Thinking of Grandmagister Lamplighter put a lump in Juhg’s throat. Juhg had been taken from his parents at a young age when the goblin slavers had descended upon their village. He hadn’t truly known them, other than to remember them. But he had gotten to know Grandmagister Lamplighter.
When Raisho said that Juhg was like the son that the Grandmagister had never had, Juhg knew that wasn’t true. More accurately, Juhg was thought of as kindly as a favored nephew. The Grandmagister had several of those, as well as nieces, and he was a favorite uncle among his family.
Knowing that the Grandmagister thought so highly of him had made leaving the Great Library harder. Still, Juhg had loaded his pack on the night that he said he would, and had made his way down to the Yondering Docks in a borrowed wagon the following morning. When
Windchaser
slid out into the harbor under the pull of the breezes, Juhg had spotted the Grandmagister among the crowd that had turned out to see the ship off.
“Mayhap Grandmagister Lamplighter wasn’t cut out to stay on the island neither,” Raisho stated.
“If Grandmagister Lamplighter would have had his druthers,” Juhg said with full confidence, “he would have been content to stay on the island, in the Vault, and visit Hralbomm’s Wing on a regular basis.”
Hralbomm’s Wing was where the Librarians kept all the epic poems and works of fiction in the Great Library. The Grandmagister had admitted that in his youth, before his promotion to Second Level Librarian, he had spent far too much time among those stacks. But Juhg knew that the Grandmagister still spent considerable time among those books.
Juhg did not feel the same about the romances and lighthearted adventures captured between the covers of those books. He had lived the harsh lives of those who had suffered in those tales, and he did not like having to relive those experiences in any form. Heroes, in the real world, didn’t often come along.
“All I’m sayin’,” Raisho said in a quiet voice as he glanced over his shoulder, “is that mayhap ye keepin’ yer hand in at writin’ an’ such ain’t a bad thing.”
“Unless I get caught at it and put to death for it, of course,” Juhg reminded.
“Well, that’s like not to happen, what with me keepin’ a weather eye peeled on ye.”
Juhg started to point out Raisho’s engagement with making a profit when he’d fallen victim to the lure of the clean white pages of the journal. During the long days of the voyage across the Blood-Soaked Sea, especially after seeing some of the monsters that lived in the murky purple-red depths that he had not before seen, Juhg had crafted himself a book. He’d boiled rags for the paper himself down in the ship’s galley, then cured and cut the paper. Making ink was an easy task.
And after that, he’d willingly filled page after page with drawings and narrative about the things he’d seen and done.
All of that was at the tip of his tongue when Herby entered the Broken Tiller with a concerned look on his young face and the flea-infested spider monkey riding across his shoulders. Juhg only hoped that some merchant or sailor or longshoreman who had just found his purse picked clean wasn’t a step or two behind the pair.
2
The Thief’s Story
A pensive look pinched Herby’s features. He was eleven years old, little more than a child by human standards. Unkempt dark hair stuck out all around his head. His brown eyes were set too close together and he had a pointed nose. Despite the length of time he’d spent at sea, his skin remained fair and always looked fresh-burned.
Most people passing him by on any street in a well-to-do city would have thought him nothing more than a beggar boy out trying to earn a few coins to escape another beating at the orphanage where he lived. The stained and worn breeches, cloak, and shirt he wore promoted that illusion. He went barefoot, not because he had no shoes—Juhg knew the boy did—but because climbing was easier with his feet unencumbered. The thick calluses on Herby’s feet proved resistant to the cracked oyster shells that covered the tavern’s earthen floor. Mud caked the boy’s toes and spattered up his legs and breeches.
His spider monkey was a gaunt thing hardly as big as one of the cats that roamed
Windchaser
’s decks and holds as mousers. Charcoal gray fur covered the monk’s skinny, lanky body, but left an oblong of white fur around his pink-ash flat face. One rear paw was white as well, but the other three were clad in dark fur. His tail darted back and forth across Herby’s narrow shoulders.
Herby called his amiable companion Gust, but that had been shortened from the crew’s appellation, “that dis
gus
tin’ monkey,” when they complained to the captain about the beast. Gust also suited him because when a sailor got aggravated at him and started throwing things, the monk would be gone as quickly as loose canvas carried off by a gust of wind. There were other names the sailors called the monkey, but the captain would allow none of the names, no matter how hard Herby tried to get by with it. On occasion, Herby still called the monkey by the foul names the ship’s crew had given the beast, but never within Captain Attikus’ hearing.
“Boy,” Raisho growled, scowling mightily. “What have ye done?”
Juhg knew that the bald bartender behind the scarred counter kept a covert eye on them.
“Nothin’,” Herby shot back as if offended. He snuffled and wiped at his nose with a grimy hand. The spider monkey mimicked the gesture, snuffling even louder than the boy. “I ain’t done nothin’.”
“Cap’n Attikus,” Raisho said, “might be somewhat soft in the head over ye, but I ain’t, boy. Ye get caught stealin’ so much as a pie here in this town, why, a hangman’ll stretch yer neck fer ye. An’ I’ll let ’em.”
“I ain’t done nothin’,” Herby repeated as Raisho continued to stare harshly.
On his shoulder, the spider monkey stood and shook his tiny fist at Raisho, raising his voice in furious chittering. Gust looked as though he was set to leap from Herby’s shoulder and launch into a blistering attack on Raisho. Some of the tavern patrons deep in their cups laughed at the monk’s screeching antics and called out encouragement to the creature.
Juhg sank back into the shadows with the tavern wall at his back. Going there to eat as a patron in spite of the fact that he was a dweller was one thing, but drawing extra attention could prove even more dangerous.
“I don’t believe ye,” Raisho declared.
Herby’s lower lip stuck out petulantly. “Wasn’t ye I come here to see, Raisho.” He nodded toward Juhg. “’Twas the little dweller.”
Little?
Juhg thought, knowing he was almost the same height as the boy when he drew himself up. Curiosity scrambled through him. He remembered the teachings of Irnst Voggal, one of the great body language experts who had specialized in haggling and was the author of
Quivers and Gestures: The Secret Language of Successful Trade and Barter,
whom he had studied in the Vault before leaving Greydawn Moors. According to the passages and examples in that tome, Herby’s widened eyes and careful focus were classic examples of a person wanting to close a deal.
“Ye’d best be a-watchin’ yer mouth an’ yer manners,” Raisho warned.
Gust stood to his full height on Herby’s shoulder. The monk clutched the boy’s hair in his tiny fist and shook his other hand at Raisho as he yammered in full voice.
“Juhg,” Herby said in a soft voice that carried no farther than the immediate table, “there’s something I should tell ye, but this tavern, why, it ain’t the place fer it. Not fer none of it if’n we want to live.”
Juhg hesitated only for a moment. The natural curiosity of a dweller possessed him, but he lacked a lot of the caution that seemed consistently paired to that trait. He’d lost some of his fears while in servitude to the goblins. Waiting for his death every day in the mines or at the end of a barbed whip had worn that dread of death from his mind and flesh, given way to an acceptance that such a thing might occur at any time. Occasional trips with Grandmagister Lamplighter to the mainland had worn away other fears.
Raisho looked at Juhg.
Making his decision, propelled by his curiosity and Herby’s earnestness, Juhg nodded. “We’ll go outside.” He produced a waterproof cloth and wrapped choice bits of food from his plate. As a dweller, he hated to see a meal go unfinished. Especially now that he was back on the mainland and less in control of his life than he had been in decades.
Eyeing his ale mug, Raisho made an obvious decision not to pursue the drink after being chastised. He pushed up from his chair, causing the spider monkey to lean back fearfully. One of the animal’s forearms wrapped under Herby’s chin and around his throat as he hid behind the boy’s head.
“Disgustin’ monk,” Raisho snarled.
Tucking his pouch of food into his cloak, Juhg followed Herby back through the crowd. His mind chafed at the possibilities the boy’s appearance represented. Although Captain Attikus liked the boy, Herby seldom brought good news to the crew.
And why would Herby come to me instead of Captain Attikus?
Juhg wondered. Suspicion occurred to him because of his dweller nature, but pursuit of hidden meanings was his through his Librarian training.
* * *
The wind outside the Broken Tiller blew crisp and clean from the north. Chill mist rose from the Sea of Frozen Teeth out in the harbor, named so because four months out of the year icebergs drifted down constantly from the northern reaches during the spring when the Frozen Ocean thawed, and peppered Juhg’s face and hands like the pecking of tiny birds’ beaks. The breeze washed away the stink of pipeweed, stale ale, and food that clung to the dweller’s clothing from the tavern. Already growing cold, he pulled his traveling cloak a little more tightly about his shoulders.
Fur ruffled by the wind, Gust quickly clambered beneath Herby’s loose cloak. A moment later, the monk turned and thrust his face out, obviously curious. Light from the oil lantern mounted on the tavern wall beside the door behind Juhg turned the little beast’s eyes the bright orange of Vendorian coins.
Rickety wooden stairs zigzagged twenty feet up the side of the rocky outcrop that held the tavern above the broken reefs that encircled the port area. The Broken Tiller perched near the water’s edge. Only a narrow lip of rock, little more than an animal’s run, jutted at the bottom of the twenty-foot drop. The tide exhumed the bedrock beneath the lip, hollowing away the loose soil and creating small caverns that echoed with the booming splash.
No level ground truly existed in Kelloch’s Harbor. The town builders had hung, perched, jammed, and piled their businesses and homes in the crags and broken spaces between the twisted shards of the Razor Mountains. None of the larger cities or trade guilds dared follow a pirate ship into the port for fear of pirates attacking in the narrow confines of the harbor.
From a distance out at sea, the civilized places—and that, Juhg thought after seeing the place, required callous disregard of the term—pocked into Kelloch’s Harbor looked like a collection of flotsam and jetsam that had washed up on the craggy beach from a flotilla of dead ships. The builders had used few fresh-cut timbers. When Juhg had arrived in the predawn hours that morning, the businesses and houses had been dark. Now lanterns ensconced in hurricane glass and flickering fireplaces devouring driftwood and firewood hauled from the other side of the mountains lit those places.
Like glimmerworms coiled in the empty sockets of a jumbled pile of skulls,
Juhg couldn’t help thinking with a chill that cut more deeply than the howling winds. From time to time, he realized that having a good vocabulary and an imagination to match were detrimental to a feeling of security.
“All right, then,” Raisho growled to Herby. “Let’s have it. I don’t fancy standin’ around out here freezin’ meself stupid.”
Herby wiped at his runny nose and snuffled, echoed a moment later by the monk. “It’s important, Raisho. Unbe
lief
able important.”
Raisho hissed angrily between his teeth. Gray vapor spewed into the air before him, but the breeze ripped it away.
“It is cold out here,” Juhg said in a reasonable voice before his friend could give vent to his temper.
And dangerous.
Juhg watched the shadows below them constantly, wondering when one of the regular denizens of Kelloch’s Harbor would take it upon himself to come up and rob them at sword’s point. Thankfully, the rickety stairs that swayed in the wind rendered such a venture dangerous for a would-be robber as well. And Raisho was big.
“It’s a goblin ship,” Herby said.
Lifting his head, feeling the old fear return to him in a blaze, Juhg gazed out into the harbor. He took an instinctive step back and bumped into the tavern wall behind him as he sought deeper shadow.
Twenty-seven ships, including
Windchaser,
lay at anchor in the deep water before the broken rock of the beach. Docks ran out over the water, built on pilings sunk deep into the rock and much of the harbor bottom.
A few small skiffs still plied the relatively calm waters, hauling cargo from the ships to the warehouse crews. Lower down, the tall, spiked hills that surrounded the harbor on three sides protected the ships from most of the wind.
The lanterns at either end of the cargo skiffs swung in the wind, casting constantly shifting ellipses of light over the dark bay. White curlers of foam, dulled by the lack of moonslight behind a mountain of dark clouds that promised more rain, rolled steadily to crash into the rough, broken rock of the beach. Carrying cargo both ways helped keep the light, flat-bottomed craft from capsizing in the turbulent water. Out beyond the shelter of the mountainous walls surrounding the port, the Sea of Frozen Teeth warred with itself, creating fierce waves thirty feet tall that smashed against the protective ring of the mountains.
Juhg recognized all of the ships. Humans crewed most of them, drawn always by their fascination with the sea. The Old Ones who had created the races of the world had given the humans mastery of the waterways, of the rivers and great oceans that covered most of the world. Dwarves—whom the Old Ones had instilled the understanding of the earth, of smithing metals, and of gems—seldom crewed ships except for trade. A few of the dwarven ships served as pirates in the Blood-Soaked Sea, further guarding the secret of Greydawn Moors and the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Elven ships were scarcest of all, and each of them carried a tragic legacy of deceit and betrayal.