The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [6]
"No fussy western songs!" Rana pounded her fist on the table. "Play us a proper Altumbel tune! Something we can sing along with!" More shouts joined hers. Tycho smiled.
"Fine with me, Rana. If you sing, people will throw me coin to drown you out!" Laughter washed around the room and Tycho sang out. "Old Raren had a daughter fair, a pretty maid with golden hair, and her heart was full of good until she met-"
"-the king of piiiirrates!" bawled the crowd. Tycho laughed and began to play.
***
Partially obscured by a veil of cloud and silvery streams of snow blowing down from on high, the moon cast pale light across the shacks, storehouses, and tenements of the Spandeliyon waterfront. The silhouettes of taller houses and a solid fortress stood a short ways inland, away from the stinking docks, but the town was quite obviously an unplanned jumble. Its buildings were like driftwood cast up on shore by the near-constant sea wind, ready to be scoured away by the next storm.
How Spandeliyon managed to survive storms was, in fact, almost puzzling-from farther out on the Sea of Fallen Stars, the whole of the peninsula of Altumbel presented a profile not that dissimilar to a barely submerged reef.
Kuang Li Chien drew the heavy quilted wool of his waitao coat more tightly around himself and watched the docks of the town draw closer. The small crew of the fat little ship on which he had taken passage scrambled around him, making the ship ready for docking. Up near the bow, the captain was shouting at the shore. After a moment, a door opened in one of the shacks on the dockside. A stout figure emerged in a flood of warm light and stumped up to the edge of the dock to squint into the dark and shout back. Li narrowed his eyes and listened, picking out the foreign words.
"Steth? Steth, is that you, you old-" The trade language of the west was simple enough, but some of it still gave Li difficulty. He couldn't quite understand the phrase that the dockmaster used, but he guessed that it was not very flattering. "What are you doing? Daylight not good enough for you or have you gone back to your old habits?"
The ship's captain replied with a rapid string of curses, most of which Li also missed. He understood the captain's final words well enough, though. "-passenger who wouldn't let me rest until we docked!"
"A passenger for Spandeliyon?" asked the dockmaster. "At this time of year?" Captain Steth's response was another incomprehensible rattle of blasphemy that sent the dockmaster running into his shack. He emerged with a torch, shouted back at the captain, and began lighting lanterns at the dockside. The ship turned, slowing to a glide in the icy black water. Li swayed with the heavy bump as it nudged against the dock. A rope was thrown down to the dockmaster, who looped it around a mooring post, and the ship swayed out then shifted back, restrained. More ropes were thrown down and made fast, and slowly the ship settled into a gentle rise and fall beside the dock. A port in the ship's rail was swung open and a gangplank run out. Li picked up his pack and made his way over to the plank and down onto the dock. None of the crew got in his way.
Steth was already down and talking to the dockmaster. Both men looked up as Li stepped into the lantern light. The dockmaster's eyes went wide then narrow, and he shot a glance at the captain. "You didn't say he was an elf! Bringing an elf-blood to Spandeliyon? You are mad!"
Li's jaw tightened. His smooth skin, fine features, and tapered eyes had earned him this reaction elsewhere in rfhe west, though not with this hostility. The captain saved him from having to explain himself-he dealt the dockmaster a sharp blow to the back of his head. "He's not an elf!" he hissed. "Haven't you ever seen a Shou before, Cul?"
The dockmaster managed to look startled once more. "From Thesk? Like one of those eastern Tuigan horde riders?"
Li drew a sharp breath, stood straight and returned the dockmaster's gaze. "I am not a