A voice behind a door told them to enter. It belonged to a tall man with white hair, whose black fuzzy eyebrows leaped up a long face when he saw that his visitors were women. He did not rise, but cast a half-regretful glance at the sheet of computations on a leaf let down from the wall before him. The letter he at first held far away as though it were an affiction of proclamation; when he grasped its purport and had seen the signature, he rose, all courtesy. “Aye, hands must wash face,” he said. “I trust you left Ser Kimred well? Will you be having a little wine?”
Dame Domijaiek excused herself, since she must return to her child, but as she embraced Lalette farewell, the girl felt thrust into her hand a little cloth pouch with coins in it, and was suddenly at the edge of weeping. When she turned, Ser Brog had set out a pair of pewter cups and was drawing the cork from a bottle of wine. He bowed her to the single chair, himself taking the edge of the built-in bed, which was so hedged about by cabinets that he must bend.
He said; “So you are seeking a sea-voyage, Demoiselle Issensteg?” (This was the name the letter had given her.) “Are you one of the inland Issenstegs from Veierelden? I hear there have been troubles in that region.”
(Was he trying to draw her into indiscretion, and how much did he really know of her origin and purpose?) She said that she was not of the Veierelden branch and waited. He asked her politely whether she had had a joyous festival and were a good sailor. When she said that she had not been at sea before, his face took on some concern, and he regretted that the captain’s wife, who usually sailed with them, would not do so this voyage. There were no other women aboard. He would provide her with a bell for summoning someone when needed—“not that you will be molested, demoiselle, but I will say the third mate is as strange—as a dog with two heads.”
With this, Ser Brog finished his wine and rose to light her to a duplicate of his own tiny cabin. She decided she had been mistaken about the question, he was only expressing interest in the friend of a friend. It was nice not to have to be afraid. An hour or so later, as she sat curled up on the bed, but not yet disrobed, came a demonstration of how well the Amorosians cared for their own. A knock on the door turned into a porter with a neatly-strapped small trunk, painted with her assumed name. It held an assortment of body-linens, shoes and a dress in her size, new and of good quality.