by Scott Warren
Dannic took care of Mercy while Cas introduced me to the basics of starting a fire using scrub trees and the dung collected from our new mule. After two or three tries, I got the hang of striking the flint just so to launch a barrage of sparks into my tinder stronghold and adding my own wind. I hung a pot over the fire on a small tripod, and into it went sausages, squash, salt, and some wild root vegetables Cas had foraged early in his ranging. My companions tried to insist that I relax and not worry. They were still in the mindset of employee/employer, believing that they should do the work and I should sit back and dole out the silver. But I refused to sit idle and instead learned a great deal.
By the time we reached the gates of Borreos nine days later, I had a much keener appreciation for the wilds, and my hands and feet both sported new calluses. I will not go so far as to say that I could survive the badlands without Cas, whose keen eyes and keen shots with his shortbow had ensured that our cookpot had never been empty. But I will say that when he vanished two days before reaching the city, I felt his absence more keenly in my heart than my stomach. Perhaps he was not ready to return to city living. Perhaps he had tired of my company. In either case, I did not know whether I would see him again. For a man so comfortable with speculation, this particular uncertainty troubled me.
The Queen’s Guard at the road did not believe me when I offered my name and occupation but had no reason to bar my entrance. After all, men entered Borreos every day with carts and wagons to load up with wares. And they lied less than most already within its walls. Gone these nearly three weeks from the city, my nose had lost its numbness to the odor of people forced to live in tight confines, and I found myself breathing through my mouth to abate the stenches of refuse and unwashed bodies wafting up on the hot breeze and mingling with the salt air. I doubt I smelled any better, but at least we had chanced upon a small stream two days prior that had offered me the opportunity to rinse my body of its sweat and oils.
After only a week, my clothes had lost their color, and everything from my coat to my boots was a uniform shade of brown that matched the dust of the badlands. I was used to people looking at me as I passed. Silk, silver, and fine shoes have that effect. But in my badlands garb and sitting on a cart pulled by a mule, I wasn’t paid the slightest heed. For the moment, I was invisible, so much so that no one even remarked when Dannic pulled us up into the courtyard behind a black carriage bearing the insignia of Fost and Lavender. I paused for a moment at the sight of it, wondering what it was doing in my courtyard. And then the figures in my head began to add up. My mood darkened upon reaching the inevitable conclusion, and it appeared I had returned none too soon.
I dismounted with a small jump, no longer pained by the blisters that had so plagued my feet only a week prior. I left Dannic and approached the shouting I heard within my banking house. One of the voices I recognized as Dahli’s unique shrill, and rarely had she sounded so incensed. I pulled open the door and slipped inside, surveying the scene within.
Marlin Fost was on the defensive, palms raised toward my secretary in what he must have thought a calming gesture but in fact made him look as though he feared she might strike him. Dahli was treating him to an impressive tableau of pejoratives from behind a single cocked index finger. Even the clerks standing behind Marlin and wearing their Fost and Lavender livery looked intimidated. Dahli was distracted when the door closed behind me, jingling the bell. She turned, eyeing my worn garb and disheveled locks with a quizzical eye.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I should hope so,” I said. “That’s what I pay you for.”
Marlin figured it out first, eyes widening. “Blessed Twins, Dahli, it’s Sailor!”
Dahli’s hands rose to her mouth. “Six Hells, Sailor!” she exclaimed, but her shock turned into a grimace, which she directed back at Marlin. “I told you! I told you it was too soon to know what happened.”
I pushed into the room, looking at my old friend. “I imagine Marlin knew before even I did,” I said. “Isn’t that right?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Marlin.
I brushed past him, dropping the road pack on the heavy table next to a sheaf of parchment. “What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“The senior partners got word your party was attacked and killed on the road,” said Marlin Fost.
“And they sent you to collect on the loan or else Kelstern would forfeit the mine or the collateral, yes?”
Marlin nodded. “But you’re here now. I can tell them there’s no need!”
I had taken Destain’s betrayal for the action of an opportunist. But we had traveled directly back, day and night in some cases. Marlin’s presence here preceded any news that should have reached the city.
My office door was locked, and the key was in the carriage somewhere south of the Borrean Wastes. I turned to Marlin. “My party wasn’t attacked. My party was the attack. The security—your security—tried to kill me so that Fost and Lavender could force the loan into default and under Borrean law seize both the mine and the platinum bar until the debt was paid. Only one problem: your brigands found something more valuable than whatever reward waited for them here, so they never bothered to finish the job.”
“Sailor, that’s absurd. You know I would never…”
I struck the cheap latch with the hammer end of the hatchet, shattering the brittle iron. The noise made both of the Fost cousins jump as I yanked open the door to my office. The safe itself required no key. I opened it and withdrew the last little velvet bag, bringing it out to the main room.
Marlin looked at it, eyes wide. “Is that…?”
I raised the axe and brought it down swift and clean, parting the velvet, the bar, and the loose pages beneath as the hatchet head embedded in the table. The two parts of the platinum bar split apart, their stark white shimmer peeking out from under the cloth of the bags. The two Fost and Lavender clerks gaped. It was likely they had never before seen a platinum bar. I picked up the larger half and tossed it to Marlin.
“Here. Turned over and witnessed. That will cover the line of credit I used at Spardeep. We never made it to Harborlight. I expect my collateral to be returned by noon tomorrow, and I’ll send along your side loan soon enough. My business with Fost and Lavender is done. My business with you is done. Now get out of my bank. I don’t want to see you in this office again.”
Marlin clutched the bar to his chest, eyes never leaving mine. He said nothing and made no move. Dahli crossed her arms. “Is that true Marlin? Did you send Sailor with a pack of pit vipers to watch his back?”
“No,” he protested. “That’s insane. Gates, how could you think that?”
“It’s time for you to go,” she said. At his cousin’s insistence and his clerks’ urging, he made his way to the front entrance of the trading house. He cast back a look so filled with hurt I almost doubted my own experience. But the anger burned hotter still. Seventeen days I had been gone. I was not even scheduled to return for another five at the earliest. Fost and Lavender were nothing if not quick to act. I am lucky, in this case, that their knowledge of the situation turned out to be incomplete.
After Marlin left, I sat down next to the embedded axe and what was left of Alkazarian’s platinum. Once I had the collateral back, we would be down a bar and a half of the stuff, and all we had to show for it was one iron mine, an unfinished ship, and mystery cargo in Aedekki that might never reach Borreos. And my life, of course. I doubted Alkazarian would be pleased to learn what had happened to the rest, but that was a problem for a later day.
Chapter 20 – Liquid Assets
In my absence, Dahli had begun the preparations to scale up Kuvtka’s Freight. The caravan captain came and went, with personnel and equipment for one of the additional wagon trains acquired and dispatched to Spardeep to collect iron ore from Bendric. But the next two would need cargo, and Tokt would be waiting with it in Aedekki. All I needed was a way to get it here.
Fortuitously, Jassem Bo
l finished installing the mast and sails on his ship, and sea trials were set for the early morning eight productive days after I returned to Borreos. I had promised the elf that I would be aboard, and so I steeled myself and kept my stomach free of any content I expected might sully the sideboards of Ur’s Gift should the seas turn rough. Darrez Issa’s warning to me had never quite left my mind. Though his version of seasickness was metaphor, I expected mine would be real enough.
Jassem met me in the same spot I had originally encountered him lurking: in the alley outside Barron Dancin’s Shipping. The smell of the bay and fresh fish was our only companion as we navigated back to his secret drydock and I found his crew ready and assembled. I was surprised to see that while most were elves, a few local human sailors were among the mix, and there was even a pair of grenndrakes that I assumed to be siblings based on their paired henna markings.
I had wondered how Jassem intended to get the boat out of the little dockside grotto, but seeing the mast assembly on Ur’s Gift dispelled all question. The curious spars in his drawings turned out to be an assembly that folded the triangular mainsail like a lady’s fan. The main mast itself could tip back almost fifteen degrees and allowed just enough room for Jassem to slip through the narrow seaborn exit. But first he had to get the thing in the water.
A series of ropes and pegs secured the ship to the ramp, and the grenndrake brothers systematically dislodged them with a pair of long-handled wooden mallets until only two remained at the foremost section of the elf’s ship. Jassem gave the signal from the aft end at the tiller, and the two drakes swung in tandem one last time. At first there was no movement. But as the brothers scrambled up the coarse, pleated lines at the front of Ur’s Gift, the ship began to overcome friction. The wood of its keel creaked as it slid forward to a portion of the ramp that had been greased with animal fat, and the ship began to pick up speed.
When it hit the water, it dropped so deep I was afraid it would simply sink to the bottom, but it bobbed up, water sloughing off sections where Jassem had applied his unguent to reveal dry timber and a bloom of chilly mist. I smiled. The trip to Spardeep had left me ample time to research and prepare. While Bendric preferred indulging in fictions, I spent the time researching alchemicals and practical shipbuilding. It took me almost the full week to discern the likely nature of Jassem’s formula. He had given me all the pieces and, more importantly, a look at the end result. I conspired with the alchemist Jess, whose voyage I’d funded the day I met Lady Arkelai. We just had to put them together in the same way Jassem did. As that voyage turned out quite profitable now that the wizard’s college was buying his caustics, Jess was inclined to indulge my request for secrecy.
Before you jump to conclusions, know that I did not do this in an attempt to cheat the elf. In fact, I would labor to keep his secret for as long as possible because the edge it gave our partnership was a prime component in the value of his new ships. But no secret is kept forever. When other shipwrights began to determine how his boat slid across the water as though it were glass, that already expensive unguent would see an enormous markup. Demand would increase, and the supply would be gobbled up. It would be very convenient for myself and Jassem that I had already taken measures. Two of the most critical alchemical ingredients were monopolized in Borreos—and soon Whadael—by a small subsidiary of the Dragon’s Daughter Trading Company. Another passed through Spardeep, where I began to issue orders to purchase it in full. It was not cheap to acquire, but it was quiet. And by the time anyone figured out what Lady Arkelai might want with those particular components (even her), we would be able to sell them back at ten times their original price.
The other half of my research helped me gain a little more insight into a venture in which I had invested a non-trivial amount of my own personal money. Building military vessels such as the Queen’s Grace could take a year or more, and Jassem Bol spent even longer crafting Ur’s Gift by himself in secret. But a small ship like the one we rode out for sea trials? That could be completed in as little as five or six weeks if the mast and sails were ordered when the keel was laid and if the crew were diligent and knowledgeable. Elves had plenty of skilled, hard-working craftsmen, though their ephemeral nature would all but ensure the builders who began work would not be the same builders who finished.
What they did not have was money to hire each other. Once Ur’s Gift was proven at sea, we could borrow against the value of future ships of its type to bolster those ships’ construction. And though the lighting could be better, Jassem’s grotto offered a perfect construction drydock out of the elements and away from prying eyes. If my spatial awareness served me well, there was even room for concurrent construction of two ships. If all went perfectly, eight sister ships might be sailing by this time next year.
I joined the rest of the sailors in their modest celebration, and several of the elves poled a small barge out for us to board Ur’s Gift. I climbed aboard next to Jassem and surveyed the activity on the deck. Though their jobs were foreign to me, it was clear when a task was performed with purpose and confidence. Jassem’s crew were experienced hands, and each man worked as a small part of a greater whole.
Under cover of the early morning’s gloom, we opened the grotto and carefully navigated Ur’s Gift out into the waters of the Borrean Bay. It was a tight squeeze, and two of the crewmen atop the mast rigging ensured that none of the complicated cables tangled themselves in the myriad clotheslines of the ramshackle shanties above. The very top of the mast was at a level with a few of the windows. Many of the Lowport residents watched from within their seaside shelters. It was slow going, and rather than risk the snapping of oars, Jassem’s crew had long wooden poles of an unfamiliar wood.
“Bamboo,” Jassem told me in a hushed voice, “from the islands to the southeast. This is the best way to get upstream in Aedekki.”
Everyone onboard endeavored to stay quiet. This was, after all, a secret voyage. The longer we kept Ur’s Gift a secret from jealous eyes, the more profitable it would be. We would row out of the bay until dawn. Then we would unfurl the sails and put Ur’s Gift through its paces and finally return after nightfall.
The ship slid out of the breakwater protection of the boardwalks and crested a bad wave that rocked the deck and brought forth three or four shouts of surprise. I half-expected to topple overboard at the first sign of turbulent seas, even briefly considered tying myself to the rail. But I found that my legs somehow already knew what to do. Behind us, the lights of Borreos began to dim, and we risked a lantern hung from the spar at the front of the ship to dispel the night mists as we made our way to open sea under the predawn light.
Rather than nauseating, I found the salt breeze through my hair and the motion of the deck beneath my feet both refreshing and stimulating. I even accepted some of the breakfast rations: bread from an elven glass oven tucked below deck. I ate with Jassem’s twenty crewmembers, and it seemed like there were at least half that many languages being spoken. There is no unifying tongue among all elves, and dialects were present from all corners of the continent and beyond. Their kind were migratory in nature, like the birds many compared them to.
I stayed close to Jassem, mostly so that the captain could ensure I did not get in anyone else’s way. He treated me as an old friend, but his first mate and the rest of the crew merely tolerated me. There was little room or love aboard a ship for those who did not work. I listened to what snippets I could from the rest of the crew and heard mention of “that money man” more than once. After my brief foray into the badlands west of Borreos, I had hoped to find myself a harder person, but I was as useless here as wagon wheels would have been on the keel of Ur’s Gift. In truth, my presence here was a symbolic gesture of my confidence in Jassem and his company. But symbolic gestures were lost on most of the crew, and I was as helpful as the bags of sand in the hold that we used to simulate a full load.
After breakfast, the real trials began as Jassem tested the rudder linkages, took careful speed m
easurements, and stressed both the canvas sails and his rigging designs. All three succeeded, though the mast made several disconcerting popping noises. Jassem Bol assured me that it was not the expensive imported cedar but the ropes drawing taut around it. I’m not entirely sure that he convinced me.
After ensuring the integrity of his vessel, Jassem ordered the sails unfurled and put the ship at a right angle into the wind, which blew from the northwest, chill with the air coming down from the Redfangs. He called this position a “beam reach” and claimed it to be the best angle for linear speed. The elf had the sails tacked in such a way that they swung out over the left side of the ship, caught full of the stiff wind. I did not expressly understand the physics of why traveling at a right angle to the wind was faster than traveling with it at our backs, but soon we began to move even faster than we had on the journey south. We were moving far faster than I ever had in a carriage, and in truth faster than I had ever gone with the exception of Lady Arkelai’s trip to Bastayne and the Jaws of the Mountain. As I had not been lucid for that journey, I didn’t feel I could count it.
As we gained speed, several sailors gathered to throw a wooden wedge overboard at the end of a knotted rope. One watched a sandglass while the others counted knots and reeled in the rope. Those in charge of counting shouted up something in an unfamiliar language.
“What did they say?” I yelled to Jassem.
“Fourteen knots,” he shouted back, a grin stretching from one pointy ear to the other. He raised his voice further, and I heard it as clear as a bell on a winter morning. “Jettison one-in-two!”
His first mate repeated the call, and several of his men formed a line through which bags of sand passed. At the end of the line, the bags were tossed overboard, until half the load in the hold was floating in the sea behind us. Jassem waited two minutes before calling another speed check. Again, the men shouted back the results, and at the raucous response of the deckhands, I again requested a translation.