With every step they took down the ridge, Alia grew a little more panicky. Everything had looked so far away, but now it was as though the harbor was rushing toward them as fast as they walked toward it. She spent half her time craning her neck off to the right, trying to catch any glimpse of Beldara, and the other half peering around like a startled rabbit.
There were people now, just a few at first and then a thicker stream of wagon traffic. Some of them looked familiar, like any Beldaran citizen, but others wore brighter clothing and had exotic flags strung along their traces. Kit seemed to soak it all in, calling cheerful greetings at all the passers-by, and waving to the children who came and clustered at the fences that ringed their houses.
She tried to calm down by remembering her classes about Rijobo, but that was all so distant that she couldn't think of anything. And it certainly didn't help when Kit was practically skipping along.
The first inkling of trouble came that night when they made camp--not that she recognized it then. They laid their bedrolls in a small grassy meadow, alongside three or four other groups of travellers, and as Alia took advantage of the nearby stream to make a kettle of soup, Kit slipped off to laugh among the others.
As always, she felt a pang of jealousy and curiosity. How did he do that? When anyone walked by their fire, they looked at Alia as though she were some sort of odd curiosity, but Kit got smiles and greetings from the very same people. She stirred extra vigorously at the soup, feeling irritated and alone. The smell of multiple campfires drifted on a cool breeze, laced with the scent of cooking meat, but this just made her miss the tribespeople and their smoky cavern. At least there, Adir and Nikka and Liandra had talked to her.
Sleep came hard that night--either because Kit hadn't reappeared beside her in his bed roll, or because the many sounds of humanity drifted noticeably on the night air, unfamiliar after so long in the desert. Alia tried not to dwell on which reason it might be.
The next day, they reached the harbor.
The buildings here were an odd amalgamation of styles. Some were stucco, as they'd been in Eastgate, some wooden, and some made of stacked stone. The roofs were flat or peaked, and while some were familiar wood or tile, others were made of odd-looking woven rushes. Kit said the roofs in Southgate were the same, but Alia found them especially suspicious, a feeling that did not improve when she saw birds burrowing in and out of a particularly unkempt one.
It was an odd sort of town, if you could even call it one. Southgate stood less than a day's journey to the north--though Alia couldn't see it, even squinting and standing on her tiptoes--and there was a Rijobish town that she kept forgetting the name of to the southeast. The harbor was populated mostly by inns, markets, and the people who ran them. It was closer to a giant marketplace than anything else.
Kit was in a joking sort of mood this morning, but in a distracted way. Twice already he'd forgotten that he was talking to her mid-joke and stopped to banter with a girl attending a market stall or a man with a fine horse. Each time, Alia bit her lip, and the pit of anxiety in her swelled further. It didn't help that they'd both agreed her Beldaran clothes would draw fewer stares here than the linen of the tribespeople, and she was constantly tripping over her skirts.
They passed through the outer ring of buildings quickly, moving from mud roads to cobblestones, and the inns and shops grew so thick their walls nearly touched. Alia was distracted by a distant rushing sound that she couldn't place, which vibrated ominously in her stomach, but Kit walked with a purpose and it was easy enough to follow his bright tangled curls through the crowd.
Then, all at once, they were spilling through an archway amid a thick press of people, and before her was a vast stone courtyard.
Beyond it was the sea.
Alia forgot everything else, drawn forward to the edge of the courtyard as though someone had anchored a line in her breastbone. She slipped through the crowds of merchants, sailors, and customers single-mindedly, not even noticing the scent of body odor and foreign perfumes.
The wind was cold and strong, filled with the smell of fish and something damp and enormous. To her left, what seemed a hundred ships bobbed gently, tall masts dancing on the horizon, but Alia barely glanced at them. It was the height of three men from the stone where she walked to the water, and she leaned incautiously over the knee-high stone wall to peer at it.
It was gentle and quiet, not what she'd expected--a glassy green-teal color, impenetrable to the eyes, and it only shimmied back and forth, making the occasional slapping sound against the wall. A wall, or rather, a pile of boulders filled in with sand, stretched out from the edge of the courtyard, extending forward and then cutting across the distant edge of the water.
For one stupid moment, she thought that line of stones was the edge of the ocean--and then her mind suddenly adjusted to the view and she saw the real sea beyond it. Everything seemed to freeze for a minute, blood thudding to a halt in her veins, eyes incapable of moving, and then a heavy hand landed on her shoulder.
Alia spun around, half-expecting Kit, but it was a swarthy, short man, nearly as wide as he was tall. He looked like his complexion had started a similar color to hers, but been baked a red-brown color from far too much time in the sun. "You never see l'oceano before, yes?" He grinned at her in a friendly way, pulling at the heavy looking gold hoop in his left earlobe.
"Um... no," Alia said, recognizing that this must be the Rijobish word for ocean. She felt uncertain and suddenly embarrassed at the way she was gaping.
"I see them like you before," he said. "Here, you come this way, you see the real oceano."
He gestured impatiently somewhere behind her, and Alia looked around, not sure whether to trust him. Kit was nowhere to be seen, though, and the man before her didn't seem threatening.
"Ah, not sure?" he asked. "Is good to be cautious, but I take you just to see the beach over there. No problems. And then maybe you come back, you buy le conchiloj, the seashells most beautiful from Carlo. Treasure of le sirenoj, the mermaids, for your family, yes?"
"Um," Alia said again, eyes prickling, "I don't think I'll be seeing my family for a long time. But I would like to see the beach."
Carlo led her over past the rock wall to a steep set of stone stairs, only a short distance from where she'd been standing. He wove expertly through the press of people, while she stumbled and apologized often. "Here," he said, gesturing expansively. "You go down here, you will be on the beach. See l'oceano, then come back and buy treasures."
"Thank you," Alia said, peering at the stone stairway. The wind whistled audibly around its corners. Might this just be a trap? It would be simple enough to have a band of thieves just out of sight down the stairs--not that she had any money for them to take. All that was in her pack were the meager remnants of their food stores, her bedroll, and the Beldaran placard.
She looked back over her shoulder. Carlo was already gone, and Kit still hadn't appeared. If he was really concerned, he'd have come looking for her, and Alia didn't want to hang around the edges of the harbor all day waiting for him to reappear. Decisively, she started down the stairs.
They were mossy and narrow, her shoulders almost brushing the stone on either side as she started down. At a switchback fifteen steps down, she started to breathe easier when there was still no sign of an ambush. Another switchback and then she could see sand and rocks at the foot of the stairs, but still no ocean.
