Fabrials. Her babsk had always been fascinated with them. Perhaps that was something Rysn should have picked up from him.
“So how’s this going to help?” the Lopen said, sitting up beside her seat. “Oh! We’re going to stick those to her legs, and then have this other person walk around, and she’ll be able to look like she’s walking!”
“Er,” Rushu said, “we were rather thinking of making her seat hover in the air.”
“Oh,” the Lopen said. “That makes way more sense.” He seemed disappointed nonetheless.
Rysn shook her head. “I see why Brightness Navani was hesitant to make any promises. If we were to make a chair hover for me, it wouldn’t do me much good, would it? The chair would have to be attached to a lattice of gemstones, and then if I wanted to move forward, someone would have to move that lattice. So I’d still need porters and carriers.”
“Unfortunately, yes, Brightness,” Rushu said.
Rysn tried not to let disappointment show on her face. The world was becoming a place of wonders—men and women soared in the air, and ships were being built with lightning rods right in the masts. At times, everything felt like it was progressing at an insane pace.
Yet none of it seemed able to help her. The healing was amazing . . . as long as your wound was fresh. The fabrials were incredible . . . as long as you had manpower to operate them. She had let herself begin to dream of a hovering seat she could direct under her own power, without needing to be hauled around like a roll of sailcloth.
Be careful, she thought. Don’t sink back into that lethargy of inaction. Life was better for her now. She’d learned to change her surroundings to suit her needs. She dressed herself every morning with ease, using the hooks. Plus she had her own ship! Well, she owned a ship. At any rate, this was better than sitting in a dull room doing accounts.
“Thank you for the demonstration, Ardent Rushu,” she said. “The technology is fascinating, even if the application doesn’t seem suited to my needs.”
“Well, Brightness Navani did assign me a list of tests to run,” Rushu said. “She gave some thought to how this might help you in your specific situation. Perhaps you’d like to get a view as grand as that of the eel’s nest? We could send you soaring up high. Or perhaps we can fashion a little lift to raise and lower you to and from the quarterdeck? That can be managed with some counterweights and a crank that can be wound periodically by one of the sailors.”
That seemed a pale offering compared to her dreams, but Rysn forced out a smile. “Thank you. I should like to be available for those experiments.”
Rushu deactivated the hoops and returned them to her box, along with some other machinery—including several silvery sheets of metal of varying thickness. “Aluminum,” she explained as Rysn peered inside. “It blocks spanreed communication, something we only recently discovered. Navani wants me to experiment with how thick the aluminum needs to be to function, and then see if it affects—in any way—how paired rubies react, or don’t react, to natural ship movements. I even have some foil, to . . . Oh, I’m getting too technical, aren’t I? Sorry. I have a tendency to do that.”
She looked to Rysn, then to the Lopen, who was sitting and rubbing his chin.
“Wait,” he said. “Back up. I need an explanation.”
“Lopen,” Rushu said, “I hardly think I can—”
“How do fish breathe?” he said.
Rysn smiled at the ardent’s exasperation. Rushu thought it was a joke, but the Lopen seemed genuinely interested as he pestered her for an explanation.
A sudden motion distracted Rysn as Kstled rushed up to the quarterdeck and whispered something to the captain, who had been chatting with the current helmsman. Rysn focused on them, on Kstled’s worried face, and on the captain’s immediate frown.
Would they remember to inform her, whatever it was? The captain gave an order, then started down the steps. Halfway down, she paused to glance at Rysn—and noticed that Rysn was looking directly at her.
So, the captain—seeming annoyed—walked back up and trotted over.
“What?” Rysn asked, anxious. “What is wrong?”
“Dark Soulcasting,” the captain said. “And bad omens. You should probably see it in person, Rebsk.”
6
Cord, the Horneater woman, dug her hand into the barrel, then pulled it out, letting thick grains of lavis dribble between her fingers. This revealed the worms; though they were generally the same color as the grain, they uncurled and writhed on the surface, then buried themselves again.
“All of the barrels?” Rysn asked.
“Each and every one,” Kstled said, nodding for his sailors to open two more barrels.
“I came to get supplies for food,” the Horneater woman said in thickly accented Alethi. “And discovered. They are . . . every one this thing.”
Rysn watched, troubled, as the sailors demonstrated the presence of worms in the other barrels. She kept meaning to find time to chat with Cord, but the woman had been spending her time in the galley, helping feed the crew. That had reinforced Rysn’s initial assumption that she was a servant. The Radiants, however, didn’t treat Cord that way. So who was she, and why was she here?
“The grain has been cursed,” Kstled muttered. “Dark Soulcasting, performed by evil Passions during the storm.”
“Or,” Rysn said, trying to keep a level head, “we simply bought some stock with dormant larvae hiding inside.”
“We checked thoroughly,” Kstled said. “We always check. And look, this first barrel was left over from our original stores, taken on in Thaylen City. This other one was from an early resupply, and this one we picked up only two days ago. All have worms now.”
She caught the other two sailors nodding, muttering about dark Soulcasting. Wormy grain wasn’t the worst thing—many a sailor had eaten such during a long trip. But the sudden appearance of worms so early after restocking, and infesting all their barrels? This would be seen as an omen.
It was an old thing, of Thaylen superstition. The Passions, it was said, changed the world. “Spontaneous genesis has been disproven multiple times, armsman,” Rysn said to Kstled. “This didn’t happen because there’s some kind of dark Soulcaster aboard our ship.”
“Maybe it happened because of our destination,” he replied. “The men dream terrible dreams full of premonitions, and their dread Passion creates omens.” The other sailors nodded again. Storms, with this, and with the death of the ship’s pet the day before setting sail . . . well, Rysn herself almost believed.
She needed to turn this attitude around quickly. “Kstled, how much of the crew knows about this?”
“All of them, Rebsk,” he replied, glancing toward the Horneater woman.
“My sorrows,” Cord replied. “I did not know this thing was . . . he was bad. . . . I asked others. . . .”
“It is done,” Rysn said, turning to Nikli. “To my cabin, quickly.”
The tattooed porter, along with his assistant, quickly carried her up from the hold to the higher decks. Yes . . . Rysn could imagine the convenience of a small lift, working via fabrial.
When she reached her cabin, she found the Lopen waiting for her. “Something wrong, gancha?”
“Corrupted food stores,” Rysn said. Nikli held her chair while his assistant opened the door. “I need to do something about it quickly.”
“I could fly to one of our outposts,” the Lopen said, following into her cabin. “Lash some more grain into the air and bring it to us.”
“A viable suggestion,” Rysn said as Nikli set her at her desk. She immediately began digging through the notebooks in the bottom drawer. Chiri-Chiri lethargically peeked out of her box and chirped in concern. “However, I feel we need another solution.”
She pulled out a specific notebook, then nodded to Nikli, who bowed and withdrew with his assistant to stand outside. The Lopen remained, lounging beside the door as it clicked closed. She glanced at him. He acted so relaxed all the time; he seemed easy
to underestimate.
“This isn’t about just our lack of food, gancha,” he guessed.
“An astute observation,” Rysn said, flipping through her notebook. “One of the biggest dangers at sea is letting your crew get away from you.”
“Like that crew from the ghost ship,” Lopen said, “who seem to have gotten away from everyone . . .”
“I wasn’t referring to anything so dramatic,” Rysn said. “But our situation could quickly turn dangerous if the crew starts to think I’ve brought them on a suicide mission.”
It was one of the conundrums of maritime life. Sometimes good crews, well trained, would mutiny. Her babsk had talked about it, and she’d found herself reading story after story. Spending so long on the ocean, isolated, the crew’s emotions fed off one another. Things that were irrational during brighter days started to seem reasonable. Emotions could take on a life of their own, like spren, and suddenly good crews would become hysterical.
Your best defenses were discipline and swift action. She searched her notebook for notes from a specific trading expedition she’d taken with Vstim several years ago. She’d been a brat back then—but at least she’d been the kind of brat who wrote about how annoyed she was.
There, she thought, finding the entries. An expedition into the wilderness of Hexi. Vstim had purchased wormy grain out of Triax for mere chips, and she’d thought him insane. Who bought grain with worms in it?
But as with all things he’d done, there’d been an explicit lesson in Vstim’s actions. Trade wasn’t only about buying things and selling them, he’d reinforced to her time and time again. It was about finding a need that wasn’t being fulfilled. It was a kind of Soulcasting: taking scraps and transforming them into the brightest of gemstones. He’d made her write down a list of locations. . . .
“Fetch the captain for me,” Rysn said absently, unrolling one of her maps.
She didn’t realize until after he’d gone that she’d given an order to a Knight Radiant. Would he be insulted? But when the Lopen returned with Drlwan, he didn’t seem the least bit offended. Merely curious as he looked over her shoulder at the map.
“Rebsk?” the captain asked.
“We need to take a short detour,” Rysn said, pointing at the map.
Rysn made certain the entire crew was on deck to watch as she invited the Hexi nomads on board. A quiet folk, uninterested in the politics of the world, they kept their hair in braids and smelled faintly of the animals they kept as sacred beasts. Their priestly class did not eat flesh, as they’d taken oaths forbidding it—but they considered grubs and insects to be plant, not animal.
They were one of six groups Vstim had made her write down as people to whom she could sell wormy grain. To initiate the trade, Rysn read off the phrases that Vstim had required her to record. The nomads sifted through the grain and found it to be good, barely eaten by the worms—which were plump and fat.
Careful not to take advantage, Rysn negotiated briefly, but firmly. The end result was a large stock of jerky, made by the nomads from the dead of their animals and kept specifically for trades like this. The blankets—given as a gift to Rysn, with the phrase “For an Honored” because of her respectful language—would sell for a good bit as well. The nomads left with the barrels of grain, singing their farewell.
“They actually bought worm-filled grain,” the captain said, scratching her head. “I’ll admit, Rebsk, I hadn’t believed you until just now.”
“Vstim never brought you here, I take it,” Rysn said.
“Ah. This did smell of one of his schemes. I wonder why this isn’t common knowledge. This place should be swarming with traders trying to offload their old grain for profit.”
“You’d think that,” Rysn said, “but that’s not what I learned from Vstim. The Hexi tribes must be approached carefully, and their language is difficult to learn. Act arrogant, and you’ll turn them away. Plus, the grain needs to be fresh good grain—though with worms. They won’t buy something that has festered and is full of decayspren.”
“Still,” the captain said.
And she was right. This was a mostly untapped market. But who wanted to trade wormy grain when there were fine rugs and jewelry to show off? Who wanted to visit the Hexi wilderness when the grand bazaars of Marat were so close?
Only someone who understood need and the true soul of a trader. Thank you, Babsk, she thought as she surveyed her crew and saw far fewer anxietyspren than before. This had mollified them. These last few days had been tense, but the crew were more jovial as they returned to their stations.
Rysn had, hopefully, inverted the omen. That was the traditional way to disperse such a thing: to derive a good turn from it. To those who followed the Passions, this showed that fate was on your side, even when an omen tried to darken the way. You could always defeat gloomy Passions with optimism and determination. Even the worst highstorm dropped fresh water.
It was all nonsense, she’d come to believe—but it was the most intriguing kind because of the underlying truth. Omens weren’t real. But the way people reacted to them was very real. Inverting that was all about perspective. Like how a barrel full of worms was worthless or of great value, depending on your perspective.
Nikli picked her up at her request; for simple transfers like this, he brought her in a cradle-carry rather than using his sling, which she could sit in. As he walked toward the quarterdeck, a couple of the sailors waved to him and called out a good-natured joke, at which Nikli smiled.
“It worked, I see,” she said as he deposited her in her seat beneath the sunshade. “You seem to have made a few friends on board.”
“I . . .” Nikli bowed his head. “I guess I shouldn’t have doubted. Yes, Brightness. They eat with me now, ask about my homeland. They are not so prejudiced as I thought.”
“They are and they aren’t,” she said. “As I said, sailors on a ship can be a tight-knit group. But these here on the Wandersail chose this duty, preferring long-distance voyages that take them new places. They’re not the type to dislike someone solely because he looks a little different—at least, no more than they distrust anyone else who isn’t part of their ship family. You merely needed to join that family.”
Nikli knelt beside her chair as she buckled herself in. “You are also different from what I expected, Brightness. I thought working for a merchant would involve . . . Well, thank you. For the way you treated those nomads earlier, and the way you treat me. For your wisdom.”
“I wish it were my wisdom, Nikli,” Rysn said. “I was trained very well by a teacher I didn’t deserve, and can never live up to.”
“Brightness,” Nikli said, “you seem to be doing a fine job, in my estimation.”
She appreciated the words, but now that she knew how the crew felt about her, she found it more difficult to quiet the voice inside. The one that whispered she didn’t deserve to own this ship. She hadn’t earned this station. She hadn’t made the money, proven her acumen, or worked her way up to being a shipmaster. Everything Rysn possessed, she had been given.
There was an uncomfortable truth to the way the captain regarded her. Rysn was untested. She was undeserving. Even victories like the one she’d accomplished today had been achieved by leaning on Vstim and his lessons. She wouldn’t stop doing that, of course. Ignoring what she’d been taught out of some kind of petulant spite was exactly the kind of thing the youthful her would have done.
That voice persisted anyway.
“You know,” Nikli said, still kneeling beside her chair and scanning the ship, “I have this strange, perhaps selfish piece inside me that didn’t want the crew to like me. It was easier to think of them all as bigots.” He looked down at his feet. “That was small of me.”
“No, just human of you,” Rysn said. “You know, you still owe me the story of why you left your homeland. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
“It isn’t a great story, Brightness,” he said. “We are a small village, my people. Not much of interest
about us.”
“I’d like to hear it anyway.”
Nikli thought for a moment. Rysn had traveled quite a bit of the world, and she’d never seen tattoos like his—they had been inked over some kind of scar tissue, as if his skin had been carved, allowed to heal, then overlaid with the white tattoos.
“I was betrayed,” he finally said, “by someone I trusted. Soon after, one of us was needed to go to Thaylenah—my people, though small, like to know what is happening in the great nations of the world. I volunteered. So I wouldn’t have to be around the one who had treated me so.”
That only raised more questions in her mind. She didn’t press him. It didn’t feel right.
“Did your master have any wisdom to share about traitors?” Nikli asked. “About how to deal with someone you trust who turns against you?”
“Vstim said to always read contracts with friends an extra time,” Rysn said softly.
“That’s it?”
“I asked him, on another occasion, to explain. He said, ‘Rysn, being cheated is a terrible feeling. Being cheated by someone you love is worse. Discovering such a deception is like finding yourself in a deep dark ocean with nothing around you but formless shadows of things you once thought you understood and enjoyed. It is painful beyond explanation. But that is never a reason to pretend it can’t happen. So read those contracts again. Just in case.’ ”
Nikli grunted. “That’s . . . a different kind of wisdom than I’d anticipated. I thought maybe this man lived purely a life of charity.”
“Vstim is good and honest,” Rysn said. “But you don’t get a reputation for either without some people seeing your nature as an opportunity.” He’d warned her of that fact too, and she’d often wondered what specific experiences had taught him the painful lessons. He’d never shared the details.
“Brightness,” Nikli said. “I hesitate to say this, but . . . I think you should know. I am the type of person many ignore, and I listen well. I overhear things. I think . . . Brightness, I think the Radiants and their friends are hiding things from you.”
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