18. EIGHTEEN
EIGHTEEN
FANKALO
Location: Shrokan District, Seraphinden
It was the fifth day of Spring. Following a highsun snack of fava and figs, Fankalo relaxed into her hammock aboard the Rapture. Dirty toes curling into the netting, she pulled the second of three notebooks into her lap.
Like the first, its paper was crisp, the ink so fresh it still shone beneath the lamplight. And also like the first, it left the feeling in her gut that the thing she sought from its pages was a phantom.
Her share of two successful raids and six smuggling operations had landed her enough silver notes to bribe a judicial scribe.
She’d requested copies of the oligarchy’s reports from 733, 734, and 735 Post Cataclysm.
Something in them would surely hold a clue as to why the Nelfinden government had allowed the Tera’thians to lay scourge on one of their port cities without counterattack.
Something would give her an idea of what happened to her brother.
She skimmed the notes. They were all related to distortion rights again. It might have proven easier to bottle flame than find any mention of the Tera’thians.
A familiar set of bouncing footsteps crossed the deck above her hammock. She squeezed her eyes shut. Just what she didn’t need: a distraction.
Mitek entered the berth. “Ho, Bratty!”
“Ho, Mitek,” she grumbled.
He stood next to her like he wanted her to say something. When the deckhand wasn’t handing the deck, he usually bothered Cam first—or Zeb. Then, when they had both had enough of him, he tried to rope Fankalo into mischief.
“Well?”
“We’ve been docked in Seraphinden for two days!” he whined.
And she had yet to set foot on land. But with the research a full year’s worth of Luck had afforded her sitting at her fingertips, there was nothing better to disembark for. “Your point?”
“Get off the fated boat! Come play cards with me ‘n Cam.”
He wanted to use her to gamble. Fat chance.
“You ruined my sirwal.” A spring and small hose beneath the cap of her inkwell.
Simple, yet cleverer than most of Mitek’s pranks.
She had mistaken the small swell of bad Luck for impending landfall and fallen for it.
They were her only sirwal, having grown out of the last. She still wore them, black spattering and all.
“What are brothers for?”
Fankalo kept her eyes firmly on her book. “My retribution will be swift and unyielding.”
“Let’s go nick you some new ones.”
Further sabotage. “You do realize I’ve been waiting for months to read these?”
He mimicked her tone, hands to his hips. “You do realize I’m just trying to help you, eaaah?”
She sighed. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, but unless you can direct me toward a Nelfinden politician still in communication with the Tera’thian state amidst a diplomatic sanction, you can’t help me.”
She turned the page, leaving Mitek in a stumped silence.
“I can’t…” He rubbed his arm and squinted like he was trying to string too many thoughts together. “But I know someone who might.”
Ten minutes down the wharf from where the Rogue’s Rapture had been docked, Mitek pulled Fankalo to a stop outside a crumbling adobe shanty. Faded blue paint peeled from a set of swinging doors embossed with dragonflies.
Shrokan. Mitek usually avoided this district like the Strikapa, keeping to its outskirts and the districts around it. “This is it,” he said with a glance in either direction. He read the question on her face. “We’re fine here, but… keep your tanka loaded.”
“How reassuring.” She tilted her chin toward the building. “Old friend of yours?”
Mitek scratched at his head. “For a while, he was like an older brother. Best I had, before the other Fankalo. Then Cam. And you.” There was something unreadable in his expression then, and he cleared his throat before knocking.
The voice that cooed from within was deep yet feather-soft. “Please, come in.”
Fankalo followed Mitek through the doors into a room lined with aged wooden cubbies, each stuffed with letters and scrolls.
A film of sludge from the street lined the earthen floor.
Dark streaks stained the adobe walls where the rain had leaked in.
The space’s sole occupant sat behind the counter: the most rotund young man Fankalo had ever seen.
He wore bold prints and an emerald woman’s turban.
Kohl as dark as his beard lined his eyes, and an orange hue stained his lips.
He was unusual, but if she’d been given only one word to describe him, she would have chosen beautiful.
“Ay, Celestar. How’s it fare?”
“Mitek!” The man tottered from his stool and threw his arms around Mitek.
Long moments of laughing and back-patting and hair-ruffling ensued.
Finally, Celestar pushed Mitek out to arm’s length, meaty hands clapped over his shoulders.
“Look at these muscles! Not a weak little thing any more.” His eyes darted to Fankalo, and for reasons she couldn’t understand, her stomach clenched. “And you’ve brought a friend!”
A corner of Mitek’s mouth pulled wide, and he gripped at his own bicep as if for validation. “Fankalo had some questions I thought you might be able to answer, so I brought him along.”
Celestar looked down his pug nose at her, mouth slowly drawing long. “That… is not Fankalo.”
Mitek chuckled. “Sure it is. It’s just been, what, five years? Six, since you saw him last?”
“That is not Fankalo,” Celestar repeated flatly. “And if it is, whatever ‘he’s’ had done, I want to speak to his guy.”
Fankalo had long since come to grips with the fact that the facade she’d paraded for so many years would not suit her much longer. Despite hair cropped short and clothes that blended with the crew’s, there were certain things she wouldn’t be able to hide.
“I’d rather we not speculate on who or what I am, as it will hardly accomplish anything. Do you know of anyone in the oligarchy’s circles—or dark market circles—who is still in communication with the Tera’thian state?”
Celestar’s angled eyebrows rose. “Why would a little thing like you have concerns for someone like that?”
“My business is my own.” She had to prevent herself from fidgeting under the look Celestar gave her: like he was reading her the way she read Luck, analyzing every possible current.
“I suppose that’s fair. What will you give me for a name and location?”
Fankalo’s heart ticked faster. Mitek hadn’t said they’d owe anything. She’d spent everything on those useless records. Everything her father had, too. He was currently in convention with his Seraphinden associates to determine how to make their next score.
Mitek stepped in. “Cam and I are lined up for cards at a parlor where Poqualle district intersects the wharf. If you join us, Fankalo will sit with you for three games.”
Celestar’s mouth twisted. “And that’s valuable to me because?”
“He’s fate-touched.”
“Mitek…” Fankalo warned.
Celestar seemed to take a deeper interest in her. “You’ve been running with, ahm, ‘Fankalo’ for how long?”
“About five years,” Mitek answered.
Celestar addressed her next. “You’re lucky to have this one by your side. I know how he gains his loyalties. For that, whatever secrets you have are safe with me.”
Mitek… Lucky? She hadn’t ever thought about it, but Mitek always had seemed Lucky in a vague sort of way. Perhaps that was why she put up with him.
“Can you help me or not?”
Celestar gave her a judicious snort. “It’s not whether I can help you. What with times being what they are and a raider taking interest in consulting with enemy forces, the question I would ask is ‘why?’”
Why did he care? Most gangsters just wanted to get paid. All this one seemed to want was to flirt and gossip. She looked at Mitek, who nodded encouragingly.
“I believe the Tera’thians have taken someone dear to me. And I want to understand why… so I can figure out how to get him back.”
“If someone you know’s been abducted by the Tera’thians, I’d place my bets on Mitek being elected Prime before you get them back.”
“I’ll place my own bets, thanks.”
“Hmmph.” Celestar crossed his arms and leaned against the counter, which groaned in protest. “Deshpian Thacklore’s the one you’ll want to talk to. He’s an ex Blue Wing official. But, from what I understand, if you’re going to seek an audience… simply put, you have some serious work to do.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He won’t give you the time of day unless you’re exceedingly wealthy, exceedingly dangerous, or—” He looked her up and down. “Well, those are the two options you have, anyway.”
Mitek winced and found something fascinating to look at on the far side of the room.
Fankalo’s upper lip twitched. “Then I’ll be both.” Nevermind the fact that she was a skinny eleven-year-old girl in Groundling mens’ clothes.
Celestar snickered. “You’re not easy to dissuade.”
Mitek snorted too. “Fankalo’s the poster child for incurable overambition.”
Celestar might have been shrewd and manipulative, but he’d given her a name for free that was worth more than what she’d paid good silver for.
She lifted her chin and took her chance.
“Three games, and you’ll tell me three things: Deshpian Thacklore’s location, why you’re confident he’ll have Tera’thian connections, and what you think I can trade him to give me what I need. ”
The messenger station keeper grinned. “I call that a bargain. Haven’t left the station in nearly a moon—my feet don’t work the way they used to. But for a friend of Mitek’s? I can go win a few rounds of cards.”
Mitek and Celestar exchanged evening plans and pleasantries and a joke Fankalo didn’t understand but left them clutching their ribs in laughter. Then they exited, Mitek’s lazy legs stepping faster through Shrokan’s streets than usual.
“I didn’t know you still had ties in Shrokan,” Fankalo mumbled to him, instead of the ‘thanks’ he probably deserved.
“Not many.”
“He seems very fond of you.”
Mitek shrugged. “Helped him out of a spat once. Celestar is great for gossip. He isn’t great for fists.”
“So you won a fight for him?”
“I never said I won.” Mitek chewed at his cheek. “Come on. Let’s go steal you some pants before tonight. There are loads of tailors in Korshuva.”
“If I sit by Celestar during cards… you’re probably going to lose.”
“Today didn’t go the way I planned,” he admitted.
That was very uncharacteristic of Mitek’s usual being a conniving and greedy arse. “Thank you.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Least I could do for you, Brat.”
Fankalo was suddenly warm in a way she’d never felt before. She floundered, seeking something to say that might make the horrendous feeling go away, and found a safe landing calling out Mitek’s idiocy.
“Aye.” She sharpened her eyes on him. “You’ve known what I was looking for. Why didn’t you connect me to Celestar before?” It might have saved her months—years—and countless resources.
Mitek made the face he always made when he was guilty of having been stupid. “I didn’t think of it before. But I’d been thinking of paying Celestar a visit… And then I realized he might be able to help.”
“You should think about thinking more often.” She lobbed him a smile. “It does you good.”