Gemworld (35 page)

Jaren’s wonder faded, and concern returned. Yes, he was concerned for Sal’s safety, though not overly much. If such a man could survive whatever horrors he’d faced before being thrown into Schel Veylin Prison, horrors that had tried their best to tear the very flesh from the man’s bones... such a man doesn’t die easily. They hadn’t seen Sal in weeks, but Jaren had no doubt that he would reunite with his pupil someday soon..

No, more than his concern for Sal was his concern for Keth. Something was tearing at the boy’s soul, eating him from the inside out just as surely as a colony of liverworms. And it was more than the boy’s morose nature. Master Seti had come to talk to the emerald a few days before with concerns of his own. Neither of them had talked to Retzu about Keth, but he had every confidence that the assassin would have similar to say.

The boy was troubled by something that had a death grip on his very soul, and Crafter be blinded if Jaren could fathom what it was. “If Sal were here, he could figure the bugger out,” Jaren muttered absently as he turned down his lamp and went inside.

Sal woke with the sun the next morning, and found a platter of fruits and breads on a stand near his bed awaiting his pleasure, as well as a full pitcher of water next to the wash basin.
The innkeeper sure seems to appreciate his patrons
, he thought, bringing to mind once more the wench that had brought him to his room the night before. Casually, he wondered if the innkeeper Finley had any ties to Reit.

No, probably not. Sal didn’t know much about how the Cause placed its people, but he suspected that Reit’s contacts were generally low key, the kind to avoid attention. The very arrogant—very
conspicuous
—innkeeper didn’t seem to fit the bill. Still, if what the wench said about the man’s honor was true...

He sighed deeply, putting Finley out of his mind. The question of the innkeeper’s potential as a recruit for the Resistance would have to wait for another time. There was so much to do, and lying in bed dreaming up “what ifs” would get him nowhere.

Sighing, he rolled out of the downy bed and shuffled toward the wash basin for his morning ablutions. The chill water felt good on his head, his chest, under his arms. Refreshed, he dressed in his borrowed leather armor and sat down to eat, stowing a few apples and a small loaf of bread for later. He snickered at the old habit. Even in a strange new world, he couldn’t go to a single hotel without looking for things to take with him when he left. Finally, he gathered his gear and laid back on his bed, awaiting the wake up call he was sure to get.

He must have dozed off, for the knock startled him, left him disoriented. “Yes?” he asked groggily.

“The
Academic
has begun taking on passengers, milord,” came the muffled voice through the door.

Sal shook the cobwebs from his head as he gathered his gear, then went downstairs. He found the proprietor behind the desk, looking for all the world as if he hadn’t budged since the night before. The corners of Sal’s mouth tugged insistently, but he denied the urge to snicker. After a night in that wonderful room, he just couldn’t see insulting the innkeeper’s devotion to the clientele.

“Pleasant morning to you, milord,” Finley said with mild disinterest. “I trust the room was adequate?”

“Yes, of course. The service, as well,” Sal returned with a quick smile.

“I see you’ve been chatting with Wileen. Fool girl. Can’t get it through her head that I’m not as ‘nice and sweet’ as she would like people to believe.” The pudgy innkeeper passed all this off in his airy, slightly irritated tone, but Sal thought he caught an amused, affectionate twinkle in his slanted eyes.

Saying not a word more about the wench, the innkeeper passed Sal a wooden coin inscribed with the image of a man studying at a desk overrun with books. On the reverse, the coin sported a painted image of the Tiled Hand, set within the design of an open book. Sal took the coin to be a boarding token. He thanked Finley and stuffed the coin in his purse.

The chubby innkeeper summarily brushed the thanks aside, having apparently no time to entertain such niceties. A few words of direction and he was gone, off to service other customers not as accommodating as Sal. Sal grinned again and dug through his purse, quietly leaving a gold coin under the inn logbook for the five-star service, then headed out the door in the general direction of the river.

The River Rhu’sai, or the River of Winter Floes, was much larger than Sal expected. Back on the hill overlooking the city, it didn’t seem quite as impressive, but up close, it was enormous. Even in the heat of the coming summer, the river looked to be a mile wide and pushing its banks—a match for the Mighty Mississippi any day. And judging by the types of ships that peppered its expanse, it was just as deep.

One ship in particular caught Sal’s eye. The ship sat at anchor in the middle of the river. It was similar in design to a barque, long and sleek with a shallow draft, made for maximum speed and payload over minimal water. This model, of course, was a slight variation on the design, with wider spaced cannon ports and horizontal slits in the hull between them. Sal took these to be galley slits, where the crew could run out oars if need be. With the steady downriver current, he could definitely see the advantage.

A mid-morning breeze kicked up across the water, churning a few waves over the otherwise calm waters. The sails billowed a bit where they were trimmed, just enough that Sal could see the colors of the Tiled hand emblazoned upon them, set in the center of an open book, the very emblem that graced one face of his boarding token.

She was the
Academic
.

In Sal’s world, the barque was one of the largest of the shallow running wooden vessels. Its reef-clearing keel also made it extremely agile, and was used throughout the 17th century as the pirate ship of choice, surpassed only by the frigate. Sal found it somewhat fitting that it would carry him to Bastion.

He watched as longboats launched from the bustling pier, ferrying passengers out to the ship. As one boat made its way out to the ship, another would pass it, rowing back to the pier for another load of passengers and cargo. At the rate they were going, the ship would be ready to shove off in no time—whether he was onboard or not. He quickened his pace though the press of travelers and merchants, all awaiting transport at their own berths, and got in line for the
Academic
.

Used to this level of activity, the crew of the
Academic
ran like a well oiled machine. One man reclaimed tokens and logged names in the ship’s manifest while another secured the passengers and their luggage. When one boat was full, it launched, making way for the other boat. Sal had barely joined the line before he was at the front of it.

“Name?” the grizzled registrar asked mechanically, sounding more than ready to trade the wharf for a nice stretch of open river.

“Sal.”

“City of origin?”

“Dothan, Ala...” He winced and bit his words off. He’d been asked where he was from a million times in the past twenty some-odd years. It was just an ingrained response now.
And one that’s liable to get me killed if I don’t watch it
, he thought.
Earthen Rank probably don’t take too kindly to people impersonating their officers
.

His choked reply brought the registrar up short. “Where?”

“Umm... Dothan. It’s a small town in the Sou-err, Southern Plains,” he stammered, grinning nervously as he struggled to get back into character as an Earthen Rank soldier, native to this world.

The sailor looked hard at Sal for a moment. “You don’t sound like Southern Plains,” he muttered. Then his eyes dropped to the bulging purse at Sal’s hip, and he shrugged to himself, scribbling in his ledger. Sal breathed a sigh of relief. The leathery sailor could care less if Sal was from the Outer Reaches—wherever that was—so long as he got paid.

“Rank and duty station?” he asked, eying Sal’s badge and rank stripes.

“Subsergeant, Fourth Regiment out of Guard, currently stationed in the Northern Plains on the Norwood Coast,” Sal recited smoothly.

“Ah, the rebels,” the registrar nodded approvingly, then gave Sal a shrewd eye. “What with their leader escaped and all, what’s your business in Bastion?”

“My family is poor, so we were pretty much on our own when I ascended,” he gave his prepared story. “Since they couldn’t afford to send me to Academy, I apprenticed to a local healer. Not much in the way of an education, but it was better than nothing. Then I heard that they were needing emeralds up north. I was told that Rank recruits get free schooling, so I went to Eastwind Delta and got my commission. I served in the Twelfth Battle Fist for a few seasons, then transferred to Garrison, then to Guard. We got a few Unmarked Greens this spring, so my High Sergeant ordered me to Bastion to receive formal training.”

“Why not train in Guard?”

“The rebels are gaining strength on the Coast, and High Sergeant felt that Bastion might give me a fresh perspective.”

The sailor mulled this over for a second, then bobbed his head as if Sal’s story was rather commonplace. Giving his ledger a final squiggle, the sailor passed Sal off to his partner, and Sal was loaded onto the longboat with the other passengers. The deckhand eyed Sal’s sword curiously, as if to request he take it off, but decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Sal breathed a sigh of relief.

He had originally suggested to Mik that he remove the doeskin from the hilt, as the Earthen Rank didn’t typically train in the art, but the old man had cautioned against it. “Ye want as little trouble as possible,” he’d said. “An’ that wee strip o’ leather’ll save ye plenty.”

Point of no return
, Sal thought anxiously as the longboat pushed off from the pier, slicing easily through the water toward the
Academic
. From this point on, he was an Earthen Rank emerald. He looked down at his wrist, at the timepiece that he’d crafted in Marissa’s shop, and shuddered. What would she think of him if she could see him now?

***

What would he think of me if he could see me now?
Marissa wondered, and not for the first time. Three weeks was a good long time to be separated from Sal, and she was getting quite good at her self-abasement. She cast her eyes slowly about her cluttered workstations, seeing without actually seeing. In every gemstone, every facet, she could only see his face. His smile, his other-worldly ways, his uniqueness—her shop seemed so drab without him there at his bench, hunched over some outlandish project or another. Where he’d come up with some of the ideas he had...

She sighed deeply, and put down the scepter she’d been crafting. She couldn’t even remember what runic incantation she’d planned to inscribe it with. It was utterly pointless for her to try and muddle through her workload for the time being. Her concentration was hopelessly lost.

She slapped at the wand half-heartedly, sending it skittering across the table and into the grasses beyond. She’d prided herself in always being able to maintain control in any situation, even one so emotionally trying as having to wait on Sal to declare his intentions. She’d known from the moment she laid eyes on the flaxen haired young soldier that there could never have been another for her. Crafter take it, they
both
knew! What’s worse, they both knew that the
other
knew as well! Why he’d taken so long… It was almost enough to make her think she’d fallen in love with a coward.

Fallen in love
. She laughed bitterly and berated herself for a fool. It was absolutely beyond her, how she could become so distracted with a man she had only known a few weeks, a man she had only kissed once! Delana said that sometimes, that’s all it took. One look, one smile, and you’re hooked like a catfish on an iron barb. Flop as you might, you won’t wriggle your way free.

But if she had to fall for someone, why did it have to be
him
? Forget that he just happened to be the only Resistance mage deemed of the Crafter to be separated from Caravan. Forget that he was an entirely new Tile of mage. Forget that he was a soldier twice born, once in his own world, and now once in hers. Forgetting all that, Sal just wasn’t the type of boy she imagined herself ending up with in her girlish fantasies. He wasn’t overly tall or well built. He wasn’t a poet or an artist. He was a passable gemsmith, but nothing spectacular. And the boy
obviously
had no sense of spontaneity. He was all fire and no form.

Fire...

Marissa ducked her head below her workbench, peering between the folding legs to the grasses beyond. The silver windings could just be seen through a particularly dense clutch of weeds.

The wand was meant to be a signal flare. By form and rune, the artifact was supposed to fire off a gout of flame into the air, where it would change color as it fell back to earth. It was a common Festival sight, one that would not stand out among the rest, except to someone who knew what to look for. It had been Sal’s idea to make the scepter in the first place. Something about “getting everybody on the same sheet of music”, although Marissa could hardly fathom what music had to do with coordinating land-based rebel with sea-based rebels.

Reaching under the table, she wrapped her fingers around the scepter and held it before her. The silver windings were starting to take shape, testimony of the long hours she’d put into it since she first cast the main body of the rod. It would be a good deal of effort to finish the main body of the artifact, and even more to set the gemstones and their runes, but she had little else to do with her time. If she spent it all working on a project she was supposed to have shared with Sal, so much the better.

It’s so unfair
, she thought, absently examining the rudimentary wings of the soon-to-be dragons that wound their way around the wand’s grip.
Unfair that I should find someone so interesting, so contrary to what I was looking for and yet so
right
, only to have him taken from me before I have the opportunity to understand his place in my life
.

Carefully, she slipped the windings off the rod, and placed one of the proto-dragons in an artisan’s vice.
At least I can determine the place of
this
bugger
, she thought ruefully as she went back to work.