s temple, for instance. You can’t see the thirty-five-foot gold-and-ivory statue of the love goddess the Lakedaimonians put in it; one gang of barbarians or another stole it a long time ago. But the temple itself still is-and deserves to be-famous for its lines. You’ve all looked at woodcuts or those clever little spells that make a pair of pictures join together in your sight so you see not two pictures but one with real depth. Well, the difference between those and the real thing is about the same as the difference between a journal story about a pork-and-cabbage casserole and a big helping of the casserole itself.