"I'm afraid not," said Yochnah. "Our assignments are classified," he explained. "But...yes. In a way. You see, there are much worse things in the world than the Empire. The Empire lets us keep being ourselves. They may not let me captain one of their ships, but they let me say my prayers and eat my food. They don't kill without purpose."

"They let you into their academy. And then didn't give you a ship." Ross replied. "I don't think I'd fit in well at this academy. So we won't even know what we're doing until we're on the water? Like a secret?" He gave the man a sort of funny, knowing smile. "I'm real good at keeping secrets."

The man smiled back. "Like what?" he asked.

"That's a secret, Captain." Ross replied dryly. "Classifed, I'm sorry. Hey, do you think these people have any fruits? For dessert? With a heavy cream maybe, that'd be good."

"Ah, of course," answered the captain. "We can get some fruit. But right here," he said, nodding to a door with a sign that was neither in Cecilian, Aquitainean, nor Common. "Is my butcher. Here, you do this," he said, pressing his fingers to a little silver decoration on the door, and then kissing his fingers.

Ross stopped walking forwards and spun around to watch the man, and then saw the sign. "Oh, I've seen that stuff before, in Lorraine." He said, interested, as he tentatively reached forward and tapped the decoration, and then kissed his fingers. "Like that? Why do you do that?"

"It has holy words inside it," Yochnah replied, clapping a spare skullcap on the boy's head before walking in. He spoke to the man at the counter in a foreign language, and the man pointed to a lamb shank. Yochnah nodded, and showed the man some coins. There was apparently a little haggling back and forth, Yochnah added a coin to the number, and accepted his parcel. "You see?" he asked the boy on their way out the door. "No different from the usual butcher, really, except they follow our rules."

Ross kept his hand on the skullcap for fear of it coming off until they were out of the shop. "You're right, it wasn't that different." He looked over his shoulder at the shop, and then back at Yochnah. "You sure have a lot of rules, though. They're interesting. And that looks like a good shank of lamb!" He exclaimed. "Do you get all your things from different shops than us?"

Yochnah shook his head. "No, unless they cook meat," he said. "Otherwise, most of the time, we get things at just the same stores. Here, we'll buy fruit at the market," he offered. "What do you like?"

He shrugged. "Well, strawberries are my favorite, but they're not really in season. I like apples and lemons and I had oranges in the Wreath and I liked those so if they have them, maybe we could get them, unless they're too exspensive." Ross said, as they neared the market. "Oh, and we need to watch for little onions!" He reminded himself. "And I can teach you how to really haggle for a roast, because even though you got a good piece of lamb I think you paid at least three pieces too much for it."