by John Booth
The Steam Dragon left the port of Bratin at first light, this time without incident. Daniel imagined that Captain Toren must have been expecting an angry mob at the least after what happened at Wegnar. Not that their visit to Bratin had been uneventful. Daniel wondered what the people of Bratin would make of their clock restarting. He hoped they would not connect the event to him.
He looked over to Jalia’s bunk where she appeared to be sleeping. He was well aware that that look could be an illusion; she often lay like that when fully awake. Jalia had made no attempt to make her special invisible ink solution when they got back to the cabin, possibly because they stayed up talking with Cara and Don until well after midnight. Nin and Hala had left them earlier as Nin had to start work at first light.
Daniel began to brew tea.
“Make enough tea for two,” Jalia said, speaking from over his shoulder. Daniel hadn’t heard her get up or come to him, which had undoubtedly been her plan. However, he did not bat an eyelid when she spoke.
“When do I ever brew tea for one?”
Turning around, he saw her standing naked. He always had trouble getting his eyes off her when she was in that state, though she was unconcerned about being naked around him. It wasn’t only the arousal, as he loved to look at and admire her beautifully proportioned body.
Jalia’s body was a work of art as far as Daniel was concerned. He could see the hint of muscles rippling below smooth white skin. She had the whitest skin of anybody he had seen; apparently inheriting it with her blue eyes from her mother. Jalia had told him that her mother had regularly dyed her hair black, as her natural hair color was some kind of yellow. Daniel had never heard of people with hair that color, let alone seen one.
He knew Jalia worried that her breasts were too small, but she would have been far less balanced and poised if her breasts were bigger. Her figure could have been designed for an acrobat and Daniel considered that she had the better of the deal, though Jalia never saw it that way.
“We do not have time for that this morning,” Jalia said disapprovingly, as she noticed the bulge in Daniel’s trousers. “You have been getting far too much of it as it is. Everyone knows that a horse needs to be kept short of oats to get the best from it.”
“Are you saying that you see me as some kind of horse?” Daniel asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I am saying that I need to keep you in shape. Too much sex will make you go blind.”
“I think it is the sexual relief I resort to that does that.”
“And to think those self-same hands just made and handed me this mug of tea,” Jalia replied. “I trust you washed them properly first?”
“No, I never do,” Daniel said with a wide grin on his face. “Does that mean that you will be doing all the cooking and tea making from now on?”
Jalia ignored him and got dressed. Daniel drank his tea while he waited for her. He sat on his bunk with his boots up on the bed.
“Don’t think you are getting me into that bunk after you have wiped your boots all over the sheets.” Jalia dragged his feet around to the floor. “I want to get on this morning.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to prepare the juice for the invisible ink. I am going to sieve it through a muslin bag but I doubt that will be good enough. I will probably have to distil it as well.”
“You have the magic ring,” Daniel pointed out.
“Daniel, you know how literal the ring is. How am I going to ask it to extract a substance I can’t even name, let alone describe meaningfully in words? I would probably end up with a vial of pure water if I was to try.”
“And the other reason?” Daniel sensed an undercurrent.
“This is a chance for me to be an alchemist again, if only for a few hours. I trained for four years of my life to do that and you know the price I paid. I want to use those skills again; if only to prove to myself I still can.”
“You will still have eyebrows at the end of it?” Daniel asked. “When you made the exploding powder you lost your eyebrows for weeks. I’m very fond of your eyebrows.”
Daniel said this in so pathetic a voice that Jalia punched him on the shoulder and laughed. “I will try and hold onto my eyebrows this time. I’m making something that won’t leave a mark on paper, so I hardly think it’s dangerous.”
“In that case, let us be off to break our fast in the dining room. I wonder if Hala will be there, or whether she considers herself part of the crew.”
“I’m sure she’ll be there, Daniel. She hasn’t made that decision yet.”
Their table was already filled with friends when they got there. Cara, Don and Hala looked up and smiled as they entered the room.
Cara was particularly eager to discuss their plans. They had barely sat down before she was asking the one question they couldn’t answer.
“How are we going to stop Gally Sorn from getting the swords to Maximus?”
Daniel looked around to make sure nobody was near enough to have heard.
“Perhaps we could just refer to it as The Problem?” Daniel suggested. Cara put her hand to her mouth as she realized what she had just said in a public place and nodded, her face having turned a deep shade of crimson.
“Well then, how do we deal with the problem?” Don asked. He bit into a piece of cheese and wondered if the Boat Company had ever considered adding variety to their breakfast fare.
“We will eat a hearty breakfast so we have the energy to think,” Jalia replied. “The remaining journey takes the Steam Dragon four days so there is no need to rush into anything. I’m sure something will turn up if we relax.”
“Do we have any idea about her plans?” Cara asked more circumspectly.
“Some,” Jalia admitted. “It is not common knowledge yet, but the Dragon will be docking in Tallis and not Dalk as was planned. Someone set fire to the Boat Company’s buildings in Dalk’s harbor and it is out of action.”
“You think the fire is the work of Deren Sorn?” Don asked, “Because from all I understand about him, he is not so stupid as to make an enemy out of the Boat Company.”
“We believe that Gally is working with Maximus, remember? This could be his plan to get the swords, not Deren’s,” Jalia said
“Deren will have every possible route out of the port covered,” Don stated as an indisputable fact. “And he will have the full support of Oto Tallis who Tallis’s king. There is no way Gally is going to get those swords to Maximus once the Dragon docks in Tallis.”
“Which merely confirms that we do not know Gally’s plan,” Daniel pointed out.
“If we don’t understand how she’s going to do it, how can we possibly stop her?” Hala asked.
“Do you know where Nin is right this minute?” Jalia asked.
“Of course,” Hala replied, confused by the question and the change of subject.
“And no doubt you have plans to meet up with him,” Jalia continued.
“Yes, but…”
“And yet I can stop those plans by making you come back to our cabin and not letting you out?”
“Yes, but…”
“Therefore I can stop your plans without knowing where Nin is or when you plan to meet him?” Jalia asked triumphantly.
“I suppose so.”
“We know exactly where the swords are and we know where Gally Sorn is. Even if we never discover what her plans are, we can still stop her,” Jalia concluded.
“But it would be nice to know, wouldn’t it?” Hala asked, feeling a little crushed.
“I’d certainly be happier if I knew what she was up to,” Daniel agreed and gave Hala a hug. She smiled and hugged him back.
“So would I,” Jalia agreed, “I was just pointing out that it isn’t essential for us to know.”
As they got up to leave, Jalia turned to Daniel.
“Let me get on with what I have to do in peace, Daniel. I should be finished before the evening meal.” She put on her best little-girl-pleading look.
“P
romise me you won’t use the fluid on the paper without me being there?”
“How could you think I would consider such a thing?”
“Long, bitter, experience, has been my guide,” Daniel said with a sad smile.
“I promise,” Jalia said when she realized he planned to keep them there until she spoke.
“Then I will let you get on with it.” Daniel kissed Jalia lightly on the forehead.
“I had my fingers crossed the whole time,” Jalia whispered to herself as she left the room.
“I’m going to do some sword practice with Hala,” Cara announced. “Some man seems to have forgotten about the lessons he was supposed to give her.”
“She was busy with Nin,” Daniel protested.
“Just like a man to come up with such a feeble excuse.” Cara sniffed. “Come on Hala, you will soon learn that a woman can only trust the word of another woman.”
“It looks like it’s just the two of us,” Don remarked.
“Is there any more of this boat you haven’t shown me?” Daniel asked.
Don waved at Daniel to follow and the men walked from the room.
Jalia returned to their cabin and collected the materials she needed to purify the juice. She carefully cut the rind away from the fruit and put the rest into a muslin bag before squeezing juice through the bag and into a basin. As she expected, the juice was full of pulp that escaped through the weave of the bag. In other times, she might have waited for the pulp to settle out, but she wanted this task finished by the end of the day. She poured all the liquid she had produced into a glass tumbler.
The next step was to distil the essence from the juice. Jalia remembered from her training that the essence of the Balbub fruit vaporized before water did. Therefore, her best option was to create a small still. She stripped the glass cover off the room’s oil lamp and bent the lamp’s clips to form a stand. She mounted the tumbler with the fruit juice on the clips before she lit the lamp.
It was fortunate that the Steam Dragon was supplied with equipment from a city. Glass was rare in the villages while cities always had glass manufacturers. Their cabin had several items she could use. There was a tall glass vase that she filled with cold water and held at a steep angle. She planned to condense the vapor on the outside surface of the vase. The liquid she wanted would form on the vase and drip into a tumbler.
She would have to keep the juice in the tumbler just hot enough to release vapors but not hot enough to boil. She also needed to keep the vase’s surface cold enough to condense the vapors, and this required frequent changes of water. It was a delicate process, requiring precise actions and patience, and would take the rest of the day to complete.
As Jalia worked, she talked to her ring as if it was a pupil and she the teacher, explaining what she was doing step by step. She had decided the ring needed a name and Lady Rotiln had given her the perfect one the previous evening.
“You see, Jaliscia, by rotating the vase I collect the droplets and then they run down it to drip into the tumbler. Rotating the vase exposes new cold surfaces to the vapor making it more likely to condense.”
“I will turn the heat down in a minute or two, as I need to change the water in the vase for colder water from the tap. To try and collect as much essence as I can I will use my knife to push as many of the droplets as I can into the tumbler before I refresh it. Do you like the name Jaliscia, by the way? I think it suits you.”
Jalia felt the ring gently warm her finger in a series of pulses and she smiled. Daniel’s theory about magic objects being nearly alive was turning out to be true.
She was so busy working that she didn’t hear the first blasts of the horn from the Speedy Star. It was only when the Steam Dragon replied that she noticed.
“Well we can’t stop what we’re doing just to watch two boats go past each other, can we, Jaliscia? According to Hala, Captain Toren will signal the other boat to stop as he has messages he needs to deliver to them. Most probably, to tell them not to stop at Wegnar and pass the word up to the Flying Kite.”
Jalia hummed as she carried on her delicate work, fully content with life and the world in general.
Don took Daniel deeper into the Steam Dragon than he had on their previous trips. Finally, they reached a set of metal trapdoors at the bottom of a long shaft that appeared to go all the way up to the main deck of ship.
“The ship’s ballast is stowed below us and comes in or out through these trap doors,” Don explained. He pulled at one of the doors and asked Daniel to pull at the other. They were heavy and tipped over on their hinges reluctantly.
“I’m not even sure what ballast is for,” Daniel said as he stared into the dark hole below.
“The more decks there are above water the more ballast there has to be below, otherwise the boat would tip over like a bottle dropped into water neck first,” Don explained. He collected a lantern from the wall. Dropping to his knees, he hung the lamp down into the darkness. They could see by its light that the hold was filled with stones cut in the shape of rectangular bricks.
“Most boats use any old stones they can find, but the boat company has to be different and has its own specially shaped stones,” Don said, laughing at the thought of the unnecessary expense and effort involved. “Captain Toren claims that it allows them to get more weight into a smaller space. They had to bring in a lot of stone ballast to compensate for the fruit they loaded yesterday.”
“That’s what this shaft is for?” Daniel asked.
“Yes, they have a pulley system up on the deck to get the ballast in and out quickly. Of course, the lid above has to be watertight otherwise if water got in, it could sink the boat.”
The bricks were about twelve inches long, two inches high and three inches wide. As Daniel looked down at them, an idea formed. He grinned.
“Thanks Don, this may be the most important thing you’ve shown me since we’ve come onboard.”
Don looked puzzled, but before he could ask a question, they heard the Steam Dragon’s horn blasting out. Even at the bottom of the boat, the sound reverberated loudly.
“We had better get going if we want to see the Speedy Star and the exchange of mail,” Don said, all thoughts of asking what Daniel had meant driven from his mind by the thought of watching another steam boat go past.
The men closed the trapdoors and ran through the dark maze of corridors to the upper decks of the Dragon.
Lady Rotiln knocked on the door to Gally suite after it became clear that waiting for her to turn up for breakfast was going to be a fruitless exercise. She sent Halad to her suite to wait for her return and went to beard the dragon in her den.
At first, there was no response and Lady Rotiln felt she would have to try the Captain’s cabin. She had seen Toren up and about, but she supposed that Gally might still be lying in his bed. Then she heard sounds of movement and the door being unlocked.
“Can’t it wait?” a bedraggled Gally asked as she opened the door six inches. Her hair was in a state and she looked as though she hadn’t slept a wink during the night. She wore a dressing gown sufficiently carelessly for one of her breasts to be visible.
“I’m afraid it can’t,” Lady Rotiln said briskly and pushed her way into the room. She had never been comfortable as Gally’s second in command and deeply regretted that King Oto had talked her into it in the first place.
“Make yourself at home, why don’t you?” Gally said sarcastically. Her dressing gown had pulled open as Lady Rotiln pushed her way into the room, revealing Gally was naked underneath it. Gally made no attempt to cover up and flaunted her body at Lady Rotiln, who found her eyes drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Nudity was frowned on in Slarn and it was rare to see such a perfect young body so exposed.
“If you like what you see then I’ll see if I can fit you in. Though I must admit I like my men old and my women to be girls,” Gally said. She pulled a chair over. The dressing gown fell open from the waist down as she sat.
“I am not i
nterested in your body, only in our mission,” Lady Rotiln snapped. “You have already jeopardized it with your actions.”
Gally’s eyes flashed at the insult and she sat up straighter, though she made no attempt to cover herself.
“And just how have I jeopardized the mission?” she asked in a snarl.
“By not giving al’Dare and al’Degar their damned possessions back,” Lady Rotiln shouted. “They might well have headed back to Bagdor if you had only been reasonable. Instead we have them on this boat doing the gods only know what.”
“They are still alive?” Gally asked in astonishment. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I had dinner with them last night. If you could wean yourself off sexual gratification long enough to attend an evening meal you would have seen them for yourself.”
“Damn.” Gally pushed herself out of the chair and started pacing the room. “Do you know what happened when they visited the Greenhouse?”
“They only mentioned it in terms of the fruit they had eaten. What was supposed to have happened?” Lady Rotiln asked. Gally’s anger had calmed her own and she wondered what the woman had been up to.
“I sent my father’s assassins against them,” Gally snarled as she paced. “Were they not even injured? What about the Marin’s and that stupid girl who dresses like a miniature Jalia, were none of them injured?”
“Jalia had a stomach-ache from the fruit. Though that was probably just a deception to give her the opportunity to leave and search my room,” Lady Rotiln said as she took a seat. Watching Gally pace the room was making her tired.
“They have the dagger and the ring?”
