by Trey Myr
“The Rickety Rukh has the best ale in the city, according to my men. Just go to the Vertical Quarter and it’s at the top of the old winding path.”
“Thank you very much, Lieutenant. You’ll join me for a mug after you’re done with Mr. White, Captain?”
“Gladly, Mistress Marjory,” I answered my ‘employer’.
✽✽✽
The White family lived in the center of the old walled town, in a mansion that put the Forresters’ to shame. An ornate whitesteel fence that must have cost hundreds of gold surrounded the huge grounds, and the guards standing at attention on both sides of the only gate were clad in heavy armor made of the same expensive metal. I could easily look through the fence at a well-manicured lawn dotted by marble statues and elegantly trimmed bushes.
“What brings you here, sir?” the left guard asked when I approached the gate. It was a far more polite greeting than I expected, but I assumed that my Captain Attire looked richly made enough to make me seem important.
“My name is Jack Baker, and I would like to speak to Mr. Simon White,” I answered.
“I see. Is Mr. White expecting you?”
“I’m afraid not, but I have a letter for him from Darren Forrester down at Gerald’s Rest.”
“If you would give me the letter, I will deliver it to Mr. White and see if he is willing to see you.”
“Thank you very much.”
I handed Darren’s letter to the guard and he went into the mansion. I didn’t know how long I would have to wait for Simon’s answer, so I whiled away the time by looking at the impressive collection of statues on the Whites’ lawn.
It took about ten minutes for the guard to return, and he was accompanied by a well-dressed middle aged man.
“Mr. Baker, I am Harrold, the White family butler. If you will follow me please, I will take you to wait for Master Simon.”
The guard opened the gate and I followed the butler forward into the grounds. Up close, the lawn looked even more impressive than it did through the gate. The statues were all carved from white marble, and depicted what I assumed were members of the White family, carved in exquisite detail by an obvious master.
The trimmed bushes, on the other hand, seemed at first to be a random collection of men and beasts. It took me a few seconds to recognize one of the bushes as depicting a Bowmaster, the rank IV form of the Archer Shape, and then it became clear that the collection was of the White family Patterns. I couldn’t even begin to estimate the time and effort required for the gardeners to maintain the display.
The mansion itself was three stories high and made of the same white marble as the statues, and clearly built to impress guests rather than for defense. Large glass windows, both clear and stained, showed glimpses into richly appointed rooms, and the butler led me to a set of double doors made of intricately carved white wood.
The foyer was even more impressive than the grounds. The floor was a checkerboard of white and black marble, with a plush white carpet leading towards a massive staircase leading to the second story. The walls were covered with rich brown oak panels and beautiful oil paintings. Harrold led me up the stairway to the second floor and into a corridor leading to the left wing of the mansion. There were more paintings hanging in the corridor, and the large glass windows I saw from outside let in the light of the setting sun.
We stopped at a medium sized room somewhere in the middle of the wing. Three comfortable looking leather chairs were set around a short coffee table in the middle of the room under a large chandelier. The left wall was covered by a large display case filled with objects I could recognize as old world artefacts, and a large book case covered the right. A large window was set into the middle of the wall opposite the door, giving a beautiful view of the mansion grounds and the city beyond.
“Please wait here for a few minutes, Mr. Baker. Master Simon will be with you shortly.”
I poured myself a glass of water from a crystal carafe that was waiting on the table, and went to take a closer look at the artefacts. The display case contained a large number of old-world coins similar to the ones Marjory and I had found in the tower. Of more interest were five small stone statues depicting a sword wielding warrior, a singer holding a lute, a robed man carrying a staff, a female archer and a robed woman holding a book. The Five were a recurring theme in old world artwork, and nobody was really sure who and what they were. The best guess modern scholars could give was the The Five were gods the old worlders believed in, but their names and purviews were a complete unknown.
On a different shelf, a collection of whitesteel pieces reminded me of the machinery I found in the same ruins the Boat Pattern was in. It may have been used to create elemental stones when it was whole, but even if it was still whole, most old-world machinery didn’t work anymore.
There were more knickknacks in there than I’d found in all my scavenging days. Pieces of old-world artwork, parts of machinery, jewels and even what appeared to be part of an ancient book cover, with a faded drawing that might have been of the lute holding singer from The Five.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
I turned around at the voice. The man who entered the room was taller than me and thin enough to be almost emaciated. He had close cropped dark hair and black eyes, and was wearing a tailored spider silk suit that probably cost more gold than I’d ever seen.
“Very impressive,” I agreed. “I didn’t know the White family were such avid collectors.”
“The family as a whole isn’t, but I have taken a liking to the old world and have started my own collection of artefacts.”
He walked over to the chairs and sat down, motioning for me to take a seat across from him.
“So, Mr. Baker. Darren tells me that you are a Shaper and scavenger, and that you desire access to some of our Patterns, is that correct?”
“It is. I find myself in need of some ranged attackers, and your Archers would fill that need perfectly.”
“That is not at all a problem. I will need four gold coins for every Shaping.”
“That’s a bit steep, isn’t it? It’s usually two gold for a standard Shape.”
“That may be true for most things, but there aren’t many ranged Shapes out there, so we charge more for the Archers,” Simon said shamelessly.
This placed me in a bit of a problem. I was sure that I had enough gold for two Archers, but at four gold per Shaping I could only afford one. On the other hand, if Simon White was a collector himself, I might be able to sell some of the things Marjory and I took from the tower to raise the gold. I’d estimated the coins and jewelry box at around ten gold if I sold to Darren, but I might be able to get more from Simon if he was buying for himself.
I’d still need to give Marjory her cut, but she owed me three gold for the whitesteel she used. Standard split for officers on a ship is one full share for the owner, one full share for the captain and whatever was agreed upon with the other officers. Since Marjory asked for a half share, she would be getting twenty percent of the profit from selling our loot, which meant that she would pay me back for the whitesteel after we reached a total of fifteen gold.
“Four gold per Shaping it is then,” I agreed. “I also have some old world coins and a jewelry box to sell if you are interested. I was going to sell to Darren on my next trip to Gerald’s Rest, but you might find something you are interested in.”
“Oh?” he raised his brows questioningly. “I would be most interested to see what you have to sell.”
✽✽✽
I left the Whites’ mansion an hour later with four Archers in tow and seven gold left in my pocket. Simon White had bought my coins without even blinking, and was very interested in the jewelry box. I sold the whole lot to him for twenty gold, and then spent sixteen on Shaping the archers. Marjory’s cut would be the cost of the whitesteel and an extra one gold, leaving me with a very nice profit from the tower.
I was determined to use the White family Patterns as little as possible in the future, but I would s
till be visiting Whitecliff often, since Simon assured me that he’d be very happy to buy more artefacts.
All in all, I was very happy with the evening’s business, and looking forward to a good dinner and some ale in the Rickety Rukh.
The White’s mansion was as far from the cliff edge as it was possible to be and still remain within the old city walls, and I’d been walking for fifteen minutes before I reached the original pathway down to the grasslands beneath. The Rickety Rukh was actually built into the cliff and its entrance was two stories below the street. The sign at the entrance showed a large bird standing on one leg on top of a bar stool and holding a mug of ale in the other.
The Rukh was obviously a popular tavern, and the common room was even more crowded than the Boar and Barrel at dinner time. The clientele looked to be fairly successful traders and craftsmen, and I thanked the old-worlders for providing me with the Attire, because my regular clothes would have looked entirely too shabby by comparison.
A very large man was standing behind the bar at one side of the room, and was kept constantly busy by demands for ale, and five different serving girls had to push their way through the crowd to deliver orders to the tables. It took me a couple of minutes to locate Marjory, and when I did I had to stop and stare for a moment.
My gunner had taken the time to bathe and change clothes while I was busy with Simon White, and this was the first time I saw her in anything other than her battered and utilitarian leathers. Dressed in tight pants and a short sleeved shirt, her heavily muscled arms and legs were clearly visible. She was a hundred and ten centimeters tall and very broad shouldered, but unlike every depiction I’d ever seen of dwarven physique, she was as far from being blocky as possible. Her body tapered from her wide shoulders to a waist that was narrow by comparison, but still significantly thicker than my own and then flared into hips as wide as her shoulders and a large, but very toned, butt. Her breasts, as I’d noticed before when she hugged me, were just as large as Mable’s and looked even bigger on her shorter body, and fitted her wide frame perfectly.
The almost scandalously dressed dwarf was definitely out of place in the crowded common room, and the other patrons left her alone at her table. When I approached, she had a huge plate of roasted pork in front of her and a large mug of ale in one hand. It was obviously not her first mug, enough to overcome even her impressive endurance.
“Jacky! About time you got here! I was starting to think you’d forgotten about me.”
“How could I possibly forget about my lovely employer?” I answered her with a smile and sat down next to her. “You know that Shaping takes time.”
“Lovely, am I?” my gunner smiled at me and batted her eyelashes. “Lovely enough for you to treat me to dinner?”
I was still feeling really good about the trading I did with Simon, and decided to play along with my attractive shipmate.
“Most assuredly,” I took her hand in mine and kissed it, then winked at her. “It will just have to come out of the resupply funds before we split the profits.”
Marjory was tipsy enough that she’d started to blush before I finished my sentence, and then she snatched her hand back and guffawed loudly. “I take it that your business was successful then?”
A pinch faced and harried looking serving girl chose that moment to break through the crowds and approach our table.
“What will you be having?” she asked me in a monotonous voice. “We have roast pork, rabbit stew and fried chicken.”
“I’ll take the chicken and a mug of the house ale,” I answered, and she immediately turned and headed back to the kitchen, her stride showing none of the suggestiveness of Mable.
“And get me another ale!” Marjory shouted after the departing girl, then turned to me. “I have a feeling I won’t be getting dessert like in Gerald’s Rest.”
“Certainly looks that way,” I agreed. “And yeah, it appears that Simon White is a collector of old world artefacts, and he bought everything except the spell for a higher price than Darren would have given us.”
“Very nice. So you got your Archers?”
“Yeah. Four of them waiting outside of the tavern. I’ll probably want to buy some more food in the market tomorrow, and then we can be on our way.”
My own dinner arrived soon after, and Marjory and I settled into a companionable silence while we ate. Marjory drank an incredible amount of ale with her meal, and had enough food to fill me up twice over. After Gerald’s Rest, I knew better than to try and keep up with her drinking and had limited myself to two mugs of ale, and Marjory herself never seemed to pass beyond tipsy.
I never thought I would be attracted to a woman who was so much wider than me, but as the evening progressed and I found my gaze drawn more and more towards Marjory’s cleavage, I couldn’t deny that I was definitely getting interested. Unfortunately, Marjory had already shown that she was interested in women and despite our earlier flirting, I knew that my attraction would have to remain unsaid.
It’d been weeks since my evening with Mable, and Marjory’s proximity was starting to make me uncomfortably hard. I considered trying to hire one of the serving girls to relieve me, but they all seemed as dour as the first one, and I found them to be completely unenticing. I ended up excusing myself to Marjory and after paying for a room, I went up and directly to bed. About an hour later there was a knock on the door, but I was in the middle of taking care of myself and didn’t want to face whoever it was, so I just pretended to already be asleep until they went away.
Chapter 9 – Down to Earth
Marjory was back to wearing her leathers when I came down to the common room for breakfast the next morning, and barely grunted as a response to my greeting. She kept on being untalkative as we went to the marketplace to buy provisions, and all the way back to the Swift. We boarded the Boat in silence and managed to lift off before the gathering crowd could get near us, and I aimed the bow towards the border, but at an angle from Gerald’s Rest so we could try and avoid the raiders we ran into before.
Since we weren’t taking the shortest route to the wilds, I expected it to take about a week to reach the border. It took Marjory all of the first day to thaw enough to speak, and she still seemed distant and refused to say what was bothering her. I was beginning to think that I may have been mistaken about her intentions that evening in the Rukh, but I had no idea how to bring it up.
By the time I saw the Outpost in the distance, the two of us were more or less back to how things were before Whitecliff. I once again stopped the Swift out of sight of the Outpost and went to talk to the soldiers, but it appeared as if there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in that part of the wilds. Back on the Boat, we sailed high to pass over the Outpost and then lowered the Swift down to nearly ground level to ensure we wouldn’t miss any camouflaged warped and sailed deeper into the wild.
I still didn’t want to go too far from the settled lands, so I took the Swift about a day into the wild and turned to more or less parallel the border. Between my four new Archers and Marjory’s cannon, hunting warped became extremely easy. There didn’t seem to be any flying beasts around, and we could easily stay out of reach of any grounded enemy and fill them with arrows.
The Archers worked in the same way that the Swift’s arbalest and mounted steam cannon did, by using Ephemera as ammunition. Somewhere between a spell and a Shape, Ephemera were physical objects made of vim, but instead of draining vim from a Shaper to form, Ephemera merely exhausted their creator’s life force, but in return only had a limited lifespan, which made them perfect for use as ammunition. My Archers could shoot twenty Ephemera arrows before becoming exhausted, and would then need about half an hour to recover. I had no idea how many shots the arbalest and cannon could fire, since we never seemed to reach the limit.
Unfortunately, just like the soldiers told me, warped seemed to be really scarce in that part of the wilds, and after a week of sailing I had barely enough vim to return to having five Deckhands. Marjory
was getting really antsy, since none of what we were fighting was worth anything. She was even starting to talk about getting back to Gerald’s Rest and taking on the raiders, since that would at least give us something to fight and some profit.
In the end, I agreed to go half a day deeper into the wilds and start to head back, with an agreement that we’d be going back to Gerald’s Rest to check on her brothers, and then back into the wilds near town where there were more targets.
Our luck changed a day after our direction did. I was still taking the Swift higher into the sky every evening so we could sleep out of sight from the ground, and I was still in the process of waking up when I caught sight of something in the distance. It looked, at first sight, like nothing more than a low hill, which is why I missed it when I took the Boat up the evening before. But with the morning’s light illuminating it, the hill seemed to be a bit too regular. I still probably would have missed it, but I’d been looking for old-world ruins for several years now, and the almost perfectly circular hill just screamed at me that it was artificial.
“Why are we turning?” Marjory asked sleepily when I aimed the Swift’s bow towards the suspected ruins. She almost always woke up later than me, since I needed to get us back to ground level before any hunting could start.
“I’ve seen something that might be an old-world ruin,” I answered her and pushed the lever to the ‘descend’ position. “I figured we might want to explore it before we continue.”
"Blasted right we do!” my gunner said with a lot more enthusiasm than she’d shown for the past couple of weeks. “I guess sometimes you do know how to show a girl a good time.”
“Hey, my problem was never about showing a girl a good time,” I hastily took the opportunity to try and mend things further. “It’s more a question of knowing when than of knowing how.”
"I guess it’s brick between the eyes then,” was the cryptic and somewhat worrying reply, and having no ready answer I let the conversation lapse.
