The houses are high,
spreading buildings with many rooms and wide windows. The poorer sort
were made of sun-dried brick, the more imposing being cut from the
bleached salt stone of the cliffs that rise behind the city.
News travels fast in the Dry-towns. If Rakhal were in the city, he'd
soon know that I was here, and guess who I was or why I'd come. I might
disguise myself so that my own sister, or the mother who bore me, would
not know me. But I had no illusions about my ability to disguise myself
from Rakhal. He had created the disguise that was me.
When the second sun set, red and burning, behind the salt cliffs, I knew
he was not in Shainsa, but I stayed on, waiting for something to happen.
At night I slept in a cubbyhole behind a wineshop, paying an inordinate
price for that very dubious privilege. And every day in the sleepy
silence of the blood-red noon I paced the public square of Shainsa.
This went on for four days. No one took the slightest notice of another
nameless man in a shabby shirtcloak, without name or identity or known
business.
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