The Last Orellen

Lerit’s Tare

Kingdom of Derif

The Ossumun Empire

One Year Ago

Nowhere was better than Lerit’s Tare.

All the men on board the Ayagull said so, but Lander hadn’t believed them. His father’s crew liked to tell tales and exaggerate. And during the long trip across the sea, Lander had been subjected to so many pranks and acts of mischief that the wide-eyed trust he’d set out with had turned into extreme skepticism.

Slapping one’s chest three times with both fists wasn’t the proper mode of greeting on Crone Island. Wartfish didn’t have pearls hidden in the lining of their intestines. And pissing into the sea during a storm wouldn’t help you grow a thicker mustache.

By the time they made port in Lerit’s Tare, the city had been so overpraised by every sailor on board that Lander expected to discover it was a collection of ruins and hovels, not the trading capital of the Ossumun Empire at all.

But it seemed it was everything that had been promised and more besides.

On the day after their arrival, he followed his father around, trying to learn the ins and outs of their business while his head was swimming in wondrous new sights and sounds.

“Da, is that a monkey? Like in the story about the drunken captain and the ape?”

It was his thousandth question, but his father turned to look in the direction Lander was staring and answered patiently. “Aye, that’s a monkey of some kind. Though I’m surprised you noticed it considering the rest of the view.”

The monkey’s owner was a musician who played the violin while the little animal danced on the slabstone at her feet. She wore shimmering pants and a shirt made of silvery netting studded with colorful glass baubles and beads. The pants were so close-fitting that they would have been a scandal on Hemarland, and the top was so little like actual clothing that Lander would have thought it was some kind of table decoration if he’d seen it without its wearer.

“Stop gawping at her, small man,” his father said. “It’s rude to stare without tossing a coin in the lady’s bowl, and your mother would stitch me to my own sails if she found out you’d given your money to such a cause.”

Lander blushed and nodded, but as they passed by the musician, he dug one of Kalen’s enchanted buttons out of the pouch he’d hidden under his shirt and tossed it into her bowl.

He felt very clever about the fact that he’d managed it without garnering his father’s attention.

The musician winked at him, the monkey bowed, and Lander grinned. Kalen’s face would be so funny when he told him one of the buttons now belonged to a woman who wore nothing but a fishnet for her clothes!

Holv led the way, and as they traveled farther and farther from the docks, Lander discovered the world was wider than he’d ever imagined.

Some men strolled the streets covered in finery, and others lay in the gutters wearing nothing but what the gods gave them at their birth. Carriages bearing city officials rolled past illegal gambling halls. There were rivulets of sewage running through open drainage ditches down the sides of some of the streets, and there were carved wooden footbridges to go over those ditches in front of the nicer shops so that people didn’t soil their shoes.

It was all so different from life in the village. Lander was pretty sure he didn’t like the chaos of it. But he did love the things the city was full of. There were toy shops and pastry shops and a shop that sold nothing but exotic birds. There were chandleries and tobacco sellers and tattooists. In front of one tattoo shop, the man who called out advertisements to passersby promised “Protective designs illuminated by a mage!”

It sounded like the tattoos would be magical. Lander hadn’t even known something like that existed. His father rolled his eyes and pulled him away before he could ask about getting one…one so small his own mother would never notice, of course.

Fortunately, they turned into a square lined with restaurants and food stalls, and Lander’s disappointment evaporated. Grilling meat sent plumes of smoke into the clear sky. Pots of shellfish bubbled and steamed. There were mountains of produce and forests of sweets, and at one stall, a man was carving melons into flowers.

Lander didn’t even know the name of most of the food he saw, but he wanted to eat it all.

He moaned over a dripping skewer of honey glazed chicken and apricots while his father talked to a spice seller whose tented stall was larger than most of the shops around the square.

There was a pair of rough-looking swordsmen guarding the tent. And the spice seller’s elderly mother, who sat on a cushion lacing herbs into strands for drying, had such sharp eyes that Lander thought they might cut down a thief before the guards ever got the chance.

He was careful to keep a polite distance from the wares while his father argued with the merchant.

Some of the spices were so valuable that they were kept in tiny lacquered jewel boxes. Others were sold in huge flour sacks. A dozen of those sacks should have been waiting in a warehouse at the docks for the Ayagull, but they hadn’t been. Holv and the spice seller were having an unfriendly discussion about it.

“They were bought and paid for last season by Captain Shunda, and promised to him by you, and here I have the chits for each of them on my person. So why aren’t they onboard my ship?”

“I told you. It’s because the price has risen since last season. Selling sap peppercorns at that rate would be the same as robbing myself.”

“I am from somewhere where a man does not make a promise beyond his means.”

The merchant’s thick eyebrows drew low over his nose. “If you were from somewhere that wasn’t nowhere you’d know these are bad times for everyone. The emperor is a coward, one of our practitioner families has declared war on the other, and the last black market portal office closed three months ago when those Leflayn bastards started arriving in droves.”

From her cushion, the man’s mother hissed through her teeth.

The spice seller looked at her. “Well, they are bastards and he is a coward. One without a care for the economy! I’ll not be damned for speaking the truth.”

Lander watched the disagreement from the corner of his eye, straining a little to understand the man’s accent. Like most continental accents, it was harsh to his ears. The words were all broken and chopped off as if the speaker were perpetually angry, and it was made worse by the fact that the spice seller actually seemed to be angry in this case.

Lander ate his final piece of apricot just as his father banged his fist against the side of a crate and shouted, “Lander, come!”

Holv stomped from the tent, Lander on his heels, and they didn’t stop until they were on the opposite side of the square. There, Holv stood staring around at the busy marketplace with narrowed eyes, arms crossed over the barrel of his chest.

“Is it bad, Da? The man said he would refund Captain Shunda’s money. With interest.”

Lander had only learned about interest during this voyage, and he was intrigued with the concept. You gave someone money, and they held it for a while, then returned more back to you. Surely even the crotchety old captain wouldn’t be angry to have his money returned to him with extra added?

But his father grunted and shook his head. “I have promised Shunda that I will bring him a certain cargo. He has plans made for that specific cargo and not for the return of his own coin. If he were a merchant from another land, I’d let it be, since we have been hired for shipping and not for trade. But Shunda is our neighbor and sometimes our business partner. We owe him more of our trouble than we would give to a stranger.”

That makes sense, Lander thought. Perhaps Captain Shunda had made arrangements to sell his peppercorns elsewhere at a profit, and he would have his reputation and his own finances harmed if the spice didn’t arrive.

“Then what do we do?”

His father grunted again. He was still staring at the market, apparently deep in thought. Finally, he said, “One of the troubles a captain from Hemarland must navigate is lack of information. It does seem to me that the market is emptier than it has been in years past. If the spice merchant has been honest, then there is little we can do to remedy the situation. But if he has been dishonest, then there is more. I don’t know which is the case, so I have to find out. Or you do.”

“Me?” said Lander. “How am I supposed to know if he’s telling the truth?”

“You know your way around well enough to make it back to the docks on your own now. Tomorrow you’ll come into town to buy your cousin’s books, and you’ll go to every shop and stall you can find that sells spices. Ask them what the bulk price for the sap pepper is.”

“I see,” Lander said, trying not to let his pride leak into his voice. Finally, he was being trusted with important work! He’d begun to fear that his main jobs this voyage would be to endure the teasing of the crew and build the strength in his back by shifting crates in the hold. “I can do that well, sir.”

“I’ll give you a few more things to ask about by morning. If the rates are as different as he says, then mayhap we have to reconsider the rest of our cargo. It would not do to allow an entire ship full of goods to sell far below their value and then return home to tell the folk who’d hired us that we’d turned a blind eye while their buyers cheated them.”

“Even if they’re not our neighbors?”

“There is an amount of respect owed to every person. I do not mind a healthy profit or those who make it, but the Ayagull won’t set sail in aid of swindlers as long as I’m her captain.”

#

The dock master, who had been a paragon of inefficiency since their arrival, became suspiciously eager to unload the ship when Holv started asking questions about the state of the economy in Lerit’s Tare.

Lander’s father told his disappointed crew that they were to stay aboard to guard the cargo until he knew more. The next morning, he set out on the tender with two of the sailors and a cask full of beer to talk to the captain of a familiar vessel that had just anchored in the bay.

Lander was the only person who was allowed ashore that day, and he was a bit too nervous to enjoy the privilege. He was supposed to find out the prices for all their cargo, and while he would never forget the contents of the ship’s hold, he was worried he might forget the numbers given to him by the city’s merchants.

But it turned out that the numbers were all so impressively large that remembering them wasn’t a problem. Some of the things they were carrying were worth three or four times what he’d been told to expect, and much of what they’d been sent to pick up or purchase for their clients was as well.

And people were willing to talk about it. Oh, were they ever! Everywhere Lander went he heard complaints.

Some practitioner family called Orellen was a nest of cowardly snakes who had abandoned their fiscal responsibilities.

The emperor of the Ossumun Empire was an even more cowardly snake who didn’t know what fiscal responsibility was in the first place.

And a Magus called Terriban Leflayn was a barbarian, hellbent on destroying the livelihood of every hardworking man and woman in the city.

The drama and scale of it all was enough to make Lander’s head spin.

By mid-afternoon, his pocket was emptied of Kalen’s enchanted buttons, and his mind was full of all the local gossip. Even the errand runner he paid to carry his cousin’s new books to the docks had something to say on the matter.

“These are magic books, ain’t they? Not the illegal kind, are they?”

“Are there illegal ones?” Lander asked.

The other boy, a couple of years his junior, scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, I don’t properly know, do I? But some kinds are trouble now, I hear. If I run into one of them new practitioners in town I don’t want them to say I’m carrying something they don’t like. Maybe you’d better pay me extra.”

“I don’t have extra to pay you. If you don’t want the job, I’ll just do it myself.”

The boy glared at him.

“Well, I don’t think they’re illegal,” Lander said defensively. “I can’t even read them. But they were cheap compared to everything else in the shop, and illegal things are usually more expensive, aren’t they?”

The boy glared some more. “You foreigners don’t know how hard it’s been for us in Lerit’s Tare. You’ve got black hearts, you do. Bet you don’t care what they do to people who get on their bad side, those new practitioners.”

Lander frowned. “It’s not like I’m forcing you to carry the books. You’re the one who came up to me and said you ran packages!”

The boy took the books in the end, but as he stalked off, he shouted, “When the kingdom gains its independence, folk like you won’t treat me so poor! Her majesty will see to it!”

Lander blinked. That was a new one.

Despite all the complaining he’d heard that day, almost nobody had mentioned the kingdom or its current queen at all. From what Lander understood, the Kingdom of Derif, where he now stood, was more of a concept than a functional country.

They were on the far edge of the Ossumun Empire, and the only cities large enough to be called such were Lerit’s Tare and the Enclave of the cowardly Orellen snakes. It was to the east. Or it wouldhave been, if it hadn’t been destroyed recently.

The region had been run by these Orellen wizarns, with lots of merchant guilds beneath them. Now that the Orellens were in trouble with the emperor and the barbarian Magus from the empire’s other magical family, it was the merchant guilds that were in charge.

Anyway…the queens and kings of Derif were just figureheads. Lander, who had no prior experience with royalty, was under the impression that the current queen was someone who dressed up in fancy costume to go to ceremonies and religious festivals. Like a street performer everyone had agreed should be present for special occasions.

The continent is a confused place full of confused people. If not for the food, I don’t think there’d be any point to it.

His stomach growled in agreement.

He’d eaten nothing since early morning, so he headed for the stand that sold the apricot and chicken skewers he’d enjoyed the day before. Along the way, he pondered lumber prices, which were five times what they should have been. Would his father really try to renegotiate for all of the Ayagull’s cargo?

If I were the captain, would I?

Lander liked to think that he would. Even though they were paid mostly for transporting goods, it would feel bad to return to any of the small islands they’d stopped at along their route and tell the people who’d hired them to haul their livelihoods and return with their necessities that they’d failed to be good stewards.

But it wasn’t easy.

What about the folk on Regorma, for example? They’d sent their entire annual Corixe Shell harvest with the Ayagull, just as they’d done in past years. It was already contracted with a distributor in Lerit’s Tare who usually resold the shells to jewelers and pigment makers all over the continent.

The money they received was to be used to pay for the supply of grain and medicine they’d ordered to see them through the next six months. But Corixe Shells had decreased in value, while grain and medicine had increased. Even if the distributor could afford to pay the expected rate for the shells, and even if those necessities had been set aside as promised for the Regormans, the price on them would now be much too high.

We can’t just take them half the food they’re expecting and none of the medicine.

Lander paid for his chicken skewer with the last of his money and wondered what it would have cost him if he’d been here last year. Or even three months ago, when things had apparently taken a sharp turn for the worse.

He ate as he wandered the market, seeing everything with fresh insight but not enough of it to feel confident in his own understanding. Then, something simpler and far more pleasant to ponder stepped in front of him.

She wore a pale pink dress, soft and velvety as a flower petal. The waist and bodice were embroidered with white thread, and she had white gloves with pearl buttons at the cuffs. Her black hair hung straight down her back, glistening like a river.

“You’re beautiful!” Lander blurted out. Then he turned bright red as a pair of women selling vegetables in the stall next to him laughed.

“Listen to the little island lad! He’s a real sweet talker, isn’t he?”

“Boy, that one is half a decade older than you if she’s a day! You’re an ambitious one.”

Mortified, Lander scurried over to another stand, wishing he could disappear. Thankfully, the object of his compliment seemed not to have heard him. Or else she was so used to people randomly shouting about her looks that she didn’t even bother to turn around.

She was heading toward the spice merchant’s tent, her stride purposeful. The hem of her gown brushed the ground, but not so much as a speck of dirt clung to it.

Lander spied on her from a distance, wondering how such a perfectly lovely person could exist. Even her ears were charming. Who had charming ears?

She entered the massive tent, disappearing behind a wooden screen.

Lander felt oddly dizzied by her sudden absence. Maybe he needed to go back to the spice seller. To see if today’s prices were the same as they’d been yesterday. Yes, that would be the responsible thing for me to do.

He drifted toward the tent, the half eaten skewer in his hand leaving drops of honey and apricot juice in his wake.

“I wish you hadn’t come back, girl. You should have known better than to try the same trick twice.”

It was the spice seller’s voice.

Why was he so upset with the lovely girl? He shouldn’t talk to her in such a harsh manner.

As the roof of the tent shaded Lander from the sun, a wrinkled hand reached up and clasped his own. The merchant’s mother dragged him down toward her cushion.

“What?” said Lander, startled. He was bent in half over the old woman. Her sharp eyes darted from him, to the girl in the dress, to the back of one of the tent’s guards. The man had his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“Shhhh…” With her free hand, the merchant’s mother pulled one of the tiny lacquered jewel boxes that held the most expensive spices from the front pocket of her apron. She flipped the lid open with her thumbnail, and Lander saw that it was full of a pressed, amber-colored powder.

The woman blew on the top of it, and Lander smelled a bright, clean scent. His heartbeat began to pound in his own ears as if he’d done heavy work, and a moment later, his mind cleared. What am I doing? Why am I following that lady around like a lost sheep?

Yes, she was breathtakingly pretty, but she was a stranger. And Lander wasn’t an idiot. He was doing important work for his father and their business today. He didn’t have time to chase after continental beauties.

He opened his mouth to ask what was going, but the old woman shushed him again and dragged him down onto the ground beside her.

“But you sold me some at the old rate last week,” the girl in the pink dress was saying, leaning toward the spice seller. “I only need a little more.”

She placed a delicate hand on his forearm, and the man jerked back as if he’d been burned.

“Why do practitioners always think they’re so much smarter than the rest of us?” he growled, his dark eyes narrowing at her.

She opened her mouth, but he interrupted before she could respond—

“You’ve been taking advantage of others in the market, too. Did you think old ties would make us turn a blind eye to you?” He shook his head. “No…you must have thought no one would recognize you for what you are.”

“You take others for fools, then you die for your foolishness,” the old woman beside Lander added. “You should have run away with the rest of them, Orellen.”

The girl spun around to stare at them, her dark brown eyes widening. Her lips trembled. Her hands were clenched in the skirt of her pink dress.

She’s afraid, Lander realized.

At that moment, a tall man in glasses burst into the tent. He wore a wafer-thin silver medallion the size of a dinner plate around his neck. It was carved with wizarn runes, and it covered most of his silk vest.

“Is this her?!” he shouted, even as he grabbed the girl in a tight bear hug from behind.

She shrieked.

Lander fell backward in shock.

“That’s her,” said the spice merchant, his voice sour.

“Beatrice!” cried the man. “Beatrice, hurry damnit! This bitch is biting me.”

A fat blond woman, puffing like a bellows, raced into the tent as well. Her own silver medallion bounced against her chest as she swept a tiny dagger from its sheath at her waist. “Hold her still, Roan! I don’t want to cut off her fingers if she’s some random girl.”

Roan grunted and gripped the girl tighter, lifting her feet clear of the ground.

“I’m not one of them. I’m not!” she screamed. “Let go of me!”

Beatrice dove forward and nicked her on the arm with the tip of the dagger. The girl in the pink dress howled like she’d been stabbed through the chest instead. She ripped one of her arms free of Roan’s grip, and his glasses went flying.

Cursing, he grabbed her again while Beatrice wiped the drop of blood from her dagger onto the medallion around her neck.

“Hurry!” shouted Roan. “Shit, I can’t see a thing without my spectacles.”

Beatrice ran her fingers around the strange metal plate. Her blue eyes were focused. Some of the runes lit.

“Oh, dear,” she said, wrinkling her freckled nose. “We’ve got one.”

“We do?” Roan sounded aghast.

The girl was still struggling wildly against his grip. Blood was running down his forearm from where she’d bit him.

“We do.”

“I told you,” said the spice merchant, pointing at the girl. “She’s been swanning around wearing enough endearment philters to charm a tree stump, and she’s conned people out of all sorts of magical reagents around the market.”

“We’ll take care of it right away,” said Beatrice, her tone pleasant and professional. “Thank you for letting us know so we could watch out for her arrival.”

The merchant looked away. “Don’t…don’t do it here, please. Those are jugs of bathing oil beside you. They won’t take the heat well.”

Beatrice gave everyone assembled an awkward smile. “I know what stories you’ve all likely heard, but Roan and I are members of the first circle. It seems some of our lower family members have been making a mess of things. We’ve been sent here to reign them in. This will all be done quickly, cleanly, and legally. I promise you.”

“I’m just a m-magician,” sobbed the Orellen, suddenly falling limp in her captor’s arms. “Only a m-magician, I s-swear. Not a Magus. I’m n-not even with the family anymore.”

Beatrice leaned toward her and placed a hand comfortingly on top of her silken hair.

Lander was still sprawled on the ground beside the old woman, his heart racing painfully in his chest. He didn’t understand what was happening. It had only been a minute. New information was coming at him too quickly. The girl was one of the cowardly snake wizarns? She had charmed people somehow?

Was that why he’d taken leave of his own senses and chased her in here?

Beatrice stroked the weeping girl’s head and cleared her throat.

“By order of the empire and in the name of the illustrious Magus Terriban Leflayn, all members of the Orellen family shall travel to the Leflayn Enclave to receive impartial judgment for their involvement in crimes against the natural law of the gods.” She spoke quickly and clearly. “Those who fail to arrive by the first day of Holy Rae’s month in the eight hundred and thirty-second year of the empire are declared guilty by their absence.”

She paused. Her hand stopped its stroking, and her fingers dug into the girl’s hair, gripping it tightly. “Holy Rae’s month is long past.”

Her other hand came up. The small dagger in it was glowing red-hot. She yanked the girl’s head back, and drove the knife swiftly into her left eye. The girl screamed, but after a second, the scream turned into a horrible, moaning huh-uh-uh sound.

Roan leaped back, dropping her onto the ground, accidentally crushing his glasses beneath his boots in his haste.

Beatrice toppled over with her victim, but she kept her blade in place for another breath. Her face was tight, her eyes distant.

Then, the girl was quiet.

“I think that should have done it,” the mage said. She sat back and pulled the dagger away from the girl’s face. Only, it wasn’t a dagger anymore. It was just the hilt. Most of the blade seemed to have melted into the Orellen’s skull.

“You…you stabbed her?” the spice merchant’s voice was unnaturally high.

“Yes. There’s no need to set someone on fire just because it’s the family’s signature talent. This seemed like the most humane way to go about the necessary business without allowing her the chance to escape. Fortunately, the Orellens are almost never good at magical combat or I would have had to make a mess of your tent.”

Lander’s ears were ringing. With every rapid, shallow breath, he inhaled a hot and terrible smell. He was squeezing the old woman’s hand so tightly in his own that he had to be hurting her, but when he told himself to let go, his body wouldn’t listen to him.

Beatrice stood. She was staring at the melted dagger in her hand as if she didn’t quite know what to do with it. Then she passed it to Roan, who took it with a queasy look on his face.

“We’ll clean this up. Do you have a tarp we could use? It doesn’t seem polite to drag a body through the streets uncovered.”

The spice merchant nodded woodenly and gestured to his swordsman.

Lander’s thoughts kept repeating themselves, as if his mind was trying to process an impossible fact. She’s dead. That girl is dead now. The wizarn stuck a burning knife into her eye, and she held it there, and the Orellen died.

He had to stay still and quiet. He wouldn’t move. If he didn’t move, maybe the wizarns would leave without noticing him.

Beatrice was rummaging through the dead girl’s dress. She pulled up the beautiful pink fabric of the skirt to reveal the girl’s petticoat. One of her shoes had come off in the struggle, and Lander stared at her white-stockinged foot.

It was being jostled back and forth in a cruel imitation of life as Beatrice struggled with a hip satchel the girl had worn beneath her gown.

“There we are,” she said, finally unclasping her prize. She opened the satchel and nodded to herself. “It’s as the reports say. She’s carrying nothing that might lead us to another family member, but she has a lot here otherwise. I guess she was doing well for herself with her schemes. Strange that she didn’t just leave the city, but I suppose she couldn’t bring herself to let her old life go completely. Some can’t.”

Lander sat still. He stayed quiet. He thought the wizarn had not noticed him.

But as she counted out the contents of the Orellen’s purse on top of a table nearby, she suddenly turned to the spice merchant and asked, “Who’s the boy?”

“What?”

The merchant turned to stare at Lander. He looked startled to find him there.

“He wasn’t here when you called us last week,” Beatrice said. “Was he, Roan?”

Roan, who was working with the swordsman to wrap the girl’s body in the tarp, glanced over at Lander. “I don’t think so.”

“He’s an island boy,” said the old woman, patting Lander’s arm with a hand that shook. “Came the other day with his father to ask about sap pepper prices. He followed the girl in here just before you arrived. The poor child’s pupils were blown wide as an owl’s.”

“Oh, dear.” Beatrice gave Lander a knowing look. “I guess you must have caught wind of her perfume. She is wearing an awful lot of it, and you’re at exactly the wrong age to shake it off. Philtres and scents of enchantment are a lot of fun, but only if you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Beatrice came toward them.

She’s going to kill me now. I should run.

But he didn’t. And she didn’t.

Instead, she held her plump hand out toward him. There were three small clear stones in her palm and a large gold piece. “Your share,” she said.

What?

Lander didn’t say it out loud, but his confusion must have been obvious.

“We distribute a guilty Orellen’s belongings to the ones who helped us locate them. It seems right to include you since you suffered harm at her hands.”

Did I?

Lander felt like he’d been harmed in some way. But not by the Orellen girl.

“They’re uncut diamonds. Quite a nice bit of wealth for a boy from the islands. Make sure you tuck them away where nobody can see them, and head straight back to your father. You don’t want to be robbed.”

The old woman pinched Lander’s elbow, and he finally realized that not moving was no longer an option. He lifted his hand and took the diamonds and the coin from the wizarn.

“Thank…thank you.”

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Beatrice said. One of her freckled cheeks dimpled when she smiled.

She distributed more stones and money to the swordsmen, the merchant, and the old woman. Strangely, not a single one of them objected to Lander being cut in on their prize.

Beatrice and Roan didn’t keep any of the money for themselves, and as they tied the last laces over the tarp that hid the dead Orellen from view, Roan paused to say a prayer.

“You go back to your ship,” the old woman said, after the body was finally borne away and the Leflayn mages said their farewells.

“What happened?” Lander asked her. “I don’t understand.”

“You go back to your ship,” she said again. “Travel safe.”

#

Lander stumbled through the market, more disoriented than he ever had been in his life. Everything was so bright. It was so loud. The people were all so alive and busy.

Why was it like this when inside the spice merchant’s tent it had been dark and so quiet that Lander could hear the rustle of fabric as the wizarn searched the dead girl’s clothes?

There was music here. And laughter.

These two worlds shouldn’t both exist side by side. He had to leave this place. Something evil was happening in Lerit’s Tare.

He stumbled faster. Toward the docks. Toward the Ayagull. Hemarland is to the west. I have to go west.

He began to run.

And as soon as he began to run, it was like his body had found the answer it had been looking for all along. He ran and ran, flying through the city. Trying to get away from it and from everything he’d seen there and all the horrors he could not understand.

He felt like the wizarns were chasing him, even though he knew that didn’t make sense.

He ran all the way to the docks. He might have kept on running if a familiar voice hadn’t called his name, and then, after he’d ignored it, bellowed it loud enough to scare the seabirds away.

“Lander!”

Holv had just stepped out of the dockside bar that was so popular among the sailors. A dark-skinned man Lander didn’t know was with him, but Lander barely registered the stranger.

“Da!” he cried. “We have to leave! We have to go! Something isn’t right here. This place is wrong.”

In a breath, he was in his father’s arms. He was shaking, and even as Holv tried to calm him down, he could only say, “It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong,” in explanation. As if there were no other words that could convey why they had to leave Lerit’s Tare immediately.

“Here, friend Holv. Try this,” said a voice.

A bottle was pressed to Lander’s lips, and a second later, he was choking and sputtering on a burning mouthful of liquor. He stared at his father in shock. “You said I wasn’t old enough to drink more than beer yet!”

“You aren’t,” said Holv. “But you just blew half of that swig out of your own nose, so I don’t think it counts.”

Lander coughed again, and Holv pounded on his back.

“What happened?” he said, holding onto his son’s shoulders and staring into his eyes.

“I saw a wizarn kill a girl. At the spice merchant’s. The wizarn stuck a burning knife through her eye and…and she held it there until she died.”

Holv’s face went still in a way Lander had never seen before. Beside him, the stranger made an unfamiliar gesture with his hands. It might have been a ward against evil.

“Let’s talk on the ship,” Holv said.

“Da, did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. Tell me the rest of it on the ship.”

#

When it was just the two of them alone in the captain’s small private room, Lander told his father everything. He found that the story made less sense the more he explained it.

An entire family, an important one, had been made illegal in the Ossumun Empire. People hunted them in the streets openly. The hunters gave Lander diamonds to apologize for inconveniencing him.

“Did Kalen’s books make it back to the ship?” Lander asked suddenly.

“That’s not important right now, sm—”

“No!” Lander leaped up from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the bunk. “The boy who carried them for me said some books are illegal. What if I sent him with illegal books? What if the wizarns found him? What if…what if they…?”

What if that boy was dead with a melted dagger in his skull?

“All right. I’ll go check. You stay right here.” Holv pushed Lander back onto the bed.

“But what if—?”

“You stay here,” his father said firmly.

He returned so quickly that Lander would later wonder if he really had checked or if he’d only stepped out of the room and then stepped right back in again and lied about it.

“Kalen’s books are here. The person who carried them for you is safe.”

Lander nodded.

“You’re safe, too,” said Holv. “You’ll stay on the ship, in this room, until we set sail again.”

Lander didn’t argue.

He would have this morning. Sleeping in the crew quarters and doing his share of the work was important. Being the captain’s son meant he needed to be even more careful than a normal new crewman not to act like he thought he was above the other sailors.

“Will we leave soon?”

His father sighed. “Sooner than we’d planned to, surely. I will have to think quickly and make new arrangements. I’ve been talking with other captains all day, and I’ve learned much. We may sail to a more southern port with Captain Kite, who I was with when you showed up. He has two ships loaded with cargo he can no longer sell here, and he has more of a merchant’s sense of things than I do.”

Another port. That was good.

Anywhere was better than Lerit’s Tare.