Chapter Fourteen. Eban
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EBAN
Birds flap overhead, frightened away by the snapping twigs beneath our feet.
We shove branches aside and stomp forward, ignoring the stray leaves and brambles that scratch our faces and snag our clothing.
Neither of us stop or speak until we finally come to an isolated section of the rocky shoreline, a ways down from the main wharf.
Sure enough, at the south pier, there’s an old greenish-gray fishing boat docked there, drifting lazily with the current. “I think this is it,” she says, and reads the boat’s transom. “Panglaban.” For the fight.
“That thing is supposed to take us all the way to the Lashing?” I scoff. “It’s nothing but a rowboat!”
“There’s a sail,” she snaps. “Come on.”
I sigh, jump in, and hold my hand out.
She ignores my hand and climbs aboard the shaky boat. I untie it from the dock and push us off, into the river, then sit beside her. The sail is useless as there’s no wind, so we each grab an oar and begin to row as fast as we can.
Once the immediate threat is behind us, I stop rowing so I can attend to my injury. When I roll up my pant leg, I notice that Gin looks away, like she’s embarrassed, or else disgusted by the sight of the wound.
“It’s nothing,” I assure her. Still, it’s bad enough that I should cover it. I look around, but there’s nothing I can use as a bandage, so I pull my shirt over my head and rip off the sleeves, using one to wrap around and stop the bleeding.
Gin studiously avoids looking in my direction the whole time.
Once I get my leg sorted, I pick up the oar and row faster. The skyline of Lacon fades into the distance behind us. From so far away, anyone would think it’s a beautiful place, no hint of the misery and strife behind the glowing lights. It looks charming, peaceful.
“Head north on the river till we get to the sea, then follow Estrella Norte until we get there.”
“How do you know how to find it?”
She shrugs and won’t say. Fine, be that way.
I do as she’s directed, but as we near the open ocean, I realize something. We can’t see the Bituon—what we Ophir call Estrella Norte—during the day. There’s no way to know if we’re going the right way. These directions are useless. Then I realize we’re not without resources.
“You still got that bottle?” I ask, thinking of what happened back at the Sleeve. The Ophir spirit saved us, maybe it will again. I fish around in my pocket and pull out the silvery glass orb with a sapphire stopper.
She does the same, coming up with hers, a milky glass with a ruby top. “Oh!” she says, startled, then looks intently at the bottle. “The spirit—it’s back! I thought it left us.” Her eyes shine brightly with hope.
“Ask if it knows the way to the Lashing,”
She grasps the bottle tightly. “I don’t know. It seemed annoyed at the bar.” She fiddles with the stopper, hesitating.
“Just try. We don’t have many options. The last known sighting of the Lashing was supposedly just off the coast of Suvarna, which is east. But that was years ago. If your source told you to follow Bituon, there’s a huge chance it’s moved from that location, if it was ever there in the first place.”
She slips it back into her pocket. “But what if it blows us up? What if instead of leading us to the Lashing, it explodes again?” She frowns. “I think we should sell these. How much did you say Zagar said they’re worth? A thousand leopard? Wasn’t that the whole point of the heist? Money?”
I can’t believe she’s saying this. “If you do that, then you’re no better off than you were before.”
“Wrong,” she insists. Anger flashes in her eyes, and I can’t help but notice how attractive she is when she’s quarrelsome.
“Right now, I have riches in my hand,” she continues.
“One of the Great Houses would pay a fortune for these, possibly even enough to buy an estate of my own. And if you’re wrong, and we don’t find the Lashing, where will we go?
Back to the streets. Or no, actually, at this point, we’re more likely to end up in the black cells, then the gallows. ”
“These are Ophir relics,” I say sharply.
“We can’t sell them. They belong to us. To our people.
So does the Lashing.” I gesture at the Laconian city far behind us.
“You really want to go back there? Even if we had that much coin, do you think they’d welcome us in the estates?
They’d never let an Ophir get that much power.
They built that city off our backs. They’d never let one of us live in a palace. ”
“They’d have to if we had the coin. I’ve suffered enough. My pain doesn’t help our people, either. And any one of us would do the same if they were in my place. Don’t pretend anyone else in the Sleeve would choose otherwise.”
“It doesn’t matter what anyone else would do, only what you do.
We could learn about the relics. Harness their power somehow, to help our people.
Help ourselves, too. You’re not sacrificing anything—all of us could benefit.
Who knows what—or who—is in the Lashing.
They could have more relics. Manuscripts. The history of the Ophir.”
“If that were true, the relics would’ve helped us by now. Why have they been silent for five hundred years?” she argues.
“Maybe because they believe everyone in the Sleeve thinks like you do.”
The comment hangs in the air. She looks straight ahead in stony silence.
Still, I need her. The relics don’t respond to me the way they do for Gin, that’s clear.
But if she’s determined to join the Laconian elite, I can try to go alone.
Attempt to use the relic myself. Anything is better than returning to the Sleeve without Vergel.
No, I’m not doing that. I’d perish at sea alone before I turn back.
“Fine,” Gin relents. “I’ll ask the relic how to find the Lashing.”
I smile to myself but say nothing. I don’t want to inadvertently start another argument.
Once we reach the mouth of the river we’ll be out in the open sea, and so long as we don’t run into any Blackcoat ships or Guild pirates, we have a clear path to the Lashing, once we find the way, of course. If we don’t kill each other first.
By the time we get nearer to the opening to the sea, it’s nearly sunset.
I reconsider the plan. It looks a lot more difficult than I’d imagined.
Being on the water at night when I don’t know where I’m going is a recipe for disaster.
We could perish before we even begin. It’s smarter to pull off to the shore and spend the night there, set out again at first light.
But where could we dock where we wouldn’t be found?
There are Blackcoats on patrol everywhere.
Then again, I don’t want to lose her in the middle of the night.
She might change her mind and leave. We could be caught.
No, waiting for a better time is a luxury we don’t have.
Gin takes the bottle from her pocket. “Should I open it now?”
For a brief moment I think of how the spirit destroyed everything in its path before disappearing. Granted, it was helping us, but maybe it was just luck that we weren’t caught in the blast. “Maybe just, I don’t know, try to talk to it nicely.”
“I’ll try,” she says, without much confidence. She holds the bottle up in front of us and concentrates on it.
“Out loud,” I say.
She narrows her eyes at me. “I know.” Then she shifts around in her seat, clears her throat, and says, “Spirt of the Ophir, esteemed ancestor, please lead us to the Lashing, we humbly ask of you.”
Nothing happens. “Try again.”
“I am trying,” she whispers, frustrated.
“Great spirit, please hear our call in this time of need,” she says.
Nothing happens for a long moment.
Gin sighs and slumps her shoulders, when I see it: a small ball of blue light in the bottle.
It expands until the entire bottle glows, like there’s a small fire inside.
Then it begins to shake. Gin grips it tightly and repeats, “We are Ophir looking for the hidden colony called the Lashing. Do you know the way?” Though she holds on with all her might, her hand shifts slightly to the right.
“I think it’s telling us which way to go,” she says, eyes wide.
I rush to move the boat in the direction of Gin’s hand. When I do, the bottle continues to glow steadily but stops pushing.
Gin stares at it in awe. “It’s a compass.”
In the distance, a bright bolt of blue erupts from the sea, like a beacon.
Both of us gasp. We all know the stories: Long ago, before the fall of Ophir, our folk possessed great magic.
Ophir was the jewel of the sea, a city that floated atop the waves, supported only by the power of our people.
Now, without a doubt, we hold a token of that strength.
What was lost in the fall has been found once again.