‘Use the front door,’ she said. ‘It’s the easiest way.’
‘I have the elven passion for secrecy and intrigue,’ he said.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘That always makes things more interesting.’
Before he could ask her what she meant by that, she strode away, pausing in the doorway to turn and smile at him. It looked posed but she was still lovely.
Life in Lothern was certainly interesting. There was no mistaking that.
Tyrion had never seen a place quite so crowded, dirty, smelly and wonderful as the Foreigners’ Quarter. He was glad he had put on his old clothes and snuck out of the Emeraldsea Palace again.
He was free and just for this evening, he felt like his old self again. It was not just wearing his old clothes. It was not being hemmed in by endless formalities and the rituals of life in the palace.
He was already starting to be bored. Weapons practice was fun, but the endless lessons in protocol were not. He had enjoyed the dancing lessons and flirting with his pretty relatives but he had not enjoyed being told how to behave. He felt like he was somehow on probation, less than a guest, something of a prisoner.
Servants watched his every move. Bodyguards followed him everywhere, supposedly for his own protection. Tonight he had climbed down from the balcony of his chambers into the street and slipped off where no one would dream of looking for him. He knew he was being childish, that he should simply have taken Liselle’s advice and used the front door, but he liked doing this.
This was the sort of adventure he had dreamed of ever since he was young.
For the first time ever Tyrion was seeing beings of a different race, and lots of them. They bustled through the Foreigners’ Quarter as if they owned the place, and they paid less attention to him than he did to them. He supposed they must be used to seeing elves. He was not at all used to seeing humans.
They were smaller than he was, shorter than almost all elves, and yet heavier, bloated with fat and muscle. They looked clumsy and graceless and their voices sounded like the squawking and bellowing of beasts in a jungle. There were so many different types of them: tall, pale elaborately dressed men from Marienburg and the Empire; dusky hawk-featured, scimitar-bearing Arabyans from the lands of the south; Cathayans clad in silk robes.
He understood why some elves affected to despise them. There was a coarseness about them, a brutal directness of speech and gesture combined with a grubbiness and stench that was off-putting. And yet he was not put off – he found the differing accents and voices and clothes and body language exhilarating, as entertaining as any book or poem he had read.
Their clothes were coarsely made and their foods smelled of fat and salt and spices. Sausages of some indescribable meat sizzled on spits. Fish blackened on braziers. Sellers stomped everywhere with trays of savouries strapped to their chest, small but vicious-looking dogs snapping at their heels.
These humans were a long way from their homes but somehow they had made themselves at home here. The architecture of the quarter had taken on a humanish look. Brick buildings leaned at crazy angles against the remnants of much older elven structures. Ancient palaces had been turned into vast warrens and mazes of dwellings and shops and merchants offices.
There was none of the courtliness or formality of elvish culture. Men bumped into each other in the street and either backed away swiftly, hands reaching for swords, or grinned and nodded and passed on their way.
Merchants argued prices. Harlots led drunken sailors into side alleys and in pairs they humped and groaned against the walls. In quiet corners, men played chess on odd-looking boards with carved wooden pieces of strange design. He stopped to watch a game and just from a few moves he could tell the rules were not so different from those he was used to.
When the humans noticed him, they stopped and looked at him as if they anticipated him saying something. He gestured for them to continue but they just stared until even he felt a little uncomfortable and a little rude for distracting them from their game, so he sketched a bow and moved on deeper into the great bazaar.
Carpets hung overhead, draped over wooden racks intended to display them to best advantage. Perhaps it would have worked as intended if the skylights had not been blackened with