The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World

by Niall Teasdale

  ~~~

  The owner and operator of The Manor was a tall, attractive, buxom woman with long, honey-blonde hair named Faioona Golden.

  Presumably the nickname came from her golden hair, but it might have referred to her wealth, which did not seem inconsiderable for the madam of a brothel. She obviously knew Constance; there was hugging and some not-entirely-chaste kissing when the two met, and the party were invited to dine with their hostess that evening. It was a free meal, so how could they refuse?

  Dinner was had in a moderately large room at the back of the upper floor which, it seemed, was part of an apartment Faioona lived in. The hostess was wearing a somewhat skimpy gown which draped around her neck in such a manner that wardrobe malfunction seemed imminent, but she was not actually topless. The three young maids attending to the diners were, which left Kana feeling a little uncomfortable.

  ‘They seem a little young to be working,’ Kana observed as a red-haired girl who appeared to be around fourteen served soup into Kana’s bowl, her small breasts not quite touching Kana’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, they are,’ Faioona said. ‘No one works, that way, in The Manor until they’re sixteen. I don’t cater to that kind of pervert. I do, however, employ a few girls as maids and I have them go bare-breasted when they serve me in private. It gets them used to dressing this way.’ She favoured the blonde currently serving her with a smile. ‘And I like the view.’

  The blonde blushed. She looked a little older than the other two girls and the blush seemed like it was for show more than actual embarrassment. ‘Thank you, Lady Faioona,’ she said.

  Sixteen still seemed a little young to Kana, but this was not her world and she had had to make a number of adjustments. In truth, the absolute age of consent in Japan was thirteen, though sex with people under the age of eighteen was generally illegal. You could, at least theoretically, get married and have children at a young age, so long as your parents gave consent. Was this really that different? Well, yes, it probably was but who was Kana to judge it as wrong?

  ‘Uh, this is a pretty amazing place, especially considering the area,’ Kana said.

  ‘And the fact that it’s a brothel? Of course, it wasn’t always a brothel. The Manor was originally built as the residence of a rich merchant, back when this part of the city was a lot more genteel. This used to be where the shipowners and such had their homes. Not too far from the docks and not too close to the quarter where the rich landowners had their city homes. The neighbourhood went downhill, the merchant went bankrupt, and The Manor ended up as a whorehouse. Most of the other big homes have been demolished and replaced with smaller buildings, but this place has gone on, changing hands now and again. It’s the oldest surviving brothel in the city, going back two thousand years.’

  Kana shook her head. ‘That’s actually pretty amazing, I guess.’

  As a city, Tokyo was not as old as this brothel. Kana knew that there were a few village names surviving within Tokyo that went back several thousand years, but Alabeth had been built before there was anything much you could describe as civilisation where

  Kana had grown up. Things like a two-thousand-year-old brothel tended to bring home that Soken was not Earth.

  ‘I like to think so. Of course, it’s not like I’ve been running the place since the beginning, but it’s been in no danger of closing under my management.’

  ‘How do you know Constance?’

  ‘It’s not obvious?’ Constance asked. ‘I used to work here. When I first left Sintar, I came to Alabeth in need of money and Faioona helped me get on my feet.’

  ‘That’s part of it,’ Faioona said. ‘We were having a little trouble with a criminal gang at the time. They were making a nuisance of themselves all through the quarter. Demanding protection money. That kind of thing. Constance was a good worker and I enjoyed her company, but the fact that she took care of that problem made her a friend of The Manor for as long as we both live.’

  Constance’s pale cheeks coloured. ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘It was, most certainly, not nothing. And, of course, you’re always welcome to come back and work for me.’ Faioona looked around at the other members of the party. ‘Your two elves could make a small fortune here if they wanted to.’

  ‘One elf,’ Aneshti said. She indicated Kana with her soup spoon.

  ‘One woman who gets misidentified as an elf a lot. And, sorry, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to resort to selling my body for cash.’

  Faioona grinned. ‘Such a waste.’ Her eyes shifted back to Kana.

  ‘You’re really not an elf? Your ears say human. Your eyes…’ The madam frowned. ‘No. No, they’re not really… I’ve seen many people from all over the world in my time, but I’ve not met someone with your looks before, Kana. Elf or not, I’m sure I could make a fortune with you.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m not quite ready for that either.’ Kana felt her cheeks glowing. It was a sort of compliment from someone who presumably knew what was desired in the female form. ‘I take it you don’t have many elves here?’

  ‘There aren’t more than a thousand elves resident in Alabeth.

  It’s rare that one of them decides to make her living on her back. Even if they did, they’d likely be dressed in silks and catering to rich, personal clients.’

  ‘Shibella has shitagi prostitutes,’ Aneshti supplied. ‘Obviously.

  There are few humans there. It’s not as though elves have some major moral objection to the profession. I, personally, don’t

  think I could do it.’ She pursed her lips and frowned briefly. ‘I lie. If it was this or starve…’

  ‘You could probably always fall back on your magic,’ Constance said. ‘When I came to Alabeth, I was trying to put my magic behind me. Of course, that didn’t exactly work out…’

  ‘I don’t care what you do, Constance,’ Faioona said. ‘You saved The Manor with that magic. You saved lives with it. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘Oh, yes I do. It just so happens that helping out here isn’t one of them.’

  7 th Ankarte.

  Given that Alabeth was slap bang in the middle of Soken’s major continent, it was maybe a little surprising that it was a port city. Then again, it did not really have the feel of a city beside the sea and the sea in question was the landlocked Heartland Sea.

  There were few very large ships tied up along the jetties. Most of the traffic across the sea was done in small and midsized ships owned and operated by their captains as independent traders. The largest ships were dedicated to transporting goods between Alabeth and a couple of ports on the southern coast of the sea, the Great Forest coast. Those were of no use to the party because they were not bound for vertagi lands.

  Constance and Rain were, therefore, talking to the captains of those smaller vessels which appeared to be still operating, despite the time of year. Kana had gone along mostly to see the docks, though she did have some interest in what kind of ship they might be spending several days on.

  The docks were, technically, outside the city walls. They were not outside the city’s defences, however. A pair of stone jetties ran out on either side, each with a round tower of about three storeys at the end some two hundred metres from the shore. Arrow slits were visible on the upper two levels of the towers and there was something which looked like a huge crossbow on the top of them. The defences were there, but limited. Clearly, Alabeth had never seen much in the way of invasion since its construction.

  The basic construction of the docks was stone. There were two additional stone jetties between the defensive towers, and those were where the bigger ships tied up. The smaller vessels sat against wooden piers, and those were more numerous, some of them extending out from the shore, others branching from the stone piers. It looked like an arrangement which had grown organically rather than having some designer behind it.

  The ships available were… variable. The biggest of them looked a lot like Chinese junks: square sterns and pointed bows, d
ecking, and multiple masts. The smaller ones seemed to have a number of different design philosophies. Some looked like Viking longboats with a single mast and positions for rowers. Some were more like river barges, but bigger, and had no masts at all. Kana could see nothing that looked like a classic sailing ship, the kind with lots of masts and rigging, but maybe that kind of thing was overkill on the Heartland Sea.

  The reason the largest of the ships were not useful under the circumstances was the job the party had taken. Down on the edge of the Heartland Sea and the Blistered Swamp, there was a village named Gareea which was having some trouble with dracs. It was a fishing village with some outlying farms and a drac tribe from the swamp had apparently decided to extort food from the place.

  To Kana, it sounded like The Seven Samurai or maybe The Magnificent Seven . She had playfully suggested recruiting two extra party members but no one had got the joke. Taking the job had two distinct advantages: it got the party out of Hillock for an extended period and it potentially provided the White Castle with information on the state of the drac tribes in the swamp.

  Sharassa had been quite keen on the idea when Kana had reported the plan.

  So, they needed a ship which was trading down the east coast of the sea. Complicating matters was the need for a ship which could transport Ranulf along with five passengers. The plan was to return north overland, so having the pony along was a good idea.

  Ranulf was a placid animal, so that was not a problem, but he took up space which the captain would not be able to use for cargo. The negotiations were not going easily.

  ~~~

  ‘I feel like I’m dragging everyone across half the world for no real gain,’ Aneshti said. Kana had left the docks to meet with Aneshti and Mimi in what Mimi called the ‘shopping district.’

  They had stopped to drink not-tea at a little shop which would have been called a café back on Earth. ‘They’re paying four gold and we’re going to be spending a small fortune to get there.’

  ‘Four up front,’ Mimi corrected, ‘and two more each month or part thereof we have to stay to get the job done. We should get a gold apiece out of it and we won’t be paying for food or board while we’re there. We’ve taken worse jobs.’

  ‘And we may pick up more work on the way back,’ Kana added. ‘You know, this place kind of reminds me of home.’

  ‘Home? Oh, where you came from. Japan, was it?’

  ‘Yes, except that this is more like, um, Paris or something.’

  ‘Paris?’

  ‘Except warmer. They have cafés where you sit outside. And you don’t know what a café is, but you get the idea, right? And it’s full of designer clothes shops.’

  ‘Aren’t all clothes designed?’ Aneshti asked.

  ‘No. Yes. This is different. A designer clothes shop sells things that some famous designer has… designed. And they put their name on it somewhere so you know it was done by them so you pay more for it. Usually a lot more. And then everyone else basically copies the design and you get cheaper copies later in the season.’

  ‘Then, why would you buy the original ones?’

  ‘To have the name on the label. The label which no one can see.

  But you know it’s there.’

  ‘Your world seems pretty crazy at times.’

  ‘I’m not going to argue.’

  Heartland Sea, 14 th Ankarte.

  Travelling in winter sucked. The rain was beating down out of a grey sky, drenching anyone who spent more than a few minutes in it. The wind was, thankfully, favourable and not strong enough to give a huge swell, so seasickness was not an issue. Overall, however, the journey south had consisted largely of being damp and uncomfortable given that they were doing it in an open boat, surrounded by crates and sacks which were to be delivered to various villages down the eastern coast of the Heartland Sea. The crates and sacks got tarpaulins to keep them dry. Passengers had to fend for themselves.

  Things would have been worse if Aneshti had not been there.

  Declaring that she was not putting up with being soaked for ten or twelve days, she had put up a magical weather shield and she kept it up as long as she could every day. Unfortunately, she had to sleep. Sleeping meant huddling in as close to the boxes as possible and trying to hide as much of yourself under a tarp as you could, but when Aneshti was awake, things were moderately comfortable.

  That just left the boredom to contend with. There was nothing to do on the ship aside from reading and talking. Topics of conversation had run short after a couple of days. They were more or less down to talking about the weather. Kana had taught everyone how to play ‘I Spy,’ but there was a very limited choice of subjects, so that had failed after about two minutes.

  On the plus side, Kana was really getting ahead on her study of the Apportation spell. It was one of the most basic spells

  dealing with the movement of objects. She thought of it as a weak form of telekinesis. Well, it could not move anything very fast, but it could, theoretically, lift some fairly large weights. It depended upon how much power you were willing to put into it. If she had mastered it, she could have casually assisted the seamen in unloading cargo while perched on the ship’s rail, kicking her feet. As it was, she risked dropping things in the sea, so she had not offered to help. Rain had been helping unload, using just her muscles, but that was an effort to stave off boredom as much as a desire to be helpful.

  ‘According to the sailors,’ Rain said as they huddled beneath Aneshti’s shield one dismal Menora afternoon, ‘Gareea is about as boring a place as you can get. No stone buildings. It’s all wood and thatch for the roofs. No real fortification. It’s on the first bit of truly solid ground north of the swampland too. The dracs have to think of it as easy pickings. I’m surprised they don’t get more trouble.’

  ‘It’s a bad winter,’ Mimi said. ‘Maybe the dracs are having more trouble gathering food and have tried a different tactic.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter why they’re having more trouble now,’

  Constance said. ‘They are and we’re going to put a stop to it.

  Have we an updated estimate on when we’ll arrive?’

  ‘If the wind stays as it is, it’ll be another week. They say the wind usually comes down from the north this time of year, so the estimate’s probably good.’

  ‘Another week of this? Such joy.’

  ‘It could be worse,’ Mimi said. Her joviality sounded a little forced.

  ‘It could?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t think of how right now, but it could be.’

  Gareea, 21 st Ankarte.

  Despite the fact that Kana was sure she was living an isekai story, narrative conventions did not kick in and the weather stayed about the same all the way to Gareea. It was, if anything, a little warmer since they were a week’s travel south of where they had been. Out of the wind, it was quite comfortable.

  Just after dawn, that was not the case. The ship pulled up against a roughly made jetty in the early hours of Menora morning and the party disembarked with mixed feelings. It had been warmer under Aneshti’s weather shield, but at least they were where they were supposed to be now. Except that where they were supposed to be was not much to look at. If anything, the sailors had oversold

  the dismal little village which sat on slightly higher ground a hundred or so metres back from the shoreline.

  Still, shortly after Constance explained to a fisherman who they were, they had been taken to a hut which was to serve as their lodgings while they were in the village. It was built on a circular floorplan with a leather curtain over the doorway and a thatched roof which had a hole at its apex through which smoke from the firepit could escape. There was no firewood and the village elder would not be able to see them for a few hours, according to their guide who seemed more concerned with getting his boat out onto the sea than in seeing to the newcomers.

  ‘Let’s get some sleep,’ Constance suggested. ‘They can wake us when they�
��ve decided their safety is important enough to bother talking to us.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Kana replied. She turned to the firepit, raised her hand, and said, ‘Create Fire.’ The hollow surrounded by stones filled with flame, the warmth from the fire rapidly spreading through the open interior of the hut. There was no smoke because nothing was burning. ‘I’ll keep this going for a while. I don’t think this hut’s been used for months. It feels damp.’

  Aneshti was already laying out her bedroll. ‘It’s nice not to have to use my spell to keep us warm and dry.’ She looked up at the thatch. ‘Assuming the roof doesn’t leak, obviously.’

  ‘It looks solid enough,’ Mimi replied. ‘Did anyone else notice the burned huts?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rain said. ‘Further into town.’ The village was, like its houses, roughly circular. It seemed to have been built in concentric circles – each house built with its door facing south

  – until they had given up on any form of regularity. Even then, there was a basically circular pattern. Their hut was on the third circle out from the middle. Inward of it, several gaps had been made in the circles, apparently at random, via the expedient of burning the huts to the ground. Exactly how many had been turned into bonfires was hard to judge, but it was evidence that the village had recently received more violent visitations.

  ‘Something about that seems weird, but I can’t put my finger on what.’

  ‘We can ask when this elder turns up,’ Constance said. She stretched out on her blankets, pulling one over her body. ‘Right now, I’d like to be warm and asleep.’

  ‘You’d probably be warmer if you didn’t insist on dressing like a belly dancer,’ Kana pointed out.

  ‘I have an image to maintain. Now, go to sleep. No, on second thoughts, you stay awake until I’ve gone to sleep. You’re maintaining the fire.’

  ‘Oh thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure. And I mean that literally.’

  ~~~

  Tolar Greybeard turned up at about midday. He was an elderly man, though he seemed to be ageing faster than those Kana had seen in other parts of Soken. He looked like he was well into his sixties. He was bald with a long grey beard and bad teeth. His clothes were not exactly designer chic, but they did seem to be of better quality than those the fisherman had been wearing that morning. He wore a shirt with horn buttons and serviceable woollen trousers, and he had a cloak held in place with a silver, decorated pin. Tolar seemed like he was someone important in Gareea.