The Fifty Worlds

With minor variations, the five weeks you spend in Rajeya are much the same as the five weeks you spent in Vlydyga. The minor variations are these:

1. Everyone in Rajeya speaks the Common Tongue - you even speak some of it yourself - so, although there is still a language barrier, it is less of a problem.

2. The name of the theatre where you perform is the Overact. It is an old building which has clearly been a theatre for many years.

3. You are not staying in an inn. Either there was no suitable inn near the theatre, or (more likely) the inn Xukry had been expecting to book you into was already fully-booked. Instead, you and Nylchrinie share a room above an alchemist's shop. The room is rather small and smelly, but the food is reasonably good, the drink is very good (alchemists often double as brewers), and the soaps and perfumes which the alchemist lets you have at trade prices are heavenly. The other dancing-girls have lodgings elsewhere, so you do not see much of them.

4. Your room does not have a bath. Rajeya has a tradition of public bathing. Once you and Nylchrinie got over your initial qualms about undressing in public you discovered that visiting public bathhouses can be really enjoyable.

5. Rajeya is a friendlier city than Vlydyga. Although both cities have large numbers of macho young men, the macho young men in Vlydyga seemed thuggish, whereas those in Rajeya are swashbuckling types.

6. Some of the swashbucklers have made it clear that they would like to see more of you and Nylchrinie (as they sometimes come to the same public bathhouses, they have already seen quite a lot of you).

At the end of the five weeks, Xukry informs you that the show is moving on, to Atlantis. He asks you and Nylchrinie whether you want to go with the show or remain in Rajeya.