Captain Bodin cornered me the evening after Lucius’ capture, when I made the mistake of going to get dinner. “What have you been doing to the birds? Is it some kind of stigmata?”

I would have been more irritated by the interruption if the food had been appetizing in the least. They were handing out soldiering biscuits, those dreadful bricks of hardtack. “I’m tracking how close the other ship is to us.”

He laughed in my face. “I can damn well see how close they are to us. The secondary bow snapped. We’re at half sail. Damn near standing still. They could be on us as soon as they feel like it. What good is your tracking going to do us?”

“About as much as your complaining.” I didn’t bother explaining what I had actually been doing. He had no need for that information.

“We’re still between sea lanes. You might not have noticed, you foreigner(1), but we’re sitting bait for another whale hunter to show up. And who’s going to save us then?”

“You have the poison.”

“It’s all been dumped. You only brewed enough for a normal detour, not for this laggardly mess.”

“I believe it is your responsibility to navigate us safely, not mine. I’m a passenger, an engineer and a scholar, not a sailor.”

He jabbed me in the chest with his calloused finger. “You’re the reason we’re in this mess!”

Aisha said, “It was my idea, not his.” She had been sitting on a crate set beside the crippled mast. An appropriate height for sitting, but what lay beneath her rear was spears packed in straw to keep their edges keen. Normally, they were kept below deck because normally the seas were safe. The closer the pirates had come to us, the more the crew had wanted their defenses at hand.

Captain Bodin scowled. It was clear he was more comfortable taking out his frustrations against me than her, but he turned on her all the same. “Then, do you have a means of escape for us?”

“If they wanted to overtake us, they would have by now. They’re not interested in us, or this ship, or what we have aboard. All they want is the path north. I say we keep the way we’ve been going. Stay between the sea lanes. If we’re lucky, the next monster will attack them instead of us. It’s like a coin toss, isn’t it?”

“I’d never bet my life on a coin toss.”

“But you would fight outnumbered? Against foreigners with stigmata you know nothing about? You don’t even have your best fighter anymore.”

“Outnumbered? Hah! You don’t know that. This ship is fully manned, and larger too–”

“Clumsier is what it is. Those pirates are faster than us.”

“Because they have oarsmen if they fall behind!”

“So they outnumber us!”

“One free man is worth three slaves.”

“But they have a sailing crew too! Don’t let your pride blind you. A coin toss is better chances than a fight.”

By this time, I had chewed apart my first bite of biscuit, and spoke up. “Our chances will actually be better than a coin toss. Now that I have a better grasp on this sea monster, I will be able to send it away.” it required something else to distract it with, either the pirate ship or a whale pod, but it made our chances far better than a coin toss. Excluding a gambler’s coin anyways. Those show up whichever side they wish. “But there are two other plausible scenarios now.”

“Oh really? And what are those?” Captain Bodin asked, his tone like he was entertaining a failing con artist.

I held up two fingers. “First, we might come upon a patrolling naval ship. If they see us so far out from the sea lanes, they’ll take us for brigands or the like. Getting arrested by them will preserve our lives.” I put my middle finger down. “Or, the pirates catch up to us and extract the path through torture.”

That took the color from his face, along with the smug and the spite and everything else. Left him a shell of a man, and gave me the opening I needed to escape the deck and return to my room. Sadly, this did not bring me solace. The young doctor was in my room. With all the emotions above deck, I had nearly forgotten, and was soon accosted with questions once more.

“How did you learn this organ’s function? What tools did you use to determine this scale’s composition? Why does this carry more memory than that? Are these runes the same as stigmata?” and on he went, extracting information from me in exchange for his steady hand carving logic circuits into the recovered bits of sea boa.

Then he asked me a question which provoked some thought from me. “How was this information lost from the world if you knew it so long ago?”

I could have given him the trite answer, that for many years it was too expensive to make copies of scrolls. It was certainly a correct answer, when coupled with a few fires here and there, along with mold and vermin doing their share of damage. Papyrus had a shelf life much shorter than the vellum used for temple texts. Sammy had worked hard enough to earn a better answer however. He was quickly becoming a sort of fresh apprentice, and I figured I could make use of him.

I asked, “Do you think smart people live longer?”

His hands stopped moving. He frowned at his tools and the patterns he had copied into the monster flesh. “It would keep you from dying to something stupid, wouldn’t it?”

“You just survived a small war. You saw plenty of men, smart and dumb alike, live and die. All of it, generally speaking, over something dumb. The auxiliaries were conscripts, caught up in the demands of nobility by virtue of their place of birth. The voluntaries did the math when they signed up that the money they would get paid would be worth the risk. Then the dice fell, some lived and some died. The only person whose intelligence mattered was the one making decisions on where to march, how to sneak around danger, how to trick the enemies, and so on.”

“Lucius.”

“As well as Medorosa and his various subordinates. The intelligence of the fighters mattered far less than their ability to endure an empty stomach, sores on their feet, and uncomfortable beds. It’s quite likely that the ones favored were in fact those of dull wit. The less going on between their ears, the easier they would conserve their strength to win the fight at the end.”

“But not all people go to war.”

“You think being smart helps in politics? It gets you an arrow in the back, or poison in your drink. You can’t assassinate all of your enemies, so you have to take out the most dangerous ones. Therefor you–”

“Kill the smart ones,” he agreed. “But, surely it’s better to be smart.”

“Certainly. It just doesn’t mean it extends your life.”

“Surely you aren’t saying it’s bad to be smart.”

“Not in the least.”

He frowned. “But you are saying it gets you killed.”

I grinned. “Only if people know you’re smart. You’re smart yourself, so let me ask you a question. Has anyone ever in your life liked you better because you were smart? Setting aside people like me who make their judgements on utility, even on interpersonal levels, it repulses people because nobody likes to be another's inferior in intellect. Not a person they have to spend particular time with at least. Just ask yourself, how many friends does a librarian have?”

“Can’t say I know very many librarians.”

“Well, it’s not many, and typically only because they attract people of their own intellect. My point is, the smartest people know better than to let on that fact, because the first thing they realize is how little they know. If they know they’re wrong, what point is there in correcting someone assured of their own fallacy? And so, over many years, with even the slightest confounding problems, it’s quite easy for knowledge to be lost. Sometimes, such knowledge is even its own destruction.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“Because I haven’t picked any fights lately.”

Jacque was a very smart man, but not yet to the level of brilliance where he could have saved himself. Hardly any amount of intelligence could have prepared him for what transpired back in Podrest after I departed from him. Mere weeks apart, he elated in the highest joy and then the lowest despair a man could know. While some might speculate about outlandish scenarios of torture and loss, there is one simple reality that recurs throughout time and civilization.

Ruby was with his child, and then lost it.

I doubt there was any particular reason, which plagued the writer’s mind all the worse. It didn’t fit into his schema of life, of people, of proper behavior. The world had teased him and crushed him Worse, it made the reality of their relationship undeniable to Ruby’s sisters, and their disgust for him multiplied.

Jacque drank himself stupid in their wine cellar. They kicked him out of the palace after that. His name was known in town and he opened lines of credits at taverns and pubs, each proprietor expecting the Ashe family to repay his debts. This only lasted until word of his disgrace spread around town. The precise cause was kept confidential, and even he did not profess what had happened, no matter who asked. The words stuck in his throat.

When at last he made up his mind, he had to steal himself back into the palace. Even the guards didn’t want to let him in, but his escapades with the young Ashe had more than once required some nimbleness and youth on his part, so he knew which windows were left unlatched and which walls could be scaled and so on. So on a night where he forewent the wine, and carried with him only a certain determination to seek out a more primitive truth the only way he knew how, he returned to his paramore.

She had grown faint since their departing, spending most of her days in bed as she was that night, as steeped in melancholy as he had been in alcohol. This left her with a clearness of mind, unfiltered even by the haze of love, and made for a very detailed journal of the events afterward. “You came back,” was her greeting.

“I must have flattered myself to think that I was acting out of character tonight,” he said, strolling across the rugs and taking a seat beside the viewing window. It was a beautiful thing, but the lacing and felt had worn thin from many years of taking tea there. His picking at it only served to unravel it faster. “I thought that I had reasoned my way above such common human things, and that tonight might be something of an adventure.”

“Returning to my bedside is hardly an adventure, Jacque.”

“Indeed. In some ways, it is a paradise I should always seek, time and time again. But, I think it will be some time before I ever come here again.”

“My sisters won’t hold their ire forever. Only…”

“Long enough to marry you off to some noble.”

She nodded.

“That’s what they think is proper, and I no longer have the heart to argue them out of it. No matter what I say, they have two recourses now. First, to society at large. By which, they of course mean the other nobles, the other keepers of power who support one another above the common man. And second, they believe themselves armed with proof that the goddesses disapprove of us as well.”

“Oh, Jacque… it wasn’t the goddesses. These things happen sometimes. I wasn’t being exactly responsible with myself before I knew–”

“Don’t blame yourself, Ruby! It’s better to curse the divine than that, at least they won’t mind the admonition. What’s more, the truth doesn’t matter. Only the perception, the justifications, what they can say to other people. They have a pretext to turn the swords of the guards against me, against us. What strength do words have against steel?”

“But it is words that motivates that steel!”

“No, what motivates that violence is self-interest. Maybe I was wrong about these things, about people and society. There’s something astoundingly real about… well, about the reality we find ourselves in! Humans simply aren’t rational. They are two-faced opportunists. The same man will pound his chest and proclaim his loyalty to Jarnmark in the face of the guards, and a moment later haggle down smuggled liquor to sell to those very same guards while talking about how the Ashe family had no right to put such and such tariffs in place.”

“Jacque, you can hardly blame people for inconsistency when the world is inconsistent. They have no framing, no true guidance. Even the gods don’t agree. That’s what makes your writing so compelling.”

“My writing didn’t save our child,” he said, sending both of them into a malaise. “I think perhaps that my work has been too theoretical.”

“What do you mean?”

He frowned and waved his hand through the air. “Do you recall that scholar who visited some months ago? I’ve been thinking of him, of his travels. He pursues knowledge and takes action with it! If nothing else, he spreads what he learns. That man has changed the world, whether he knows it or not, and learned a hundred things more than I can cooped up in a place like this.”

Ruby blinked. She caught the main thrust of his words and almost fell out of her bed when she moved towards him. “No, no Jacque, you can’t mean to leave me?”

He stood up and clasped his hands behind his back. “Ruby, you know I can’t stay regardless. I need to point myself towards something, and take action to fill in these gaps of reason I have.”

“Just stay a few more months with me! Some weeks at least. Jacque, don’t make this goodbye. Please, I can’t take that. Please, don’t do that to me.” Tears pooled in her eyes and her cheeks swelled scarlet as she dug her nails into the sheets of her bed to keep herself upright.

Jacque kept himself resolute. “It won’t be for long, my love. I’m going to the capital, to the high cathedral. I will seek an audience with the emissary of Saphira and get some answers.” He never did come back to her.

Unfortunately for humanity, he left behind his writings when he left, and they ended up in printed circulation through all the wrong hands.