Winterfinding (18 page)

“
He’s an ass, that
Adrenine.” The boy replied.

“
Well, yes, but I can
think of someone being a bit more of an ass right now.” A toothy
grin opened on the boy’s face.

The door opened wider and the boy waved her
into the darkness of the shop, “Of course you are.” The boy was
walking away from her. “Close the door behind you, latch it too.”
He commanded.

“
Your master about? The
scrivener.” Jena looked around the shop. It was dingy. There were
several desks, the kind she remembered from the brief stint she
spent in school before her father had to pull her away. Each one
was covered in a thick layer of grey dust that itself was collected
strange tufts. She looked at the window glass, which now on the
inside that let in a bluish light and seemed to queerly
glow.

“
This way.” The boy called
and Jena follow his voice through the desks and into a back room.
Its walls were all bookshelves. It gave the already small room an
even more cramped feeling. At the center was a desk like those out
in the larger room. Its surface slanted upward with an inkwell in a
far corner, there were stains around it but otherwise the desk was
pristine. There was no other door. The boy pulled up a
stool.

He held out his hand. Jena just stared at
him. He wasn’t looking at her. He waited, and then his fingers
snapped impatiently. “Where’s the scrivener?”

The boy turned to look at her, “Do you want
the work done or not?”

“
You’re the
scrivener?”

“
As much as you’re a free
ranger.” There was a moment of silence. Jena snorted and shook her
head.

“
Alright,” she removed the
vellum from insider her waist pocket and placed it in his palm, “I
need this reproduced & validated.”

The boy gently unfolded the vellum and read
it. “This is burned.”

“
Which would be why I need
it reproduced.”

“
This isn’t you.” He said
offhandedly. “Neither of the names here.”

“
That is true.”

“
I know Colm.”

“
Do you?” Jena was
surprised.

The boy nodded, “He hated his aunt. Wasn’t
too fond of his uncle either.” The boy pulled out several vellums
from a thin shelf under his desk. Each was a slightly different
shade between grey and brown and their thickness varied. He
shuffled through them until he found one that satisfied him. He
stood and brushed passed Jena back into the main room but kept
talking to her, “I never got to meet his parents. But, yeah,” he
returned with a few quills and two new vials of ink, “Moria is a
horror. She once knocked me out with a brass pitcher.”

“
From the little I’ve seen
of her, that fits.” Jena looked around and found another stool in
the far corner. She grabbed it dragging it over to where the boy
sat beginning his work. “What’s your name?”

“
Well,” the boy was bent
over with his face oddly close to the fresh vellum, “it’s probably
best that you just refer to me as you have been. The
Scrivener.”

“
Come on, do we really
need to play this out?”

“
It’s fun.” The boy said.
“But if you’d rather, you can call me Garza.”

“
What kind of name is
that? Sounds a bit like…”

“
The cant.” The boy
nodded, “I’m athingani. It means custom, duty.”

“
That how you two became
friends?”

Garza nodded, “Moria heard me talking it
with Colm. She grabbed the nearest thing and bashed me upside the
head. Started screaming at me, kicked me halfway down the alley.
Then turned to Colm, slapped him til his lip and nose bled.”

“
Seems a bit of an
overreaction.” Jena said absentmindedly as she took in all the
books Garza had.

“
I don’t know,” he bit
down on this tongue as he write a long line with quite a few
flourishes, then nodded satisfied, “I mean, you know how it is for
her.”

“
Do I?”

“
Have you not read this?”
Garza sat up for a second, a bit taken back, “You know how to read
right?”

“
Mind your tone, son, I
can cut that tongue out of your mouth.”

“
I may look like I’m
twelve but my kind don’t look our age. So, keep the ‘son’ talk to
yourself. For all you know, I could be your dad.”

“
Sorry.” Jena didn’t want
to get into a fight or sour her only scribe. “How old are
you?”

“
Had my twenty-fifth
birthday in Mabon.” Garza returned to his work.

Jena wasn’t surprised. She knew athingani
didn’t age the same as most people. Thinking of Roth, she smiled
slightly. Her old man. Shaking her head slightly she responded to
Garza’s questions, “Yes, I can. And yes, I have.”

He raised his head up for an instant. “What?
Oh, right. Well, Reg owns The Archway, not Tanner.”

“
So his brother-in-law is
a sponge. What of it?”

Garza shook his head, “He’s not a sponge;
he’s incompetent. Tanner ran six businesses into the ground before
he married Moria. And he only married her because Reg forced
him.”

“
He get her in trouble?”
Jena asked.

Garza nodded, “Stillborn though. But Reg
made sure they were taken care of, gave them the inn.”

“
But he didn’t trust
Tanner with owning it?”

“
Or running it. Moria’s
been the boss since the beginning. But she can’t own
it.”

“
Because she’s athingani.”
Jena said to herself.

“
Yep, but no one knows
that. She flew off the handle because she was afraid folks would
hear Colm and me, figure it out. Then she’d have the inn taken from
her or, worse, given to Tanner.”

“
Well, that makes sense.”
The boy continued his work in silence. After a few minutes Jena
asked, “How did you get into this? Who owns this place? And how do
I know that deed will hold up?”

Garza put out his hands to calm her barrage
of questions. “My father was a scholar.” He pointed over his
shoulder to the main room. “That was his school. My mother was
originally a civic in Rikonen. When they emigrated, they made sure
they became part of the bureaucracy.”

“
How was that possible,
being athingani?” Jena asked puzzled.

“
I was,” Garza held up the
vellum and lightly blew on the ink, “but they weren’t.”

“
A friend of was a ward.”
Jena stared blankly at the vellum in the boy’s hand. She blinked a
few times, “Actually, two of my friends. But one in particular,
he’s like you.”

“
Athingani?” Jena nodded
and Garza seemed impressed. “Not many can say they know so many.
Or, at least, want to know so many.”

“
Just kind of happened.
One day you find yourself in a tiny library as a boy makes a forged
deed for you so that you can secure the legacy of child you barely
know.”

Garza held out the deed for Jena’s
inspection. “This isn’t a forgery. The scrivener mark is passed
through a family. Doesn’t matter the individual, the family name is
the legitimacy.” Jena took the new vellum deed. Garza reached over
and pointed to a mark in the upper corner. “That’s the signature
that matters, that makes this legal.” It was a four-point infinity
knot.

“
The family that took you
in was brehon?” Jena looked satisfied.

“
The family I belong to is
brehon.” Garza corrected. “This will stand up against any
adjudicator
of any faith
or any nation. Or, at least, any honest one.”

“Still doesn’t explain how
you’re able to be here.” Jena read the deed over and compared it to
the original. It looked identical, only new.

“Property is still in my
parent’s name. I pay the fees to the town, to the Cathedral through
this little business I have through Adamix.” Garza held out his
open palm staring at her patiently.

“What do I owe
you?”

“Ten aurei.”

Her eyes widened, “That is
rather steep.”

“I’m young but this is
artisan work. It’s authoritative. And, frankly, you’re getting a
deal because if you went to Bandra or Sulecin or Ardavass for this
kind of thing you’d be paying triple and none of them would keep
their mouths shut about what they had done.”

“Why aren’t you charging
more then?” Jena slowly folded the fresh vellum and stowed it way
in the inside pocket of her tunic. Pulling a pouch off her belt,
she loosened the drawstrings and fished out the gold coins for the
boy. She put five in his hand at first, then another five, and then
five more.

“I don’t need a tip.”
Garza said with a bit of an edge to his voice.

Jena shook her head, “It’s
not a tip. I need you to keep an eye on the Archway when I leave.
Colm will be back here someday. He’s going to need someone to tell
him what’s been going on in his absence.”

Garza closed his hand over
the coins and nodded in approval. “I don’t know if five aurei will
really be enough but I will do my best. Maybe record the
interest.”

“When he comes back, he’ll
pay all debts.” Jena asserted. She stood and held her hand out to
the boy. “Seems I’m getting to know the queerest people these
days.”

Garza shook her hand, “The
only kind worth knowing.”

Jena winked at him and
left. When she got back on the street, she thought again about
dealing with Moria. She resolved to lay some groundwork before
Addison returned. In the meantime, Jena needed to eat and rest.
Arderra had become an exhausting place.

The Stony Shore

Had it all been a dream?
It had to have been. But when did he fall asleep? Was it in the
Aral, out under the banner of stars thick and twinkling? Was it out
in the hot sand after they had crawled out of the noxious shafts of
the Lappala’s mines? Was he awake? Did he have to accept that
Towsend’s throat had been carved open before him? Was he feeling
his blood on his face now? Shocking him, making him cough as it
splattered into his mouth aghast. Making him blink as it sputtered
into his wide-open eyes. Choking him with its life. Choking
him.

Cochrane shot upright. He
gasped for air seeing only the thin pale blue of the distant sky.
The canoe he was in rocked back and forth. He flung himself to one
side in a vain attempt to right his balance. Only making it worse,
Cochrane again over corrected throwing his weight back in the other
direction. His heart was racing. Instinctually his hands shot out
to either side griping each gunwale and praying to the Light that
he didn’t turn over. Even with his spastic actions and the waves of
the sea, the canoe didn’t tip and soon returned to its lulling
drift.

He had regained his
composure. A hard thirst came over him as he brought his hand to
his lips feeling the dried roughness. He looked around him to see
what was available. The light of the sun reflected off the waves
blinding him. It left his vision peppered with red blotches. A
large bota had served as his headrest and near his feet was a wide
paddle. How had he gotten out here? Where was here?

Shading his eyes, he tried
to get his bearings. There was sea and sea and a far shore. For the
most part, the water was calm. Cochrane tried to gauge the distance
but couldn’t focus. There were no clouds on the horizon and no
ships in sight. Lifting the oar, he began to paddle. His shoulders
hurt, his forearms burned, and his fingers were swollen like
sausages. Slowly the stiffness worked itself out of his system. At
first, he couldn’t tell if he was making progress but aft about a
half hour he realized he was coming into shore.

He threw the bota over his
head and shoulder. Once he was close enough to the beach, he jump
out of the canoe. It was probably the least graceful maneuver he
had yet done in his life. Fell face first into the water, somehow
lost his balance and went under. However, the water wasn’t deep
enough for him to worry. Standing he grabbed the gunwale of the
canoe and walked onto shore.

Dragging the canoe up the
rough beach, he felt the shells crack under his boots. The dugout
was lighter than he imagined it would be. He stopped when he reach
the grass and trees. Kneeling he took a long drink from the bota.
As exhausted as he was, he was beginning to feel better. Looking up
and down the beach, he could only guess where he was. There was
nothing else in the canoe. He had to think.

The last memory Cochrane
had was the darkness of the cell. He had talked with the captain
and had been glad for the company, but that had only last a couple
of days. Then they had taken the captain away. Cochrane never saw
or heard him again. In fact, he didn’t see or hear anyone else
after he was taken. The captain, what was his name. Raff, Riff?
Riv, it was Riv.

After a day or so, when he
hadn’t seen anyone he had begun to call out. He knew he was still
under guard as they still were feeding him—a tray slide into the
room every day. At least, he assumed it was every day. There was no
light in the cell, just quiet and darkness. Even when the slit to
the door was lifted, the change in light was negligible. No one
responded to him.

Soon the hours bleed
together and it was difficult for him to tell when he was asleep or
awake. It didn’t matter. He was lost in the void they had wrapped
around in the room. They must have drugged him. He had no
recollection of anyone removing him from the cell or of being put
in the dugout or being dumped at sea. It was difficult. Cochrane
flexed the muscles in his hand and arm. He stood stretching his
back and legs.