The story had lulled Aisha’s mind, had sent her away to another time and another place. Opening up about himself was akin to taking her by the hand and carrying her away. Over the course, the two of them had drifted from the railing, to the port side of the ship, where a bench sat near the wheel. She squinted her eyes out across the sea, where chop and wind cast a haze over the horizon, obscuring the black line of horizon. “Is that where you’re from then?”

“I suppose the maps in Hearth Bay might say it is, but I don’t think anyone lives there. Jarnmark is farther north. We’ll pass it tomorrow or the next day.”

“Really? Why doesn’t anyone live there? Even in the desert, there are nomads traveling around. You probably saw some, didn’t you?”

“It’s the sea. Maybe some people live out there, but the Ashe family doesn’t bother sending tax men, so it can’t be said to be part of Jarnmark. They’re barbarians of a sort. Takes a tough kind of person to live on some rocky slope where it’s too dangerous to fish,” he said, gesturing at the distant waters. When he saw Aisha arch an eyebrow at him, he continued, “The further west you go, the more wild the fish get. This sea is protected by the goddess Saphira. In exchange for Vassermark’s allegiance, she drives out the monsters. Out there, where the priestesses don’t go, you can still find krakens and sharks big enough to eat krakens.”

“I thought those were all extinct? All the stories are from the Dark Era.”

“Well, maybe they are. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve seen what the temples do.” he gestured to the back of the Sea Bird’s Rest, for it was a proper Vassish ship, and dangling from the back was a smoking brazier that laced the waters with the blessing of Saphira.

Aisha let herself give just a fraction of a smirk of interest. A shadow of enjoyment as the sun began to hang low in the sky. While the captain sought nightly refuge, Lucius began again.

~~

The temples to Saphira are more like businesses than churches. Nothing at all like the cathedrals to Lumis that dot the land between the great kingdoms. Of course, hundreds of people supplicate themselves before their icon of the goddess, but free prayers don’t keep the candles stocked and certainly don’t pay for manuscript paper. While they did possess land, often in complicated lease agreements to the nobility and the farming collectives so as to evade certain tax measures, their revenue primarily came from the dirtiest sort of filth.

The day of the the final match, while Master Wilhelm padded the day with performances and other trifles, Lucius had been banished from the Arena, and sought refuge with the temple in hopes that he could fill his stomach out of charity. He had to shut his nose, as the priestesses and acolytes and doffed their embroidered robes and thrown on rough sewn mocks near black with stain. The gaiety of prayer forsaken, the women devolved in behavior fitting the sailors they traded with.

The workshop cried out like the arena stands with the shouting orders for buckets and chemicals, for extra hands and above all, the slapping of dead fish upon tables to be gutted. They cared hardly at all for the meat, even dogs hesitated to eat those oily slabs, but for the greasy organs within.

“Boy, if you’re going to sit there, you had better at least be making yourself useful.” Lucius knew the woman as Sister Brown, on account of her chestnut brown hair. “Take the meat to the kitchens. There’s good soup to be made.”

Between the two of them were, as far as he was concerned, a slop of oozing flesh. “Which is the good meat?”

“The mud eel for starters.”

“Which one is that?”

She sighed and shoved over a strip of scales like a snake. She had gutted it from jaw to tail and stripped out the cartilage spine already, leaving the ribs and meat behind. “And wash your hands. Your clothes too, before you eat. You’ll get parasites if you don’t.”

“What’s a parasite?” What’s a godling to a god?

Sister Brown sighed. “They’ll make you sick, and if you get sick from them, you’ll have to lay in bed drinking garlic tea, thick as honey and foul as fish guts.”

Lucius winced at the thought. He could remember that kind of medicine from when he lost his arm, the way it burned his insides to burn out the infection from his ragged stump. The thought of fish soup, perhaps with some root vegetables tossed in, motivated him more however, and he gathered up the mud eel slices into a pot. Wrapping his arm around the bulk of it, he hefted it up and scurried from the workshop.

The mistress of the kitchens was a grandmotherly woman, widowed by the sea and employed by the temple for decades. “Lucius, what are you doing back here? How did you get those bruises? Did Master Wilhelm lay his hands on you?”

“It was Edvin.”

“Edvin?”

“Edvin Ashe.”

The chef stopped chopping the vegetables before her and stared at the boy. With the scrutiny that only comes from age, she shook her head and tutted. “And if you’re here, I imagine no one believed you, did they?”

Lucius huffed the pot onto the counter beside her and slumped on the table. “Of course not. Who would believe me over him?”

“Someone with a brain between their ears. Give me this. Mud eels? They expect me to cook the pot with mud eels again? The sisters are getting cheaper and cheaper these days.” She got to work regardless, cleaning the scales and stuffing the charity cauldron to the brim. She mused to herself about why the refuse fish were getting bought up, though she hardly understood a thing about the alchemy performed by the temple. Her knowledge ended at cooking.

“I hate having to work for people like him.”

“Too bad. Everyone works for people like him, unless you’re the king.”

“But I don’t want to work for them… like, directly. I could work on a ship and go someplace far away.”

The old woman laughed, turning away from her bubbling pot. “No one would hire you, kid. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. You’ve got a rotten lot in life.”

“I’ve got a stigmata!” he piped up. “I heal.”

That just made her laugh again, and shake her head. It was in the sad way children often misunderstand. “No one is going to believe you heal, not with an arm missing.”

He couldn’t respond to that. He merely scratched at his stump, for it often itched. Ever since he had lost it, the missing limb had irritated him, a constant annoyance that he tried to ignore. Eventually, and under his breath, he said, “But I do heal.”

“Why don’t you find Kajsa and help get some bread for the soup?”

As little more than a charity case at the temple, he knew his stomach depended on doing whatever it was he was told, whatever menial task they felt like giving him. As such, he capitulated and went to see the girl Kajsa. At the time, he had no notion where she had come from, nor why she lived in the Saphiran temple. All he knew was Kajsa was in fact older than she looked, and the one that managed purity testing on the grease the temple produced.(1)

Ever since he had thrown out a beaker of grime to clean it, which was actually a validation test of hers, Kajsa had been unable to stand Lucius. “What are you here for? This isn’t the kitchen.”

“I was asked to help you fetch bread for dinner.”

“I’ve got–!” She spun about the room, looking at sieves and decanters and the enormous distillery chimney that sat cold and idle. From what I understand of their process, Lucius had arrived just after the raw oil had been loaded into the vat, still thick with waste like fruit pulp in juice. The vat had to sit and separate before the blaze could be enabled, a perfect time to send Kajsa on an errand rather than leave her to idle mischief. “Oh, shouldn’t you be at the arena or something? Isn’t your circus employed right now?”

“Yes,” Lucius answered.

Kajsa was enough of a genius to have single-handedly extended the shelf life of the temple’s special incense by two additional months, as well as a corollary discovery in wax production which revolutionized the city’s cheese production. Deducing what had happened to Lucius fell squarely within her capacity, and even she had to put aside her frustrations with the boy and work with him. “Come on then.”

The temple had a long standing purchase order in with the adjacent bakery. The bakers reveled in it, knowing that any amount of bread they produced would at least be covered at cost, stale and hard at the end of the day. The place continually smelled of roasting loaves. The scent spread throughout the street like a succubus for the nose. While the bakers loaded up sacks for the two of them to carry back, Lucius had a question for Kajsa.

“The temple sells the oil to ships, right?”

Kajsa had been rebraiding her long, golden hair and nearly let the whole thing fall apart when she turned to appraise the boy. “Yes. What about it?”

“It’s to burn, to keep the monsters away, right?”

“For the next ship, yes. The residue creates sea roads. It works a lot better now that we have all the currents mapped out. Why do you ask?”

“Isn’t taking care of that an important task, on a ship?”

The girl caught on to where he was going, and squatted down beside him. She wasn’t tall herself, and in fact she had to look up at young Lucius when she did so, but she said, “Yes, but it isn’t something you’d be able to do, with only one arm. If a storm were to hit while you were aboard, you would need to be able to steady the brazier as well as maintain the fire.”

His face had begun to redden with frustration and his hand balled into a fist. “There could be some kind of contraption to help with that! I’ve been in the temple a bunch. Nothing you do is magical. I could learn it all and get a job on a ship, and leave here!”

“You’re more likely to leave with Master Wilhelm’s troupe, if he get’s hired to go abroad to Vassermark.”

“I don’t want to work for Master Wilhelm though! He uses me as a… a prop! A freak! And the moment someone sneers at me, he tosses me aside. Why would I want to work for someone who doesn’t care about me?”

“Don’t ask me, I work for an absentee goddess. From what I’m told though, the trick is becoming your own boss, so you don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself… and your wives. You’ve got that working against you, as a guy.”

“I don’t even want to get married!”

“That is the most childish thing I’ve heard come out of your mouth,” Aisha said, her chin in her hands and her gaze on his face.

Torn from his story, she forced upon him such self-consciousness that he cast about for another source of conversation. With the dropping sun, Captain Bodin offered him precisely that. The Sea Bird’s Rest was furling sails and slowing to a halt, for he had spied a beach, and there on the coast a fishing hamlet. “Seems we’re about to get some food, what luck.”

Aisha nearly remarked on that, a cutting blow of the tongue, but before she could enunciate the quip, her belly gurgled and growled. Her cheeks flushed even more than Lucius’ had. “That sounds great,” she said, jumping to her feet as the captain spun the wheel and sent the ship drifting to the shore.

And so, our first night of the journey began around cookfires beneath a stump of a lighthouse that had been passed between so many faiths even I couldn’t understand the iconography. Of course, Lucius and Aisha were busy keeping each other’s attention.

Deep Oil, and the associated incense braziers, was the secret weapon of Vassermark, bestowed unto them by their goddess. Or rather, the knowledge of how to harvest and process it was given to them by some of Saphira’s emissaries, a bounty from beneath the waves that, when burned, had an effect akin to a pesticide. By tradition, all ships at the mercy of the goddess, that is at the mercy of the ocean, kept a stock to burn for her protection. In truth, the chemical produces a poisonous irritant that forces away the great monsters of the depths, but only along those lanes of travel used. Without local knowledge, ships from Aillesterra had never been able to cross the sea to the heart of Vassermark.