by Trevol Swift
“Not. Funny,” Shep said. “Did you two plan this?”
Jhee chuckled. Kanto gave a hearty laugh until he noticed her appearance. “My word, denbe, what happened? Your robes? The poultice? Were you robbed?”
“That pork and rice looks delicious.”
“Sit here. Let me get you some,” Kanto said. He sniffed her several times. “Is that liquor? Are you drunk?”
“Long story. Thank you.”
Shep set down a washbasin and a cleaning cloth. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No.” When Kanto returned with a bowl of food, she devoured it. The water in the basin was too cold. She gazed at the fire yet did not have the strength to redirect it. She’d be surprised if she could even get a spark from an Adept stone.
“Look at me,” Mirrei said. Her usually light and demure tone had gone replaced by one which Jhee could only describe as motherly and stern. She held up a finger and moved it in front of Jhee’s eyes. After one or two passes, Jhee had to stop. “Jumpy tracking. Pale. Low body temp. Shallow breathing. Cyphering fatigue.”
Kanto hovered and frowned, followed by dragging Shep aside for an animated conversation outside her hearing. Jhee picked up an uneaten roll.
“Wait,” Shep said. Jhee bit into it and practically chipped a tooth. She tapped the roll against the table. It sounded fit for an Earth Adept’s use. “Not everyone has adjusted their recipes properly for non-wheat flours yet.”
She sighed. “Do we have any broth or soup?”
She put the roll into the soup and consumed it piece by piece as it softened.
“Kanto, not now,” Shep said.
“If not, now, when? Before or after she slips away again without a word? Only to turn up like this? Or should we wait until she turns up dead?”
“Fine, we’ll change the schedule. Here. How’s this? The past couple of days will be my days or off days, and Jhee has my full permission to spend them how she wishes. Mirrei’s days will be next since it’s been a while for her and Jhee.”
“For Makers’ sake, Kanto, if it’s that important, take my day,” Mirrei said.
“All right Kanto then Mirrei. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Jhee?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“There. Now everyone’s happy or equally miserable. Take your pick.”
“Shep, Mirrei, I ask a moment of denbe prerogative?” They had taken enough of the ire meant for her. They went to bed, leaving her and Kanto. “I’m sorry I left without a word.”
“The timing on your return couldn’t have been better, though,” he said.
She quirked her mouth. “Where’d you learn that story?”
“From the Prospectives. You didn’t expect us to stay shut in the room all day while you run around. Don’t worry, I had a clerical escort. I didn’t realize how many of them came from isles like ours.”
“Is that your way of saying you want to become a Professed?”
“And scandalize these poor, sheltered women?” Kanto made a grand sweep of his hand over himself. “They couldn’t handle this. This is also not to be hidden away under ill-fitting cowls and cassocks.”
Jhee rolled her eyes. “Spheres forfend you smile at one. She may faint.”
“Wouldn’t be the first.” They laughed. “Denbe, I don’t want to fight or nag.”
“No, I have to do better by you.” Jhee touched her chin then patted his hand. “Learn anything else interesting on your outing?”
“Here listen to this.”
Kanto played recordings from his conch. Notes from a lute quavered and echoed in a way she never quite heard before. It sounded as if wind chimes accompanied them. Jhee squeezed her eyes shut. Men chanted. The sonorous tones caused her to think about a home by the sea, about footsteps that echoed in the too empty house. Jhee pressed her hands together in front of her trembling lips. Once she regained emotional equilibrium, she opened her eyes.
Kanto quickly glanced away. “The first is me in the Worship Hall. Eerie? The acoustical properties of the abbey are extraordinary. Our practice courtyard has a whisper wall where you can stand in one corner and whisper yet be heard by a person at the opposite corner. There is a certain step where you can clap and get an infinite echo. The weird shape of the building plays all sorts of auditory tricks. The wind blowing through an odd window or cracks might very well sound like moaning or scratching at the walls.”
Jhee listened as further into the recording, the chants became sea songs and shanties. The refugees and the Prospectives were men like Kanto. The parallels between the missing young men and the deaths of the Prospectives weighed on her as much as her family duties. Refugees had gone missing, and no one noticed. Men died, and their Justicar had not noticed. Kanto had long felt neglected, and she had not noticed either.
Jhee folded her hands and faced away from Kanto. “Between Mirrei’s health problems and Shep’s episodes, you were the one I never had to worry about. I sometimes forget that you require my attention too, and for that, I am truly sorry. I never had to worry about you, and I took it for granted that I never would. Forgive me. We have not had a day together in a while. I intend to correct that. When your day comes, it will be your day and yours alone. We’ll do whatever you want.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Jhee had worked this all wrong. Despite the vizier’s rebuke, she had still focused on the wrong death. She had avoided it, but she needed to plunge down into the drowned Prospective’s death. She had set it aside long enough.
12 Wisps Lights
A Goat Path
Jhee shielded her eyes to gauge the position of the dual suns. She might have time to check out the lee of the isle. She found the aforementioned goats and let them lead the way. The terrain became rockier and more treacherous as she approached. She turned to glance back at the abbey. Its shadows loomed large, yet not enough to reach this far. Even the storm light spire.
The small herd of goats wandered by her further out than she dared. They stopped and chewed on the hard scrub grass right on the verge of the cliff. One disappeared over the edge. The screech of child cut through the night.
Jhee whipped around to determine the source. The screech came again. It had come from the edge where the goat had fallen. She hastened over, summoned her courage, and peered over the edge.
The goat stared up at her from a series of steps carved into the cliffside. It gave another disturbing bleat as it descended further. She slumped her posture. The other goats trotted by her oblivious.
These steps may have been where Prospective Leigh fell. What was at the bottom? Jhee gathered her wits and courage to take the first step down. She thought to take the wet steps backward so she could look up instead of down. Or better still, eyes closed. Her Maker Within told her what a horrible idea that would be. Instead, she hugged the cliff and prayed the goat did not change its mind about its direction.
A fell, rain-soaked wind kicked up. Jhee accidentally glanced out over the steps to the breakers. She flattened back against the wall. “Not today, Storm Child. Not today.”
She brought her focus back to the stairs. She murmured the phrase over and over as she descended. The peculiar way the waves broke seemed wrong to her. The closer she descended to the shoreline, the better visible a subtle glow from a nearby inlet became. A yellowish glowlight bobbed in the water atop a small buoy tethered in place.
At the bottom of the steps, there was no mistaking the opening in the rocks to a smugglers cove. A sea vessel, not imposing enough to be a pirate ship and devoid of ship-to-ship weaponry, moored at a makeshift dock. A few glow orbs lit it from inside. She crept along the cliff base towards the lights. She caught a strain or two of shanties. A group of smugglers loaded the ships hold with crates and several of the metal-bound casks with the Tranquility Gold, double-Drake brand burned into the oak along with some bearing the black label and orange brands. No sign any were armed.
Jhee crept closer. A gull bird
nesting in the side of the cliff flew from its hiding place. The smuggler nearest her position gave the alarm. One grabbed a cargo hook.
She drew in her breath and took hold of the nearby winds. A gust sent them flying into the water. She felt the pullback as one or more tried too. A three-way struggle ensued between them and the storm. They were practiced, probably from wielding it to speed their passage. However, she gained her experience in battle. She allowed the storm to do much of the work, only insinuating herself when it turned the winds in her favor. Anyone who had not fled was now in the water.
With a lull in the winds, she had nothing to work with. The smugglers, instead of seizing the advantage, fished each other out. One, though, had fallen farther away than the others. The one she knocked in the water first had drifted away from the dock and headed for the breakers. She struggled and gulped.
Jhee froze. A young, teen’s image begging for her help replaced the smuggler. Jhee was a pre-jubilant again, clinging desperately to a rock while the waves buffeted her. She began to shake.
Not today.
Jhee tore free from her memory-induced paralysis and thrust her will into the water. Against the arcane infused waters, the best she managed was to prevent them from drifting farther out. The other smugglers threw a line to the one struggling in the bay. Jhee collapsed to her knees. With their compatriot rescued, they turned her way again. She offered no resistance. She merely focused on the sea and the breakers. One of the smugglers raised a hand to strike her.
The Cove
“No,” the smuggler who had nearly drowned yelled. She coughed and sputtered. “She saved me.”
“Saved you? Captain, t’were her what put you in the sea, first,” another smuggler said.
“Ain’t Makerly to kill a magistrate. We’re not murderers.”
“What you propose we do with her?”
“Are you all right?” Jhee asked.
The captain nodded. She gained her feet and shook the water off her body hair. “Thank you, Magistrate.”
Both smugglers had sea dog accents and pale body hair. Their eyes were a lighter more amber shade than those from around here. Jhee indulged her curiosity. “You are from the Gray Dale, captain ...?”
“Yaren. Aye, that I am. Pardon, the reception, mum. You surprised us is all. What might a magistrate be doing about the beach in this weather?”
“I might ask the same of you fine folk.”
She tugged on her ear. “We got slips. All forms and whatnot proper-like if you want to see them.”
“Please.”
The smugglers released Jhee. She dusted herself off as Captain Yaren led her to an alcove with a driftwood box. She opened it and pulled out a tiny, credential chip and a conch. At the bottom of the box, was some hard, shell currency. When she attached them, a manifest appeared. “There you are, Magistrate. As ye see, all taxes and duties, paid rightly.”
Jhee gave the manifest a once over. The header was crooked. It had Penstock Freight’s name, the shipping company it purported to come from, misspelled. The signature belonged to a notoriously corrupt dock master who had died two years previous. “What I see is a mediocre forgery.”
Captain Yaren’s eyes went wide, and she played with her ear. “Me crew have nothing to do with it. They loaded what were by their reckon a proper manifest.”
“I’ll take that into consideration should your help with another matter yield dividends.”
“Aye, ask, and it be my humble honor to comply.”
“Are you aware of the young man they found on the rocks?”
“We ain’t had nothing to do with the death of that poor boy. We’re Makerly devouts, we are.”
“He had to have gone in the water around here. Any idea why he might be out this way?”
The captain tugged hard on her ear. “Admiring the view.”
Jhee shoved her hand in her robes. “You try my patience, Captain. Your crewman’s inner wrist bears a tattoo though he tried to remove it like the one on the Prospective’s body. Likely a gang marker.”
The captain’s eyes flared. “Gangs?”
“That currency at the bottom of your chest matches the minting shape and denomination of currency also traced to the Prospective. Did you and your crew find him wandering out there and seek to rob him? He struggled, and you flung him to his death.”
“Bite your tongue. None who be here is thief or robber of men. We’re decent Maker folk. You ask the abbess. It were she what gave us the wine.”
“Pyrmo?”
“Saheli. We’re Makerly devouts, Magistrate. The tax on the wine were better spent on good works. We shared our custom and plied our trade to the benefit of Tranquility Bridge as much as our own. The abbess reckon it no crime we kept ourselves and our families fed. She saw we said prayers, made our offerings, and did our penance and devotions regular.”
“Regular? How often?”
“Once or twice a full-tide until recently. Now it’s that sour-faced woman what comes. Or we meet her by the solar arrays.”
“The prioress.”
“Aye, that be her. We sought to aid that boy’s troubled soul. He paid us fair sum to take passage on our next lay out. Our lay out come, he never showed. We sailed ahead of a nasty squall. Not till our return did we learn his fate.”
“Because of your operation here, you chose not to share your arrangement with the young man with the authorities.”
“Beg pardon, Magistrate. Weren’t our business. We told Saheli, and that were the last we heard of it. No other authority know enough to speak to us. We won’t do it for them.”
“Do you know why the young man wanted to leave?”
“Nay. He did seem sore troubled, though. We did our humble part to be fishers of our fellow folk as the abbess taught us.”
“And for a nice fee.”
“We do have families, mum.”
Jhee imagined Saheli sitting up in her spire engaged in her works, seeing the strange lights as Jhee had. If she also had full access to the archives, she would learn the isles many secrets and inlets. An operation such as this would not escape so an involved an abbess as her. If Saheli not only benefited but supplied the smugglers, she had no incentive to turn them in except in the direst circumstance. And they had no motive to do her in as long as their arrangement held. It made it hard to believe they would kill Prospective Leigh for catching them. Why not merely tell the abbess and have her deal with it?
“How did he even know you were here?”
“A good question, mum.”
The crewman Jhee singled out for their tattoo tried to hide behind another. “You there. Would you happen to know how he knew?”
“The abbess did not always come herself for the items she needed. She sent him down to procure them in her place.”
“What items?”
“Fancy, expensive items. Sometimes... intimate items.”
“I’ll hear no false talk against the abbess.”
“It’s true, captain. The boy came here regular with a list and payment to get personal goods on behalf of his abbess. His words. I never brought it up with her myself due to the intimate nature of some of the items.”
“He booked passage for himself and no other?”
“Aye.”
“Thank you.”
Jhee stroked her chin. The captain cleared her throat. “Magistrate, what might ye be doing about me crew and my humble person?”
“For the moment, nothing. Remain here should I have need of you again. If you flee, do know I have what I need to track you down.”
Jhee touched their sailing vessel and performed the full hand cypher for a temporary illumination. The smugglers gasped. None of them seem to know the difference.
“Aye, Magistrate. Best hurry, mum. Begging your pardon, you ought not be out on the heath after dark. If not for sheer treacherousness of the footing, but what with the spirits and wisp lights about like what lured that poor, troubled boy to his doom. Best take a light and this sage.”
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Jhee tried to wrap her head around what she had learned. The Prospective wanted to leave the isle. Where had he acquired the currency to book passage and still have such a significant sum left over? Pilfering was not out of the question. He had a pipeline right here. His tattoo showed he had some form of gang affiliation. Could he have been profiteering off the refugees? Did they have those sums of money?
The missing men from the camps. Might Prospective Leigh have something to do with it? Trafficking? The same brand of robbery she accused the smugglers of.
The Wood
Armed with a glow orb and sage, Jhee made her way back up the stairs. She kept her gaze focused up and away from the breakers. It was almost second sunset when she reached the top. Alone on the bluff, the goats have gone on along their way, she felt like relighting the sage. It had gone out during the climb though it continued to smoke. With the smugglers, prioress, and formerly Saheli running around here at night, she saw now why everyone thought the place infested with sea wisps. She gazed up at the moons in the sky. Full bright, when the largest shined its fullest. Sister Serra’s talk about astrological alignments and unleashed evil forces came back to her.
The dim-day had turned grayer. Jhee held her orb aloft to fight the gloom and made her way back towards the abbey. She thought of the sightings of spectral lights out here. Likely only the glow orbs of all the travelers between the abbey and the smugglers cove no doubt. Combine orb lights with a few mist reflections, and you had a recipe for sea wisps. Not to mention any gases which leeched from the wetlands or from underground mineral deposits.
In addition to the light and sage, the captain had explained to her the quick way to the side door by the solar arrays. The shortcut offered a different approach to the horticulturist’s shed. Sister Serra was quick to illuminate the failings of others. What might she have to hide out there? Jhee examined the shed by the herb garden and the door that led to the solar arrays. She couldn’t help but notice twice Sister Serra had prevented her from seeing inside. Serra was also rather cagey about her whereabouts.