The captain’s offer of passage to Sidya in exchange for my work turned out to be no great bargain for either of us. I spent most of the voyage being seasick. I rendered up what seemed to be every morsel of food I had eaten during my entire lifetime. At least, I provided good-natured merriment for the crew. They assured me they had never seen a living human being turn such a bright shade of green.

Our little cockleshell of a boat leaked so much I was amazed it floated. I helped as best I could with the endless bailing. When the wind died and the sail hung limp as a dishrag, I lent a hand at the oars. Sometimes we made no headway at all. I doubted I would ever set foot on dry land.

Seeing me in despair, the captain promised landfall the next day. I had noticed he never consulted his compass or any other navigating device. How, I asked, could he be sure? He pointed upward.

“The sun. The stars. Better than any of your fancy compasses. Above all, this.” He tapped his nose. “Every port has its own stench. Set me blindfolded in a rowboat, I’d make my way straight to Sidya. No mistake. I smell it already.”

He was right. After a time, I, too, sniffed an odor in the wind. Not, as I expected, the heady aroma of precious spices. More like garbage. And we did, in fact, reach Sidya Harbor late the next afternoon. As we tied up at the dock, I made ready to climb the stone steps from the landing stage to the quay. The captain held me a moment by the elbow.

“Tell me, lad,” he said confidentially. “Ever thought of following the mariner’s trade?”

I answered that I hadn’t really considered it.

“Take an old sea dog’s advice,” he said. “Don’t.”

Even so, we parted company on good terms. Despite the wreckage of my digestive equipment, and not remembering when last I had a night’s sleep, once on solid ground I felt in fine fettle and eager spirits. However, the din along the quayside split my ears and rattled my brains. I was hardly able to collect my wits, let alone decide what next to do.

If Magenta was a bustling port, Sidya bustled a dozen times louder and faster. Never had I seen so many comings and goings, embarkings and debarkings, sailors, dock hands, merchants in turbans and long robes or garbed in the fashion of my own part of the world. And all shouting at the top of their voices—not in their mother tongues but in trade-lingo.

Cobbled together from just about every language, trade-lingo was common coin where goods and money changed hands. Not only in all ports, but from Marakand, throughout the Land of Keshavar, the Road of Golden Dreams, and beyond the borders of Cathai.

Idling around Magenta harbor, I had picked up a good bit of it. (In time, I came to patter the lingo as well as anyone; and spoke it as if by second nature.)

At the moment, however, I was not concerned with trade-lingo but with saving my neck. Barely had I taken two paces when a mighty army of street urchins besieged me. They wore hardly enough rags among them to put together one suit of clothes. I first thought they meant to murder and rob me then and there in broad daylight. They had higher ambitions.

Pulling and pushing me in all directions, they implored me—for the sake of my comfort, well-being, and the health of my immortal soul—to follow them to one inn or another. I later learned they scraped out a living by hustling travelers to these lodging houses; for which service they received a coin or two as commission.

The choice was not mine to make, the decision taken out of my hands when yet another ragamuffin appeared. Taller than the rest, nearly my own height, this new arrival scattered the army like so many ninepins and shooed them away when they tried to regroup.

“Do not listen to them,” warned the newcomer. “They are shameless liars and riffraff.” Every bit as ragged and grimy as the others, the youngster sported a head cloth that looked as if it had wrapped countless generations of previous heads. “Bless your good fortune I came in time to save you from being cheated. I shall be taking you to the finest lodgings in Sidya.”

Quick as a conjuring trick, this individual relieved me of my shoulder bag. My cloak would have joined it if I hadn’t wrestled it away.

Since my bag had already been kidnapped, and seeing not much difference among the urchins, I thought I could do no worse than to follow this one.

“My name is Khargush. ‘Rabbit,’ as you would call it,” my self-appointed benefactor went on. “And you, mirza, will be grateful and thank me generously.”

Rabbit, I noticed, used the respectful address “mirza,” all the while towing me disrespectfully along one of the streets leading from the dockside. I appreciated the courtesy.

“The Joyful Garden of Happy Travelers,” Rabbit continued. “There is no inn like it. You shall have the biggest room in the house and live like a king.”

My guide—or abductor—chattered on about the luxuries in store for me: the sumptuous meals, the delights of the hammam, which I understood to be some kind of sweat bath or steam chamber.

If this Joyful Garden of Happy Travelers turned out half as good as he claimed, my journey would have begun well. And Rabbit, under the various layers of grime, seemed a likable sort.

At last, running out of attractions to praise, my conductor added:

“Wherever else your journey takes you, mirza, you will not forget your days there. Your home away from home. Indeed, many of you ferenghis lodge with us.”

The word ferenghi, I knew, applied to any Westerner. Not an especially complimentary term, it was common usage. I took no offense. Still, I bridled a little, hearing it applied to myself. I could not help replying, in a bantering tone:

“Well, now, Messire Rabbit, I’m glad to have made your acquaintance and I thank you for all your heartfelt concern. I ask, only out of passing curiosity, what makes you so sure I’m a ferenghi?”

Rabbit grinned. “Mirza, you smell like one.”

I let that pass. We had come into the courtyard of a rambling structure of timber and mud brick. A balcony ran the length of the upper story. I glimpsed sheds, outbuildings, and, judging by the aroma, stables.

Rabbit ushered me inside. If someone had put the port of Sidya under one roof, the effect, as far as noise and confusion were concerned, would have been the same. Rabbit motioned toward a large alcove. There, the landlord bent over a wooden counter barricaded with piles of account books and cash boxes.

I first thought to ask his professional opinion and advice on how best to make my way to Marakand. I decided to put that off for a quieter moment when I could hope for his closer attention. My turbaned, heavily-bearded host was overoccupied in dealing with arriving and departing guests. He barely had time to accept my payment for several days in advance, flick the beads of an abacus to calculate the exchange rate of my Magentan currency, subtract his commission, scribble an unreadable receipt, and note the transaction in one of his ledgers—all of which he did with lightning speed—and wave me away.

Rabbit led me up a rickety flight of stairs to a long, open-sided gallery. At the far end, a door hung ajar, relaxed on one hinge. I ransomed my bag with a couple of the coins I had received in change—probably too much, for I had no idea what they were worth.

Rabbit showered me with blessings, more salaams and gestures of gratitude than the situation required—which made me suspect I had, in fact, vastly overpaid—and then vanished, leaving me to fend for myself.

My sea voyage, though relatively short, had exhausted me. My muscles began aching all at once, the aftereffects of rowing and bailing. My stomach, thoroughly emptied, growled and grumbled. I could hardly keep my eyes open.

I squeezed my way through the sagging door and stepped gladly into my room.