That night, after we'd loaded the Coldhold with most of the cargo that they'd bought from Emborin and Sons, I finally decided to indulge myself and went to have an early dinner at Engario's to have their highly recommended doughstrands.

It was absolutely delicious. The doughstrands were boiled, and then fried in beast fat with diced vauang and sharrods, fatty pieces of beast meat and mushrooms, with a dash of salt and ground green nigrum to taste. It was all I could do not to cry, it tasted so good.

Only my caution of the possibility we'd get waylaid on the way back to the docks kept me from eating until I was too full to move.

Afterwards, I took Cottsy, Yhorj and Multaw to have dinner at the Shady Stand, just leaning back with a meat dumpling as they ate. Tomorrow, I was going to be visiting our recruit candidates to see who needed help with packing and bringing their possessions to the Coldhold, so tonight I didn't have to work at listening for any possible people to recruit. Instead, I was able to just relax and talk to the people who came to sit with us, some of whom we'd met on previous nights.

"So, how's the search going for you, Rian?" Aran asked. He worked at a local papermaker's, something I'd wished I'd known before I'd placed an order with Ravia, but that was how life was.

"Pretty good, pretty good," I said cheerfully as I waited my cup of broth to cool. There was a little skim of oil on top, but I didn't mind. "We've found some good ones, and I'm checking up on them tomorrow. Thanks for the recommendation by the way, but they weren't interested."

"Ah, too bad," Aran's brother Golto said. He also worked at the papermaker's with his brother. "Still, glad to hear you've found someone to take back home with you. Most people wait until the ships come in with fresh blood to go recruiting. If you'd been here earlier in the spring, you might have had an easier time."

"I'll remember that for next time," I said, even as I wondered if there was some kind of schedule of boat arrivals. In hindsight, I probably should have asked. "Still, better safe than sorry. Wouldn't want to be caught by a dragon out at sea, after all."

The men at the table all nodded at that. Yes, no one wanted to be caught by a dragon at any time.

We left earlier than we usually did, as I didn't have to stay to talk to people about recommendations. It was actually a nice change of pace. The streets were still fairly full of people out and about, either heading home or stopping somewhere for dinner, and I felt fairly safe that we wouldn't be ambushed. Buying drinks for all those people the previous nights had been very obvious, and clearly a large expenditure. While I liked to think that the people I had shared a table and conversation with wouldn't deliberately spread word about me, the fact I had done the same thing again the next night, and then the night after that, and then the night after that…

Well, it was fairly obvious I had so many beads on me that I was willing to share them.

And doing so every night, at the same place, for the same length of time… well, it was predictable. It was easy to observe where we went when we left the Shady Stand. It was easy to count how many of us walked together, and therefore how many people it took to outnumber us. Every time we left the tavern, I lived in dread of it finally being the night that our luck ran out, and some toughs coming at us for the beads I was carrying. It was why we stuck to the wider streets, so that it would be harder for us to get hemmed in.

Fortunately, we didn't have to deal with that tonight either, though every walk back I feared this would be it. The four of us reached the relative safety of the docks, greeting the dockworkers patrolling the docks that night as we gave them a warm paper bag full of meat dumplings.

"We're going to miss this when you leave," Plet, the night dockmaster, said wistfully as the bag of dumplings was passed around. He and the night shift usually sat outside of their office to be take advantage of the breeze coming from the ocean. "Most of the people that dock here give us nothing but trouble."

"We'll be back then," I said cheerfully. "Thanks for all the hard work."

From what I had heard, while the docks had used to get a few gangs trying to get into the warehouses or make trouble for the new arrivals when a ship came in, the miscreants had gotten bolder since the incident when someone had set a warehouse on fire and stolen a ship. I'd been woken up by the men once when they'd heard a commotion at the dock entrance, which had turned out to be a gang trying to climb and get into the docks. The dockworkers had run them off, but one of them—Ryloi, if I remember correctly—had gotten hurt by a knife in the process.

The man had been fine two days later, soft pink flesh the only sign of the wound after a Deadspeaker had seen to him—the docks apparently had an arrangement with a local Deadspeaker for their workers—but it had certainly made the men more vigilant about keeping watch. They'd actually brought up perhaps taking the boat to sleep out in the open water again, though I'd eventually decided we were reasonably safe if we kept watch, and the time saved in the morning was worth it.

So when Cyuw woke me up in the middle of the night, I went into a controlled panic to wake myself up in case something was happening that I had to react to immediately, like a gang having set another warehouse on fire. "Wazapenin?" I eloquently managed to get out. The wisplight and air blower was near the back where it wouldn't shine on our eyes and could circulate air from the hatch, but there was enough illumination to sting my eyes as I opened them. One hand patted around me for either my new walking stick or my belt knife, the big one just barely not suited for chopping wood and undergrowth.

"Lord Rian, there's a boat coming towards us," Cyuw said, speaking quietly.

My hand felt the cane and I pulled it towards me as I blinked and tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes. "A… boat?" I said, trying to wrap around… Oh. I shook my head again and got to my feet. "Right, boat, boat… how close are they?" A boat coming towards us at this time of night— "Is it morning already?"

Cyuw shook his head. "Still the middle of the night, Lord Rian."

Right… a boat coming towards us at this time of night was probably some kind of mischief at best. If it was something malicious… "Go back up and get on top," I said, finally looking around for my knife instead of feeling for it. Where was…? Oh, right, it's under my pillow. "Make sure to stand somewhere they can see you and make it obvious you can see them." A paranoid thought occurred to me. "But be ready to get behind something if they have a weapon or…" Ugh, I was still sleep-stupid. "Be careful. I'll be right behind you."

"Do we wake up the others?" he asked.

"Be ready to, but not just yet. Let me see what's going on first." If it was something malicious…

I got to my feet and debated whether or not to put my boots on before deciding I didn't want to give Umu and Mikon more work to do by poking a hole in my socks. Quickly pulling on my footwear, I grabbed my cane in one hand and my knife in the other, heading towards the ladder and hatch at the back.

Then I had to leave my knife on top of the driver bound tool since I needed one hand free to climb the ladder up. The cold night air struck my face as I poked my head out of the deck, and I shivered a little, but the sudden shock helped push me a little further towards wakefulness. Once I stood on deck, I looked around. The moons were out in various degrees of fullness, giving me enough light to not worry about my footing as I looked out over the water, looking for—

Oh.

"Cyuw," I said, "I think I've told you all before, but just to be clear. If it's our size or bigger, it's a ship, if it's smaller, it's a boat. That's definitely a ship." I shook my head, rubbing my eyes again. "Uh, you can come down from there, I don't think they need to see you after—no, wait, put the wisplight where they can see it so they don't accidentally run into us!"

Fortunately, Cyuw was more awake than me, so he was able to act sensibly, taking the wisplight from downstairs—everyone was still asleep, and it was cool enough they didn't' really need the breeze it made—and hanging it up at the front of the ship while he took the one that cast light in a cone and hung it from the tiller so it cast its light over the rest of the Coldhold, making it more visible. By the time he was finished, I was awake enough to be able to actually put together analytical thought.

The ship was heading towards the dock, a vague outline of shadows and moonlight. Its sails hung like listless curtains as it moved slowly though the water, propelled either by a bound tool driver or a wizard. The ship's dimensions were difficult to ascertain, since it was still in the dark waters between the entrance to the cove and the docks, but I could see that its deck was higher than ours, standing above the roof of our cabin. The height, distance and darkness made it difficult to see what was going on, but I could make out shadows and lanterns moving along the edges of the deck as sailors looked out to make sure their ship didn't run into anything.

I watched as the ship came closer, shivering slightly at the wind. "I don't think we need to wake up the others, Cyuw," I said as the man moved to stand beside me, "but thanks for waking me. We should keep an eye out as they pass us, if only so we can react if it looks like they might get too close." The ship I'd been on had arrived in Covehold during the day, so they'd begun having us get off the ship shortly after we'd arrived, but it was the middle of the night right now. "Hopefully they'll let people sleep and not start unloading right away, but if they do… well, we'll have to make sure no one tries to get aboard our ship in the confusion."

Cyuw made a face as if contemplating something unpleasant. He was probably remembering something that had happened when we'd first gotten off the ship. "Yes, we wouldn't want any troublemakers getting near us," the man agreed.

I stifled a yawn. "I'll stay up with you until the end of your shift," I said, already foreseeing my suffering tomorrow from lack of sleep.

"No, you go back to sleep, Lord Rian," Cyuw said. "You need your rest for tomorrow. I'll wake up Yhorj instead. We'd not going out for salt because the new Deadspeaker might be joining us, so we can rest during the day."

I open my mouth argue, and that's when great yawn left it. It went on so long I'm lucky a bug didn't fly in my mouth. When I was done, Cyuw was giving me a smug look.

"Fine," I said. It was being woken up that was making me grumpy, not anything else! "But if there's any trouble…"

"Then I'll wake everyone up, Lord Rian, not just you," Cyuw assured me.

Yeah, that was probably smarter than what I was telling him to do.

Giving him a nod, I climbed back down the ladder and made my way back to my bedroll, laying my cane down beside me. As I put my head down on my pillow and closed my eyes, I heard Cyuw waking Yhorj up…

…

Wait, did I leave my knife on the driver?