Dozens of boats - houseboats and barges and rafts and canoes and suchlike - arranged around a row of piers. The piers seem to be exclusively for walking on, with all actual socialization and business conducted on the boats, and there's another little island with some of the piers terminating there rather than on the shore and a bit of settlement on the shore and the island both for, it appears, people too old or feeble to live on boats.

He'll get closer and wait for them to notice him.

"Ho, traveler!" calls somebody loading crates from one boat onto another.

"Hello! I'm expecting a delivery by barge here in a few days; do you think you'll have enough people here to load it onto wagons for me or should I hire them elsewhere?"

"If you'll pay for it you can get loading done by whoever's here for sure."

"Of course I'll pay, thank you."

Next: up a tree with a spyglass to check for any towns closer than the one he has in mind, and off to look for wagoners to hire; he's back on the evening of the third day leading a small chain of them.

"Hello there! Are you here to pick up Kaneer's delivery?" someone calls.

"I am! What are you asking to unload it?" He'll haggle them down a little, of course, and also pitch in himself if their methods don't seem too complicated.

They're not super complicated, no, and their prices are reasonable, maybe because some guys over there will undercut them if they're not or because it's for Kaneer.

Well, Ruel has no complaints either way. The wagons can be loaded, and then the dockworkers can be paid, with a tip for good service.

He'll stay with the wagons on the way to Kiraavi's new claim, which takes a few days; once there, he gives the contents of the wagons to Kiraavi as an offering (no need to unload, he can accept the supplies right where they are), pays the drivers, tops off his wallet, and makes his way to Honeyguide Harbor.

Honeyguide Harbor is a bustling city. It has a few canals and a lot of people and a great big temple with a suitably eye-catching sign reminding people that offerings can be dropped off on the front steps. There's a lighthouse and a shipyard and a paper mill and a textile mill and dormitory housing and rowhouses and a school and an every-day market square and a separate seafood-in-particular market and a few little shrines for offerings so people don't have to go out of their way to the big temple.

Ruel pokes around in much the same way as he did in the town, asking the first likely-looking person he talks to for an inn recommendation and then taking in the nearby sights. He'll try bribing an urchin to talk to him again as it gets close to dinnertime; sometimes that works a little better if he makes it clear that they'll get dessert if they stick around that long.

Here's an urchin who has been drooling over a fried dough thing that gets served drizzled in honey. She will accept her bribe dinner in a very businesslike fashion and do her level best to earn the sweets. "So whaddaya wanna know? I know where you can get wholesale fabric straight off the boat before they mark it up. And where they do the side bets on the races."

"I might want to check out the betting later, yeah, but that's not what I wanted to talk to you for - I'm a priest of a different god, Kiraavi of roads, and he's thinking about working with the goddess here, but we want to know a little more about what she's like first. She seems pretty good for most of the traders and farmers and things but I thought it'd be interesting to hear what she's like for someone like you."

"I don't talk to her much. She never did me a bad turn or anything. What's it like other places, do their gods do more stuff there?"

"Some places, yeah. Gods are different from each other the same way mortals are, some are friendlier or busier or like things to be just how they want them or things like that. My god is pretty busy a lot of the time but he likes to talk to people when he's not, he's pretty curious about things. And the goddess where I grew up was kind of mean, she wanted things a certain way and she'd get upset if she didn't think people were helping with that enough. Most gods are pretty good, though, they're just good in different ways from each other."

"Huh. Well she's not nosy or mean. She's just kinda there. I guess I'd ask her if I wanted there to be a tree someplace. Or something. My friend asked for a tree one time by his fishing spot for shade."

"And she did it? That's pretty good. Is there anything else like that that you'd want to ask for? Even if you think she wouldn't do it, I mean."

"Yeah, she put a tree. I dunno what-all gods can do besides tree kinds of things and picking stuff up and putting it down. I'm pretty sure she won't just give me stuff for the asking if it's stuff stuff and not trees..."

"They can do that but it's harder than trees, yeah. Kiraavi does that, he asks people to give him their travel supplies at the ends of their trips and then gives them to people who want to travel but don't have the supplies, but he couldn't do it if people didn't give him most of the supplies. He'll tell people things, too, like if someone wants to move to a different kind of place but doesn't know where there's a place they'll like, he'll help them figure out where to go, or ask one of his priests to help them, or if they do know where they want to go they can ask if the roads are good to get there and he'll tell them if there's bad weather or dangerous animals or anything. Or some gods introduce people to each other, like if you wanted an apprenticeship when you were a little older some gods would help you find someone to apprentice to, that kind of thing."

"If I was starving she'd give me somebody's leftovers that they gave her, for sure, but I'm not. Maybe she'd do the apprenticeship thing. If I asked. I wanna be a weaver but I don't know about the whole apprenticeship thing."

"Well, if I find someone who seems like they wouldn't mind you watching them weave and seeing what you can pick up that way, I'll let you know about it." Nom. "Do you know of anyone else who's asked for things?"

"I know people who've gotten leftovers before. And one time Simby got a bit of a rag and... Miu's sourdough starter."

"And do you know anybody who asked for something and didn't get it? Or do people mostly know what she will and won't do already."

"I think people know. Maybe little babies don't know so they're like 'Iabeltha give me candy' or whatever. And then she doesn't probably."