by Tim Paulson
There was a noise from up front.
“Don't worry mother,” Ina said, raising her voice. “We'll have all the loaves risen and ready for baking before we open.”
Despite being half her size Ina was already ripping on the hunk of dough Giselle had left behind. Her kneading motions were so smooth and practiced. Once again Giselle was struck by her own uselessness. She couldn't help but feel that Ina and her mother would be far better off without a third mouth to feed.
Uncle Wilhelm had left her here to stay safe until her mother returned but it had been months now and nothing. Earlier she'd hoped her uncle would return at some point with Thira and at least say hello. That hope had waned as time passed. She'd been angry about it until she realized how much there must be for him to do in order to wrest his kingdom from those republican usurpers. Surely he must be somewhere important, making connections, preparing for his triumphant return. She just wished he would have involved her, instead of leaving her behind to knead bread... poorly.
At least she'd been able to share stories with Ina and even hear a few Divarian ones from Ina's adopted mother. The woman was stern and quite demanding but beyond that forbidding front she had a heart as warm and soft as her pretzels. Giselle had heard stories with characters like that, but they were kings or queens, not bakers. It was too bad.
Another noise from the front, a crash. Both girls rushed to the swinging door. On the other side, Ina’s mother had collapsed on the floor behind the counter.
Ina gasped and knelt down beside her but Giselle found herself frozen. The poor woman! What had happened? She'd just gone up to the front to clean the display cases not twenty minutes prior. It couldn't have been an intruder. They weren't to open for another hour.
“Giselle!” Ina said, snapping Giselle out of her own head.
“Yes?”
“Get mother some cool water on a rag.”
“Right,” she replied, continuing to stand. What would they do if Ina's mother was seriously ill? They'd have to run the bakery by themselves! No, that wasn't possible, not with her abysmal baking skills. Ina would be forced to do ninety percent of it on her own. She'd start to hate Giselle for being so useless, surely.
“In the back!”
“Yes... right.”
Giselle left and returned with the cool wet rag. Ina placed it on her mother's forehead, having turned her over onto her back.
“Thank you,” Ina said, dabbing the rag over the woman's eyes and forehead.
“Is she alright? I hope she didn't get my illness.”
Ina shook her head, her nose twitching. “What you had two months ago was different, you were throwing up. You never collapsed.”
“I'm sorry about that,” Giselle said, frowning.
“It's fine. You'd been through a lot. This... this is my fault. I knew I smelled something off about Mother. I've been smelling it all week... but...” she wiped a tear away, “it was worse today.”
“What is it?”
“She's had it for a while. It's called Tiverian fever. It comes and goes but it's been years since she's gotten sick... I suppose I'd hoped it was gone for good.”
“What can we do?” Giselle asked. She was not familiar with this disease, though that wasn't too surprising. Her tutors had taught her that all the shipping trade, for as much wealth as it created, brought the constant threat of disease from distant lands. Many cities had been decimated by new and terrible diseases. Even now much of lower Miran was still largely quarantined.
“Once you get it, you have it forever. Most of the time she's fine but stress makes it worse... and there's been a lot of that. It could last for weeks...” Ina looked to the floor.
Giselle knew that look. The girl was holding out on her. “What else?”
“Well... There's a medicine shop in the dierlijt quarter that my mother found when the fever came before. It was right after we moved here. The medicine helped her. The fever went down. She was better in only a few days.”
“So let's go then,” Giselle replied.
“I don't know where it is,” Ina said.
“We'll just ask around Ina. Really, it's not that difficult. As long as you're with me we won't have any trouble.”
“The dierlijt quarter is not small Giselle. There are several different sections where different dierlijt live together. I don't know which kind made the medicine. Not to mention the fact that there could be dozens of apothecaries there. How do we know which one made the medicine my mother needs?” Ina said, hands on her hips.
“Being married to a technician teaches one a few things, such as the value of a systematic search. We'll think it through and go step by step. I'll bet that even if there are dozens of them, they all know each other. They are competitors after all.”
“Well... that's a good point. But we have to get there first and to do that we need to get through the Marlinist and Cavlinist neighborhoods.”
“Take your pick, witch hunters or bigots,” Giselle grumbled.
“Precisely! I'd rather not see either.”
Giselle brightened. “Let's get your mother in bed. The Cavlinist neighborhood is thinner. It's so early in the day I'll bet if we leave now we can get through before any of them even wake up.”
Ina's eyes widened. “You're right!” Then she looked down at her mother and her face fell. “We have to get her upstairs first. I love her, but she's.. ample. It'll take us an hour just to get her up there.”
Giselle raised a single finger. “Ah... but you're incorrect,” she said as she produced a knucklebone from the pocket of her apron as well as the tiny satchel of veil powder that went with it.
“Giselle no! Mother said it's not allowed. If any of the puritan clients see we're done for!”
Ina's mother mumbled something unintelligible.
Giselle sprinkled a pinch of powder on the bone. “I'll tell him to stay upstairs. He always listens, he has to, I have the necklace.”
Ina frowned.
Giselle threw the bone to the floor. In seconds it sprouted into a great black creature made of sinuous tentacles that attached at the top to a skull with two horns. The eyes glowed red.
“Hello Daniel, can you help us carry Ina's mother upstairs?”
The skull nodded.
“I don't know how you can be so calm around him... He's... I've never seen so many tentacles,” Ina said, backing away so Daniel could slide in and wrap his many appendages around her mother.
Giselle shrugged. “Once you've seen one tentacle monster you've seen them all, I suppose.”
The girls followed Daniel upstairs into the small apartment over the bakery.
“Will he be able to look after her while we're gone?” Ina asked.
“Yes, he'll be fine. There's a boy inside there remember. He's a real person, or he was, once.”
Ina looked unsure. “Well... We'll just keep the bakery closed until we come back. Then maybe you can help me and we'll be able to open a little bit late. Business has been picking up lately. I don't want to lose any of it. Mother might hate the purple republic, but it sure has helped our income.”
“Daniel, will you stay here and take care of Ina's mother? Use the wet cloth to keep her fever down if you must but don't go outside of this building. Do you understand?”
Daniel nodded. In the dark of the upper apartment, his red glowing eyes cast an eerie light upon the bedsheets as he carefully tucked Ina's mother in.
“Are you sure you want to try to get this medicine... I mean there is another possibility...” Giselle said though she had an idea what the response would be.
“No! Not my mother! You keep Harald out of this. You know what he said after what he did to the king... that it was a fluke! He said himself he might have blown him up!” Ina shook her dog-like head emphatically. “Absolutely not.”
Giselle shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
“At least this is happening when it's cold. If this had happened in the summer, heat from the bakery plus the summer sun?
It would have been horrible for her!” Ina said as she took some money from the chest at the foot of her mother's bed.
“Will that be enough?” Giselle asked.
“I hope so... it's all we can spare,” Ina replied as she stuffed it in a pocket of her dress, pausing only to check herself. She adjusted the angle of one of the colored bows she'd tied into her brown fur.
“Alright, let's get going,” Giselle replied.
Chapter 2
"The akkikul female is extremely aggressive and standoffish until she's assured you mean no harm to her clen."
-Excerpt from the Dierlijt Recognition Guide, revised edition, distributed by Republican Publishing, 1620
A noise startled Celia awake, a growling noise. The sky above was blue and the air in her nose cold and damp. Frost crusted the edge of the wood around her.
A gull with a blue-gray head flew over, hanging in the wind above while it scanned her inert form, looking for something to eat.
Celia's stomach growled again.
“You and me both buddy,” she said.
The light meant dawn had come. It would happen soon.
Carefully, quietly, she turned over and put her eye to the knothole in one of the planks that made up the bottom of the crow's nest of the merchant ship Teppel. Down below people were moving. Deckhands had begun filing out from their quarters below. The crew sergeant loomed over them, hands clasped behind his back. Likely the captain would be appearing soon.
“Perfect,” she whispered, pulling a scrap of worn red cloth from an inside pocket of her torn cloak. This she flashed twice above the edge of the crow's nest.
She returned to the knothole, watching as the hands scrambled around the deck. They were extending the thick planks used for off loading cargo and unlocking the doors to the hold. Good.
Celia was supposed to remain still, to keep her head down and out of sight until four crates had been removed to the dock. Still, she was... concerned. They'd failed her before. They'd fallen asleep, wandered off, gotten drunk. Each time they'd blamed her for their stupidity. So she went against her instructions and crawled up the side of the nest for a look.
The entire high docks of Valendam spread out before her. Rows of massive wooden ships went on for leagues, their sails drawn up and tied to keep the winter winds from wreaking havoc. On each ship the crews moved like ants, working toward whatever end had been set for them. Some were swabbing, while others were loading or unloading cargo, or mending sails. Beyond the ships and the wooden docks they'd latched upon like barnacles, were the tall square buildings of the merchant warehouses. Constructed with the aid of goliaths each was a small world unto itself, a gigantic construction of timbers and wooden slats. All were positively crammed with valuable goods from all over the world, which was why they were so well guarded.
Celia saw what she was looking for. Two dark shapes were hovering in the shadow of the nearest warehouse, behind a textile trader's inspection station. If she saw two, then all six were there. That was how they were. Rankers were nothing if not predictable.
A quick check on her escape line before she ducked back down. It was still there, running from the crow's nest to the docks. It was a thin line, so as not to draw attention, but it would bear her weight, or it ought to. Surely as thin as she was now.
She sighed, wrapping her arms around her middle where an unsettling warmth was steadily growing. The gnawing pangs of hunger would go away after a day or two but occasionally they came back and always at the worst times. Her gut was trying to remind her, the only way it could, that their current situation was untenable.
“I know,” she whispered, putting her eye back to the hole.
She saw a man! He was a well-muscled deckhand with dark skin and a determined look on his face. They'd sent someone to check on the crow's nest? Of course, they would choose to try to jack the cargo from a ship with the most thorough officer in the fleet.
With only seconds to decide, she chose.
Celia slipped over the side of the nest, opposite the direction the deckhand would enter. She couldn't hang vertically or she'd been seen from below, so instead, she curled herself around the outside of the nest. If she hadn't lost so much weight, it would never have been possible, she thought wryly, as her fingers and toes clasped the lines that hung along the nest's edge. From below she would just look like another part of the nest. The crew of another ship might see her, if they were looking.
There was a thump as the man flopped over the side to where she'd been only seconds before.
“Oh... smells like shit up here. I need to bring a bucket next time. Fucking gulls.”
It was true. She hadn't had a bath in far too long, Celia knew it. The occasional dip in the ocean wasn't enough to get you truly clean, and downright dangerous as cold as it was now. Worse, his voice was so close to her, he must be right over top. If he even leaned too far in her direction, he'd see her.
A gull flew by, the one from before. It warbled at them.
“Fuck off!” the deckhand yelled.
There was yelling from below. Celia's hands were starting to burn. She could not hold on for much longer.
“Hey? What's that?” the man called down.
More yelling. Celia could almost make it out, except that all her attention was devoted to not plummeting hundreds of feet along the ship's mainmast to her death.
“Yeah, it's fine... I'm coming down.... hey...” Footsteps. “What's this line?”
More yelling from below.
“No... I don't know what it is, that's why I'm asking you!”
The man grumbled. “I'll fucking leave it then. If the ship rolls it'll snap the top of the mast right off... Not my problem... nope.”
The man crawled back down the way he'd come.
Celia sighed and pulled herself back into the nest. When she put her eye back to the knothole, she saw three crates had already been unloaded with the fourth on its way down the heavy plank. Six deckhands to each box. Normally something that heavy would use a crane and pulleys but it appeared this captain cared more about speed than the longevity of his deckhands. Not surprising, he could acquire replacements easier than a whore could find customers. It was good they moved quickly though. The longer it took, the more likely her companions were to be spotted, or her for that matter.
There, the fourth crate was coming out of the hold. It was time.
Celia stood up and stuck her head out over the side of the crow's nest.
“Up here you morons!” she yelled, waving her arms.
“Hey!” they shouted at her. “Come down from there!”
“How did you miss me up here you idiots!” she yelled again, continuing to wave her arms. If she wasn't so thin she might have taken off her top. That had never failed to get attention in the past. Unfortunately, her assets in that department had diminished considerably.
The crew had begun brandishing clubs and climbing the rigging to get to her. Among them was the man who'd just left, looking very surprised.
Celia's eyes darted toward the docks. Had she given them enough time?
No, not quite... They were still in the middle of switching their crate, filled with garbage, with one of the new ones. Risha had assured her the switch would only take a few seconds, that her people were so strong it would be nothing to make the switch. Apparently not.
Celia would have to improvise.
She hung her head over the side again. Deckhands were now three-quarters of the way up.
“I'm a woman up here... all by my lonesome... first one-up gets my favors!” she yelled.
The change in the expression of the deckhands was... priceless. They went from just doing another boring job to a fierce competition in an eye's blink. That meant pushing and shoving, even grabbing.
“Hey! Quit that you fools!” The bootsman yelled from below, calloused hands cupped to the front of his thick red beard.
Celia grinned. In all the commotion, no one was paying attention to the docks.
&n
bsp; “Ahoy!” a voice yelled.
She turned to look behind her. It was another man on the ship behind them, a four-masted monstrosity, even bigger than the one she'd snuck aboard. She didn't recognize him but he was waving to her. Probably just for fun.
Celia laughed and waved back as she stepped up on the wooden edge of the crow's nest.
“Whoa!” called one of the men from below.
“Stop lass!” said another.
Then she pulled a metal hook from the back of her belt, squatted, and dropped onto the line.
“Oh... so that's why that line was there...” said the man from before as Celia sped away, sliding down toward the docks at incredible speed. Unfortunately, she'd only gone half the way, when the tension went slack as the line snapped.
Quickly, Celia wrapped the hook around the slackline several times, grabbing on with both hands as she swung backward, back toward the Teppel. Luckily her rope caught on some of the rigging, preventing her from swinging back, directly into the mainmast. Not so fortunately, it brought her right through the center of the ship's crew, who grabbed the slack at the end of her line. Celia let go and found herself surrounded by at least twenty irate sailors.
“Girl, you had better have something mighty impressive to say for yourself,” the captain said as he strode forward from the stern of the ship. “What the devil were you doing on my rigging?”
“Admiring the view,” Celia replied, her eyes darting to each of the men and women who surrounded her, looking for an avenue of escape.”
“Captain, this girl is an idiot. I suggest we throw her overboard and be done with it,” the first officer said, hard blue eyes drilling holes in Celia's head.
The captain turned to her. “What? Didn't you hear what the little beggar said? The girl's a harlot. I have a mind to turn her over to the crew. Let them have their fun with her... what's left of her anyway.”