Tandosa

Tandosa lies on the north bank of the Llovo's mouth, where a low headland shelters a natural harbor from the ocean swell. The navy holds the inner harbor, the fishermen the outer, and the town climbs the headland behind them.

Dallatie. The old fishing harbor keeps its native name, which means "harbor." Its boats land sardines at dawn, and by noon the salting sheds have them in barrels. Every house has an octopus line and every doorway a woman mending nets. Modarsa Tandosno was born here, a fisherman's daughter, and the quarter tells every visitor so.

The Pine Yards. The navy's shipyards run along the inner harbor: slips, rope-walks, mast ponds full of Tandosa pine trunks, and the arsenal where the galleons' bolt-throwers and crank-wound arbalests are kept. The yards have been building troop ships since spring, and the shipwrights do not like being asked what for.

Pilot's Hill. The headland holds the navy's pilot school, the harbor church with its storks, and the houses of captains and pilots. The school teaches the reading of the stars from the Zarvani star tables the Berrode banned in 960, bound inside the covers of approved books.

Seawater Row. The waterfront street between the yards and Dallatie is taverns, lodging houses, chandlers and pawnshops. Here King Llelilo's refusal of water is told as the tale of a fool, and here every sailor learns the joke of Two-Fathom's wooden foot, the one joke the Castavari coast shares with the pirates.

The Mouth. The river-mouth quays upstream of the harbor take in the barges from Grarañe and load their wine, oil, cork and silver onto seagoing ships. Coastwright boats of driftwood tie up here to sell fish and buy iron. The harbor officers write them down as fishermen from up the coast and ask nothing more.

The Galleon Mole. The long stone mole where the galleons lie is the finest harbor work in Castavar. Captain Tandosno's Bairnaro Drosdo, the "White Star," has a berth at its seaward end and rarely uses it.

The Pilot School. A plain stone house on Pilot's Hill with a flat roof for star-sighting, where boys of twelve learn to read a chart, a coastline and a sky. Tolerto the Pilot-Master runs it.

The Tuna House. The spring tuna belongs to the crown alone, and this long whitewashed hall at the Mouth is where it is weighed, salted and taxed. It is the only building in Tandosa with a royal guard.

The Salt Cup Steps. A flight of stone steps at the end of Dallatie runs down into the sea. Here each new sailor swears his first oath on a cup of seawater while the priest present looks the other way, and the steps are worn hollow.

The Thirsty King. The oldest tavern on Seawater Row has a sign showing a crowned man refusing a cup. The Office of Truth has twice ordered it taken down, and it has been put back both times.

The fishing fleet goes out before dawn and comes back by noon, and the salting sheds work through the heat. The navy pays in silver, late, and the town lives on credit between paydays. People eat sardines, octopus, bread and olives, with tuna on feast days. Most families have one man at sea, one in the yards, and one who went over to the Brotherhood's Tandosa Ghosts and is never spoken of. A day in the yards pays 1 jabirga, a barrel of salted sardines costs 8, and four dried octopus cost 1.

The Salt-Sworn faith runs deeper here than anywhere in Castavar. The sea does not care, and a promise sworn on it and broken will be collected in a storm. Its keepers are ship's quartermasters, and Leldo the Quartermaster, an old man with a voice like a hawser, swears the boys in at the Salt Cup Steps each spring while the Berrode's priests face the other way. The Vinvelon, the party that says Castavar is a power of the sea and should never march on the Sunmaw again, has its heart here, and it grows every time a crusade comes home.

• Captain Tandosno has been ordered to leave the pirate hunt and ferry crusaders to the coast at Baamarsh, and Pilot's Hill says she has refused in writing.
• A sealed letter from Captain-Queen Sormerva Vex reached the Bairnaro Drosdo by way of a Coastwright boat, and Leldo the Quartermaster carried a cup of seawater aboard that night.
• Tolerto the Pilot-Master is expecting a new copy of the star tables, smuggled out of Mazbaaran, and has cleared a shelf for it.
• The Tandosa Ghosts have been taking on men along Seawater Row, and three shipwrights from the Pine Yards are missing.

RISING. Tandosa is the one Castavari city that grows while the capital spends. Its navy wins its fights, its fleets feed the realm, and the Vinvelon gain every time an army comes back from the desert smaller than it left. The Fourth Crusade will need its ships, and the church will try to take them. If the navy obeys, Tandosa becomes the crusade's harbor and pays in hulls. If the navy refuses, and Captain Tandosno carries a pirate's treaty to court, Tandosa may become the capital of a different Castavar, one that faces the sea.

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