Chapter Thirteen After #2
While Fell consulted his harbor charts, reading the currents of the busy docks, the helmsman turned the wheel, and the Fledge responded, bearing to port. Wood clacked as oars were racked below deck, ready to help maneuver the ship at Fell’s command.
As they approached, Cat squinted, eyeing the closest lighthouse. Her gaze narrowed, tracing the tower, its stone whiter, cleaner. Newly built.
Next to her, Fell did the same. With a snap of his wrist, he unfurled a collapsible spyglass and peered into it.
“Is that—”
“A song tower,” Cat finished for him.
Fell glanced sidelong at her, suspicious. He tipped the spyglass, offering the lens to her. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve seen song towers before, Fell,” she answered dryly. “I know what they look like.”
But I’ve never seen them beyond Arcayo.
She turned the new information over in her mind as the Fledge sailed closer. The tower was unmistakable now, not rounded like the Esperese lighthouse but squared off at the corners, every inch of the white stone carved in intricate whorls.
To match the wind and the tides, the sky and the sea, Cat knew. And the song within it all.
Her eyes ascended, tracing the carvings as they twisted upwards. There was a room at the top, open on all four sides, like the crown of a bell tower.
With no bell.
“Can you see inside?” Fell muttered, shading his eyes to stare at the shadowed belfry. “What do they keep up there?”
Cat resisted the urge to remind him he held the spyglass. Instead, she shook her head.
“Priests, mostly. But the sun is high, the sky clear, the sea soft and calm. There is no need for a priest today,” she explained, her eyes darting between the waves and the heavens. Then back to the top of the tower, searching for a glimpse of an indigo-dyed sleeve.
Fell collapsed his spyglass and stowed it.
“I did not know Esperin believed in island superstition,” he scoffed, shaking his head, though his eyes remained on the tower as they passed. Down the deck, most of his men seemed to show the same skeptical sentiment.
Superstition. Cat did not share the faith, but she would hardly categorize the Arcayan religion as such. Though she doubted Fell would care.
“They did not use to.”
Against the Esperese port, bustling with continental warships and merchant sailors, the song tower seemed terribly out of place. Peculiar. And foreboding too.
“Singing off hurricanes—what a joke,” Fell muttered, turning his face back to the city.
After a long moment of staring, too many thoughts swirling in her mind, Cat did the same.
Like Archenport, Alvaris was only a few decades old.
Most of its buildings were pale-pink stone, built to withstand the storms of the Furies.
The streets climbed up the first heights of a green volcano presiding over the island.
Cat spotted the burnished bronze steeple of an Esperese church and battlements of a walled fort overlooking the harbor.
Cannons glinted in the noon sun, bright as black stars.
They did not give her pause like the ships at anchor.
She counted a dozen warships, and three times as many merchant vessels, in dock or anchored in the shallows.
Most unloaded cargo for the market, carrying wares to the flat plaza alongside the docks, half of it shaded by striped tents.
But the bustling dockside was not her concern.
Cat looked above the city, tracing up the volcano looming over Alvaris.
The fiery mountain was long dead, the jungle ridges overgrown, with only birds rising from the highest peak.
Her brow furrowed as she searched, hunting for another church spire, another flash of stone amongst the trees.
Somewhere, a bell began to toll, counting off the noon hour.
It took six strikes for Cat to find it, the simple church tower amongst the trees, half consumed by the jungle. Not shimmering bronze but worn stone, a sentinel for many decades. She stared at it without blinking, tracing the path from harbor to tower a dozen times, until she felt satisfied.
Out of habit, Cat reached for the watch at her belt, checking the time against the bell tolls. Her lips twisted, the hands of the clock well behind the hour.
“You should sell that old thing if you aren’t going to have it repaired,” Fell muttered, eyeing the face over her shoulder.
“I shall add that to my list of things to do,” she replied, snapping the watch closed before Fell could tease her about the faded rose. “We start with the Esperese navy, and work our way down.”
Fell scoffed, his lip curled in disgust. “Down?”
Cat did not know Alvaris well, but Meridian or Esperese, the colonial ports were all the same.
There would be a thriving marketplace, a crossroads for all kinds of folk.
The docks and market crawling with every station of person from navy captain to indentured servant.
Shops thrown open to merchants and travelers and city folk going about their business.
Churches with open-handed priests and weary pilgrims. Taverns filled to the keel with sailors, traders, diplomats, officers, and workers.
Then the gambling houses, frowned upon but well-tolerated.
And the brothels, ignored by some, sneered at by most, and frequented by almost all.
She could not help but grin.
“Tell me, Jasper Fell—are the rumors true?”
“Which rumor exactly?” he drawled, rolling his eyes. His chest puffed out, as if to display the medals he no longer wore.
“That you’ve never set foot in a brothel.”
He deflated audibly and Cat’s smile widened, her amber eyes glinting like the coins sewn into her dress.
“What a sight that will be,” she mused, turning on her heel.
* * *
AFTER SOME BICKERING and bribery to the port officer, Fell secured a berth at the harbor docks, close enough to the market but with room to maneuver should they need to flee the navy in a hurry.
Cat doubted that would be necessary, nor even possible.
Unlike the Meridian Empire, Esperin had not abandoned its colonies during the war, only loosened their hold a little.
And Alvaris was still the home port of the Esperese in the Lyrian Sea.
She defended treasure fleets and held off the pirate republic.
Fell was a talented captain, but hardly a magician.
There would be no escape for the Fledge if things went ill.
Alvaris was enough of an assault on the senses to forget her worries, if only for a few moments. Together with Fell, Whisten, and two other sailors of the Fledge, Cat disembarked to find herself in the heart of a riotous, vibrant city.
Striped tents and merchant stalls splashed color across the marketplace, which seemed chaotic at first glance.
But as they walked, Cat realized it was painstakingly organized, with foot traffic carrying them in a singular direction like the flow of a current.
She glimpsed fishmongers, butchers, spice traders with piles of salt and ginger, farmers with everything from bananas to tobacco, weavers, silversmiths, jewelers.
Exporters sending products off the island and on to the rest of the Lyrian or beyond to the continents—north to Esperin, south to Itzima and the mining colonies.
Importers sold goods not found in Prospera, at varying prices and varying quality.
Cat’s eyes narrowed comparing textiles from the Meridian mills, picking out flaws and imperfections.
As expected, sugar dominated the Alvaris plaza, with half the market seemingly dedicated to its trade.
Raw or refined. Barrels of molasses. Bottles of rum.
All of it came from the vast sugar farms on the north side of the island, transported through Alvaris before sailing to every corner of the map.
Porters and managers and merchant captains bustled through it all, meticulous in their calculations, followed by flocks of free laborers and indentured.
The people of the Alvaris market were just as varied as her wares, and the party from the Fledge fell in with the moving crowd.
As they walked, she noted many Esperese merchants and sailors, all of them speaking their own language.
She understood most of it, the slower parts at least. Based on what she could glean, many were eager to leave Prospera and make the crossing back to Esperin.
Something about the coming hurricane season, which looked to be brutal.
She shivered to think of it. Cat knew better than to be caught in the Furies during storm season.
And yet where have I found myself, she thought bitterly, her lips twisting.
There were precious few Meridian sailors, but enough to make it so Fell and his crew did not stick out so sorely. The Meridian folk were ruddier and fairer than the Esperese, who bronzed in the Lyrian Sun, while most Meridians cooked in it.
Cat caught sight of a particularly red-faced sailor, sunburn blazing across his cheeks.
Limp yellow hair poked out beneath his hat, and a roll of fat caught under his chin.
Her stomach jumped with a sudden memory, the thought of another scarlet Meridian man, well beyond his depth in the Lyrian Sea. And long dead.
I have not thought of Ryman in years.
It took her off guard and she missed a step, her boot catching on the pavement beneath her feet.
Before she could drop to a knee, a quick hand caught her under her arm. Gentle but firm, holding her steadily in place.
Cat looked up, expecting to see Fell smirking over her.
Instead, an old man stared down, his lined face the color of ochre, his eyes dark and warm, as if lit from within. His hair was slate gray and smooth, combed back into a long tail. With his high cheekbones and proud, arched nose, there was no mistaking him for a man of Esperin or Meridia.
He was an Arcayan, an islander, a true son of the Lyrian Sea.