“Is that where we gave that man a boat?” Alorria called, pointing.

“Yes,” Tobas called back.

Gresh decided not to even ask about that. He did peer off to the south, though, and glimpsed the ocean in the distance, glinting in the afternoon sun.

They must be past the peninsula that held the Pirate Towns. Tobas’s alleged home must have been near the eastern boundary. That meant it was only another fifteen leagues or so to Ethshar of the Sands, perhaps even less.

Gresh had been to both the other Ethshars before, in the course of his business, but by ship, rather than flying carpet. Carpet was definitely faster, but all in all, he thought he preferred to take a few days to go by ship.

And the journey to Ethshar of the Spices, and then across the Gulf of the East to the Small Kingdoms, was almost twice as far.

While they were in Ethshar of the Sands, Gresh decided, he would unpack enough to get out a book to read. He had brought a few histories, written by various court scholars in the Small Kingdoms, in hopes that by balancing out the various patriotic lies he could glean some useful information about the region’s past. He had on occasion traveled the Great Highway across the northern end of the Small Kingdoms to Shan on the Desert, and he had taken ship up the river to Ekeroa, but he had never before actually set foot in Dwomor or any of its immediate neighbors. The existing maps and reports invariably reflected their makers’ biases as much as any physical reality.

He had originally thought he would be reading his books in bed by candlelight, but now he thought otherwise. It had not occurred to him when he was packing that riding a carpet would be a good time to read, but now he could not think of a better use of his travel time.

At least the sun was behind them now; for the start of the flight it had been in their eyes.

Behind him Alris started crying again-all in all she was a well-behaved baby, but four hours of wind would be wearing on anyone, and of course every baby cried sometimes. Gresh glanced over his shoulder.

“Give her to me!” Alorria said, turning. Karanissa had been holding the baby, giving Alorria’s arms a rest, but quickly handed her back to her mother. Gresh suspected that she was perfectly happy to unload the squalling little nuisance.

Alorria bounced the child for a moment, cuddling her, then said unnecessarily, “She’s hungry!”

Gresh had figured that much out from Alris’s gestures and expression, and he knew very little about infants-he had handled his youngest sisters and a few of his nieces and nephews on occasion, but never taken a great interest in them. He politely turned his gaze forward again as Alorria unbuttoned her tunic to take care of the situation.

“What do you plan to do when we reach Dwomor?” Tobas asked him, shouting over the wind.

“Find the mirror,” Gresh said.

“Yes, of course, but how?”

“That’s my business.”

“Well, yes, but…”

“Tobas,” Gresh interrupted, “I’ll find it. Leave the details to me.”

Had they been safely on the ground he might have been less abrupt, but the truth was Gresh didn’t know exactly how he was going to find the mirror. He would improvise, as he usually did. Telling a customer that would be bad business, though.

He glanced over to the right; the ocean was plainly visible now, and the coastline was sandy beaches. It couldn’t be terribly much farther to Ethshar of the Sands. He peered forward, into the distance, hoping to glimpse the Great Lighthouse or the towers of Grandgate, but as yet he could see no sign of them.

He shifted in his seat, adjusting his legs to keep them from getting stiff; the carpet soared smoothly onward, undisturbed by his movement. A small boat or spring-mounted wagon would have rocked, but whatever magic kept the carpet in the air was not bothered by such things.

He wondered why carpets were the traditional way to use Varrin’s Lesser Propulsion. It would make more sense to use boats or wagons, which already had seats and sides, and would be harder to fall off. Why not build things specifically designed to fly through the air, with solid sides, and perhaps a transparent panel of some sort at the front to block the wind and keep the bugs off the luggage? Admittedly, you wouldn’t be able to roll those up and store them in a closet, but was that really so important? Even just enchanting a sofa instead of a carpet would be more comfortable, and that could be used on the ground readily enough; it wouldn’t need any special storage.

But no, wizards always used carpets. It was traditional. It was what people expected, so it was what wizards did. Wizards were very fond of tradition.

Of course, one reason for that, he had to admit, was that the traditional ways of doing things were known to be relatively safe. Carpets worked; they didn’t explode or run away or eat people or argue with their owners. There was a lot to be said for that. It might just be that when Varrin invented the spell, hundreds of years ago, he had first cast it on a carpet, and everyone had used it on carpets ever since simply because that was known to work.

Not that terribly many people used it at all; it wasn’t a simple spell. Gresh doubted there were more than a hundred functioning flying carpets in the World, and some of them, like the one he was on, were decades old.

Still, you’d think some eager young wizard would experiment a little. Maybe he would ask Dina about it when he got home, suggest that there might be good money in making flying craft a little more sensible than carpets. He had a momentary vision of swarms of sky-boats zipping around above the city, or flying caravans replacing merchants’ ships…

The Wizards’ Guild might not like that. The merchants and shipwrights and ship chandlers might have reservations about it, too. And homeowners might be a bit wary about large heavy objects overhead, for that matter. He vaguely recalled hearing something about how Varrin’s Greater Propulsion, which in bygone days had lifted entire castles and ships and kept them aloft indefinitely, was considered too dangerous to be used by anyone without special Guild approval exactly because sometimes the things did fall, with very unfortunate effects on whatever happened to be underneath.

So any plans for marketing sky-craft would require caution-but still, it shouldn’t be impossible to sell a few.

Behind him he heard Alorria cooing, and then a surprisingly loud belch from Alris. He resisted the temptation to look back, and instead stared ahead over Tobas’s shoulder, looking for Ethshar of the Sands.

There, at last, he could see the conical turret atop the Great Lighthouse, and then the crenellations around the lamp itself, peeping above the horizon, still tiny in the distance. A little to the left was an almost imperceptible flicker of red that was the banner atop Grandgate. Gresh smiled.

The remainder of the journey went much more quickly. Having their eventual goal in sight helped immensely, even when Tobas insisted on taking a small detour to the north instead of flying over the central portion of the city. He refused to explain why beyond saying, “It’s not safe to fly over the palace anymore.”

Gresh didn’t think a direct path would have brought them within half a mile of the palace dome in any case, but it didn’t really matter. He watched with pleasure as they skimmed along twenty feet above the top of the city wall, looping aside to miss the guard tower at Northgate, then swinging out over the Wall Street Field and the rooftops of Northangle, before finally descending onto a street he did not recognize, a few blocks from Grandgate’s north tower.

The carpet came to a stop a yard in the air, just as it had in front of Gresh’s own shop in Ethshar of the Rocks, and Tobas half-jumped, half-tumbled off the front, then turned and stood, looking uncertainly at Gresh.