Adam wrote:Bennedict sniffs a bit at the term "adventurers," but let's it pass without comment.
"These young ones are emigrating here to the city," he answers. "Their parents were lost in a gnoll raid. They are coming to live with an Aunt and Uncle, who we were told we could contact through your organization."
“If they do business here, yes.”
Once provided with the names, the factor consults a ledger.
“Ah, yes, I see!”
He arranges a ride along with wagons making a delivery. “We’ll shift the loads around a bit on the carts so you and your friends can ride, miss.”
Chara thanks him.
“It’s no trouble.”
The factor takes one of the cart drivers aside and says something to him about mentioning something or other to ‘Shipmaster Tarin’ and 'favor.'
The ride takes the party straight through the middle of the city, down a wide, stone highway with wagons, riders, and pedestrians passing east on one side and west on the pother.
Along the way, from the perches amid sacks and casks of grain in the back of the heavy wagon, the orphans gawk at the scenes of the big city.
The driver answers a few questions, but mostly he pays attention to the traffic ahead of him on the streets.
Selgaunt seems to have few ruins or derelict houses. The party passes half-a dozen worksites on the way toward the waterfront: laborers clambering on scaffolds as they repair old buildings or erect new ones.
They also see dozens of shops along the main concourse and up the many side street.
Hundreds of strangers…
A woman leaning out a stone house’s front door, shouting last-minute orders to a servant girl.
A boy walking a dog on a chain.
Two fighting-men in gambesons standing in close conversation, as a lad seated on an overturned barrel beside the men works on a short sword with a whetstone and oilcloth.
Harlots waving to Klokulf and Sir Clive from windows. One shows a bit of what she’s renting out.
Beggars with bowls lifted.
A man in a plumed hat reeling out of a public house, voices raised in song washing out with him.
Two girls with flashes of jewels at their necks peeking through the window of a passing sedan chair…
The further east the wagons roll, the heavier grows the smell of water, salt, and fish.
Gulls shriek, wheeling over the rooftops.
Presently, the party arrives at a long waterfront. Workers, passengers, crewmen swarm over the boardwalks and stone piers. Six big ships moored, and three more outbound on the bay with sails bellying in the stiff wind.
Many small boats.
The waggoneers make their delivery to one of the mid-sized vessels.
A tall man in well-cut but practical-looking garb, maybe forty years old, clambers down as soon as he sees Chara and her siblings with the party.
“Chara?”
He looks like a grown-up version of Chara’s brother, El.
Chara starts crying as soon as she sees him up close.
“Uncle Tarin!”
She runs and hugs him.
El, carrying Myra, joins her.
Tarin turns to the party after a few whispered words with his nieces and nephew.
“Thank you for bringing them safe to me, friends. I’d have come myself but I was at sea when Sorista got the word about my brother. Chara’s letter in reply arrived a little ahead of all of you.”
El walks over to look at the ship, standing on the pier.
''Wow!''
Tarin sends a runner to fetch his wife, and then invites the party to his home that evening for supper.
"Have you found lodgings?"
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)
