Brave Story (92 page)

“Yeah, but that doesn’t belong to you, boy,” the captain said, deciding that perhaps this boy was just a boy after all, and in need of a scolding.

The black-haired sorcerer raised an eyebrow. “Nor to him,” he said, pointing the rolled bundle of papers at the block of ice on the floor. “He stole it from someone else. He didn’t write it himself, that’s for sure.” He shrugged. “So, when do we leave?”

For a second, the captain had no idea what he was talking about. “Leave? Ah, this evening. Leaving at night would be better, but there’ll be no moon in the sky, and it’s too dangerous to sail out in the dark. We’ll wait until the branch guards have finished their rounds, and set sail.”

“I see. More waiting. Great.”

The captain shivered, half from the cold, half from fear. “What do we do about this…ice?”

“Leave it. Ice melts.”

Melt?
The captain recalled the young man’s face. He had last seen him that morning. “Won’t it, er, bleed?”

“I don’t think I’d worry about that, but if it bothers you, I can easily clean this up.”

The captain swallowed. His mouth was suddenly very dry. “What if the branch…finds out?”

“The branch? Oh, right, those Highlanders or some such rabble,” the boy sorcerer said, sounding not at all concerned.

“Yes, them. If they decide to search us, we won’t be able to leave. Get on their bad side, and things won’t be easy for either of us.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t leave a trace of my work,” the boy said with a grin that sent another chill down the captain’s spine. He gritted his teeth, regretting for what must have been the hundredth time taking on such a client.

Just then, something banged on the door downstairs hard enough that the captain feared the bar might fly off the latch. Someone was shouting from the street outside. “Captain! You up there? Open up! Branch chief wants to ask you some questions.”

The captain looked at his client. He could feel his stomach rise into his throat, but the boy seemed calm as ever. “It seems we have some visitors,” the boy said, standing. “Could your ship leave this moment if it had to?”

“A-aye, she’s ready for sea.”

“Then let’s leave.”

“But we won’t make it out of harbor with the branch following us.”

“You just worry about getting us to your ship. I’ll get us out to sea.” The boy sorcerer picked up his staff, and the gem on its tip flared brightly.

Wataru, Meena, and Kee Keema parted ways with Jozo in the forest along the border gate between Arikita and Bog. Jozo offered to take them all the way to Sono, and he even flew over the border once, but after they passed a few villages, they noticed they were causing quite a commotion on the ground. Dragons were rare creatures, but in industrialized Arikita, they had been largely relegated to the stuff of fairy tales. Jozo told them that the air in Arikita was the dirtiest of any place in the southern continent. Dragons tended to steer clear of the area, thus the general surprise at their passage.

With people already astir, the last thing they wanted was to cause any further trouble. Nor did Wataru want to involve Jozo in problems not his own. So they turned back, allowed Jozo to return to the Isle of Dragon, and made their way to the border on foot. Once at the border’s gatehouse, they decided not to share their experiences at Dela Rubesi. Instead, they talked about the warehouse in Sono. A karulakin messenger was dispatched to the branch office. Wataru, Meena, and Kee Keema set off after him.

When they arrived at the branch in Sono, everyone had already left for the warehouse. The only ones left behind were a director and a communications officer. The sailship company bearing the mark of the yellow fist was a small operation run by an old ankha sea captain, who apparently had been involved in several smuggling operations. Wataru was relieved to hear they were on the right track, but he caught Kee Keema scowling out of the corner of his eye.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.

“I’ve got a feeling that the branch here has been letting this smuggling stuff slide for while,” the waterkin whispered back.

Wataru had heard of similar things happening in the real world. Sometimes it made more sense for the police to cooperate with crime than try to stamp it out. “Still,” he assured Kee Keema, “they’re doing everything they can to stop it now—high chief’s orders and all.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

It wasn’t long before one of the Highlanders who had gone to the warehouse came running back. The captain wasn’t there, he reported. Still, there were signs that people had been living in the second-floor office, and something else…

“It’s a little hard to believe, but there’s someone up there, frozen. Or rather, it’s like a lump of ice in the shape of a person.”

The three exchanged glances. Meena gasped. “The fugitive…”

So he hadn’t been able to escape the punishment of Dela Rubesi. The Goddess’s wrath had found him all the way here in Sono.
But if she could do that, why would she go to the trouble of appearing before the chiefs to tell them to capture the fugitive?

Wataru frowned. “Was anything unusual found in the office? Something like a blueprint—it might be a bundle of papers, or a tube.”

“Well, it was kind of messy up there. Most of the Highlanders went down to the harbor. We don’t know where the captain is, so we needed to check out his sailship.”

“Then we’ll go to the warehouse and check it out. Is that okay?” Wataru asked, turning to the chief.

“It’s fine by me.”

Before the chief could finish, the entire branch building shook. The building itself was a simple structure of wooden planks topped by a tin roof and was quite old. The first jolt made the rafters squeak. The second and third rattled the windows out of their frames and sent shock waves through the floorboards, making it difficult to stand.

“What’s going on?!”

Wataru thought it was an earthquake. But Meena corrected him. “Tornado!” she screamed as she looked out the window.

Everyone ran outside. Meena was right. It was a tornado, and not just one; several twisting columns of air, one hundred feet high, rose all around the town. And they were moving in the same direction. Coming together. The simple, decrepit buildings in their path were shattered and smashed, scattered far and wide. The tornadoes pressed on. Toward the sea.

“That way’s the harbor, right?” Wataru shouted over the roar of the wind, pointing in the direction they were headed.

“Yeah,” the branch chief shouted back. “Those twisters’ll rip our sailships apart!”

In Wataru’s mind he replayed the scene at Triankha Hospital. The cyclone there had snatched up all those believers, leveled the thick-growing sula woods, and whisked Wataru all the way off to the Swamp of Grief on the far side of the continent. Mitsuru had done that with his wind magic.

Mitsuru’s at the harbor.

“I have to go!” Wataru shouted. Behind him, the branch building collapsed in a pile of rubble.

Running down the twisting streets of Sono toward the harbor, Wataru watched roofs ripped off warehouse homes and wooden pilings tossed and splintered. Windows broke, and rain gutters were twisted and ripped away. Things were falling and breaking everywhere. People ran out of their homes, hands over their heads, trying to escape. An old lady watched, astonished as her laundry was torn out of her hands, clothesline and all. Wataru saw her mouthing the words “My apron,” over and over. Dogs and cats were whipped into the air. Trees too. Wataru saw an oven slide up into one of the whirling vortexes.

Still the tornadoes advanced, and Wataru, Kee Keema, and Meena ran after them. Wherever the tornadoes had passed, people stood in shock and silence. As the three drew nearer to the tornadoes, the twirling winds buffeted them. Undaunted, Kee Keema forged onward, picking up a wooden door that had blown from somewhere along the way. He used it as a shield to block flying objects.

“Hang on to me!” Kee Keema shouted over the wind. Wataru hunched down, clinging to Kee Keema’s waist with both hands and putting his head against the waterkin’s broad back. Meena did the same, wrapping her tail around Wataru’s torso for good measure.

They were only a street away from the harbor now. They could see the quays from the road.

And then the wind stopped. Everything that had been lifted into the air suddenly came plummeting down. Wataru and his friends looked up into the sky over the harbor.

The tornadoes—ten in all—were floating over the sea. They were gathered near a single sailship, tied to one of the wharfs. They were no longer exactly tornadoes, either. Each of them had become like a round ball of wind, bobbing in the air, slowly rising and falling.

The harbor was perfectly calm. The sailship surrounded by the windspheres was an old craft with a leaning mast. The mark of the yellow fist on its side was almost completely worn away. Practically everything on the ship was rusted. Its sails were down, and only the mainmast stood, like a sickly tree stripped of all its leaves. Still, the ancient-looking craft sat calmly on the water, rocking gently with the slow movement of the waves. The other ships in the water sailed nearby with their sails hanging limp from the masts, as though nothing had happened.

Wataru and Meena started running toward the ships. A second later, Kee Keema tossed aside his wooden door and joined them.

The wooden quay was ancient, with yawning gaps between the boards. Wataru caught glimpses of the water below. Sticking his foot through a rotted plank, he came to an abrupt stop.

“Mitsuru!” he shouted, wringing the last ounce of strength out of his body.

The back door of the captain’s cabin opened, and a small male figure walked out toward the stern. He was wearing a sorcerer’s black robe.

Mitsuru.

In one hand he held his staff. His other hand gripped the gunwale. His expression showed half surprise and half amusement. “Oh, it’s you.”

Wataru could hear the waves lapping against the quay. Seabirds that had flown away from the tornadoes in fright were slowly beginning to circle back to shore.

“What are you doing here?”

“That’s my line!” Wataru shouted back. He caught a glimpse of someone moving behind Mitsuru in the cabin.
That must be the old captain.

“I’m crossing the sea in this sailship. We’re about to set sail,” Mitsuru said, his voice ringing clear over the water, even though he didn’t seem to be shouting.

“What, to the Northern Empire?”

Mitsuru didn’t answer. He was inspecting the balls of air floating above his head as one would examine a piece of machinery. The twisters that had so violently smashed their way through town just moments before were now tamed, floating in their translucent spheres, spinning in silence.

“Is there some other place I might go?” Mitsuru asked.

Wataru began to walk toward the sailship. One step, then another. Meena and Kee Keema started to follow him, but he waved them back. “Why are you going to the north?”

“Isn’t it obvious? That’s where my next gemstone is.”

In response, the gemstone atop the staff in Mitsuru’s hand begin to glimmer: first red, then green, blue, and finally, amber.

Four colors.
He already has four colors.

Wataru realized all at once that his Brave’s Sword and Mitsuru’s staff collected gemstones quite differently. His sword added gemstones into the fixtures on its hilt. But Mitsuru’s staff seemed to absorb energy and power from the collected gemstones.

“Just one more,” Mitsuru said, looking at his staff. “And that’s in the north. That’s why I have to go.”

“And you were too busy to listen to what the Precept-King in Dela Rubesi had to say?”

Mitsuru’s dark eyes opened wide. “Oh, so you went to Dela Rubesi, then?”

“We did.”

“You’re too nice for your own good. I figured even you wouldn’t waste your time there.”

Wataru ignored the chiding tone in Mitsuru’s voice and stared back at him. “Dela Rubesi is gone. The Precept-King is dead.”

Mitsuru said nothing.

“The fugitive is dead too, frozen solid even while he lived. You know, don’t you?”

Mitsuru continued to remain silent, his hair blowing freely in the breeze. Wataru noticed that his hair was longer now than it had been when they met at the hospital.

“You were with the fugitive, weren’t you? You knew he was going north, so you used him to find passage, didn’t you?”

“He was a source of information,” Mitsuru said, simply. “And he did beg me. You know, he didn’t even have enough money to pay his own fare.”

“Where are the diagrams the fugitive was carrying?” Wataru asked, his eyes never leaving Mitsuru’s face.

Mitsuru laughed, his eyes narrowing. That was answer enough. Wataru faced the stern of the sailship and stretched out his hand. “Give them to me. Now.”

“Why?” Mitsuru shot back.

“If the Northern Empire gets its hands on those, all of the south will be in grave danger.”

Mitsuru’s smile widened. “You sure are funny sometimes.”

“I don’t see what’s funny about it.”

“What’s so dangerous about plans for a powered boat?”