'Alyss, do you think you might do something to make yourself a little less exotic?' he asked. 'I was thinking about your hair, in particular.'
She nodded agreement. 'I've been thinking the same thing. I'll get busy on it right away.'
As she turned away, Evanlyn surprised her by asking, 'Can you use any help with that?'
Alyss turned back and smiled at the princess. 'I'd appreciate that,' she said. 'A girl always likes a second opinion when she tries a new style.'
The two girls disappeared into the stern cabin once more. Will watched them go, then asked Halt, 'Anything you'd like me to do? Grow a beard? Learn to walk like a rooster?'
'If you could stop asking facetious questions, that'd be a start,' Halt told him. 'But it's probably a little late in life for you to do that.'
Halt and Will were waiting by the gangplank for Alyss to emerge from the cabin. The two Rangers looked relatively anonymous in their mottled cloaks, and with their cowls drawn up to conceal their faces. Their massive longbows couldn't be concealed, of course, and Halt had wondered if they should leave them aboard. But then he reasoned that they were going into unknown territory and he wasn't willing to do that without his principal weapon.
The hatch to the rear cabin slid open and Alyss emerged onto the deck.
She wore a long, dark cloak, also with a cowl pulled up and masking her face. She was tall – there wasn't a lot Alyss could do to conceal that fact. But she walked stooped over, and that helped a little. When she came abreast of them and flicked back the cowl, Will muttered in astonishment.
Her long hair was gone, cut short to frame her face. And where it had been a gleaming blonde in colour, now it was black – jet black. Alyss's familiar face smiled out at him from this decidedly unfamiliar frame. And yet, there was something different about her face as well. He peered more closely in the uncertain light of the gangway lantern and realised that she had applied some kind of stain to her skin to darken her complexion, changing it from its normal fair colouring to a light olive brown.
'Good grief!' he said. It was disconcerting in the extreme. She was Alyss. But then again, she wasn't. It was like a stranger with Alyss's eyes and Alyss's familiar smile.
'Not perhaps the most flattering reaction,' she said, and he added to the list, Alyss's familiar voice.
'Well done, Alyss,' Halt said approvingly. 'You've worked wonders.'
'Evanlyn did most of it,' Alyss said, indicating the princess as she emerged on deck. 'I couldn't have cut the hair by myself and it was her idea to stain my skin a darker shade.'
'Good grief,' Will said once more. Alyss frowned at him. Alyss's familiar frown, he thought.
'Must you keep saying that?' she said.
'But…how did you do it?' Will asked, and Alyss shrugged.
'I'm a Courier,' she said. 'We never know when we might have to go undercover, so part of our standard travelling equipment is a disguise kit. Skin dye, hair colouring and so on. We cut the hair short because I only had a small bottle of dark hair colour.'
'Well, you won't be mistaken for a local,' Halt said. 'But you'll excite far less comment than you would as your usual, blonde self.'
Selethen had been eyeing the results of the girls' work for some minutes.
'Personally, since I'm used to ladies with darker skins, I find this new look quite glamorous indeed,' he said.
Alyss smiled at him and dropped a small curtsey in his direction. She saw Will draw breath for another comment and said, without looking at him, 'If you say "good grief" again, I'll kick you.'
Since that had been what he was going to say, he said nothing.
The three of them slipped down the gangplank and headed down the quay. As they reached the street that ran parallel to the harbour, they hesitated.
'Right or left?' Halt asked.
'Or straight ahead?' Will put in. There was a broad road ahead of them, flanked by the lights of what might be shops, taverns and bars. It was difficult to tell as the signs were all in incomprehensible Nihon-Jan characters. The road itself was erratic, zigzagging haphazardly, and they could see numerous smaller roads and side alleys branching off from it. Of the three choices, straight ahead seemed the most likely, Halt thought. He took an uncertain pace towards in that direction, then hesitated.
'Why will men never ask directions?' Alyss said. She had noticed a small group of locals perched on the harbour wall, fishing rods protruding out over the dark water. She strode towards them now and, as they became aware of her approach, she stopped and bowed politely. One of the fishermen scrambled down from the wall and bowed in return. Alyss spoke quietly to him for a second or two. There was a certain amount of pointing and arm waving, obviously indicating a sequence of direction changes. Then the man held up three fingers to make sure she understood fully. She bowed again and turned back to where Halt and Will were waiting.
'What did he say?' Will asked.
She smiled at him. 'He said my Nihon-Jan was excellent. Then he sort of spoiled that by adding "for a gaijin". Still, a compliment's a compliment, I suppose.'
'Was your excellent Nihon-Jan good enough to understand his directions to the rillokan?' Will asked sarcastically.
'That's ryokan, and yes, it was. Straight along that main road to the third lantern. Then left, then fourth right. There'll be a graphic of a crane outside the inn – a flying one,' she added, forestalling any comment from Halt. The Ranger simply shrugged.
'So I was right. It is this way,' he said as they set off.
The buildings were set close together, built from timber and with thatched roofs. Doors and windows were covered with sliding screens whose translucent panes showed the warm yellow of lanterns shining inside. Halt stepped a little closer to one and studied the small panels in the door.
'It's paper,' he said. 'Heavy paper. Probably waxed or oiled to make it rain proof. But it lets light through and preserves privacy at the same time. Ingenious.'
'Not so ingenious if a burglar wants to get in,' Will said. The doors and windows looked decidedly flimsy, he thought.
'Perhaps the locals are all law abiding,' Alyss commented.
They reached the third street lantern, which hung from a pole and swung from side to side in the gusty wind, and turned left into a side street. The buildings on either side seemed to close in on them in the narrow confines of the street. The main street, broad and windswept as it was, had been virtually deserted. But here more people hurried along, the women shuffling quickly in their long, narrow robes, men striding with a more open stride. Passers-by peered at them. Their clothes marked them as strangers, even if their faces and features were hidden by the deep cowls they all wore.
They heard babbles of conversation and sudden gusts of laughter from many of the buildings they passed. Occasionally, doors slid open and figures emerged, calling farewells back to their friends inside. As they emerged onto the street, they usually stopped to watch the three foreign figures passing by, hurrying through the shadows. But their interest was cursory. In a seaport like this, the locals were used to seeing foreigners.
'It seems we're being noticed,' Will said softly. Halt glanced sidelong at him.
'Not as much as if we came blundering down here in full daylight,' he said. 'And at least so far, we're only being seen by the townsfolk, not Arisaka's soldiers.'
'Maybe they don't come down these side alleys at night. How are we doing, Alyss?'
Alyss's face, in the shadow of her cowl, was contorted in a frown of concentration. The side street was even more erratic than the main street had been, twisting and turning and opening onto alleys and side entrances to the buildings. It was difficult to keep track of what was actually a street and what was simply a blind alley.
'Shut up. I'm counting,' she said. Then she pointed to a narrow opening on the right. 'That looks like it.'
They plunged into the alley. There were more people on the street now and they had to jostle their way through the slow-moving crowd as people stopped to read what appeared to be menu boards outside eating houses.
'S'mimasen,' Alyss said repeatedly as they brushed against passers-by.
'What does that mean?' Will asked, as they reached a stretch of street bare of any other pedestrians. He was impressed by Alyss's grasp of the local language.
'It means "pardon me",' Alyss replied, then a shadow of doubt crossed her face. 'At least, I hope it does. Maybe I'm saying "you have the manners of a fat, rancid sow". I'm told a lot of the meaning is in the pronunciation.'
'Still, that could be a useful phrase to know,' Halt said. But he'd noticed people's reactions to Alyss's apologies. They'd simply nodded acknowledgement and gone on their way. He was pretty sure she had the correct word. He, too, was impressed with the way she was coping. Pauline would be proud of her, he thought, and made a mental note to tell his wife about Alyss's language skills.
'There it is,' the girl said suddenly, pointing to a two-storey building on the opposite side of the street. It was more substantial than its neighbours. Its walls were constructed of solid logs, with the space between them filled in with clay or mud. There were several of the waxed-paper windows along the front of the building and four more on the upper floor, facing the street. The door was made of solid wood planks.