by Sarah Lin
"He's here to harvest sublime materials?" Nauda watched him with a continually more skeptical expression. "He didn't need to take the villagers' wagon for that."
"Is this a wild forest?" Fiyu asked. "Can we gather materials as well?"
Theo shook his head. "Based on how everyone else has stayed out of it, I'm guessing that this forest belongs to the Armeau family. If they're in control of the city court, they're powerful enough that they don't need to build a wall or guard it too carefully: the threat of punishment will keep out everyone else."
Nauda looked like she'd need some time to swallow that, but Fiyu nodded as if she understood and continued examining the environment. "It does not seem like a very fertile region."
"No, I think it's just well-harvested. They probably send people like him out to gather up anything that's useful, then store it in the Armeau family vault. That makes sense for his soulhome: strong enough to go unchallenged, but unimportant enough to be given an errand like this."
"If we are taking materials from a wealthy and unkind family, then I propose we steal." Fiyu apparently took to theft faster than he'd expected, but her sudden enthusiasm pulled Nauda out of her sour mood. Staying together within Fiyu's stealth technique, they set to work.
First, they determined that the fallen wood the noble was gathering wasn't valuable enough to be worth stealing. Though technically a sublime material, it had no advantage over the hearthtree wood that they had in abundance from Tatian.
Deeper within the forest, however, they might find more valuable materials. So they soon left the Archcrafter to his menial labor and ventured to take what they could. Though the vast majority of the trees weren't made of sublime wood, and many beds of plants showed signs of heavy harvesting, it seemed certain that there would be more that had been overlooked.
Their work was disappointing for some time, the only sublime materials available a few sticks that must have fallen during previous harvests. They did stumble across a tree with bright golden apples hanging from its boughs, but they were clearly unripe. At their peak, he thought they would have been a solid sublime food, but at the moment taking them would be nothing but sabotage.
"Oh!" Fiyu gasped and moved forward, forcing all of them to scramble to stay inside her shadowy bubble. Theo couldn't tell what she'd seen using his eyes, but he immediately reached out with his soulcrafter senses and realized that one tree was not like the others.
Amid the sea of silvery trunks and leaves, one tree shimmered with the same colors... because its trunk reflected like a mirror. As they got closer, he could tell that the leaves were actually duller than the others, but the bark shone like the clearest mirror he'd ever seen. More importantly, the reflective bark felt extremely potent, not for generating cantae but for resisting it. Given that, he could see how it might escape harvesting, as only Fiyu's observation technique allowed her to identify it from so far away.
"Can we take this, Jake?" Fiyu raised her fingers almost to the surface and looked back at him hopefully. "I believe that this would be valuable for me. Perhaps for you as well!"
Nauda frowned and peered at the trunk herself. "I'm not feeling much cantae from it, but..." She extended a hand and emitted a very small bolt of cantae, which promptly reflected off the tree without leaving a scratch. "Ah, I understand."
"Yes, you see its value. It could be used to reinforce buildings, and might resist weaker cantae, but I believe it could be far more effective within my soulhome."
"I think we can risk taking it," Theo said, "but be careful. We can't make too much noise while we're here or leave evidence that could be tied back to us."
"Yes, Jake. I will be careful."
Harvesting the mirror-like bark - which Theo strongly suspected would be translated as mirrorbark in his mind - proved to be more difficult than it looked. It reflected all weak cantae, and though Fiyu was able to overcome it with her bladed knife, the mirror blackened and curled away from her hand. In the end they resorted to brute force, which came down to Nauda using her staff to break the surface enough to peel the bark away.
There wasn't much room to work, so Theo stayed away, on the lookout for guards or other sublime materials. He was a bit disappointed so far, though not really surprised. Deuxan had a strong grip on all of its sublime materials in the habitable regions, which prompted a pang of nostalgia as he thought about material hunting with Brigana.
"Why do we hate that tree?" Senka popped up beside him without warning, tugging at his pants. "Is it a fumpet?"
"Do you know what sublime materials are?"
"Senka doesn't know!"
"Well, they're... is it worth explaining?" He regarded her irritably, knowing that he was mostly frustrated by the lack of results and not caring. "Actually, how old are you?"
"Senka is sporping old!"
"I guess it was too much to hope you'd give a number. We're looking for special materials like that tree bark. Just stay quiet and don't attract any attention."
"Shiny rocks? Senka can find shiny rocks!" She promptly skipped to the tree and tried to put one of the smaller shards in her mouth. Nauda hastened to stop her, a step too slow, but Senka spat it out a moment later and began to wander off, passing outside the bubble of Fiyu's technique.
Theo grumbled under his breath and went in pursuit - though the chance of anyone seeing them was low, there was no sense taking unnecessary risks. The little brat moved over the ground with surprising speed, snuffling like an animal. Before he could manage to grab her, she suddenly headbutted the ground.
"Here! Here! Senka smells a shiny rock!"
Part of him nearly grabbed her by the mouth and took her back, but that was the old man in him. Theo examined the ground, which appeared ordinary enough, and decided that he had nothing to lose. As he began to dig into the soft soil with his hands, he eyed Senka, wondering if this was some sort of childish trick. She did seem to be watching him, but then his hands touched something much harder.
Working quickly, Theo uncovered a small lump. Once he got it out, it proved to be a mushroom, though it was much heavier than any normal mushroom and cobalt blue once he brushed the dirt off. Most of all, he could feel the cantae flowing from it in considerable quantities for a simple sublime food. Not as warm as flamefruit, but it had a-
Without warning, Senka snatched it from his hand and bit into it. For a moment he feared that she was going to suck the whole thing into her soulhome, but there was absolutely no soulcrafting movement from within her: she really did just bite into it with teeth alone.
A moment later Senka declared "This tastes blooky!" and dropped it back onto the ground. Though Theo wasn't inclined to eat that one now that it had her slobber all over it, he found himself looking at the little creature again. Perhaps she had some sort of natural sense for cantae, or simply an excellent sense of smell...
"Senka, is this the shiny rock you were talking about?"
"Yup! But it's blook."
"You, uh, realize that this isn't a rock."
She gave him an odd stare. "Shiny."
Rubbing his eyes with one hand, Theo decided to just roll with it. "Can you help us find more shiny rocks like this?"
"Okay! Senka will help!"
With that, she scurried off into the woods, though she took a curving path around the tree where the others worked. Soon enough, she identified another point for him to dig, and he wasn't surprised to find another sublime mushroom. They seemed to be somewhat rare, and he couldn't ever guess their locations by vision or cantae senses, but Senka sniffed them out with little difficulty.
It was the first non-annoying thing she'd done, so perhaps his good deed saving her hadn't been repaid with misery after all. Though he still disliked how she ran about dog-like, he reflected that her antics hadn't actually gotten them into any major trouble. During the fight with the demons she'd stayed out of the way, and she'd shut up during the confrontation with the Archcrafter. Perhaps she had some sort of animal survival instinct.
&nbs
p; By the time Fiyu and Nauda had finished with the tree, he'd uncovered several dozen of the mushrooms. When he returned to the others, he distributed them evenly and they promptly ate the evidence of their theft - the mushrooms weren't bad at all, even a bit dirty, but he could imagine their use in fine cuisine.
Meanwhile, Fiyu had shattered a significant amount of mirrorbark into herself but left some pieces for him. It might have been invaluable to his old light-based soulhome blueprint, but he took it anyway because he could probably think of something. Nauda didn't think it could be useful for her, so they divided the rest between them.
When they finished, the tree had been utterly stripped of bark, looking oddly pale in the metallic forest. They retraced their steps, removing evidence of their passage wherever they could. Within his soulhome, Theo threw all the sticks and other junk materials into the singularity in his central chamber, consuming them forever.
Just as they were about to leave, Nauda took a deep breath, staring at something behind him. Fiyu had gone utterly still, almost as if she'd seen a predator, but hadn't tried to use any cantae. Since they gave him no indication, Theo turned very slowly to look.
A creature resembling a deer stood between the trees, staring at them with unnatural stillness. The fact that it could see through Fiyu's shroud proved that it was a sublime beast, if the rainbow shimmer of its antlers wasn't enough. His eyes cataloged the delicate body and dappled gray coat, but it was the antlers that kept drawing his attention, clearly flowing with powerful cantae.
None of them moved after he turned, he barely even breathed, but suddenly the deer turned and darted away, vanishing into the forest without a sound. Once it was gone, he heard exhalations from the other two.
"It looked like a prey animal," Fiyu said softly, "but the horns were very sharp."
Theo could only nod. "You remember the Archcrafter talking about a special hunt? I have a feeling I know what they were hunting."
"Should we go after it?" Nauda asked. "It runs fast, but if we set a trap..."
"I... think we'd better not. What we've taken so far will probably go unnoticed, and I doubt the Armeau family really cares about it. But that beast... I have a feeling they'd punish anyone who dared to touch them. We could probably sell the antlers in another world, but it's not worth the risk."
"I believe we have enough." Fiyu came to stand beside them and renewed the shroud. "I think the city of Anguedan might be a difficult place, but perhaps we have put off our visit for long enough?"
He just nodded, which was answer enough. They left the Armeau family forest with new treasures in tow, but he had a feeling they wouldn't find any other sublime materials so easily.
Chapter 11
If he hadn't known better, Theo might have thought that no time at all had passed since he walked the streets of a Deuxan city. Though Anguedan was a bit different than the cities he remembered, that was true of every city. As an outsider from another world, he was constantly encountering details that were new to him - it was part of the joy of being in the Nine Worlds. So the differences of time were dwarfed by the differences in region, culture, and fashion.
Still, some details stuck out to him. Many of the men and women walking the streets alongside him shielded themselves from the sun via ivory white umbrellas that emanated shade and cool; those had been expensive and rare before, not seen on every street. The shielding flagstones in front of major buildings were larger and stronger than those in Brigana's family home, so the technology must have advanced.
How much time that had taken, he couldn't be sure. Many parts of the Nine seemed mired in time compared to the rapid advancement of Earth, but they still evolved. He would have an answer before he met up with the others again.
They had entered the main gate of Anguedan at separate times to avoid being recorded as a group, but gathered together without incident. Though he hadn't fully grasped all the rules of the local court, this was a fairly relaxed city, without any obvious fatal traps. Duels couldn't even be to the death without special permits, though he supposed that could be local leniency or societal advancement. In any case, the city was safe enough that they split up again to accomplish as much as possible.
While the others had more conventional errands such as acquiring food and local money, what he needed was to check his knowledge. Everything he knew about Deuxan might be far out of date, and in any case he knew nothing about the local region. If he was going to be worth anything as a leader, he needed to get a lot of questions answered.
At the moment he headed to a bloodhouse, because he was fairly certain that was one thing that wouldn't change, no matter where or when he was on Deuxan. Though he spotted several buildings with the familiar icon of a silver blood drop, he avoided the ones that looked seedy.
Instead he found the best bloodhouse that he thought would let him in: it had many young nobles moving through it, but relatively few soulcrafters. That would be the best source of information without potentially being overheard or getting drawn into any local conflicts.
"Wait a sec." The doorman was finely dressed, but his scars suggested he could serve as a bouncer as well. After a moment examining him, the doorman grunted. "Yer a foreigner after all. This place isn't for you. You know it would kill you, right?"
"Oh, I don't intend to partake." Theo brought his best Deuxan smile out of storage, a flat expression that suggested he had never had a political thought in his life. "Are bloodhouses no longer the right place to exchange information?"
"Ah. Then yer in the right place after all." That settled, the doorman stepped back, examining the street again.
Once inside, Theo found that the bloodhouse was roughly the quality he'd expected. A few Deuxans lay semi-conscious with needles clutched in their hands, but most laughed with one another in circular booths, a bowl of needles resting in the middle of the table. Occasionally someone pricked their skin with one and gave a little shiver, but it was just light amusement, not addiction.
If he put too much of that in his veins, he'd die. As far as he knew, the ability to draw strange substances into their blood was a unique feature of Deuxan biology, one that Brigana hadn't ever explained. For that reason, they'd developed very few drugs of any kind, and outsiders wanting to try "Deuxan intoxicants" got a rude awakening.
Most of the locals didn't care about him, and if they did, they only noted him as an ignorant foreigner. They all wore their tunics, hats, and badges extremely carefully, each difference indicating many details about their allegiances and interests. Long ago, there had been a very awkward interaction with Brigana in which he'd learned that a badge on the left lapel meant looking for a fight while a badge on the right meant you were looking for romance.
All of those indicators changed utterly from court to court, so there was no point trying to pretend he knew about them. Theo blundered straight in as a strange foreigner, instead scanning for elements of human nature that might be true even here.
He spotted an old woman seated in the corner with a pot of tea that appeared cool and a bowl of needles extended outward. Yes, that was who he wanted. She was exchanging information in a low voice with a young man, but when he departed, she beckoned to him.
"Well, a foreigner, hmm? And from quite far away, unless I miss my guess. Hmm, what's your name, lad?"
"I would happily exchange that information for other similarly simple facts." Theo slid down into the seat opposite her, letting the guise of a rube fall away. He might not know every local detail, but he also didn't care: he needed her to take him seriously enough to deliver reliable facts.
"If this is about court politics or the Armeau family, I don't get involved."
"Oh, my questions will be far simpler. All my information about Deuxan comes from the writings of a deceased master in my family. That information is likely horribly out of date, so my questions will be those of a child. I believe I have news enough to afford such questions."
She examined him critically, and as an informatio
n-broker she was obviously no fool, but Theo had thought through his cover story. He would look ignorant no matter who he asked, but this premise would match Deuxan views of outsider ignorance. Hopefully his questions would slip from her mind as soon as he departed and he could be better prepared for Deuxan at large.
"Very well, lad. What do you know, hmm?"
"I've just come from the Tatian gate, specifically the city of Nlukoko. I've no doubt that you've heard some of the recent happenings, but I survived them."
Though the old woman played off the information as irrelevant and Tatian a backwater, he saw her interest. She asked sharp questions about subtle matters of trade that he hadn't expected, but he had no need to lie about those. When it came to the Landguard and the demon attack on the city, he'd carefully prepared the answers that any traveler might have.
When they finished, the old woman sat back and nodded in satisfaction. "You pay closer attention then most, lad. I'm curious about these questions of yours."
"Very good." Though Theo kept his face neutral, he could feel his heartbeat speed up. At last, he was finally going to get the answers he hadn't been able to find in a timeless world like Tatian. "For a start, I need to know the local dueling laws in detail, in particular the penalties for actions against those of lower rank."
"Planning on offending someone, are you?" The broker chuckled and waved the question away. "I'll give that information to you later for nothing, and something free besides: if you come with a vendetta, I do not suggest bringing it against the Armeau family. But surely you have more interesting questions."
"First... the historical document I have is out of date. What year is it?"
"Year 87 of the Ditchdigger's Era."
Theo paused, for the first time truly thrown off. He'd thought his cover story was perfect, only to be given a year that meant absolutely nothing to him. There was no choice but to admit ignorance... "Forgive me, but the document I read referred to year 741 of the Silverbraided Court."
