Joined at the Hilt: Union (Sphereworld: Joined at the Hilt Book 1)

by Caleb Wachter

  One way or another, he would be rid of Three Rivers and its damned Federation before the next dawn’s light warmed his face.

  Chapter III: Parting Words

  Near Noon, 25-11-5-659

  He had precious few belongings, save some articles of clothing which would serve no purpose outside the city walls. Those few items he did call his own he carefully placed inside a rucksack he had won a year earlier from a traveling minstrel who was a surprisingly bad card player—and had an even worse tolerance for spirits.

  After fastening the sack’s opening he went to one of the main beams made of wood supporting the steeply angled room and gently slid his tiny, wooden key into a familiar knot. Years earlier he had fashioned a small compartment within the wood, and he used the knot as a simple security mechanism.

  Once opened he saw his life’s savings: one long, narrow quarter-bar of gold and three pieces of silver. It wasn’t much—barely enough for a season’s lodgings and meals at a halfway reasonable lodging house in a Federation quarter of the city—but it would have to suffice.

  He carefully withdrew his meager wealth and looked at it in his hands. It seemed like such a pitiful amount when viewed in the rays of noontime sun streaming in through his window. In the distance he heard the third bell sound throughout the city, signaling that midday had arrived. He slipped the gold quarter-bar into the bottom of his rucksack while he dropped the trio of silver coins into the coin purse which also held his tips from the previous evening, amounting to less than half an additional silver coin in total.

  Randall turned and made to leave the room when the toe of his left foot stubbed against something soft and heavy beneath his bed. Having not remembered placing anything there, he knelt down and felt around for the curious object. His hand felt some sort of tightly-bound leather, which he pulled out into the light.

  He turned the strange, surprisingly heavy bundle over in his hands. It was narrow and long—a little over three feet in total—and there was clearly something very dense and inflexible at its center. His curiosity piqued, Randall untied the leather strips which had fastened the bundle and unrolled it on his mattress.

  At first he was puzzled when he saw a pair of neatly folded, leather purses like those used for traveling beauty kits which wealthy women used. Randall took one in his hands and opened it, finding that his initial suspicion had been correct—it was indeed a beauty kit. Except the usual bottles of blue, red, purple and green dyes and powders were replaced with various shades of dark brown and black.

  The second kit was the same, only its contents were nearly exhausted. He knew he could sell the first, nearly full, kit for at least another quarter gold bar and he was elated by the fortuitous find as he continued to unpack the bundle.

  He found some fine articles of clothing which also appeared would fetch a fine price down at the Native Bazaar, and kept unrolling the bundle until its contents were fully exposed. He reached out for the central, heavy object which was itself wrapped in a fine sheath of peach-colored satin. Pulling the satin back, his breath caught in his throat as he realized what it was he had unveiled.

  It was a sword! And not just any sword; its blade was made of some strange, dark, glittery metal which was far heavier than it should have been for a piece its size. The very edge of the blade was lined in some kind of translucent material which seamlessly blended with the metal of the blade itself, and there were five pieces of strange, crystalline embedded within the face of the blade itself. These pieces were about half the diameter of a coin, and irregularly shaped. Two of them—the two nearest the tip—were murky, but the three others were translucent and looked strangely familiar in composition.

  The weapon had been in a finely made, if simple, leather scabbard. He also noticed that its hilt appeared to be loosely wrapped in simple leather, and the hilt itself looked longer than a weapon of its size should have had. There was also no crosspiece or pommel present, which filled Randall with a sense of disappointment.

  “Not going to be worth much without proper furniture,” he muttered bitterly and almost before the words left his lips he felt his scalp turn numb, which put him on high alert—he had never received three premonitions of danger in a single day before.

  He immediately cocked his head and listened for footsteps outside his room. When he heard nothing, and the usual period of time came and went without incident, he returned his attention to the weapon itself. For the first time he noticed a slip of paper on the bed which must have come loose while he had unwrapped the sword.

  “This just gets stranger by the moment,” he said under his breath as he unfolded the paper. There was an odd symbol at the top of the paper, but below that was a message—written in Ghaevlian! Ghaevlian language, either in spoken or written form, was expressly forbidden in Federation society. But he had learned it as a child, and he mouthed the words silently as he read:

  Randall,

  You do not know me, and we shall never again meet as I have chosen to meet my fate with what little dignity remains to me. But I have entrusted you with all that I was, all that I had…and all I could have ever had were I not such a fool. It is not much at first glance, but I sincerely hope you will do better with it than I.

  You have many questions, but now is not the time for their answers. Life is nothing if not a journey and I would not deprive you of the wonders it may yet hold for you. So instead I offer a pearl of wisdom and a piece of advice, in the hope that you will not make the same mistakes I did:

  The pearl is this: true friendship is naught but sacrifice. You must understand this absolutely before you can make meaningful use of my advice, which is thus: never turn your back on a true friend, no matter the price you might pay.

  We are surrounded by temptations at every turn of the path, but we would each of us do well to cleave to our courses once struck and see them through without faltering along the way. With that, I will wish you starry nights and bright mornings.

  ~T~

  How this person knew his name, Randall had no idea but there was something about the bundle that seemed familiar. Then like a blast of warm, morning sun, it hit him and his eyes widened in a mixture of fear and wonderment: this was the bundle which the gold Union-tipping customer had placed on the bar! With that realization, the full memory of their conversation came back to him like a rush of water—including how he had brought the bundle here and hidden it before returning to the bar.

  “Bastard cast a spell on me,” he muttered, and again his scalp turned numb. But again, despite his annoyance and mounting trepidation, nothing happened in the usual period so he shook his head to clear his thoughts.

  “What is going on?” he asked in bewilderment as he rubbed his head vigorously, hoping to somehow banish the sensation for at least a few minutes. Thankfully, the numbness went away quickly enough but he was getting the feeling that he needed to get out of there—and fast.

  There were a few problems with that, though. He needed to leave the city but it was illegal for his kind to travel without a license, and such licenses were notoriously difficult to qualify for—not to mention being prohibitively expensive, costing a full gold bar each if rumors held true.

  Then he re-read the closing line of the enigmatic letter, and came to another startling conclusion. “You were one of us?” he gasped, recognizing the old farewell saying as something he had heard his mother use when interacting with others of their kind. He replayed the conversation he’d had with ‘T’ in his mind but nothing he remembered suggested the other man was of Ghaevlian descent.

  Except, he thought to himself, his identification of our mead’s ingredients. He said he got it from an ex-waitress, but…

  Looking at the clothing and makeup kits, Randall eventually gritted his teeth as he realized he had been played for a fool. The strange man’s arrogant smile hadn’t been what he thought it was; it had been because he knew that Randall—and likely everyone else in the city—had never once suspected him of being anything other than ju
st another arrogant, condescending Federation Citizen!

  “Oh, you bastard,” he breathed, but the truth was he actually appreciated the man’s ability to play the role so well.

  Possibilities began to stream through his mind faster than he could focus on them. If he could learn how to use the disguise materials here, he could pass through the gates of Three Rivers for free! Not only that but he could actually stay here in the city if he could learn how to play the role as well as this ‘T’ person had done.

  No, he thought firmly, there’s no way I’m going to do that. Even if I wanted to, there’s no way I can get up to speed on such an elaborate deception like this. Besides, there was no way he could stay in this place, where the gap between Federation citizens and non-citizens—not to mention his own people’s particular plight—was so horrific.

  Randall needed to leave, now more than ever, but it seemed he would need to learn at least some of this ‘T’s’ craft if he was to do so.

  But first he wanted to examine the sword more thoroughly, so he carefully picked it up by the scabbard. It was heavy—a lot heavier than a weapon of its size should have been—and he gently placed his hand around the leather-wrapped hilt.

  A sensation somewhere between a jolt and a fast-spreading numbness ran through his hand and up his arm, and before he could release his grip on the weapon the sensation had spread throughout his body.

  He tried to let go of the thing but his hand wouldn’t respond. Thankfully, a few seconds into the startling (yet surprisingly painless) experience, the sensation faded—everywhere except for his scalp.

  As soon as he was able to do so Randall dropped the weapon to the bed, after which even the numbness in his scalp began to dissipate. He flexed his fingers and found them to be in good working order, along with the rest of his body. Although the numbness in his scalp lingered longer than it usually did following a premonition.

  “Hmm…” he growled, both excited and dismayed by the increasingly likely possibility that the weapon was enchanted. It was exciting because such pieces were incredibly rare—and valuable—but dismaying because within the Federation they also required extensive documentation and licenses, which only the richest people could even consider affording.

  Randall had once attended a public auction for high-end articles and during that sale an enchanted dagger—of what he took to be fairly minimal quality, as such things go—fetched thirty bars of gold. “A sword of this size has to be worth at least three times that much to the right buyer, even without documentation,” he mused.

  Having never fully regained sensation from the previous episode, his scalp again went numb and this time he stomped his foot angrily on the creaky floorboards. “What the hell is going on!?” he yelled to no one in particular. He was more than a little unnerved by the fourth—or fifth, depending if he counted the time he had grabbed the sword—time his scalp had gone numb that day, and he could think of absolutely no good reason for it to have done so. When no reply came to his sudden outburst, he turned his attention to the unpacked bundle.

  He searched its contents thoroughly but found no documentation for the weapon, which made him more than a little concerned. The hilt-wrapping and the scabbard were both far too simple to be true matches for such an obviously valuable weapon, so it was looking more and more like the sword had been stolen somewhere along the way—probably by this ‘T’ bastard, whoever he had been—and modified to disguise its true nature in public.

  Which means I’m probably stuck with the thing, he thought to himself bitterly. Still, there are worse things than being stuck with a magical sword…even one as odd as this.

  Careful not to touch the hilt again, Randall did his best to replace the contents of the bundle as he attempted to re-fasten the leather strips around it.

  There was a knock on the door, and he heard Lorie’s voice outside, “Randall?” she called. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” he replied.

  There was a pause. “May I enter?” she asked.

  It was the first time in many years that Lorie had asked for entrance to his small corner of the inn, but he took one last look at the bundle, which again concealed its contents just as effectively as it had when ‘T’ had set it on the bar.

  “Of course,” he replied as he sat on the edge of the bed.

  The door opened, and Lorie stepped through with a small box in her hands. She stood there awkwardly for a moment before finally saying, “I’m sorry about earlier, Randy.”

  Randall shook his head, thankful the anger he had felt toward her was no gone. “You were right,” he assured her. “You don’t have the same choice I do, and I’ve been selfish to stay here for this long.” He looked around his tiny little loft and smiled. “You’ve been nothing but good to me, Lorie,” he continued honestly, “but I think it’s time for me to find my own way.”

  Lorie gave him a sideways look before nodding slowly. “You’ve been a big help around here, Randy…I don’t want you to think you’re unwelcome. You know you can come back if you need to,” she said earnestly, and Randall could see her eyes beginning to mist over, “you’ll always be welcome at the Coin.”

  He nodded appreciatively as he stood from the bed and slung the rucksack over his shoulder, while taking the sword bundle under his other arm. “I know, Lorie. And really, I don’t think I could have made it this far without your help. I’ll never forget you.”

  She nodded and wiped the fresh tears from her cheeks as she thrust the small box toward him. “Here, you should have this.”

  He took the small, surprisingly heavy box in his hands and gave her a quizzical look.

  “Open it,” she urged, and he did so.

  Inside was a curious looking, triangular pendant nearly three inches long on each side which appeared to be made of some kind of dark, strange metal. There were tiny, intricate inscriptions covering its front surface and edges which Randall thought seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place them. A long, thin piece of leather passed through an ovular loop at the pendant’s top, which he assumed was intended to be fastened around the wearer’s neck.

  On the reverse face was an emblem of some kind: a large tree standing alone atop an otherwise barren mountain. But the tree’s trunk gradually morphed into a spider’s body the higher it went with arachnid legs for branches, and a strange design on its abdomen/trunk which Randall didn’t recognize.

  “It was your mother’s, and her mother’s before her,” explained Lorie. “I kept it safe for you at her request, and I did my best to keep to her wishes when it came to your own upbringing but—“

  “Lorie,” Randall interrupted, “you could have been hanged for hiding this!” All such articles were confiscated many years earlier in an attempt to ‘purge the stain of Ghaevlian influence from the Federation,’ or some such nonsense. Keeping items like this was an offense which incurred the ultimate penalty, and Randall knew that Lorie had taken a colossal risk keeping it safe for him all these years.

  Lorie shook her head resolutely. “There are some things worth dying for…your mother was a friend to me when no one else was, and I know I can never fully repay her kindness. I just hope it means as much to you as it did to her.”

  He closed the lid and fastened the small hook at the front which kept it from popping open and untied his rucksack to place the box inside. When finished, he turned to the woman who had seen him through the most difficult period of any young man’s life. “Thank you, Lorie,” he said seriously. “I’ll never forget you.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “You had best get going,” she said as she came forward and embraced him. He returned the gesture, and when they were finished she tilted her head toward the window. “I assumed you would need to leave as soon as possible, so I called in a favor with Rhekim. He said he’ll see you two ports up Snake River in exchange for your trick’s overly generous tip. His ship leaves tonight at sixth bell, so I suggest you make your way over there as quickly as you can to avo
id the night patrols.”

  Despite being angry at her continued suggestion that the gold Union had been payment for his…services, Randall decided to ignore it and held out his hand. Lorie took it and firmly returned his grasp, and when they broke apart he made his way down the stairs and out into the afternoon sun, which somehow felt warmer than it ever had.

  Chapter IV: A New Home

  Noon, 25-11-5-659

  Rhekim was one of The Last Coin’s primary suppliers of cheap mead, which the Federation soldiers went through like fish go through water. He had a riverboat which made monthly trips up and down the Snake—one of the three rivers for which the city was given its name. Having promised to take him two ports upriver, Randall knew he was in for at least a week onboard. But he had important matters to attend first.

  Aside from Lorie and the occasional fleeting acquaintance at the Coin, there were only two people who Randall considered friends in the whole world: Ellie and Yordan.

  They possessed Ghaevlian similar to his own, meaning they were also third generation. Together they had undergone the brutally painful ‘procedure’ to remove their ear tips, as well as to burn the marks of their Ghaevlian ancestors from their bodies. To allay suspicions as to the origin of the horrific scars which such removal left, they had burned themselves so badly that Ellie had nearly died from infection, but they had survived the ordeal together. Randall always felt as though he owed them something he could never repay, since he had opted to simply keep his own markings covered with the hair on his head rather than burn them away.

  But the two women had never once suggested they were anything but the closest of friends to him. It was for that reason that he knew he had to risk meeting with them one last time, if only to say goodbye.

  He made his way through the winding alleys between the dilapidated buildings which made up the poorest section of the Native District, and finally came to their door.