Oliver stepped into the inn, looking around warily. It was dark, poorly lit, and filled with people. Many of the folks from the barge were here, and the rest must have been from the city, most of them dressed poorly.

It had a greasy spoon vibe and though it was nowhere near as clean and well-kept as the other places, it drew him in with the kind of cosy appeal a dive bar has on a late night when it's the only place with lights on in town. It just felt right, somehow. A working man's joint.

There was a covered kettle on over the fire in the hearth and people around him were eating and drinking merrily. A buzz of conversation filling the place to its low, smoke-stained ceiling early in the morning. It was a far cry from the cold, almost sterile feel of the stone streets outside and he felt something inside him to relax.

He elbowed his way over to the bar, where a couple of women and a man were taking orders, chatting with customers at the bar, and bringing out food from the kitchen in the back. They were moving briskly even as they kept up fluent conversation over the din of the room.

He found an open space at the bar and eventually one of the women came over, middle-aged with blonde hair, a bit tired looking.

"What can I do ya fer, dearie?" she asked, brusque yet friendly.

"Breakfast and a room for the next few days," he said.

"Right, it's grits and sausage for breakfast, and I'll see about the room," she said, then was off before he had a chance to say thank-you.

He loitered at the bar for a few more minutes, saw that she wasn't likely to be coming back any time soon, and found a spot at a table where he sat down and made himself comfortable, soaking in the heat of the room.

Were it not for the rough loggers' clothes which he'd been given, he'd have undoubtedly taken quite the chill outside. But in addition to the clothes and sturdy boots he'd stolen from that worker, he'd been given a thick wool overshirt which kept him warm enough. Still, the warmth was pleasant.

Soon enough the woman returned with food and a word about the room. "We're a squeezed a bit tight, at the moment," she admitted, "but there's a room at the end of the second-floor hall with an empty bunk."

"I suppose that'll do," he said, as if he'd had a choice.

"Right, well, it's a quarter a night, and that's to include board in the morning," she said, holding out a hand.

He dug through the coins in his pocket, found the solid guilden coin, and handed it to her. She took it with a smile and a businesslike nod, then was off, eyes scanning the room for her next target.

Breakfast was bland and salty, but hot and filling, and he had no complaints. There was nothing to drink, though, so he went thirsty.

Some time later he stood, brought his bowl to the counter and looked around uncertainly for a place to leave it. The other waitress took it from him with a grateful smile.

He made his way to the back of the room where a door led to hallway and some stairs. Up the stairs, he found his room down at the end. There were two beds as promised, but nobody else in the room. He looked around, sat down on the further bed, the one against the wall near the window, and mussed it a bit so the other occupant would be able to tell it had been taken. The other one bed was a little mussed too, as if somebody had sat on it for a minute, then left. Nothing to identify them by.

The room was as dark and small as the common room, lit by only by the oil-paper window through which the weak morning sunlight struggled and mostly failed to pass.

He left it and passed through the busy common room once more. He needed to explore the city, get a sense of its size, and find the university that one of the boat's other passengers had mentioned in passing. At a quarter guilden a night he had enough coin for six nights' stays, not even a full week, and that was excluding food. He needed to find work to which he could meaningfully contribute, a more permanent place to stay, then worm his way into the university.

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He'd given it much thought over the past few days and his conclusion was a simple one: if the university had need of servants, janitors, or any other kind of menial labor, he could kill two birds with one stone: find work and have an excuse to linger near a place where magic was actively taught and studied.

It was a plan he'd conceived of after learning what this city – Celeia – was known for. It was a popular stopping place along the river, and at some point some hundreds of years ago a university had been founded by the Maran Empire for the study and furtherment of magic.

The streets were becoming busier as he left the inn, the early morning quiet giving way to the clamor of the business day. Along the wide street he saw merchants setting up stalls. People dressed in a wide variety of garb, and of a wide variety of skin colors, were making their way up and down the street on various errands.

Oliver set off, walking quickly and with purpose, wanting to get a sense of the scope of the city and its populace. Would he be able to integrate here?

He'd already stopped in one village a couple of days prior, spent the night, but it was still a little too rural, such that he was attracting strange glances and more than a little suspicion. But of course he expected little else from such a remote village; it had been quiet, small, and saw little traffic.

This was a proper city, it seemed, with a large enough transitory population that he attracted little in the way of suspicion. The loggers hadn't seemed to find his features distinctive enough to warrant investigation, beyond their surprise at seeing him appear out of the unpopulated hinterlands of the Range Perilous, as the mountains to which he'd been borne were referred.

A little after stopping by a street stall for lunch, further drawing on his meagre coinage but filling his stomach with some sort of hot, spicy meat kebab, he came across the university.

It was set in the heart of the city just north of the river, surrounded by a high wall beyond which the tops of trees could be seen, well tended. He spent some time walking the perimeter before coming upon the main gate, which by this time had been cast open, the metal doors open and unguarded. Beyond them lay a flatstone leading into the university grounds, lined on both sides by trees which had begun to color, leaves turning red, yellow, and orange. Autumn.

The doors stood in a wide marble arch, cunningly formed from a single piece of marble smoothly carved and engraved with inscrutable symbols, a language he could not read.

An enormous purple gem perhaps six feet in diameter was inset in the top of the gate, polished smooth, looking for all the world like an enormous crystalline marble.

He stood looking at it for a moment. Its size and beauty were a strong reminder of the differences between this world and his own; never had such an earthly crystal been carved or set, though he had heard of some that grew nearly as large deep in caves back home.

After some time spent in admiration, he set aside his wonder and moved on before he drew attention to himself. This was as close as he needed to get, for now.

The rest of the day he spent exploring the city on foot, and by the time the sun had fallen he had built up a decent familiarity with its layout. It was bisected by the river he'd come down on, with three or four large bridges crossing the forty foot wide divide made of stone or wood. The river passed roughly east to west, dividing the city into the North Side and the South Side. The North Side and the South Side were divided, oddly, into five quarters, among them the University, the Poor Quarter, the Merchants' Quarter.

There were a number of temples in the city, though on this first day he hadn't dared to explore any of them, wishing to avoid any social faux pas that could get him kicked from the city or, worse, outed and captured.

Additionally, there was a garrison at the north end manned at all times by a legion of soldiers from the capital, who were spoken of in tones of guarded displeasure.

Beyond that, the city was filled with buildings at whose purpose he couldn't guess, dwellings, inns, lots of unreadable signage, and more.

Satisfied that whatever mysteries the city held posed no immediate threat to him, Oliver returned to the inn in time for dinner.

Again it was crowded, and this time, to his displeasure he found the musician singing in the corner, playing a fiddle in the corner from atop a stool, where his head nearly brushed the low ceiling. He was singing something, too, but the rush of voices overwhelmed his voice, and he didn't seem to have attracted much attention.

But the room smelled of food, and was warm, and there were plenty of other people, so he dismissed his concerns as being overly cautious and ordered some food.

About halfway through his meal, somebody sat at the empty seat at the bar beside him, despite the fact that he was doing his best to look unwelcoming, his sword in its makeshift sheathe propped up against the bar beside the open seat.

He looked up. It was the musician, holding two mugs.

"Care for a drink?" he asked, with a smile, and set one of the mugs down in front of Oliver.