While there were certainly few stranger ships prowling the Outer Sea than the Horizon Chaser, it had the advantage of being small. The mind that rebelled at the sight of what should, by all rights, be a three-masted galleon could content itself with the existence of a smaller craft that propelled itself without visible means.
Thus while it always attracted some degree of notice or attention, it could put in at a comparatively cosmopolitan place like Montport without attracting overmuch fuss. It was a remarkable ship in its strangeness, but there were ships arriving every day that were more remarkable in their size, or ostentation, or shadiness, or in some other quality.
From the moment Jace first saw Montport from the water, he had a feeling he had overestimated his abilities and underestimated the size and complexity of the city of Montport… it was so much more different from his only frame of reference that he couldn’t have hoped to have hoped to envision it on his own.
Keeper’s Cove was a ramshackle and sprawling town full of ramshackle and sprawling buildings. Montport was not only bigger, it was more squeezed in. The buildings were taller. Even those that crowded up against the harbor were stacked four and five stories… tall and skinny like trees, and the windows were glazed all the way up, not just on the ground floor or on the fancier ones. This density of urban growth filled a pair of horn-like promontories and the crescent moon between them, stretching up the steep slope inwards and covering the foothills of a volcanic peak.
But Jace had said he was capable and he meant to prove himself honest in that declaration. Katryn might not realize it yet, but her quest was his quest, too, and he would fulfill his part in it, no matter how humble it might be for the time being. The ship docked, and Jace was sent forth with a written list of needed supplies to show to shopkeepers and a verbal list of where to go and where to avoid. Katryn, sensing his uncertainty, had told him to keep the sounds of the harbor in his ears.
“The streets twist like snakes, but as long as you can hear the harbor, you can’t get lost and you’ll know which way to run if you get into trouble,” she had said. “Everything we need can be had within a stone’s throw of the water… don’t go searching for deals and don’t go looking for adventures.”
Jace intended to take this advice to heart. He didn’t need to look for adventure, after all… it had found him.
He couldn’t read a letter of any language, but many people couldn’t who still had coins to spend and the merchants of Montport used much the same symbols on their signs as those in Keeper’s Cove. He found a shop selling dry goods and a grocer and arranged for them to deliver most of Katryn’s list to the Horizon Chaser, where she would pay for them. She’d given him money only for the smaller sundries from specialty shops that would not have standing arrangements for deliveries to the pier, such as her inks and parchment.
Jace had never had a reason to seek out a parchment shop, but he knew how to find out: he asked the grocer his opinion after they’d completed their business. He’d seen strangers in Keeper’s Cove doing the same. They always got better advice after they made it clear there was enough money to go around.
“If your master wants the best value, what you need to do is go all the way down to the end of this row, take a left, and then the second right you come to, and then the third left, then keep going until you come to a silversmith’s,” he said. “You can’t miss it. There’s a little bookbinder’s shop there right next to it, run by a friend of mine.”
“Is it very far?” Jace asked. Not wanting to seem unsure of himself, he added, “I have other places to visit today.”
“Not too far,” the grocer said, and Jace reasoned that even if it was farther from the harbor than he’d intended on going, he could always follow the directions backwards.
“Thank you,” Jace said, and he set off deeper into Montport.
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