43. FORTY-THREE
FORTY-THREE
NIKLAUS
Location: Town of Thaligan
Niklaus had the navigational prowess of an elephant at sea, the elemental hardiness of a Skywalk lady, and the proactivity of a jellyfish.
His making it to Thaligan, after two days traveling through the grasslands alone, was a supernatural feat.
But by some miracle he arrived at the dock, sore from his travels but exuberant with his success.
It was a small dock: three warships long with a single pier that jetted into the Casowhatan. Beneath it, rippling water glowed gold with the lowsun. At the far end of the pier, a small group had gathered—four men and a young girl—laughing at a story told by the man in the middle.
Closer to Niklaus, a sturdy fisherman stood in a skiff, unloading a net filled with the day’s catch. A seafaring hat smothered his mop of dark curls. Niklaus approached him and cleared his throat. The fisherman looked up with a close-mouthed smile that nearly became lost in his beard.
“Ho, traveler. Strange times to see three from the desert in one moon.”
Strange times indeed.
“I need passage to Steila.” Niklaus was surprised at the sound of his own voice: harsh, like an instrument fallen out of tune from lack of use.
“I have a note here,” he fumbled through the bags at the horse’s side for the writ of passage from Thyatira, “from the General Prime. It will be on the Oligarch’s notes. ”
“All ships held from Steila, I’m afraid.”
“Begging your pardon?”
The fisherman tossed a net brimming with silver fish over one shoulder. “Just going off hearsay.”
How was it that a Thaligan fisherman knew not to go to Steila when the Red Wing didn’t? “And what, precisely, did you hear said?”
Worry crept into the man’s eyes as they darted toward the writ.
“I’m just following orders.” He cocked his head in the direction of the dock.
“You’ll want to talk to that fellow. He gets good intelligence on these things—friends in high places and all that—and he says not to move towards Steila for the next moon, or until he sends someone to say otherwise. ”
Niklaus looked to the group gathered at the edge of the dock. “That fellow”: a young man with long, dark hair, strewn with braids. Roughish sort. The kind who made a living from their hands and a life from their mouth.
Niklaus walked towards them, boots thunking against the planks, water slapping below him. As he approached their group, their voices settled.
He swallowed his nerves. “Hello.”
“Hello to you.” The seafarer’s lopsided smile reeked of confidence but wasn’t altogether uninviting.
He reached out a hand, calloused and tanned from a life at sea.
“Mitek. I was just about to say my goodbyes. Unless you are in need of something urgent?” His body language spelled nonchalance, but his gaze was tight on Niklaus’s paltry excuse for a uniform, faded and worn by the desert.
Might as well just skip the pleasantries.
“Niklaus. Why did you tell the dock to hold boats to Steila?”
Niklaus knew the answer the moment the words left his mouth. This wasn’t a fisherman. This was a raider, and he got his information because he didn’t follow the Blue Wing’s ordinances limiting seafaring to the coastline.
The raider only grinned wider. “The answer, friend, depends entirely on who is asking and why.”
“Leaving?” interjected the pre-teen. “When you only just got here?” Her mouth drew into a pout.
Mitek shot her a stern glance before asking Niklaus, “What can you tell me, soldier?”
Soldier. Said as both a challenge and a question. Despite protecting Nelfinden citizens, he was no national.
“I’m looking for two men who just sailed there. One Azadonian—short—one Nelfinden—tall, mute.”
The jovial aura from moments before evaporated. The men to either side of Mitek wore expressions like they’d just learned a serpent lurked beneath them. The salty air held still.
Mitek’s dark eyebrows shot upward. “You just became very interesting to me. Tell me more about this mute.”
Calver, too, seemed to have friends in high places, for an antisocial. Or perhaps, for a bounty hunter, an expected number of enemies.
“I’m not sure I have much to say about him. Depends on who is asking, and why.”
Mitek barked a laugh. “Let’s say it’s a brother.”
The man resembled Calver about as much as Dex did. That would be a very distant brother. Or a figure of speech. Or a certain enemy. Niklaus could tell the truth, without telling everything. The man’s reaction might determine where he stood.
“I have a writ from the General Prime for his capture.”
Mitek ran his fingers over his goatee. Niklaus squirmed, feeling very much like he’d just bet on a game of stones.
“And you’re a friend of the General Prime, are you?”
“I only just met him,” Niklaus said, finding it to be the least suspicious yet still-honest answer.
Mitek crossed his arms and gazed north for a long while. No one said a word. The only sound was the ocean crashing against the shore.
Finally, the raider bumped an elbow into the girl beside him. “Mefeeb?”
The girl rolled her eyes. “You know I can.”
“Yes, but I still don’t like it. You know the risks?”
“Life is one big risk, you told me that. Give me a shot?”
“I can’t promise it will change the rules, but it might improve your chances.”
The girl nodded firmly and with so much reverence, it shook Niklaus. Like he’d just told her he’d swim after her in a storm.
“She’ll take you,” Mitek said to Niklaus, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the pre-teen.
“She’ll… take me… to Steila?” The girl hardly looked old enough for a walk around town alone, let alone a sail up the coast into enemy-occupied territory.
Mitek nodded. “Good listening skills. You’ll need those, as it will be easier if you do whatever she tells you.”
Niklaus swallowed. “Right.”
Mitek pulled Mefeeb to the side. He spoke to her in low tones that he clearly didn’t mind being overheard by the group: instructions on discretion and a route that would get a skiff to Steila without being spotted from the city’s ocean patrol.
“Don’t pass beyond the cliffs toward the harbor.
Don’t, by any means, follow this traveler toward his query. ”
The other men exchanged gratitude and farewells and low, unintelligible murmurings. Two of them stepped into the skiff to depart—Mitek’s companions, presumably. The others passed by Niklaus on their return into Thaligan.
Mitek gave the girl a hug and turned toward Niklaus expectantly. He stretched out a palm. “Whenever you’re ready.” He was not suggesting Niklaus hold it.
“I also have a writ from the General Prime to provide payment for passage. I don’t have any notes,” Niklaus explained earnestly. “Can we arrange to—”
The raider began laughing. Half mad, half jovial, it was almost contagious, had it not been so disconcerting. He wiped a tear from his eye.
“I’ll have my people contact his people,” he said, like they were in on a joke.
But before delivering the punchline he stepped into the skiff with all the suaveness of a man who was used to finishing conversations.
“Good luck, Niklaus. And forgive me if I cross the line, but I think you should know: if Thyatira really sent you to capture who I’m thinking of, he’s got it out for you. ”
The skiff veered off, and Niklaus’s stomach reeled when he realized that they were gliding across the waves without sails or oars. He stared and stared until he saw, from a distance, Mitek’s hand on a lever lowered into the water. It was mechanical. It was powered by distortion. It was…
“You ready?” It was the girl—Mefeeb—looking at him like he was a target to be acquired.
“As much as I’ll ever be. Are you?”
“After a good piss and a bag of snacks. Ten minutes.” She spoke like the Shrokan recruits: jarringly coarse and almost too quickly to follow.
“Do you work for him?” he asked, tilting his head toward the departed raider.
“I wish. An errand here and an errand there is the best I get. But this one’s dangerous, so… if we don’t die, maybe I’ll get to.” The girl squinted an eye. “Don’t ask questions about him,” she barked. “I’ma take that piss now.”
“I’ll wait here.”
Niklaus looked out over the barren town. He considered taking the time to use the facilities himself, but didn’t feel the urge. He was fully equipped with food and water, and the stares from the few dock- and market-goers were untrusting at best, hostile at worst.
He stretched his legs, stiff from the days of walking but not nearly so much as they had been in the early days of the caravan.
How strange it was that life had brought him here: on the edge of a war zone, about to embark on a sea journey with a child as his captain.
He had no idea what the future held, but whatever that was—even if it was nothing—it was better than what he’d come from.
Mefeeb returned, a patched bag slung over one shoulder.
She chucked it into the boat and pointed a dirty finger at him.
“Listen good, eah? These are the rules: don’t try to rob me, because I’ve got nothing you want, don’t touch me unless we’ve capsized and yer saving my arse, and don’t pull your prick out unless your back is turned.
I’ve got a dagger and tanka and I’m a damn good shot.
Make one wrong move, and you’re hitting the deep’s bottom. You hear me?”
He was sure all of Thaligan had heard her. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good. Get in.”
CALVEROUS
Calver had always preferred the temperate coolness of Chira’na to the heat of Nelfindar’s northern tropics.
The late-winter waters of the Casowhatan were pleasantly cool, albeit in a bone-hollow sort of way.
Survivor present, he hardly registered the icy spray splashing his face as he sailed their sloop through a rough patch of sea while Dex huddled, clinging to his elbows against the wind.