‘Oh, he’s kind of like Fuyu Shogun. Or Jack Frost.’
‘If you say so. Some people say he’s an aspect of the human father deity, Wota.’ Aneshti gave a shrug. ‘Seems like he’s decided to make his presence known early this year.’
‘The weather workers are saying this will be a bad winter.’
Aneshti made a scoffing sound. ‘They don’t know what that means this far south.’
‘Well, I can tell it means there’s cold water running down my neck. Let’s get out of this and into the warm.’ Kana quickened her pace and Aneshti had to stretch her legs to keep up.
‘Hey! You’ve got longer legs than me.’
‘Longer legs and bigger boobs. You must hate me.’
‘Only on Hantoras.’
‘It’s Hantora today, Aneshti.’
‘Oh! So it is…’
The White Castle, 14 th Deokarte.
The arrival of a team of riders from Shibella was something of a surprise, especially given the weather. The White Castle often had snow in winter, but this year it was early and thick.
Travelling at this time of year was foolish at best. This year it slipped into the realms of abject stupidity, but six men on horseback had made the trip. Presumably they were being paid exorbitantly well.
That they had come for nothing added insult to injury and also left Sharassa to face the Master who was not best pleased.
‘It seems,’ he said in far too calm a voice, ‘that they were sent to retrieve Aneshti.’
‘That seems to be the case, Master,’ Sharassa replied.
‘A letter was sent to her explaining that she should return home to be married. Instead, she set off with Kana to the south.’
‘She did, Master.’
‘Did you, perhaps, know of her impending nuptials?’
‘I did, Master.’
‘And you neglected to inform me of the arrangement because…’
‘You can rightly claim that you knew nothing of the matter, Master. Further, Aneshti is of no use as the wife of a merchant.
My statement of her utility to Kana in progressing the search for Cadorian was not incorrect. Aneshti had no desire to be part of her family’s plans for commercial conquest. She is happier where she is and performing a far more useful task than entertaining party guests in Shibella.’
The Master grunted his displeasure. ‘You’ve left me in a difficult position, Sharassa.’
‘No, Master, I’ve left myself in a difficult position. You can deny any responsibility for this.’
‘That is not how this kind of thing works. But I take your meaning. I also know Aneshti’s father, however, and he won’t let this rest so easily. His people will be under orders to hunt down Aneshti and drag her back by her hair if necessary.’
‘I believe you’re right, Master. They’ve asked leave to spend the night and intend to go south tomorrow.’
‘Idiots. This is the worst winter we’ve seen in half a century.’
‘Still, they seem determined.’
‘Hm. You’ll not warn Aneshti that they’re coming, Sharassa.’
Sharassa affected a shocked expression, though it was doubtful that the Master believed it. ‘Of course not, Master. I will say nothing to Aneshti about any of this.’
‘Well and good. Under the circumstances, we’ll say no more about it.’
Sharassa gave him a smile. ‘Thank you, Master. I’ll go to see about providing our guests with beds for tonight and provisions for their onward journey.’
15 th Deokarte.
‘The Master told you not to warn Aneshti, so you’re telling me?’
The ‘call’ had come through as Kana was working on a scroll of warming; the magic shop had requested that she make as many as she could manage thanks to unusual demand this year. It had been a surprise since Sharassa rarely contacted her, but it had come with Sharassa’s identifying avatar and Kana had accepted it because it seemed unlikely that the elf would go to the trouble without good reason.
‘The Master told me not to warn Aneshti. He neglected to tell me not to warn you and I am choosing to take this as tacit permission to do so. The riders left this morning before sunrise, but it will take them some time to reach Hillock. Months, I would imagine.’
‘But not a lot of months… Okay, warning received. Has anyone come to any conclusion regarding Cadorian?’
‘His current location and motives remain unclear. We believe that he did take ship to Skonar. Beyond that, we have no news. We don’t know what he’s doing or precisely where he is. All we can
hope is that he’s working to defeat those wishing to return Serpens to the world.’
‘If this was an anime, that would be really ominous.’
‘You still believe you’re dreaming all of this then?’
Kana gave a shrug which Sharassa could not see. ‘Maybe it’s more a matter of hope now. I mean, as a dream, this sucks. I’m supposed to be an adventurer and I’m spending all my time making scrolls so people can keep their feet warm. I should just reinvent the kotatsu and have done with it. Hm… That’s not such a terrible idea…’
‘What is a “kotatsu?” It sounds like something I’d find very useful at the moment.’
‘Uh, basically it’s a low table with a blanket laid over it that reaches the floor. Then you put a heat source under the table.
Traditionally, that was a little charcoal burner, but maybe someone up there could invent a suitable enchantment.’
‘And this is a good way to keep warm in winter?’
‘Oh yes. You kneel with your legs under the blanket. It’s wonderful. The only problem with them is that you’ll never want to leave once you’re in one.’
‘I do believe I’m willing to take that risk…’
~~~
‘We’ll just have to be elsewhere when they get here,’ Mimi said.
‘If they can’t find you, they can’t take you back.’
‘We’ll just take a job somewhere south of here,’ Rain agreed.
‘We’ve got at least a month before we need to worry,’ Constance added.
‘More like two,’ Rain said. ‘With the weather the way it is, it’ll be a couple of months before they can get here. If we go south, we can be free of the worst of it and make better time than they can.’
Aneshti bit her lip and there was actually a tear in her eye.
‘You’re sure that’s okay? It means travelling in winter and–’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Mimi said. ‘You’re one of us now and what you’re facing is terrible. It’s archaic! No, it’s not even that because no elf should be forced into a marriage like that. It wouldn’t have happened ten thousand years ago! It can’t be allowed.’
The elf in question sniffed. ‘The shitagi picked up a lot of bad habits from human society in the north. Down here, the humans picked up customs from vertagi culture.’
Constance gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘You say that, but it’s really only Alabeth and Trefall where that’s happened. In Sintar, it’s not uncommon for daughters to be literally sold into marriage to clear a debt.’
‘Slavery is legal there,’ Rain said, as though that explained the matter.
‘It is, but it’s illegal to take a free Sintari citizen as a slave. It is legal for a citizen to sell themselves into slavery and it’s a really amazing thing how many pretty daughters are willing to sacrifice their freedom when their family has financial problems.’
Rain gave a shrug. ‘Arranged marriages are a common thing in Skonar and Skangar. Skovir too, from what I hear. It’s not slavery, but I guess there can be little difference.’
‘You two make it sound like you were both running from arranged marriages yourselves,’ Kana said.
Constance shook her head. ‘That wasn’t my problem. You know why I left Sintar.’
‘Same,’ Rain said. ‘I mean, I wasn’t escaping marriage. I just…
had to leave to be what I wanted to be.’
‘They didn’t
want you to be an adventurer?’ Aneshti asked.
‘Huh. No way.’
‘But your grandfather was one, right? He left you his sword and that breastplate you wear.’
‘Yes. Yes, he did.’ The bastard sword Rain wielded was actually a big deal as an inheritance. It was enchanted and of good quality.
The breastplate was nothing special, but Rain was rather attached to it given that her grandfather had used it in his own adventuring days. ‘But my father thought that adventuring was foolish. He didn’t want me doing what his father did.’
Kana was not sure that that was all of it. There was still a bit of mystery about Rain, something she was not saying. The sword and armour were part of that. Would an old man, even an adventurer, from the paternalistic north have left his prized magic sword to his granddaughter? Maybe he had been more forward-thinking than usual. Whatever, Rain would tell her tale when she did. ‘So, what do we do now? I don’t think starting south with no idea where we’re going is a good idea. Not at this time of year.’
‘Well, no,’ Constance said. ‘Aside from anything, it’s almost new year. We’re not leaving before then. I’ll talk to Sonia. The guild has a network for passing on untaken quests. If something comes up in the south, we’ll hear about it. And for right now, I’m heading for the baths. Anyone else coming?’
‘I need to go check on some things at the stable,’ Rain said once everyone else had agreed to go.
‘Sure,’ Constance replied. Rain never bathed with them, so it was hardly a surprise. It was just another thing adding to the mystery that was Rain.
31 st Deokarte.
Kana was pacing her drinking. It was the last night of the year and just about everyone was in the Sword and Staff. They would be there until dawn, drinking, singing, chatting, and generally making merry, and then they would troop off to bed. Some of them might even make it to their own bed and Kana intended to be one of those, hence the pacing.
‘Well, it hasn’t been a bad year,’ Rain commented. There was a general feeling that it was almost midnight. The world would soon be entering the limbo period between the end of the last day of the year and the first light of the new one. People claimed it was a dangerous time, but Kana had never seen any trouble then.
The only real danger came from drunks.
‘We’re not dead,’ Constance said, ‘and we met two new friends.
I’d almost be prepared to call it a good year.’
‘I would have liked a warmer end to it,’ Mimi said.
‘Hey,’ Kana countered, ‘I’m making good money with warming scrolls. Don’t knock the cold.’
‘This isn’t cold,’ Aneshti said. ‘Southerners don’t know what cold is.’
‘There’s actually snow on the ground,’ Mimi said. ‘I can’t remember the last time we had snow here.’
‘Three years ago,’ Rain said, ‘but it wasn’t this deep and it didn’t last. Aneshti’s right though. Southerners are soft when it comes to the cold. Even humans are a much hardier breed up there.’
A spell Kana had worked from first principles earlier in the evening triggered and she heard her own voice in her head:
‘Midnight.’ ‘It’s midnight,’ she said aloud, though you could sort of tell since various mages who had clearly done the same as Kana were calling out to friends. Back in Japan, now would be the time to celebrate, but here it was dawn and several hours away.
‘They’d better be hardy in the north. Dawn will be even later for them.’
‘Oh, they’ll be drinking for hours yet. They’re hardy in more than one way in the north.’
Skonar, 1 st Ankarte 6024.
The humans were getting drunk. There were a few shitagi among them who were also doing their best to end up retching their guts up when dawn came, but Skonar was primarily a human city and elves were few and far between.
Cadorian drank, but only in moderation and mostly to keep some feeling in his toes. Skonar Island was a frigid place; staying warm in winter was an exercise in futility. The ‘great city’ of Skonar was not that much different from the Ice Peaks: keeping your feet warm was next to impossible.
In truth, Cadorian would have preferred to stay away from people, as he had been doing for much of his enforced stay in the city.
Tonight, that would have made him stand out more than usual. The humans had taken their year-end celebrations from elf culture, at least in part. In the Great Forest, in Cadorian’s time, each clan would gather together on the last night of the year, sitting around a large fire they had built over the past week. There, they would wait for the coming of the first light of the new year and, yes, there would be a lot of drinking and making merry.
Tradition had it that the sounds of happy elves kept the dark spirits who roamed that night away. Back then, Cadorian had suspected that it was just an excuse to get drunk, but now… It seemed as though the humans had turned the elven celebration into a ritual of determined alcohol consumption. One more reason to hate them. One more reason to punish the elves who had allowed these humans to proliferate.
One thing Cadorian was sure of: this would be the last time the humans celebrated the beginning of a new year. He was going to make sure of it.
Chapter Nine: The City, the Sea, and the Big-Ass Lizard Alabeth, 6 th Ankarte 6024.
According to what Kana had been told, Alabeth was the largest city on Soken with a population of around two hundred thousand.
Almost all of the people who lived there were human, even though there was a direct connection to the centre of vertagi territory via the portal outside of town. There was no such thing as a human capital of Soken, but Alabeth was that capital for all intents and purposes.
The walls of Alabeth were huge and white. The white was not the natural white of limestone, however; fairly ordinary, basically
grey rock from the nearby Soansha’s Crown range was used for almost all the stonework in the city, but someone had paid for the entire outer facing of the city’s walls to be enchanted with spells which not only turned the rock a shining white never found in nature but also stopped dirt sticking to them! That kind of exorbitant magic use was apparently not uncommon in Alabeth.
Once you got inside the walls, the public-facing buildings were all stone, occasionally dyed various colours in the same manner as the outer walls. Not only was stone the prevalent building material, but the buildings had clearly been designed and built by master craftsmen. There were ornate columns, gargoyles, intricately carved reliefs, and all sorts of other ornamentation.
Alabeth looked a lot like the grand city it was supposed to be.
Until Constance led them away from the main thoroughfares. Beyond the parts visitors to the city generally saw, the stonework got less ornate and gave way to wooden frames with stone lower floors, and then to wooden buildings. About that time, the streets became narrower and went from flagstones to cobbles to dirt. The area was hardly a slum, but it clearly was not as well off as other parts of the city. It was, however, relatively close to the docks and the docks were the reason they were in Alabeth at all.
‘We’ll get settled and then Rain and I will go talk to some ship captains,’ Constance said as she led the way down street after street. ‘It’s going to take a couple of days to get passage south, I’d imagine. The sea’s landlocked, but it’s big enough that winter weather cuts the traffic across it.’
Aneshti was looking around with growing alarm, or maybe growing horror. ‘Where are you taking us, Constance?’
Constance flashed the elf a grin. ‘There’s a place I know where we can get some rooms at relatively reasonable rates. It’s not far now.’
‘Good because–’ Aneshti came to a stop as two women walked past, arm in arm. They looked quite happy. There was a skip in their step. Aneshti was not surprised to see two happy women walking together in a rough neighbourhood, however. Each woman was dressed in a long skirt, split into sections so that the fabric danced around their legs as they moved, and a corset which nar
rowed their waists. Neither had anything covering their breasts.
‘It’s the local uniform for courtesans,’ Mimi explained, smirking at Aneshti’s surprise.
‘Technically,’ Constance said, ‘if you’re following the strict letter of the law, your nipples need to be visible. High-class courtesans often wear thin silk blouses. For most, it’s easier to
just go bare-breasted. Get over your shock now. You’ll be seeing a lot more of it soon.’
‘Oh,’ Aneshti said. ‘That really sounds like a law created by a man.’
Constance shook her head. ‘Nahaina Whorebane got the laws on the statute about twelve hundred years ago. As you might guess from her nickname, she was dead set against prostitution, but the city makes a lot of money regulating it and there were plenty of politicians who did not want it gone for other reasons. So, Nahaina tried to regulate it out of existence through the back door. Unfortunately for her, she died before she could complete her plan, but it was a partial success. Public nudity laws stop prostitutes from working on any of the major streets. And we’re here.’
Here was a fairly large building which, unlike most on the street, had a stone-built ground floor with another of wattle and daub above it. It also had a gatehouse of sorts, built entirely of stone, which let visitors through into a courtyard within.
Kana guessed that the exterior walls made a square of about a hundred metres on each side. The courtyard was obviously smaller, but it had a decorated well at its centre and stables built of wood on the right as you came in. The place looked like it was an inn of some sort, but it was well off the beaten track for visitors to the city and its actual role was, perhaps, suggested by the large number of topless women who could be seen walking across the flagged yard.
‘It’s called “The Manor,”’ Constance said. ‘It’s the highest-class brothel in this part of the city. We’ll be staying here until we head south.’
‘In a whorehouse?’ Aneshti asked, though it was basically a rhetorical question.
‘Don’t worry, Aneshti, as long as you keep your top on, no one’s going to ask you to do anything you don’t want to.’
‘I see. Well, that’s a cheery thought.’
The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World Page 20