The carriage swayed and rolled out through streets that had grown quiet with the hour. Lamps hung low from doorways and cast thin coins of light on thresh and stair. Dogs nosed refuse and did not bark at the city guard. Far off, signal fires had burned themselves down to red bowls. A woman poured grey water from a second-floor balcony and paused when she saw the marked coach, her hand hanging as if the water were a rope she did not want to drop.
The group kept quiet until they reached the harbor district, where the stink of tar and new rope and old salt lay in the air despite the endless miles of sand that separated this city from real sea. The desert was its own ocean. They were led on foot by the captain through a forest of masts and tall poles and rigs that caught the dawn winds better than any sail. The harbor was a mouth where caravans entered and left on sled-keels rather than hulls, where shipwrights wore desert scarves and spoke of dunes as if they were waves.
