Dreamlands

by Scott Jäeger

  Gorice launched into a description of the merchants’ habits and wares. Though manic in its attention to detail, his spiel added nothing to the rumours Solomon regularly plied. The blacksmith’s obsession was to me faintly ridiculous but as he was the friend of my friends, I decided to hear him out. Later on, we ended up in a grog house popular with sailors and labourers called the Brass Coin. Erik joined us and tea drinking turned to rum drinking, but the subject stayed the same.

  “You’ll recall,” Erik was saying knowingly, “just this week Solomon narrowly avoided being crushed to death by a pallet of masonry blocks on Dove Street.” Gorice agreed this was a sign he was getting closer to the answers they all sought.

  “I’ve listened to you two, and Solomon, jabber endlessly about these merchants,” I said, “but I’ve yet to hear an account of any crime.”

  “They are making themselves rich in coin and bullion,” Gorice replied, “but at great expense in goods. They deal in gold only, mind you. Silver, copper, anything else they will exchange at a loss.”

  “What do they need so much gold for?” Erik pondered. “An army perhaps, an invasion?”

  “If gold is their cargo,” I said skeptically, “those galleys should be swarming with pirates. It’s a wonder they’re not attacked right in port.”

  “Haven’t I heard they were slavers?” Gorice asked, eyeing our fellow drinkers.

  “Maybe in other seas,” Erik answered, “but here they come by their crew honestly. I’ve known a few who have gone aboard to pull the sweeps for them. I have seen men go, but never seen them come ashore again.”

  “If you considered these mysteries when you were sober,” I said, “they would be much easier to solve. You yourself mentioned they started hiring this past year. If their route takes them to the Cerenerian Sea, they could be gone the round of a year or even longer."

  “They sell almost every form of goods folks wish to buy,” Erik remarked, ignoring my argument, “but what freight do they carry on their return, aside from a strongbox full of gold?”

  “An interesting question,” Gorice said slowly. “A sailor friend of mine was tasked to guard one of their ships two weeks past, while they were all away at some villains’ congress. He decided to take himself a look-see.”

  “And?” I said, into the weighty pause that followed.

  “It was sand,” he replied. “Crate, barrel and sack were all packed with sand, and not just for ballast. Their whole cargo, everything they took aboard, barring provisions and water, was a fake.”

  “Is this friend of yours still around?” Erik asked.

  “He told me he would be leaving the very next dawn, and by road, not by sea.”

  Erik coughed up a mouthful of drink, the idea of a seafarer leaving Zij on foot more baffling than anything else he had heard.

  “But why?” he said. “Surely they couldn’t know he had poked about a few of their packages.”

  “I said as much myself,” Gorice replied, “and he told me, They’ll know. They always do.”

  When the blacksmith spoke with such quiet drama, he looked like a huge, serious child, and I let out a guffaw. He and Erik turned their hangdog expressions at me, and I laughed in earnest until their solemn faces began to crack and we were all laughing together.

  * * *

  In the week leading up to my next voyage, I worked aboard the Asphodel from dawn to dusk, and hadn’t the opportunity to visit Isobel or Solomon. I had been assisting with the final loading when the old shipwright appeared on the dock, I supposed to wish me luck. He kept his eyes shaded from the sun, and approached haltingly, as if ill.

  “Solomon, are you sick? Sit down on one of these hogsheads.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, dismissing my suggestion with a grimace. “Too much wine is all.”

  While waiting for the block-and-tackle man to finish rigging our next load, I drew the pearl-handled dirk given me by the blind shopkeeper. I had told Solomon nothing about the parcel he had given me.

  “What do you make of this?”

  “It would fetch a good price in Ulthar,” he said blandly.

  “It’s a fine blade,” I agreed, “but I’m of no mind to trade it.”

  “Then you’ve good judgement as well as a strong back.” Then, looking away, “I heard you spoke with Gorice about those villains in the bazaar.”

  “All I heard from Gorice is that men are crewing with them. But this is a port, after all.” I gestured expansively. “You’re likely to find men working on ships, for coin.”

  “Will you be ready to move against them?” he asked, missing my tone.

  I studied him more carefully. He did look sick, and old, as if he were being chipped away.

  “You’ve finally ginned up a reason to attack them, have you? I haven’t time for this. The Asphodel is about to sail, and even if she weren’t, I’ve no interest in starting trouble.”

  Solomon snorted, and sneered at the barrels and rope as if they were not to his liking.

  “This is more important than going to sea to earn some pennies for rum,” he said. “I have been watching these creatures closely–”

  “And what have you uncovered so far,” I interrupted, throwing down the bit of rope I had been nervously twisting, “that traders like gold? I suppose in the dreary land they come from it’s wanted for rings and bracelets. Next season they will want grain, and after that door hinges or lollies for children.” In an attempt to soften my words, I added, “If you’ve so much time to spend on conspiracies, retirement must not agree with you.”

  He clenched his fists and paced for a few moments.

  “I’ll leave you with this:” he said, “if you sail now, you may not like what you find when you return.”

  I turned my back as he strode stiffly away, thinking what a relief it would be to put to sea.

  * * *

  When I awoke late that night to Solomon’s creased and humourless face, it was much too soon.

  “We’re going to see the harbourmaster,” he declared, as if this were a perfectly sensible reason to rouse a sailor who shipped out with the dawn. I rolled over and pulled up the cover, but when I closed my eyes I saw Solomon incarcerated, Isobel frantic, and me far away on the water. I relented.

  Harbourmaster Voxhaus lived in a room above the city customs office next to the docks. Though it was midnight, I was thankful to see a candle burning in his window. Voxhaus was an intimidating man, difficult to deal with even during the daylight hours, and so taciturn it was said a witch had cursed him to pay a copper piece for every word he spoke.

  He answered our knock wearing his night robe, and produced a bass growl deep in his chest.

  “I need you to search a ship,” Solomon said, suddenly deferential.

  The grooves that made up Voxhaus’s face deepened slightly.

  “Don’t make me remind you of a certain favour–” Solomon began.

  “I won’t.” Voxhaus went back inside, reappearing a few minutes later in his usual leather vest and grubby trousers, carrying a lantern. At his belt hung a heavy-headed truncheon. Locking his door, he motioned impatiently at Solomon, and the old shipwright led us to one of the many black merchant galleys which, as far as I could see, was identical to the one next to her and to all the others. They each of them showed no light and kept no watch, bobbing in their berths as if derelict. I noticed an oddly strong spice smell about the crafts, and a nasty, reptilian scent beneath.

  Solomon’s lips moved as he scanned the ship’s name, written in the runes of the merchants’ own queer language, forwards and back. A harbour official would copy the characters into his log when they moored, but no one in Zij knew what they signified. At last the shipwright confirmed this was the vessel in question.

  Voxhaus spat, and asked, “The charge?”

  “Imprisonment,” Solomon said, crossing his arms to reinforce his own conviction. “I believe the crew are being held against their will.”

  “Slavery,” Voxhaus made a sound like a co
rpse laughing, “in my port?”

  The harbourmaster stepped aboard the accursed ship without announcing himself, opened the main hatch, and descended.

  The minutes stretched unpleasantly, with Solomon nervously checking all quarters as if expecting an ambush and I speculating idly how the northerners kept their hulls completely free of barnacles, until Voxhaus finally reappeared, white-faced, and walked off the ship.

  “There is nothing untoward about the management of this vessel,” he said.

  With obvious effort, Solomon stopped himself from restraining the harbourmaster as he passed.

  “We know there are men on that ship below decks,” he said. “What of them?”

  “They are under no duress,” Voxhaus said without breaking stride.

  “Men from Zij were due to return on that vessel. Are you telling me they choose not to disembark in their own port? I don't believe it.”

  “I said they are under no duress!” Voxhaus’s voice caught in his throat mid-shout, making it a terrified yelp.

  Whatever he had seen had shaken the harbourmaster to his depths, and had I not moved aside he would have bowled me into the sea. Mouth agape, I watched his hasty retreat to the watch house while Solomon squatted down on his hams, breathing heavily, empty eyes fixed on the pier.

  Ajer Akiti

  Boarding the Asphodel that morning, my comrades looked as drained as I, though they were exhausted from debauchery rather than fruitless midnight quarrels. My shipmates would jibe me about my pensiveness throughout that tour, as my thoughts circled constantly back to Solomon and Voxhaus. This preoccupation almost cost me a hand while wrangling cargo in Jalob, but otherwise the time passed swiftly in routine.

  The night of my return to Zij, after soaking the worst of the tar out of my seams at the public baths and making a short-lived call at the Iron Street apartment, I found myself back in the Brass Coin, where I reflected on the nature of alcohol. It was a sensible drug. You took your pleasure, and if you took too much, you paid a toll and were done with it. With opium the price was borrowed at interest, and when the reckoning came, it was always too dear.

  Superior though rum may be, my cares made poor companions and I drank with little enthusiasm. Earlier, receiving no answer at my friends’ apartment, I had entered to find Solomon alone, and the curtains drawn. Before him sat an empty cup and an open, but untouched, bottle of wine. Intending to wait Isobel’s return, I told the story of a storm off the coast of Zur that threatened to pluck any untethered soul straight from the deck and into oblivion. He sat unreplying, his weird malaise compounding my own unease until I decided Isobel could wait until the next day, and made my exit. Drifting towards sleep on my bench in the Brass Coin, I pictured a fine layer of dust settling over Solomon’s corpse. When I shook myself awake, the last lamp in the empty drinking hall had burned to the wick.

  With six weeks on the Asphodel at my back, the street pitched and yawed beneath me, and I swaggered with a drunk I did not feel. The yellow half-moon and scattered stars did little to illuminate the crumbling and charmless storehouses along my route, nor the staring black holes that in daytime served as windows.

  I jolted as the noise of a breaking bottle punctured the night, along with the unmistakable sounds of a brawl. I rushed in that direction, thirsting for distraction and careless of whatever trouble attended it. An almost impassably narrow alley led me to the yard of a disused warehouse, where a man with gleaming black skin took on four squat ruffians with an iron-shod bō. Plainly a fighter, he was giving three of his enemies, armed with short, square-tipped swords, all they could want. The fourth, though, brandishing a grey club the breadth of a man’s thigh, was about to flank him.

  I drew my knife and cutlass on the run, and called out, already too late. The fourth assailant closed, and I saw that his club was in reality a grotesque appendage protruding from his sleeve. In profile, it looked like a massive slug, and its underside was carpeted in needlelike spines. Where it caressed the black man’s bare arm, dozens of little pricks detached, quivering in his flesh. He collapsed instantly.

  I brought my sword down on that gruesome limb, and it offered no more resistance than a stick of butter, slapping to the dirt with a sizzling sound. Its owner turned to me briefly, though in the poor light I could make out nothing of whatever gazed from the recesses of his hood, before fleeing in an awkward shuffle, as if I had lightened him by a leg rather than an arm. The other three stopped like a clockwork with a broken spring, swords raised but suddenly impotent. Their faces I could see plainly, and though they looked deranged with bloodlust or fear, they were human enough. The four of us posed in this idiotic tableau for several seconds, until without a word they scattered into the night.

  Once I had cleaned the ichor from my cutlass, I sheathed my weapons and knelt by the victim. The black man looked longer still, stretched out on the ground, like a gangly child fallen asleep in the broken cobble and ragweed. His face contorted in pain, and after rolling onto his back he lay unmoving, his skin already turning a sickly grey. I plucked the spines from his skin with a scrap of cloth. They were not barbed and came easily, but the punctures bubbled, and when I squeezed his bicep the blood was viscous with poison.

  I was able to carry the man myself as far as the Asphodel, where I enlisted Erik’s help. Lurching down the street with our burden, I was nonplussed to see a boy loitering in the entrance of my hostel, tugging at a prostitute’s skirts. As we reached the door, I recognized the smaller of the two as the dwarf who lodged in the same building. I did not know much about him, save that he harboured a special envy for my pearl-handled dagger. The girl wandered off to ply her trade elsewhere, and he grumbled,

  “Your friend’s having a rough night.”

  “He may have gone a little too far, but morning will see him right.” I assessed the steep stair before us, and thinking to put an end to the conversation asked, “Care to lend us a hand?”

  He did not.

  Even with Erik’s assistance, shifting the black man to my third floor room was a feat of both strength and logistics, but at last we laid him out on my cot, propping his dangling feet on the chair. The dwarf followed, standing in the door to watch us.

  “Ye know there’s no guests allowed up here,” he said, rolling his eyes at the figure on the bed, which by that time looked more like a corpse than someone needing a flop.

  I leaned forward to listen at the slack mouth. He still breathed, but shallowly, in fits and starts.

  “Probably owed the wrong people money,” Erik suggested, pretending to study the black man’s staff while watching my neighbour, who was muttering into his beard.

  “No,” I replied. “I don’t think that was it.”

  “Given any thought to selling us that pretty knife, have ye?” the dwarf asked.

  I ignored him. I was more concerned about the nature of the barbs I had plucked from the fighter’s arm than the reason for the attack, but my mind was flitting about like a hummingbird, and I couldn’t settle on a course of action.

  “I’ve got coin right now.” Black-beard’s pouch vouchsafed him with a musical jingle. “Had a good run in the gambling house.”

  “I’ve told you a dozen times I’ve no interest in selling it,” I said, marching towards him. “Now get out, or you’ll get a closer look at my dagger than you’d like.”

  Rather than retreat to the hall, the dwarf stepped inside the door, and we engaged in a slow and awkward tussle. I planted my hand on his chest, but may as well have been pushing a brick tower, while the oaf clumsily shoved his money pouch between us. When I felt him pawing at my sheath, I rocked back and boxed him one on the ear. At this the dwarf shifted to a fighting stance, and began to call out a sailor’s encyclopaedia of curses, and fondled the wickedly sharp hand axe at his belt.

  We were an instant from coming to blows when the screech of the bō’s iron tip on the floor cut his tirade short. Erik straightened from where he leaned casually on the fallen man’s staff and smiled. T
he dwarf eyed him murderously but, as he wasn’t ready to tangle with us both, satisfied himself with kicking the rope-hinged door on his way out. It swayed drunkenly behind him.

  “He doesn’t look the forgiving sort,” Erik observed.

  “I’ve enough problems right now without him skulking around.”

  “Keep a watch here," Erik said, shaking his head at the whole situation. "I’ll see if I can scout out a healer.”

  It was daylight when he returned with a ginger-smelling poultice. This concoction made the worst of the swelling fade, and the fighter’s coma changed to agitated tossing and turning. When we were able to fetch the local sawbones to wash and dress the puncture wounds, he declared the raging fever to be a positive sign. I was instructed to give the patient water whenever feasible, but could do little else but wait for the poison to run its course.

  After a few hours of sporadic sleep, I left the black man and returned to Iron Street, bounding up the steps like a boy when Isobel’s raven head bobbed into view above. When I kissed her, I saw by the rings under her eyes she hadn’t slept any better than I. Without any greeting, she drew me inside. The curtains were again drawn tight against the world, and a wool blanket added besides. The gloom made the apartment small and mean.

  “It’s my father,” she said hesitantly. “He hasn’t been well.”

  “I called on him yesterday,” I said, sitting in my accustomed chair. “I could see something wasn’t right.”

  Isobel pressed her lips tight.

  “Well?” I said, irritated. I had been expecting to boast of my heroic deed in the warehouse district, but her cold welcome had put me off.

  “He stopped working,” she said, pacing as much as one could in the little space. “He doesn’t visit his cronies in the shipyard anymore, and he won’t tell me why. He broods about the house, and when he speaks at all it is to grouse about those cursed sea traders from the north.”

  “The merchants again,” I said. “Has he been talking to Gorice?”