There are always dozens of things to be done aboard even when there aren't any repairs to be made, so I didn't go ashore until the next afternoon. Khaatarrekket and I made good use of the time, making what repairs we could on our own. Despite her usual disguise being a zebra mare, Ket could quick-change into a nondescript unicorn for magical tinkering. She was definitely better at fine detail work than I was.

At the end of the forenoon watch, Ket and I went ashore. She normally would have stood the afternoon watch, but I wanted her with me on my first little errand. An antiquities dealer had written me about some curious cuneighiform tablets that had come into her possession, and I wanted good, strong sunlight to examine them by. The letter had been in a strange script and a dialect of Saddle Arabian that I was unfamiliar with, but Ket knew fairly well. She was a changeling of many surprising talents.

She was also a darned good fighter, and as I had acquired a reputation as both a collector of oddities and an implacable foe of the eastern pirates, a setup for an ambush was not outside the realm of possibility.

The house of the antiquities dealer was in the densest part of the old city, down narrow streets barely wide enough for Ket and I to walk side by side. Most foreigners would have been accosted by every merchant and tea shop keeper along the way, but as I wore an eyepatch^[1] and had two heavy shortswords strapped to my barrel, and moreover was walking with a zebra friend at my side chattering away in Zwahinny, we found our way to the house fairly quickly.

----------
[1] There was nothing wrong with my eye. There are several good uses for eyepatches that have nothing to do with injured eyes, and on that day, I'd chosen one because it matched my greatcoat and made me look "extra stylish, but of questionable morals." Yes, Rarity was involved in the decision.
----------

I gave the bell-pull mounted next to the intricately carved wooden gate a firm tug and waited, casually keeping an eye on the few creatures in the small square where the house stood. Within a minute a small hatch in the gate slid aside and a small, dark eye peered out at us. The hatch immediately closed again and we heard the clank of a heavy bolt being pulled open.

The gate swung open and a rather large water buffalo motioned us inside. "Welcome, Captain Blackmane. My mistress hoped you would favor her with a visit," he said in Equuish, with a heavy Anubian accent.

I didn't ask how he had recognize me; I was dressed so as to be eminently recognizable. He walked us through the tiny front garden and into the house, leading us up a few flights of stairs just barely wide enough for his shoulders. He even had to tilt his head to one side so his horns wouldn’t gouge the walls. We exited onto a rooftop terrace, which was a typical feature of local townhouses, and were seated on comfortable cushions under a silk awning.

The buffalo told us that his mistress would be up very shortly, and squeezed back down the stairs.

I gazed out toward the ocean in the distance, enjoying the light seabreeze after the close and stuffy warren of streets below. My greatcoat helped to hide my wings—along with a plethora of useful items—but it could be unpleasantly warm despite the cooling spells woven into the lining.

"Ah! Captain Blackmane," came a pleasant voice from the stairs. "And…?"

I turned to find a lavender pegasus mare, heavily adorned with Tanzebrian-style gold jewelry stepping onto the terrace. "This is Zashira, my third mate," I said, gesturing to Khaatarrekket, and using her zebra alias.

"I am Trade Wind. You are welcome in my house, and it is a great pleasure to meet you both." Contrary to my expectations, she spoke perfect, unaccented Equuish. She turned to Ket and added, "Karibu nyumbani kwangu." in similarly flawless Zwahinny Zebrish. Her cutie mark was a treasure chest filled with scrolls. Interesting.

Trade Wind sent for tea and refreshments, and we went through the typical exchange of compliments and polite talk that was the Zanzebrian version of a hoofbump. Nothing of importance could possibly be discussed until the current state of everypony's family, health, and business had been exchanged and commented on over tea, with appropriate good wishes for the future ladled on.

As eager as I was to get a look at the tablets, I didn't feel any time pressure, and was truly interested in this unusual pony. "After your letter, you are very different from what I was expecting," I admitted to her.

"Ah, yes," she said, dropping her eyes to the cup of iced mint tea she was holding between her wingtips, and blushing ever so slightly. "Forgive me for that, but there are usually only two types of creatures who are interested in ancient writings, and I wished to determine which sort you were."

A year before, I would have grinned and blurted out, "Scholar or treasure-hunter?" But my voyages had given me a better understanding of the eastern culture, and she knew what she meant as well as I. I smoothed over her embarrassment by saying, "I quite enjoyed puzzling through the Arabian moon-runes, actually."

"Indeed?" She cocked her head and gave me an evaluating look. "May I say without meaning any disregard that you, Captain, are not at all what I expected, either?"

This time I did give her a grin. "Reputation is more important than gold on this coast."

"Both of which you seem to have in great supply," she observed, Her smile had taken on a bit of an edge.

Another test? I thought, and took a chance with a tangential approach to rudeness. "More than seems believable?"

"Oh, I would never dream of doubting the famous captain of the Nebula!" she quickly replied.

Saying, "the Nebula" had been a bit of a misstep^[2], and I wasn't sure if it had been intentional or not, but I forced myself not to react or reply. Ket dispelled the slight tension by way of an eager interruption. "I confess I am excited to see the tablets you described to us, mistress Trade Wind!'

"Oh, then let me fetch them for you!" Trade Wind said and leaped to her hooves. She quickly nipped down the stairs and out of sight. Evidently, though she trusted delicate cups and plates to her water buffalo assistant, ancient artifacts were a different matter.

-----------------
[2] Aeronauts and sailors do not refer to their craft prefixed by the definite article, any more than an average pony would ordinarily call me the Twilight.
---------------

Our hostess soon returned with a large rosewood box and set it down on the low table between us. She opened the box, lifted out one of the velvet-wrapped shapes within, unwrapped the cloth from around a baked clay tablet, and set it down in front of me.

I peered at the tiny triangular marks impressed in its surface and then looked up at my hostess. "This is a list of warehouse goods. Very old, yes, but hardly uncommon."

Her mouth dropped open and then snapped shut.

"Yes," I said, softly, "this rough and piratical-looking mare can read ancient Sumareian."

"I… I must apologize! I seemed to have given you the wrong tablet! I am afraid I am only familiar with the later phonetic script just before it was supplanted by Ponycian."

"An understandable mistake," I assured her as she put away the first tablet and unwrapped another. I had passed the canny mare's test, and I was liking her better by the moment.

"Yes, this is the correct one," she said, turning the little clay brick over to reveal its reverse side. "You see? There is some sort of map here on the back."

I studied the roughly incised lines for a few moments. Something about them was familiar. Then I turned the tablet over and began slowly working through the symbols and letters.

It was in early Asshireian, which is primarily ideographic, but also uses phonetic characters. Sometimes ideographic characters are used to suggest phonemes. Yes, the written language is much like notes written in class by young ponies in a hurry to communicate. "Y R U L8? ☘♡ is going 2 t dance w/★♫! U O me ฿2." is a simple analogy. To make matters worse, because there was almost no standardization back in the ancient world, each region had its own wildly different idiosyncrasies.

"The scholars I asked to look over this piece suggested that it may concern a tomb filled with traps," Trade Wind told me in an effort to be helpful. "The instructions seem to be how to correctly perform rituals to bypass the dangers."

I considered that for a moment. What I had been able to read so far suggested something not quite in line with that hypothesis. I made a non-commital noise and continued decoding the text. Ket and Trade Wind left me to it, moving away from the table to the terrace railing and chatting away in Zwahinny. It was only a few more minutes before I interrupted their gossiping with a burst of uproarious laughter.

Both ponies trotted over, looking at me expectantly.

I set the tablet down with the diagram side upward. "I thought I recognised this!" I said, gleefully. "Trade Wind, this isn't a treasure map, it's a treasure itself! The best kind of treasure: knowledge!"

Before she could ask, I told her the secret. "In the Royal Canterlot Museum there is an ancient artifact, recovered from a tomb in the ruins of the ancient Anubian city of Cur. It's an oddly shaped game board including pieces and dice. There are many others, recovered from digs all across the region; it must have been very popular. Of course nopony had any idea how it should be played… until now!" I pointed triumphantly to the little tablet.

"These are… game rules?" The disappointment in her voice was quite evident.

I had to look down away from her face when I nodded in order to prevent another bout of laughter that might offend her. "Well, it's a letter proposing changes in the rules... mostly to make it better for gambling as far as I can tell. But it briefly goes over the basics, and that's much more than anypony's had until now."

"I… see. So, now you have the knowledge, but the tablet itself is worthwhile as a provenance, surely?"

"Oh yes, I don't think that makes it much less valuable," I admitted. "But perhaps you will feel it only right to lower your price a bit if I take the other tablets along with it?"

We whiled away the rest of the afternoon haggling pleasantly over more tea and delicacies. Trade Wind was shocked when I pulled a big bag of Saddle Arabian golden dinars out of my coat when we finally arrived at a mutually satisfactory price.

"You carried such a sum through the Jaws?"^[3]

-------------------------
[3] In the heart of the old city is an intersection of five twisting streets that meet in a small, irregular plaza. It is decorated with several pairs of impressively-sized shark jaws hung on the surrounding buildings. To put it simply, it seems to be a concentration point for the most unsavory elements of Stone Town's population. Trade Wind's house was only a little ways north of the intersection and well within the neighborhood that had become known as the "Jaws."
------------------------

I smiled softly at her. "Trade Wind, may I presume to call you my friend?" She nodded, still wide-eyed. "Then, my friend, I assure you that no part of my reputation is exaggerated in the least."

Back aboard Nebula, I spent the early evening writing letters and making copies of the tablet's text and diagram, as well as my translation. I had Spike send a copy to the Curator of Antiquities at the Royal Canterlot Museum via Celestia, and bundled up the rest for more mundane delivery by mail packet. The tablet itself, along with the others in the rosewood box, I carefully tucked away in a secret compartment in my cabin.

Pinkie Pie popped in to ask if I was dining aboard. In port, we went to Hoof, Wing, and Horn watches^[4] to give the crew more time off, so at the change between the dog watches, most of the crew would be ashore, returning already fed, or preparing to spend an evening in town. Not many would be staying aboard for dinner, no matter how good the cooking was, and Pinkie was getting a headcount so we wouldn't waste supplies by making a lot more food than would be eaten.

-------------------
[4] The crew was not assigned watches by tribe, of course. The names just reflected the separation of the crew into three watches rather than two, and provided convenient labels for each. On some larger vessels, they are called Mizzen, Main, and Fore after the masts, or are given arbitrary colors as designators.
------------------

It turned out that only Fluttershy, AJ, Pinkie, and I would be at dinner, so AJ made individual veggie pot pies while Pinkie whipped up a batch of cookies for dessert.

We sat at a table on the crew deck with the main hatch cover off for ventilation. After we had eaten, we stayed at the table and chatted about this and that until Pinkie suggested playing a game of Pin the Cutlass to the Pirate.

"Wait!" I said, teleporting a piece of paper and a quill from my cabin. "I have an idea for another game we could play!"

Pinkie's smile froze and her brow began to wrinkle. "Is it a word game? Or something involving math? 'Cause I dunno…"

"Nope!" I replied cheerfully, while sketching out an irregular grid on the paper and drawing in symbols in the appropriate squares. "It's a game that was played long ago in this part of the world."

Pinkie's expression changed to something more… avaricious, but AJ was still unconvinced.

"So, this here game is some sorta history thing?"

"Historical yes, but it's really a simple board game," I said, and winked in a few little bits of wood from the carpenter's stores that I could use to make counters and dice. "I can explain the rules in two or three minutes, and we will be the first ponies to play it in almost two thousand years!"

It only took one game to convince them. It turned out that the Royal Game of Cur ^[5] was not only a bit of history and an interesting window into the past. It was also a lot of fun. A beginner had enough of a chance of winning to keep them interested, but it was obvious that an advanced player, who had worked out the strategies and probabilities, would win more games in the long run. The special squares gave enough of a boost that come-from-behind wins were not uncommon.

-----------------------
[5] That isn't the game's original name, of course. To this day, nopony knows what it was actually called. The name we know it by now was decided upon because the first board was discovered in a royal tomb in the city of Cur.
------------------------

It was quite late when most of us got too sleepy to play. It was very clear by then why the game had been so popular that it had been played in one form or another for almost three thousand years.

Fairlead and some others of the crew had joined us, and Half Hitch was already forming plans to make up a few proper sets of the game.

All in all it had been a pretty perfect day.

Author's Notes:

The Royal Game of Cur Ur is an actual thing, as is the tablet I describe in the story:

And it is a very fun game to play!

Again, my heartfelt thanks to Jordanis for superb editing! He is amazing at de-clunkifying my more contorted prose!