by Rye Sobo
Zori inherited Fritzbink & Sons around the time the Fortean Empire disintegrated. Her father never came to grips with the fact he only had a single daughter. Zori represented the “and Sons” of the company.
The collapse of the Fortean Empire was one of conflict and confusion across the Auster Islands, which comprised most of the protectorates of the empire. With the collapse, the currency became worthless and many trading houses fell with the empire.
My mother told me during those times a loaf of bread cost five silver, a month’s wages. People starved. Livestock butchered and seed grain eaten just to keep families fed. Many found themselves outside the gates of the Temple District begging for scraps of anything to eat and a few coins. It was because of these bleak times that the Commonwealth adopted the outstretched hands on the silver palms coin, to remind us of when Drakkans had to beg.
Any other merchant would have sold their ships and hawked their inventories. Many of them did. Zori, who was into her second century by then, sought adventure. She bought whole trading houses and used her new fleet to transport food, weapons, and mercenaries into the city from farms in Lesser Auster. She smuggled out the Fortean noblemen and their households who were escaping from the roving companies of mercenaries looting the city.
It’s claimed, though never substantiated, that Zori got a quarter of everything raided from manors in the Gilded Hill and half the coin any noble tried to flee with. In the tumult, Zori thrived.
Over the next hundred years after the downfall of the Empire, the turmoil settled. Zori had a second son, changed the name of the business, and established shops in every major city along the Azurean coasts.
***
I slid through the massive main door of the Southern Empire Trading Company and through the corridors of clerks and money-counters to the warehouse in the rear. At just two cubits tall, I could walk full-upright past the counters and not be seen over the piles of paperwork.
This late in the harvest season the storehouse must be filled with crates of produce and dried meats ready to ship to the Outer Islands soon. She won’t miss a few items.
Zori stood on top of a wooden crate to be eye level with a dark, thin man in the uniform of a merchant captain. She made a point, despite her gnomish stature, to furnish the Empire offices for the convenience of her human clients and employees.
Zori and the captain were at a table in the middle of the warehouse checking manifests and charts. Captain Claudio Azpa listened to his master while he poured over the documents.
“One in each of the offices,” she said. “The station manager will have the key, which will need to be sent on a separate ship.”
“As you wish,” Captain Azpa said in his smooth, thick Laetian accent. “Should the recipient be informed of delivery?”
“They will know when the time is right. There’s no need to arouse suspicions,” she said.
Keeping one eye on the two merchants, I opened a crate with only the faintest of creaks, slid my hand into the container and removed a massive, cured sausage.
“Do you plan on working today, Ferrin,” Zori asked without glancing up from the table. “Or just stealing my wares?”
I froze, sausage half tucked into my trousers, hesitant to say anything. I stood. There was no sense hiding from Zori.
“I still have need of another deckhand,” the captain said. “Perhaps he can earn back what he has stolen.”
Zori nodded.
“Claudio’s ship leaves port tonight,” Zori said. “Two spans to Whyte Harbor and back.”
“Forty days!” I protested. “I really have so much to do.”
“Oh? What’s her name?” Zori asked.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I mean, the options are endless these days—”
“The Delilah Fritzbink. Shouldn’t be too difficult for you to remember,” she said cutting me off. “It’s named after your grandmother. Now if you’re not working, get the hell out of my storehouse.”
I adjusted the sausage in my pants and pushed my way through the crates toward the door.
“Tonight,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
Had anyone else intruded, Zori Alsahar would have had the thief drawn and quartered. But as her son, I got offered a month-long job. To this day, I’m still uncertain which fate was worse.
CHAPTER FOUR
Istepped out of the Southern Empire to ponder the offer from my mother. Four spans. The longest I’d ever been away from Drakkas Port was a span and a half.
Even then, that was an overland trip to the Stormreach Mountains with my father and brother. Forty days at sea?
I squatted on the broad stone steps of the Empire’s trading house and stared out over the city.
The glistening harbor opened to the north of the Central Market with hundreds of ships crowded together in a chaotic swarm that only the most seasoned sailors could follow. The Harbor Master’s Tower stood at the center of the crescent moon that made up the docks surrounding the harbor.
Across the crowded thoroughfare from the Harbor Master’s Tower was the shrine to Aequor, the god of the sea, with its spiraled dome and imposing stone spires.
The western half of the crescent moon was an amalgam of storehouses, bars, and brothels frequented by the perpetual stream of merchants entering and departing the port. The eastern half dedicated to naval docks, shipwrights, bars, and brothels. Fort Hydrus, the ancient stronghold of the city, climbed above the eastern docks and dominated the northeastern quarter.
Opposite the fort, the northwestern part of the city was Smuggler’s Scourge, with its tight serpentine corridors and network of ramshackle homes. Built from the scraps of ships, crates, canvas, and everything else residents could get their hands on. The shacks of the Scourge climbed the gigantic stones of the imposing outer walls like Monkey Vines consuming a mighty Barno tree.
The surrounding streets grew dark. The shadow of something massive blocked out the sun over the city. I glanced up just in time to meet the head of an immense, red, mountain dragon gliding without a sound fifty feet above the roof of the Empire. Then another and another. In all five massive lizards clad in steel, each larger than three ships placed bow-to-stern, circled above the Black Keep before turning and diving toward the fortress. The famed dragon vanguard of the Drakkan Commonwealth, protectors of Drakkas Port for at least two thousand years.
The vanguard traveled with the Drakkan army when it deployed, working as something of a blend between a scouting force and “a flying wall of fire-breathing holy fuck, putting the fear of Cassis into our enemies,” as Dem always characterized them. It had been a year since I had seen the vanguard. The Council had committed a substantial detachment of the army to Laetia, for reasons never made clear to the citizens of the Commonwealth.
The dragons fly quicker than the ships, so they will island hop as the ships transporting the army advance from the Auster Islands to Laetia, allowing the dragons plenty of chance to rest and eat. Once the flotilla is within a day of the capital, the dragons fly home. The early morning flyover and the southern approach means they stayed the night in Dragons’ Roost in the Stormreach Mountains.
It also meant the fleet would arrive by midday. A few thousand soldiers returning from a year abroad, heavy with coin, meant the liquors would flow and new stories abound.
Roused from my thoughts, I pressed my way north through the teeming market. There was a fresh vitality in the crowd, perhaps from the sight of the battle-dragons flying overhead, perhaps from the prospect of family members home from distant shores. As I worked through Central Market, I noticed merchants raising crimson and gold pennants above their stalls and hanging fresh bunting in the Commonwealth’s colors from the trade halls and boarding houses.
The priests in the Temple District say Cassis, the god of war, and Pecunia, the goddess of commerce, are twins. As one sibling prospers, the other also has their fill. As I watched the merchants move in an excited flurry, it was easy to understand the truth in that belief. B
y the end of the span, the coins from the fort will have progressed to the purses of every mercer, miller, grocer, whore, and barkeep in the city. Soon, everyone would have their stake of the spoils—everyone but the soldiers.
The excited energy of the Central Market turned to frenetic action Dockside. Stevedores moved from one dock to the next, carried mooring lines, hooks, and crates toward the eastern side of the wharf.
In the far distance, near the walls of the citadel, the priests in the temple of Cassis had stoked fires and heavy white columns of smoke ascended from the fresh sacrifices being performed. The head of one of the massive wyrms peered above the wall of Fort Hydrus as it heaved a sheep into the air before devouring it whole.
Men, dark from a lifetime of days under the hot Drakkan sun, led mules and carts at a brisk pace from warehouses to the berths, weighted down with cargo intended for ships on the western side of the harbor. There was a crowd clustered around the Harbor Master’s Tower as ships’ officers scrambled to change departure times to set sail before the Hydra’s Mouth became choked with the hundred warships that would soon flood into the harbor.
The towering walls defended the capital from attack, but the city runs on commerce. To secure the port and the critical shipping, the architects of the Great Walls of Drakkas Port extended the one-hundred-foot-tall walls into the harbor, and provided only a narrow break, wide enough for an individual ship to pass through, as the sole means of entering or exiting the harbor. This challenge left the Harbor Master to organize the hundreds of ships that passed through the Hydra’s Mouth on any span. With the fleet returning, warships would block the Mouth until well after dark. Any captain hoping to escape before nightfall would need to leave in the next few turns at the latest.
I turned left past the temple of Aequor and followed the busy half-moon seawall around to the three-story stone and mud building which looked as though it had collapsed on several occasions and the occupants had just stacked the stones back up where they thought they should go. On the facade, someone had driven a corroded navigator’s sextant into the mudwork above the door. The building had no other markings, except the sign that identified the decrepit building as a public house. The denizens of the dilapidated hall all knew it as the Rusted Sextant.
CHAPTER FIVE
From within the Sextant, the atmosphere was everything one would expect in a questionable tavern along the harbor. The air was always thick with the smell of cheap tobacco, cheaper booze, fish, and the dank, salty air of the sea. The few windows in the place were caked with decades of dust, vomit, and blood, so the place had the feel of twilight even at midday. A dozen or so tables in various states of collapse were littered around the main room with an assortment of broken chairs and crates pulled alongside them. At that early hour, the Sextant had nearly emptied of the crowd that had passed out the night before.
“Fer’n! You see ‘em?” Max said.
Maximilian sat behind the ancient, beer encrusted bar and slowly sipped on a cup of bilge water he insisted was quality Aeromon-style coffee.
“See what? Did something happen?” I played dumb.
Max, like most people who did not grow up in Drakkas Port, was always excited to see the dragons circle overhead. His face lit up like a child watching an illusionist’s play during the Festival of Arkanus. How could I possibly take that from him with a jaded response?
“Drag’ns! The fleet’ll be in soon,” he said. “Tonight, all the docks will be a huge party! We’ll get rich!”
“What? You mean we’re not getting rich off all these drunken adventurers,” I said with a grand flourish of the room.
In total there were eight people in the Sextant that morning: Max, me, Old Herus nursing the hair of the dog, and five men clad in a random collection of armor. The Rusted Sextant saw its share of adventurers fresh from their travels, mostly because the cheap rooms and cheaper booze. They were the reason I frequented the run-down pub with such regularity. Adventurers bring with them stories of adventure, or failed adventure, or attempted adventure—stories I used to relish hearing as a young boy.
Greater Auster has been continuously inhabited for close to four thousand years. The Fortean Empire built fortresses and temples, now mostly in ruin, across the island during their two-thousand-year run of the place, and Auster was the only place ever known to have domesticated a dragon, if you can consider a flying wall of fire-breathing death in plate armor to be domesticated. The island was ripe for the adventuring sort. These five men: a human, a half-elf, two dwarves, and an honest-to-goodness high elf made up the latest in a long tradition of post exploration debauchery.
If there is anything rarer in Commonwealth than a gnome, it’s a high elf. At one time, when the empire ruled the Azurean Sea, the high elves had a substantial settlement in the capital city, Fortis. But when the empire began to collapse, the elves fled. Perhaps back to Jia, beyond the Caligin Ocean. Their offspring with the humans were common enough. You could find half-elves, or quarter-elves in most port towns, but a full-blooded high elf was a rare sight indeed.
“We’re nae drunk yet,” one of the dwarves said in response to my flourish. “Nae with this swill.”
“Speafer yaselph,” Old Herus slurred from his spot at the bar.
“Max, these lads are looking for quality beverages,” I said. “Grab that bottle of Stormreach Whiskey from under the counter, please.” I knew that happy customers with a few strong drinks in them could share some stories.
“That’s much better. Thank ye, lad,” the dwarf said.
I pulled a crate close to the adventurers’ table. Up close they wore the signs of battle. The dwarves each had singed beards. The half-elf had a makeshift bandage wrapped around his bicep and dried blood ran down his arm. The human had a squared dent in the center of his breastplate, where he had clearly taken a warhammer to the chest.
“You look like you had a hell of a time,” I said. “I’d hate to see the other guys!”
“If you do, be sure to slit their throats for us,” the human said.
Max came up to the table and set down seven glasses and provided a healthy pour into each. “What’re we drinking to then?”
“Seamus,” the high elf said in a graveled voice, grabbing a glass and raising it up without breaking eye contact with the table.
“Aye, to Seamus,” one of the dwarves said. “May Lady Nex keep him.” The men each grabbed a glass and raised it in their friend’s honor. Max shot me a knowing glance as he raised his glass, downed the drink, and returned to the bar.
After a long, uncomfortable silence, the human looked over to me. “Do you know anywhere we could get some armor repaired?”
“You mean that dent,” I said pointing to the concaved breastplate, “I can fix that.”
“You?” he asked with an incredulous look.
“Take it off and put it here on the crate,” I said as I grabbed a glass and walked over to the fireplace. I half-filled the glass with Max’s bilge-coffee from a kettle resting on the hearth near the fire. The rest of the party laughed as the human pulled at the straps of the armor.
“Would a gnome even know what to do with armor?” asked the half-elf with a laugh. “He’s likely to turn it into a boat and float out of here.”
“Aye, with my cock as the rudder,” I said as I returned to the armor at the crate.
I slid the hot glass under the breastplate. The high elf cocked his head to the side and watched me with intense scrutiny. I closed my eyes and began to focus on the boiling liquid in the glass. Placing my hand on the steel just above the glass, I took a deep breath, muttered an arcane word, and pulled my fist into the air.
THUD. I opened my eyes to see the armor reshaped back into its original form without a hint of the mighty hammer blow that had been there a moment ago. I picked up the plate mail and handed it back to its owner who, along with the other party members, had gone from laughter to stunned silence.
“I guess I’m going to need another boat,” I said.
The human, wide-eyed, took the armor back from me and looked it over. Content with the work he reached into his purse and handed me four silver palms, about twice what Max pays me a week for entertaining the customers.
I had spent enough time around adventurers to know that there was no story to be gleaned from them. Most likely they were ambushed by bandits before they ever got near the ruins. The bandits probably mistook the dwarves for mercenaries from Stormreach and thought they had a good score.
In the ensuing scuffle, Seamus charged the attackers. By the look on the high elf’s face during the toast, I guess he cast a fireball that enveloped the bandits and Seamus. The dwarves tried to pull their friend back, but the flames were just too much for them. Their beards and tabards were singed.
The human was likely the ringleader of the expedition. He probably told his friends that it would be easy. They could just find an old temple and dig around for some treasure. The quiet dwarf blamed the human for Seamus’s death. He was the one who had sunk his warhammer, which he had tried to hide under his pack, into the human’s chest.
This was an expedition that had failed miserably. That was the look Max had shot me. He had read the scene as soon as he approached.
I sighed.
The icy cold glass burned my fingers as I picked it up and turned toward the bar. A light hand touched my shoulder. I turned to see the high elf, now stooping to look me in the face.
“I would not have expected to see such a skilled arcanist in a place such as this,” the elf said in his deep, graveled voice. “Your efficiency is impressive.”
“Thank you,” I said, a bit dumbfounded. I knew that a compliment of any kind from a high elf was as rare as a unicorn, but a high elf complimenting another’s manipulation of the Fabric was something that just didn’t happen. The whiskey must have already had its effect on the elf. “I studied for a number of years under my father at the University. That’s the extent of my parlor tricks.”