Chapter Sixteen

“There’s still food down there, if you want?” Ryland said, watching to see if the figure reacted.

It didn’t.

It just sat there, unmoving.

At first, Ryland thought maybe it didn’t understand him, or that it might be asleep, but then, ever so softly, he heard the sound of a stomach growling.

The figure bundled itself more tightly into its cloak.

“I see,” he said and then turned and left.

A few minutes later, he returned bearing a plate with some bread and fried fish on it, which he then set down near the figure.

“Enjoy it, we’ve got a long hike tomorrow.” He said, and then turned to leave.

As he did, Koamalu came up the stairs at the end of the landing.

“You had enough?” Ryland asked.

Koamalu shook his head. “Just wanted to see if you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” Ryland yawned, then raised his cup. “A little tonic and off to bed. Try not to make too much noise when you come back, okay?”

“I’ll use the usual knock.”

“Oh,” Ryland paused as he started to turn away. “Do me one favor?”

Koamalu raised an eyebrow in interest.

“Ask around to see if any of the other hires have escorting experience.”

“Okay,” then he looked past Ryland, “Hey, is that…?”

But Ryland clapped him on the shoulder. “Just leave it alone. It doesn’t talk much.”

He glanced over to see the figure had turned away from them - the plate already empty. Then he heard a coughing sound.

I should have brought it something to drink. Oh well.

Koamalu awoke the next morning to find Ryland’s cot empty, and after doing his morning stretches, he wandered downstairs to get breakfast. He expected to find Ryland sitting at one of the tables eating with a pencil in one hand and a notebook beside him, but instead found that his friend was nowhere to be seen.

“Just be a minute, luv.” Said the older female server from behind the bar with a slight annoyance in her voice. “They’re takin’ their sweet time jawing it up back there.”

Washing his hands at the bar’s basin, Koamalu looked past her through the window into the kitchen, and raised an eyebrow when he saw Ryland back there talking and smiling with the cooks.

Shaking his head, Koamalu turned and walked over to join some of the others from the night before who’d come down and were waiting for breakfast. They welcomed him like old friends, and soon fell into conversation about the inn’s beds, the alcohol, and the women of Lakewick. Oddly enough, the most vocal on the subject of the women was Jandra, the lone female escort of the group, a well muscled woman who opined on the poor quality of the local girls.

Jandra was well into her commentary comparing the local girls with farm animals when the head server arrived with plates. She gave Jandra a stink eye, and the escort returned the gesture in kind. Ryland was behind her carrying a steaming pot of breakfast pottage, and it was quickly doled out to the group before Ryland and the head server moved on.

“Hey, isn’t that your friend?” Jandra said, pointing a dripping spoon in Ryland’s direction. “Why’s he working here? Can’t he afford the room?”

Koamalu blew on his breakfast to cool it, “He likes to cook. Probably trading recipes.”

“Huh,” Jandra watched Ryland for a time. “He’s an odd one. Can we really count on him in a fight?”

“Uso’s had my back, and he’ll have yours.” Koamalu swallowed the pottage and looked at the others. “Just give him a chance.”

After breakfast the next morning, the group assembled with their gear and headed down to the docks to wait for the ferry. Walking a bit apart from the group, Koamalu gently took Ryland aside.

“Hey uso, I know you like cooking,” the big islander said carefully. “But seeing you do that makes the rest of them not want to trust you.”

“Really?” Ryland seemed surprised and became thoughtful, then he nodded his head. “Oh, yes. I could see that. They’re already questioning my manhood, aren’t they?”

“You don’t look like you’re much in a fight, and seeing you do women’s work…”

Ryland snorted. “There is only work, not men’s work or women’s work. Besides, you hear the most interesting things when you work in a kitchen.”

“Oh yah?”

The redhead nodded, “Our employer hasn’t been very honest with us. The cook, Rita, told me that word has it the Falsefort merchants are having a hard time with bandits. Mr. Rudge tried to hire local men in here and Siltcarden to do the escorting, but they’d have none of it. That’s why he came so far down south to Northport. Looking for people who didn’t know the score.”

Koamalu frowned. “Should we still go with him?”

Ryland waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I already expected it was something like this. We’ll continue on up to Falsefort and get a better idea of things there.” Then he paused, and added, “And thanks for letting me know. I think I’ve been away from escort culture for too long, I should have thought of that.”

Koamalu clapped him on the back and grinned. “You got it, uso.” Then he noticed Ryland was looking around and pointed behind them with his thumb.

Ryland looked back where Koamalu indicated and saw what he was looking for.

There, a few dozen paces back, the little cloaked figure moved along the edge of the road.

Ryland increased his pace to catch up with Jaxon Rudge, and when asked why the little one was walking so far behind them, Jaxon shrugged.

“I told her to stay back there. She don’t need to walk with us.”

“Isn’t she your servant?” Ryland asked.

Jaxon snorted. “Yah. I guess you could call her that. More like a nuisance if you ask me. Just ignore her.”

Once they arrived at the docks, they had to wait until mid-morning for the ferry to finish loading on the carts and oxen. People came last, squeezed in among the more important cargo until the bosun yelled “enough!” and closed the gate.

Then the long flat-bottomed ferry creaked out into the brown lake, pulled by the rows of oarmen on either side, and began its slow journey to Siltcarden.

As they did, Koamalu jumped up on one of the piles of boxes and began to scan the horizon.

“Is this a sea, uso?”

Ryland smiled. “No. Just a lake. That’s all fresh water. Lake Winterning is the largest lake in the north. Big enough to have its own unique species of fish.”

Koamalu looked concerned. “Are there sea dragons here?”

The question seemed so ridiculous Ryland almost laughed, but then he thought about it for a moment. His friend wasn’t actually asking if there were sea dragons, but if there were animals in the lake big enough to be dangerous. A real concern on the waters where Koamalu had been raised.

“I don’t think so,” Ryland said. “Even the fish up here are pretty small compared with the oceans.”

This made Koamalu relax and he climbed down to sit on the boxes. “You sure know a lot about the sea, uso.”

“You mean, for someone who grew up in the middle of the empire?” Ryland said and shook his head. “You’re forgetting the capital is near the sea. When we were on breaks, my academy classmates and I would go down to the beaches and walk the dockyards. I saw plenty of catches and talked to quite a few fisherman. That’s how I picked up a bit of your language.”

Koamalu nodded in understanding.

“The sea is very beautiful,” Ryland continued. “Not like this mud pond. You must miss it a lot.”

Then he looked over at his friend.

“Well, you are where you are,” Koamalu said. “You just have to make do with what you’ve got.” Then he paused and nodded. “But yah, sometimes I miss the sound of birds.”

“Birds?” Ryland said, puzzled. “We’ve got birds here.”

Koamalu gave a big grin. “No uso, not like our birds. The island birds are like music- singing all the time. There’s so many of them you can’t even count them, and they’re always filling lagi lagi - the big sky. If you climb a tree and shout, it’s like the whole forest gets up and flies away.”

“Sounds beautiful,” Ryland commented. “I hope I can see it someday.”

“I’ll take you there, uso. You and your girl. We’ll go back and meet my family and have a good feast. When we’ve brought your family honor back.”

Ryland grinned. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”

Then he pulled out his green notebook and a pencil. “Tell me more about these birds…”

It was mid afternoon when they sighted Siltcarden, the capital of the Northeastern Territories, it’s tall, colourful buildings jutting up high over the city’s stone walls. As a territorial capital, it was much smaller than Northport, but still an important city as the representative of the empire in this part of the land. It had only the smallest of shanty-towns, and most of its people lived inside the safety of the walls.

In fact, there were so many people inside the walls that they’d been forced to built up, and not out, creating five and even six floored apartment buildings where many families lived and worked. It was something Ryland had seen before in the crowded capital, but not expected to see again in this northern outpost.

No wonder his companions were craning their necks back in wonder as they walked among the towering buildings and stared up at the lines of hanging shirts and trousers. It was like a giant spider had spun a web between mighty monoliths and someone had come along and dumped their underwear all over it.

“How do they get water?” Koamalu asked, waving to some women who were leaning out the windows chatting to each other.

Ryland smiled. He would think of that first.

“That’s what children are for,” Ryland said. “Unless you’re not lucky to have any to do the running to the local wells or the river.”

“I wouldn’t want to live on those top floors,” Jandra commented. “Can you think of how much walking you’d have to do?”

Everyone agreed with that, and then Jaxon told them to hurry up move it, reminding them that they had to pick up supplies at a merchant hall before they could move on to Falsefort.

“Excuse me, sir.” Ryland rushed up to Jaxon. “Can I meet you at the merchant’s hall? I have a short errand to run.”

Jaxon, probably deciding that Ryland wasn’t going to be of much help with loading, waved the younger man away. “Yah, go.” It was only later he realized that he’d also lost Koamalu and cursed himself for letting them go, but by then the pair were long gone.

“We need to find a bank,” Ryland explained as they made their way through the city. “There’s no point in taking our savings with us to Falsefort, especially since we’ll be on the road a lot.”

“Where do we find a good one?” Koamalu asked. He’d learned about banks while they were in Northport, since Dunstand Fiske complained about them and the rates they charged to keep your money safe at every chance he got.

“Simple enough,” Ryland led them along until they reached a sign bearing linked golden rings, and ducked inside the shop entrance.

Just inside the door, two large men were sitting and playing knucklebones at a table, but they suddenly stood up when the two younger men entered. Each of them picked up one of the large batons they had lying on the table between them and looked at the pair with menace.