A Terra Cotta Roof

Paula then took charge. "I do not feel comfortable with this. I am sorry to waste your time, sir." And at that, she left.

When she came back the next morning, she told both Astra and Copernica of the previous night's talk. Copernica and Paula were nervous - too much information had been given to Sabok, who was a Hespaniard that neither knew well. Although Namak seemed to vouch for him, Paula thought that the risk was too much. She thought that Astra must go to a safer place than Hyrcania, and do so that day.

Astra disagreed. If her mission in Hyrcania was to have any chance, she had to practice ferreting out secrets from the Hespaniards. She reasoned that matching her wits against the simple minstrel would be a good gauge of her ability to do so. Copernica could not order Astra not to try, and so Astra sought out the minstel. She dressed in Copernica's civilian robes, which were those commonly worn by merchents. Copernica gave Astra letters of introduction and a cover story. She applied a black wax seal on the letters to confirm that they came from her.

Paula called on the Hespaniard barracks again, and Namak told her where Sabok was most likely to be. He was staying in two-storey house, of Norma the Goldsmith. And so it appeared that Sabok, although a stranger to Themyscira, had managed to get himself invited to house of a well-to-do Aqualarian.

Astra knocked at the gate of the house, and introduced herself as a friend of Copernica's - a merchant from the north. The manservant took the letters, and ducked inside. A moment later, he came back out, and said that his mistress would see her around lunch.

While Astra waited outside, she could hear the sound of someone working on the roof of the building, replacing shingles. She looked up, and saw a slight man wearing nothing but a loin cloth. He seemed to be olive-skinned, short, and hairy. He was obviously a foreigner. The roof style was foreign too. Instead of the wood or thatch used in the cheaper Aqualarian buildings, or the marble or stone of the dearer ones, this man was laying down the rounded, reddish-brown terra cotta tiles that one saw in the north of Hespan. So apparently even the architecture in Aqualaria was slowly turning Hespaniard, Astra thought.

Having nothing else to do, she watched Norma's hired worker lay down the roof. Astra noticed that he was not very fast. Although he appeared to be careful, he made too many mistakes to have anything more than apprentice-level skill. But she noticed that what he was building was not of bad quality. He appeared to have an eye toward making the undulating line of the half-cylinder tiles look good.

What made the man most worthy of attention, though, was the songs that he kept humming to himself. Astra thought that the songs might be of a Hespaniard style, but part of her wanted to doubt that. The measures of the song flowed in threes - it was graceful, and not at all like the harsh and bombastic martial music that she associated with Hespan. She had convinced herself that this was probably Sabok. He sang:

One by one
Rank by rank
Eighty chips
To a row

Astra noticed that the man used the first two stanzas to keep track of his progress, but played around with the third, filling in an aphorism or a observation. She hid in the shadows of a shrub, wanting to see what she could glean from him. The man seemed to be in his own world, intent on laying the tiles.

One by one
Rank by rank
Eighty chips
To a row

And with that verse, the man stood up and waved at her. Astra was caught off-guard. She stammered, and then said, "You have the wrong idea, workman. I was just passing the time until I could meet the mistress of this house, and was interested in your singing."

"You can hear that better up here, too," he replied. "Why don't you come up here and help me with the roof? It is actually a better way to pass the time."

Astra then decided

1. to say, "I am sorry, but I would get my clothes soiled, and that would be impolite to my hostess."
2. to ignore him.
3. to respond, "Sure. I am not sure I will be much help, though. What is your name?"

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