“But you’d rather be here, wouldn’t you?” I said.
Naila smiled. “Better to serve in Heaven. Come on, we’re holding up traffic.”
As we reached the intersection with Coin Street, another thought occurred to me. “There must be a black market,” I said.
“Sharp!” Naila wagged a finger at me. “Didn’t I say I wanted to introduce you to someone?”
***
Dan Seidenberg ran his little potion shop from a sort of medieval wheelchair. He looked a bit older than Keats, with a deep tan, a bald head and an overgrown goatee. His left leg was cut off at the knee, the pants leg tucked and stitched. The wheelchair was based on what looked like two wagon wheels and a leather cushion, but far from seeming makeshift or jury-rigged, it had clearly been built with love and care. The cushion fitted the seat perfectly, the arms were padded, and as Seidenberg rolled down the wide aisles of his shop straightening bottles and blowing dust off labels, his ride was smooth and silent.
He didn’t acknowledge us until he’d tidied up to his satisfaction and then he only looked at Naila.
“Need something?” he said. His voice had the rasp of a lifetime smoker, though tobacco was forbidden in the Summerlands.
“I wanted to introduce you to somebody,” Naila said. Seidenberg turned away with a flick of one wheel, shaking his head, and rolled towards the low counter at the back of his shop. Naila went after him. “Seriously. Come on, you know I don’t like it when you turn your back on me.”
That stopped him. He looked back with narrowed eyes. “Sorry, kid. But you know how much I enjoyed the last person you introduced me to.”
“Touché,” Naila said, her hands in the air. “But still. This is Linnaea. She and her party are new.”
“They always are,” said Seidenberg.
“I comped them for a meal and they actually paid me back,” Naila said.
“Really?” Apparently that got Seidenberg’s attention, because he turned his wheelchair to face us head on.
“Her archer called Agony an asshole,” Naila added. “Loud enough for him to hear.”
“Okay,” said Seidenberg. “All right. Maybe I do want to meet her.” He looked at me for the first time. “What do you think of the Summerlands, kid?”
“Well, it’s interesting,” I hedged. He didn’t want the prepackaged noob answer, that much was obvious. What was he looking for? “It’s a lot more complex than I expected.”
“Complex?” Seidenberg gave Naila an are you kidding me? look.
“The feeds don’t show much other than the players,” I said. “You only see a little fraction of what life is really about here. It’s weird, actually, when you think that NPCs outnumber players like three to one.”
“NPCs?” he raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, I’m sorry—” I started, but he laughed.
“Just messing with you,” he said. “It’s dehumanizing, but that’s the lingo.”
“Tell him what you think about the economy,” Naila prompted me.
“Oh, I just said there had to be a black market,” I said.
“Why?” asked Seidenberg.
“Well, it’s a company town. Expedition basically owns everything, right? Plus they control what people can and can’t do, how they can spend their money… there’s gotta be a black market running to serve everybody who isn’t a paying player.”
“She’s sharp,” Seidenberg said to Naila.
“That’s what I said!” she laughed. “She’s pretty much figured it out for herself, so where’s the harm?”
“Fine.” Seidenberg looked at me, frowning, as though he could bore two holes in my skull with his eyes. Finally, he reached out his hand, which I shook. It was large, dry, and covered in old scratches and scars. “I’m Dan Seidenberg, potions guy.”
“Oh, I know,” I said. “You’ve been here since the start. Golden Apple used to come here.”
“Weren’t those the days?” Seidenberg rolled his eyes. “Naila, shut the door. Her cam is off, right?”
“Of course,” Naila said as she gently closed the front door. The shop sank into sudden dimness; Seidenberg was like an old statue of a president in his chair. “Linnaea’s white wizard was hurt yesterday,” she went on. “His hand was busted up by a harpy. They ended up paying Wolfheart to heal him, if you can believe it.”
“That’s charitable,” said Seidenberg.
“If you say so.” Naila wrinkled her nose. “Look, Linnaea’s party is just starting out. In forty-eight hours they’ve managed to get tangled up with Andronus, Wayland, and Wolfheart. Matter of fact, I think the only honest person they’ve given money to is me. If they have to pay Guild prices every time they screw up a fight, they’ll be slumming it in Bad Luck Alley before the week is out.”
I kept my mouth shut about that.
“Christ, the Guild,” said Seidenberg. “You ever been in their guild hall?”
“The White Wizards?” I shook my head. “Uh-uh.”
“Big waste of space. Anyhow, if you need healing, come see me, okay?”
“I can’t afford any potions,” I said. “I’m sorry. I wish!”
Seidenberg’s eyes drilled into mine. “I’m not talking about potions.”
“What?” I blinked as my brain caught up. “Oh! Isn’t that illegal? Or, wait, are you an ex?”
“Hell no!” Seidenberg laughed. He gestured at his missing leg. “I got this in Afghanistan a long time before you were born. I’ve never seen so much as a gold dog in the Summerlands. And yes.” His face got serious. “It’s very illegal for me to do magic. But I do it anyway. So if anybody asks, shut the hell up, huh?”
***
“There she is!” Cass shouted as I strolled across Portal Square. “Linnaea, come here!”
I stopped halfway through a description to the camera of what going through the portal felt like, which I’d gotten on after seeing a smiling, chatty Donna Markan leading three men in starter clothing towards a weapons shop near the White Wizards’ Guild Hall. I spotted Cass in front of the Expedition Hall, waving with both hands as though despite the volume of her voice and the fact that we’d been best friends since middle school I wouldn’t be able to pick her out.
“Linnaea!” That was Donna, catching up with me as she returned from her errand. “I was just talking to your friends. How do you like the Summerlands?”
“Come on, come on,” Cass urged as we got close. “Hey again, Donna.”
“Hey again!” Donna patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger.”
Cass spared a wave for Donna as she headed back into the Expedition Hall, but Noah didn’t seem to have noticed her. He was poking in fascination at something in his hand, and I craned my neck to see what it was, but Cass put herself between me and him, practically bouncing with excitement. “Okay, do you want the good news or the good news?”
“Huh?” I said.
Before Cass could respond, Magpie appeared from the mouth of an alley at a near-sprint. At first I thought someone must be chasing him, but then I realized that he was as giddy with excitement as Cass. Apparently spending a little coin had recharged everyone’s batteries until they overflowed.
“I have an idea!” he exclaimed, stumbling to a halt in front of us. “What if we went after Golden Apple?”
“Went after?” Cass said, frowning.
“Not like that.” Magpie shook his head frantically. “I mean, what if we go where they’re going? Wyatt Falls! They obviously know something that everybody else doesn’t and if they’re rushing out of town it must be a fat score.”
“He’s got a point,” I said. His excitement was contagious and he did seem to know what he was talking about when it came to money.
“Huh.” Cass tapped her chin. “Okay, let’s say we do go to Wyatt Falls. We don’t know where the ruin is, right? And you heard what Rad said, it’s dangerous up there. It hasn’t been tamed like the area around Wellpoint.”
“How’s your arm?” I said, and Cass look
ed down at the long scratch that was starting to scab over.
“Point taken.” She nodded. “Okay, let’s do it. If Magpie is right, maybe we can get all the money for Dad in one big haul. That would be…” She glanced away, blinking, and cleared her throat. “That would be good.”
“Didn’t you say you had some news?” I said, taking a page from Keats’s playbook on how to change the subject.
“Right!” Cass brightened immediately. “Check this out.” She stepped aside to reveal Noah, who was still fiddling with a little black object that looked like a phone.
“It’s Noah,” I said. He looked up, gave me a flash of a smile, then went back to fiddling.
“It’s a handheld!” said Cass.
“A what?” I said.
“For our drones!” Cass looked at me expectantly. “To turn them on and off! And we can track our viewership!”
“Why would we want to do that?” I asked. I knew I was being a bummer, but I was already worrying about how we’d get to Wyatt Falls ahead of Golden Apple and their massive head start, and anyway it didn’t slow Cass down for a second.
“Because of this,” she said. “Noah, show her.”
Noah tapped the touchscreen of the handheld a few times, then flipped it around and handed it to me. I looked down to see my own name, LINNAEA, in big letters across the top of the screen. Below that was a line that glowed green: an email icon and the text 103 NEW MESSAGES.
Next came a line graph, with the last twenty-four hours across the bottom and VIEWERSHIP written vertically along the left side. A bright red line showed a steady climb from the time I’d turned on my camera in the Near Fields, peaking when we fought the harpies at Athan’s Rest, and dropping off to nearly zero when I turned it off on our trip back. The line jumped back up each time I had streamed that morning, and was currently holding steady…
At 12,442 viewers.
I looked up at my camera, down at the handheld, back up at the camera, and finally back down. There was one more thing on the screen: a big red button labeled END STREAM. I hit it as fast as I could.
Hard Pass
“I’m here in the Near Plains with the Einstein of the airwaves herself, the first, best, and only scientist of the Summerlands, the legendary Linnaea!” Cass ducked towards me and her camera followed. “Say hi, Linnaea!”
“Hi,” I said, forcing a smile. “How long did it take you to come up with that, Jessamine?”
“Only all night,” said Cass. She took a long step over to Noah. “Now let’s check in with our wonderful white wizard…”
“Are you okay?” Magpie sidled up to me as Cass rambled on. She’d turned her camera on the moment I turned mine off and it had been on ever since, chronicling our so-far uneventful venture back into the wilderness on our way to Wyatt Falls.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.” I held up a little notebook, rough white paper bound in leather. “I’ve been feeling better since I got this. No more streaming for me.”
Magpie laughed. “Cass is doing enough for the rest of us.”
“It’s good!” I smiled at him. “This is how she always wanted to play the game. She’s welcome to it.”
The only rock in Cass’s shoe as we made our way towards the White Chasm was her numbers, which were nowhere near what I’d hit. She’d topped out around two thousand, though that was a big jump from her previous high of a hundred or so. Her hope had been to pick up my viewership and it had worked, but only up to a point. She was working those two thousand viewers as hard as she could, though, somehow coming up with a never ending stream of jokes, observations, and confessions. It was actually pretty entertaining to watch as long as she kept the camera pointed away from me.
I was happy with my notebook, though it had cost me more than I’d expected. There were no ballpoint pens in the Summerlands, but pencils were allowed, and I now had a stash of those along with a little pocket knife to keep them sharp. I’d started our sortie making sketches while we walked—I’d gotten the whole layout of the Viking-looking ruin while the others took a pee break—but I found soon enough that I couldn’t keep up with Cass’s pace if I was drawing, so I stowed my pencil. I didn’t want to put the notebook down, though.
“There’s the White Chasm,” Noah said. We were tracking roughly northeast, planning to skirt around the edge of the canyon on our way into the Battle Plains. The White Chasm was ahead and to the left, meaning I’d steered us more or less perfectly. Despite the fact that we’d been walking for hours, I found a new spring in my step.
***
“Look at this!” Noah held up a battleaxe that had been split straight down the middle, the shaft and double-headed blade broken into two perfect halves.
“Worth keeping, you think?” asked Cass.
“Probably not.” I looked up from a pile of broken arrows, their red fletching bright against the gray dust of the Battle Plains. “It would be a pain to reforge and it would probably break along that same line when you tried to use it. Maybe we could have it made into two single axes?”
“Nah,” said Cass. She waved to Noah. “Toss it!”
“We should keep moving,” Magpie said. He was maybe ten yards ahead of us, pacing in the dust as we picked through the shattered weapons and armor all around us. “Golden Apple has a full day on us.”
“About that,” Cass said, gesturing for us to huddle up. “What about Hard Pass?”
“Hard Pass?” Magpie looked lost.
“The normal way to Wyatt Falls is to skirt east around the foothills of the Wyvern Range, through a rock formation called Dann’s Teeth,” said Noah. “But there’s a pass between two of the lower mountains that lets out at the top of the Falls. It would probably save about a day.”
“Great, let’s do that!” Magpie said. “Come on!”
“Wait,” I said. “It’s called Hard Pass for a reason. A couple players died there in the early years, including Wyatt Sheridan, who the falls are named for.”
“Not much of a gamertag,” Magpie said.
“Hell of a fencer, though,” said Cass.
“He was an Expedition employee, actually—” Noah began, but Cass held up a hand.
“I think it’s worth a shot,” she said. “Otherwise Golden Apple is going to loot the new ruin before we can even find it. If we can get to Wyatt Falls when they do, we’ll have a chance at the treasure.”
“Wait,” I said. “I wanted to suggest something.” I glanced up at Cass’s drone, which was quietly humming a few feet above her head. “Maybe we should turn the cameras off.”
“What? Why?” said Cass.
“Well, I’m just worried about spies,” I said. I dropped my voice to a whisper despite knowing perfectly well how sensitive the mics were on the drones. “We don’t want some GA fanboy sharing our plans with them.”
“You’re paranoid,” said Cass.
“It happens,” said Noah.
“She’s right,” said Magpie. “Information is power. We don’t know how many players know about the new ruin. We should be trying to keep that number down.”
“Fine.” Cass nodded. “Noah, kill my feed, would you?”
Noah pulled out the handheld and tapped it a few times. Cass’s drone backed off into a neutral position, no longer concerned with good angles.
“Thanks,” I said. “I think we should go for Hard Pass.”
“Sure,” said Noah.
“Perfect!” said Cass. She set off at a trot, headed for the distant mountains that made a faint blue line on the horizon. Noah followed her and I was just setting out when I heard Magpie mutter from behind me.
“I agree too.”
***
“You know,” Cass said between wheezing breaths, “I used to do my homework during these parts.”
Hard Pass was a long, shallow uphill slog featuring lots of rocky scree and a path obstructed by boulders. Sometimes the boulders blocked the way and we’d have to climb over them while hoping they wouldn’t shake loose under our weight and star
t one of the short but terrifying rockslides we’d learned to expect.
It was exhausting, it was unwelcoming, and most of all, it was boring. On the shadeless side of the Wyvern Range, sweating our way uphill, the welcoming sun of the Summerlands became a glaring white fireball. Our usual banter died away and was replaced by nothing but muttered curses as we toiled up the pass. Cass’s quip was the first thing anyone had said in over an hour.
And it was true, I reflected as I clambered up the side of a boulder taller than I was. Back on Earth, watching the feeds, it was so easy to skip these parts. If you were watching live you could hit mute and do something else. After the fact, there was the fast-forward button. Highlight reels cut this stuff out entirely.
I reached the top of the boulder and paused to wipe the sweat from my eyes. Then I blinked, because something was coming down the pass towards us. Under the bright sun the shape soon resolved itself into three people. One of them was limping badly, supported between his comrades.
“Hey!” I called, waving. “You guys okay?”
They looked up as they came near and exhaustion was written plainly under the streaks of blood and filth on their faces. Two women about our age supported a man who hopped on one leg; he was at least twenty years older than they were. Their gear was battered and dirty, but mostly whole.
“What’s going on?” Cass shouted up to me. She was behind me, peering up around the curve of the boulder. I slid down her side.
“Other players,” I said.
“Don’t—hey!” Cass put on a big smile as the strangers rounded the boulder. Even up close I didn’t recognize them. They weren’t major streamers. Cass put out a hand, which the man shook. “We’re Hearthammer. I’m Jessamine, party leader.”
“Merric.” His hair was long and lank, a flat brown. His face was pale beneath his tan and his cheeks were sunken. “And what’s left of Merric’s Angels. I don’t suppose you have a healer?”
“Sepharad, any chance you could help out?” Cass said.
“I’ll try,” said Noah. He knelt down by Merric’s feet and pulled a left-handed leather glove from his pack.
Expedition- Summerlands Page 13
