"Lar? Sir?" he called, as he rapped on the wood again. He tried the latch, but the door was locked. He groped for an appropriate title for an ambassador, and called, "Your excellency?"

Still no response. He dropped his hand to his purse – the possibility that those coins weren't really silver at all, but some lesser substance enhanced by a bit of magic, had finally occurred to him. He frowned.

If that was the case, well… all he had really lost was a day's work, give or take a few hours, and a little of his self-respect. He could stand that. At least he hadn't bragged about his new job to anyone; by the time he had gotten Lar settled in the Crooked Candle, answered hundreds of questions about the city, discussed rents and wages, and carefully gone over the plans for today, he hadn't felt like talking to anyone else. He had eaten supper with Lar downstairs here, then gone back to his attic room in the tangle of uncertainly-named streets behind Canal Square, where he had looked over the foreign silver carefully, gotten out his best clothes to air overnight, and then gone to bed early, so as to get an early start today.

He had spoken to his landlady in passing, on his way up to his room, mentioning that he had a new job that might force him to move out, but he didn't think he had told her anything that would embarrass him. He hadn't run into any of his friends or family.

And today he had breakfasted with the ambassador here at the inn, then set out on his business. He had not told the owner of the house in Allston who his employer was, merely that it was a foreigner with business at the Palace.

He had told the guard at the Palace the whole story about the Vondish ambassador, but he could live with that.

"Are you looking for the man with the red coat and the fancy hat?" someone asked.

Startled, Emmis turned to find a young woman standing at the top of the stair. "Uh?" he said.

"The foreigner with the plumed hat," she said. "Are you looking for him?"

"Yes," Emmis answered.

"He went out about an hour ago. I'm not sure when he's coming back, but he left all his things, so I'm sure he'll be back eventually."

Emmis glanced at the locked door, then back at the young woman, who, he realized, was wearing a beer-stained white apron and had her hair tucked up under a mobcap. "Oh," he said. "Do you work here, then?"

"Sometimes. My uncle owns the inn, and I help out when he's short-handed."

"You're sure he'll be back?" he said, nodding toward the door.

"He didn't take his belongings, so I'd say so, yes."

Emmis's hand squeezed his purse; the silver, if it was really silver, was still there. And the girl said Lar's luggage was safe inside the room.

Lar was probably real after all, and he had been worrying about nothing. The ambassador had surely just gone out on an errand of some sort, perhaps to buy a few things in Shiphaven Market.

Not that Emmis had seen him when he had passed through the market a few minutes before. "Did he say where he was going?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. Not a word."

For a moment Emmis stood silently staring at her, trying to think of something useful to ask her, but nothing came to mind.

The girl stared back. "The other foreigners might know something," she said at last.

Emmis blinked. "Other foreigners?"

"Downstairs, eating lunch," she said. "Four of them."

"Are they Vondish, too?"

She turned up both palms. "I have no idea," she said. "I just know they're foreigners from the way they talk."

"Oh." He took a final look at the locked door, then said, "Could you introduce me, perhaps? My name's Emmis of Shiphaven."

"Of course. My name's Gita, by the way. Come on." She turned and beckoned, and led him back down to the common room.

The four foreigners were three men and a woman, seated at a large table to one side of the room. The woman was middle-aged and full-figured, wearing a white blouse embroidered in two shades of blue; the men wore brown cloaks with hoods thrown back. All four had the dark hair and dark complexions common in the far south, but were otherwise unremarkable.

Gita took his hand and led Emmis directly to them.

Emmis was unsure what they had been doing when he first entered the room, whether they had been talking amongst themselves or not, but the moment Gita started toward them they had all turned and stared silently at her approach, and at Emmis behind her. That did not strike him as entirely normal behavior, but after all, they were foreigners, and couldn't be expected to have any manners.

Then the woman smiled at him, and while she was at least a decade older than he was and no great beauty to begin with, that at least made him feel less like an intruder. "Gita, my dear," she said, speaking Ethsharitic with a truly barbarous accent, "is this the young man you told us about?"

"Annis, this is Emmis of Shiphaven," the innkeeper's niece said with a curtsey, and Emmis suddenly found himself thrust forward, and his hand released.

The three men still hadn't moved or spoken, but the woman waved at a vacant chair. "Have a seat, Emmis of Shiphaven!" Her accent was thicker than Lar's, but Emmis did not think it was the same; she spoke her vowels through her nose. While she was obviously from the Small Kingdoms, he didn't think she was from the same one that had produced the Vondish ambassador.

There was clearly something going on here that he didn't understand, but none of these people looked particularly dangerous, and no one was likely to do anything violent here in a public house. Warily, keeping his eyes on the woman, Emmis sat down.

"I am Annis the Merchant," the foreign woman said. "I hope you don't mind that I sent Gita upstairs to see if you would join us."

Emmis gave the innkeeper's niece a quick glance, but she was hurrying away toward the kitchen, carefully not looking at him.

"Ah," Emmis said. "You did that?" Gita had done an excellent job of getting him here without mentioning that she had been sent to find him.

"Yes. And of course you want to know why."

"Well, yes."

"Of course. You would be a fool not to wonder, and I'm sure you are not a fool." She smiled again. "Are you?"

Emmis did not care to answer that. "Who are you people?" he asked. "What do you want with me?"

"I told you, I am Annis the Merchant. These three are, if I have the names right, Neyam, Morkai, and Hagai, all of them from Lumeth of the Towers."

The three men shifted at the sound of their names, and it occurred to Emmis that they might not understand Ethsharitic. They gave no sign they were following the conversation. Emmis did not think he had ever heard of Lumeth of the Towers, which meant it was almost certainly one of the Small Kingdoms. Emmis did not know much about the lands outside the city walls, but he was fairly sure he had at least heard a mention of every nation outside the Small Kingdoms, from Kerroa to Shan on the Desert, or from the Pirate Towns to Srigmor.

But he hadn't heard of all the Small Kingdoms simply because there were too many.

"And where are you from?" Emmis asked. "You don't sound Vondish, and I notice you said they were from Lumeth, not we are."

"Ah, not a fool at all! I am from Ashthasa, on the South Coast."

Emmis had heard of Ashthasa, and even met a few Ashthasan sailors, and now that she said the name, her accent did seem to fit, and her coloring was dark enough. She might be telling the truth.

One of the Lumethans said something in what sounded like Trader's Tongue, and Annis made a quick, brief reply. Emmis thought she was telling him to shut up until he had been introduced, but Emmis's command of Trader's Tongue was almost as weak as he had told Lar it was, and Annis spoke Trader's Tongue with that same thick Ashthasan accent she had in Ethsharitic, so he was not at all sure of his interpretation.