Quill

by A. C. Cobble

  “Why does it matter?” asked Sam. “On the side of that mountain, surely it’s not suitable for agriculture. Even I can guess that.”

  “No, but any unusual features may speak to mineral wealth or perhaps a clue to the nature of this island. It appears volcanic, which matches the other islands in the Vendatt chain, but you never know…”

  “How much of a hike is it?” asked Sam.

  “Not far,” assured Oliver. “Well, not too far.”

  The Priestess VI

  From the top of Imbon’s peak, its volcanic origins were obvious even to a laywoman. Duke pointed out the features while she watched and sweated. His eyes were bright with excitement and he spent an excruciating two hours circling the rim of the crater which crowned the island, peering down at the jungle below, making notes in his sketchbook as he went. When they finally arrived back at their starting point, it was midday, and she was famished.

  “Time to eat?” she begged.

  Duke nodded and squatted beside his satchel. He pulled out several packages and began peering into them, seeing what the governor’s staff had packed. He unwrapped a roasted chicken, a handful of fruits, and a small bag of roasted and salted seeds.

  Sam grabbed the bottle of wine and worked the cork out of it then cursed when she saw there were no cups.

  “I don’t have a problem sipping from the bottle if you don’t,” remarked Duke.

  “You don’t have any infectious diseases, do you?” she jested.

  “None that have been diagnosed yet,” replied Duke with a wink.

  She grunted and then took a long pull of wine. Warm from the morning in the nobleman’s satchel, it was still better than water, their only other option.

  Snacking on the seeds, Duke peered down the slope at an area five hundred yards below them.

  Around a mouthful of chicken, Sam asked, “What is it?”

  “This peak is a classic formation for a volcanic island except that one spot,” explained Duke. “The hollow there, see? There’s no reason that shape should exist on a slope like this. There’s no natural way the lava flow would form such a depression.”

  “What is it, then?” wondered Sam.

  “It could be the remains of an earlier mining operation, where rock was dug into a pit, but that makes no sense given the native level of technology when we found this island. More likely, it is evidence of an impact.”

  “An impact?”

  “A meteor,” answered Duke.

  Sam watched as the royal swapped the packet of seeds for a hunk of chicken and tore off bites with his teeth. He paced back and forth, studying the layout of the land below them. Intellectual curiosity, a thirst for adventure, and a surprising disregard for the comforts they could be experiencing down in the governor’s mansion — the man was proving to defy all of her expectations.

  They ate quietly and quickly, catching their breath, not wanting to waste daylight. The hike down the slope should be quicker than the hike up it, but the sun had already crossed the midpoint in the sky above them. Neither one of them had any interest in traipsing through the jungle after dark.

  “Ready?” asked Duke.

  When she assented, he led them down the mountain.

  Following close behind the man, she admired the ease in which his booted feet found footing on the loose soil and how he dodged between the branches of trees, using their trunks to steady himself as they descended. He was comfortable in the jungle, even if it’d been a decade since he’d hiked through this particular one, perhaps even more comfortable than how she’d seen him in Westundon. Though, to be fair, they had been sneaking an unconscious baroness down the backstairs of a pub there.

  As they hiked, she also realized, he was in incredible shape. Ahead of her, he was breathing heavily in the thick air, but so was she, and she’d trained for years with her mentor Thotham to build endurance and speed. The fact that a coddled peer was able to traverse through the jungle as easily as she could irritated like a burr in her britches. Whenever he suggested a pause for rest, she shook her head, and they continued on.

  Within two hours, he unerringly led them to a thick wall of foliage, and when they broke through, they were looking out over a crystal-clear pool. One hundred yards across, the thing sat down in a hollow of jungle that would have been difficult to spot if they hadn’t viewed it from above.

  She peered into the depths of the pool before noticing that surrounding it were dozens of waist-high wooden posts.

  “That’s odd,” remarked Duke.

  She walked to one of the posts and studied it. It was a cylinder the thickness of her leg and flat on top. It wasn’t recent, but it wasn’t ancient, either. On top of it and down the sides were scores of tiny runes. Holding out a hand, she waved it around the post then in between it and the water.

  Duke was standing beside the pool, stripping off his jacket and unlacing his shirt.

  “Don’t,” she warned.

  “Why not?” he asked, peering at her curiously.

  “These runes are describing life spirits, but they seem to be a warning or a… a trap.”

  Duke’s curious look slid into a frown.

  Sam stepped closer to the water and looked down, searching the depths for… “There.”

  He looked along the length of her finger, and suddenly, his eyes widened.

  “A trap,” she affirmed.

  Two dozen yards below the surface of the placid water, they could see the sun-bleached bones of a human skeleton. Looking harder, she spotted two more and wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the bottom of the pool was littered with a carpet of the things.

  “I don’t understand,” muttered Duke.

  “Someone enlisted the help of a water spirit,” explained Sam. “It appears as if… as if the spirit has the strength to pull someone down into the depths and hold them there.”

  “To drown them,” replied Duke. “A life spirit, you said?”

  She nodded. “Life and death, the spirits have no natural aspect, remember? It’s merely a matter of whether they exist in our world or the underworld. A life spirit wouldn’t normally be inclined to kill, I don’t think, but…”

  “But why?” wondered Duke. “Why would anyone do such a thing here in the jungle?”

  “To keep anyone from finding this place, obviously. Or more specifically, finding what is in that water.”

  Peering around the clearing, Duke rubbed his chin. “Have you encountered anything like this before?”

  “No,” answered Sam. “I spent most of my life in Enhover, with only a few trips to the United Territories. There’s nothing like this in Enhover, no life spirits at all. If magic like this ever existed there, it wasn’t in our lifetimes”

  “Life aspected spirits, you’re sure?”

  “I believe so,” she responded.

  “The Company has never been interested in the land on this slope,” said Duke. “It’s too steep for agriculture, and besides, the more valuable plants grow closer to the sea anyway where the rich soil has washed down and settled. This peak is all volcanic rock, so there are no minerals worth exploiting. It’s quite possible that no more than a few dozen men and women from Enhover have ever climbed that peak as we did this morning. There’s nothing to see there except the view. I doubt any of them would have been as curious as I was about this depression, and it’s not on the direct path to and from the colony.”

  “We may be the only non-natives to see this,” guessed Sam, “in addition to whoever those bones belong to.”

  “Not Company men or women. Search parties would have been formed and reports would have been filed. Surely, though, the natives are aware it’s here,” said Duke. “There is edible plant material growing at this elevation, and someone put these posts here. I suspect there’s a shaman on the island, at least one, and the Company has never heard of them.”

  “Perhaps this is a holy place to them,” wondered Sam. “A shaman, as long as they commune with life spirits and not those of the underwo
rld, is not illegal. Would the Company be aware of local religious practices?”

  “Maybe,” said Duke, starting to walk around the edge of the pool, not letting his boots come within a pace of the glass-smooth water. “The Company attempts as little disruption as possible in a colony except where necessary for commercial gain. There’d be no reason Company officers would come here and interfere with local practices. You met Towerson. Do you think he would bother learning about native customs?”

  “Maybe the natives don’t know that,” suggested Sam.

  “When we discovered this place, we found they were aware of Finavia’s colony just a few days’ sailing from here,” responded Duke. “It took some time to convince them we weren’t actually part of Governor de Bussy’s forces. Finavia maintains much the same attitude we do toward their colonies. No, I don’t think the natives would be concerned for religious reasons.”

  “Then what?” asked Sam. “These totems and the spirit below are a trap, but it is not a hidden one. Anyone who saw these, who was familiar with the language used, should understand the warning and avoid the pool.”

  “Well, I can’t read it,” grumbled Duke.

  “It’s not a warning for you, then,” remarked Sam, “and I doubt it’s a warning to other residents of this island. Perhaps rivals from another landmass, or it could be that the warning is to residents here, and the rivals are thrown into the pool as a sacrifice.”

  “That could be,” agreed Duke, tossing his coat onto the grass-covered bank, “but why would one sacrifice to a life spirit?”

  “Practitioners are not always educated, particularly on a small island like this,” explained Sam. “A shaman may be communing with a life spirit but not be aware of its nature. Spirits in the underworld have use of fresh souls, but I don’t know how…”

  “Or, they could be hiding something else,” guessed Duke. “This may not be religious at all. They could be covering a commercial opportunity, like star-iron.”

  “Star-iron?” wondered Sam. “Like from the… oh. A meteor.”

  “Exactly,” said Duke.

  He stripped off his shirt, displaying well-developed muscles, little fat, and pale skin that rarely saw the light of day. She looked away, fighting down a sudden flush of… of interest.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, looking into the pool again instead of at him.

  He grunted, and she looked back. He had his broadsword out and had stuck the blade into the soft, rain-damp soil around the base of one of the wooden posts. He worked the steel back and forth then left it there and wrapped his arms around the totem.

  “I don’t think that’s a good—”

  He settled his boots on opposite sides of it then arched his back, tugging on the post.

  Her mouth hung open and further protest died as she watched his muscles pop into sharp relief.

  Suddenly, with a wet squelch, the post slid free, and Duke stumbled back, his arms still wrapped around the wood. With a strangled curse, he fell and landed on his bottom in the pool.

  Sam gasped and jumped after him, her boots splashing in the shallow water, but by the time she reached him, she already knew there was no water spirit. The totems and skeletons were a ruse.

  “That was exceptionally dangerous,” she chided as she collected the wooden post from him and tossed it onto the bank. “You realize runes like this are not used to bind a life spirit, right? Destroying the pattern would have done nothing. I think these are fakes, but if they’d been real and you’d fallen in, you would have died.”

  Struggling to stand in the water without pitching over again, he mumbled, “Would I?”

  “Yes, if there was a real spirit…” she said then groaned. The man was kicking his boots off and tossing his remaining belongings to the bank. “Don’t tell me you’re…. Duke! We don’t know for sure—”

  He dove into the water without comment, his body knifing deep into the clear liquid, his legs kicking powerfully.

  “And there he goes...” Muttering to herself, she walked out of the pool and sat on the bank, stripping off her own boots and shaking them, cursing the cobbler who’d sold them and told her they were waterproof. Maybe enough to keep her dry through the puddles in Westundon’s stone streets, but standing calf-deep in the pool, the knee-high boots had gotten soaked in heartbeats.

  Duke resurfaced, spluttering and gasping.

  “Do you not swim?” he asked after he caught his breath, treading water in the center of the pool.

  “I do,” she answered, “just not before a jungle hike home. Imagine how wet your feet will be in those boots of yours.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said then drew a deep breath and ducked back under the water.

  She could see him clearly, pulling and kicking deeper under the surface until he reached the bottom. When he resurfaced again, she asked, “Well, anything other than skeletons?”

  “I believe it may be star-iron,” he claimed, treading easily in the crystal-clear pool. “The bottom is covered in a layer of silt and… and bones. There are hunks of a hard material buried underneath of it, though, and it has a smooth feel. I’d expect the natural rock of this place to be rough. The water isn’t running here, so it wouldn’t smooth the surface like it would river stones. If it’s not star-iron, I still don’t think it’s natural to Imbon.”

  He swam to the bank, and she averted her eyes again as he lumbered out of the water, shaking his body like a dog and bending down to try to squeeze water from his dripping trousers.

  “I should have taken these off,” he grunted.

  She studied the trees around them.

  “Are you blushing?” he asked.

  She turned her gaze back to him, forcing herself to look at his face. “No… it’s, it’s just hot out here. It’s mid-afternoon. Are you not warm?”

  “I just went for a swim,” he reminded her before plopping down next to her and leaning back on his elbows, letting the sun fall on his outstretched length. He dug through his satchel and pulled out the half-empty bottle of wine and took a sip before offering it to her. “I’m sorry. I thought… I thought after the comments you made about the baroness… I thought, well, I thought maybe you preferred the company of someone like her. A woman.”

  Sam’s face reddened more.

  “It’s frowned on in some groups, like the Church,” continued Duke, “but you have no worries of judgement from me. Believe me, I’ve seen stranger things.”

  Sam didn’t respond and was unsure she could if she wanted to.

  “Seriously, I apologize,” offered Duke. “I imagined you were well-experienced in that regard. I don’t mean to offend.”

  Flabbergasted, she stared at him. Finally, she managed to reply, “That’s about the most offensive thing you’ve said all day.”

  “What? That… oh.”

  “I am experienced,” added Sam, “with both men and women, and you were right, I prefer the latter. Not that it is any of your business.”

  Duke sat up and untied his hair, shaking the wet locks free. He was quiet and busied himself pushing his damp hair back into a ponytail and retying it.

  “I don’t know why I told you that,” admitted Sam.

  Duke grinned at her. “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?”

  She blinked at him, mouth agape. She was bouncing between laughing or punching, certain she should be doing one of the two.

  “That was offensive, too, wasn’t it?” he said, a genuine look of remorse on his face. He raised a hand to his hair then dropped it, evidently remembering he’d just adjusted the tie. “Sorry. I—”

  “You’re right,” she confirmed. “About it being offensive, and… and the other bit.”

  Duke stood and offered a hand to pull her up. “We fought a man to death together back in Harwick while investigating a strange murder that shouldn’t have been possible in Enhover,” he said. “You helped me dispose of a drunken paramour after listening to, well, you know. You knocked out a former pit fighter in a ba
ck alley of Westundon to save my skin. We’ve drank together, spent over a week sharing a tiny room on an airship, hiked a tropical island, and I hope we’ve found a new deposit of star-iron together. We haven’t even made it to Archtan Atoll yet. It’s not unusual for people to tell a little bit about themselves through the course of all of that. I’m sorry if I pried, but take it as I meant it and not as it sounded.”

  “Sharing about myself is unusual for me,” replied Sam, her eyes fixed on the pool, ignoring the hand he’d held out. She turned up the bottle of wine and took a big swallow.

  Duke collected his shirt, wrung it out, and then shook it. He held it up and sighed.

  “Well, since we’re sharing,” he said, pulling on the shirt, collecting his jacket, and stuffing it in his rucksack, “why don’t you tell me about where you were raised and how you learned to fight like you did against that boxer? What was his name, Baron Child’s fellow?”

  “Jack,” she reminded.

  “Yes, Jack. Tell me how you learned to fight a man like that.”

  “I think I’ve shared enough for one day,” said Sam. Then, she stood and started off into the jungle, pushing aside a shoulder-high palm frond and ducking underneath a branch.

  “That’s the wrong way,” called Duke. When she reemerged from the greenery, he complained, “You’ll tell me about your sexual preferences but not about how you became a priestess who can fight?”

  “I’ve told you before,” she said. “I’m not a priestess. Besides, you guessed my… my preferences. I didn’t volunteer to tell you. Now, before it gets dark out here, lead us back to the compound. It seems my sense of direction is no good outside of a city.”

  He grunted and started off in the same direction she’d been heading.