Authors: Miyuki Miyabe
He closed his eyes and stood on the snowy plain with his head held high. He raised his sword to the heavens. And, as though it had been waiting just for him, a golden ray cut through the thick layer of clouds. Wataru was bathed with joyous light.
Only two gemstones to go.
The port town of Sono.
In a lonely corner of the wharf, a warehouse with a discolored tin roof stood silently. Rain pipes rusted by the relentless sea breeze dangled from the eaves. With each gust of wind, the pipes knocked together in a mournful rattle. The sea looked dead, the color of an old bruise. The smell of brine swept through the mostly deserted streets. Even though Sono was a port town, there was no hustle and bustle there. The people who walked the winding streets did so with a sluggish gait.
Sono couldn’t keep up with the changing times. Too late did it think to attract the sea merchants that prospered with the development of the sailship. Too late did it establish itself as a dependable land route for merchants. Once a fishing town, Sono also lacked the know-how to process goods the northern and southern continents wanted. Those who tried to trade soon realized that the same warehouses they used for holding fish couldn’t be used for cloth and furniture. The antiques sold to sailship merchants required delicate handling, but the thick-fingered fishermen of Sono simply lacked the skill needed to ensure safe handling. In desperation, they looked for ways they could accept goods at their port and then ship them to other towns for restoration and resale—they held meetings and formed committees that bickered into the late hours of night. Unfortunately for Sono, sailship merchants have a keen nose for incompetence, and they soon took their business to brighter ports.
The working men of Sono were not true seafarers, after all. They were merely fishermen. When industry clouded the waters and they saw they could no longer make their living off the sea, they cut their lines and left town. Those who remained clung to their ever-thinning purses as the economy of Sono sputtered and stalled.
Yet, as time passed, and the industrial and shipping ports of Hataya and Dakla saw their fortunes peak, the USN government began to regulate and control the shipping business in the busier towns. Ironically, fortune smiled upon the little port of Sono. In the wake of regulation, there were many sailship merchants without the wherewithal to get official permits for trade. These were men of little means and even less influence with the government. With courage and eagerness, these businessmen brought their own special kind of industry to Sono.
Smuggling.
Within a few years, the black market became a vital source of income for the town. Officially, no one knew about it, yet those looking for alternate, non-government-regulated sea routes found friends in Sono. Smuggling was the only means left for the people of Sono to keep their town alive. The business carried the promise of added value too: here there were thrills one couldn’t find in other towns by other means.
The warehouses that stood shoulder to shoulder facing the sea looked like itinerant workers trawling for employment. One of these warehouses bore a clenched-fist icon—the trademark of a small shipping company. The office on the second floor was drenched with the stench of sea and mold, and the warped window frames gave it a rather shabby look. But not a single employee cared a whit about the appearance of their office space. The old ankha man who ran the company lived on a ship moored in the harbor. This saved him the money it would take to buy or rent other lodgings. Plus, he could maintain the ship himself, thus saving even more money.
No employees or customers ever came to the office. It was simply a holding tank for anyone who desired secret passage to the northern continent. Since newcomers to Sono attracted a lot of attention, the captain had to accept the fact that it was safer to keep his clients locked away and out of sight. He didn’t want Highlanders sniffing around his business.
It wasn’t such a burden, in any case. Ships could make the passage northward only three or four times a year. It was not as though he had to hide someone year-round. Usually, the time between when clients arrived and when they left was only a few nights—four or five at the most. As soon as the starseers gave word that weather was favorable, he would cram his clients into the bottom of his sailship, and head out. After that, he would never have to see them again.
But this latest customer proved a bit more trouble.
He was a young man, and he was in an incredible hurry. He kept saying he wanted to go to the north, the tone of his voice almost threatening. He wanted to leave that very night, even though he had arrived several days before any ship could hope to make the crossing. In the end, the captain had lost his temper with the man.
The ships can’t go if the winds don’t blow, he shouted. Even when the time was right, they had to go out in such a way as to not catch the attention of the watchful branch. If those conditions weren’t satisfactory, said the captain, the man was welcome to go elsewhere. At that, the man flew into a rage and kicked a chair against the wall. When he tried to leave the warehouse, he fell down the stairs. It wasn’t that his foot slipped—he had simply collapsed. In his excitement, he seemed to have gotten dizzy and then simply passed out.
The captain was at a loss. He could kick the man out on the street, but if word of suspicious behavior reached the local branch, they would surely come sniffing around. The smugglers had long since learned the art of buying the law’s favor. But there were some among the Highlanders who could not be bought, and, on occasion, the branch in Sono had to make some arrests to please the high chief in Arikita. One could never tell when a crackdown was coming. Caution was mandatory.
There was nothing to be done about it. The captain dragged the unconscious young man back into his office and put him on the thread-bare couch. The man had been carrying very few possessions. The only thing he clutched was a bundle of paper that he held in his arms like it was more important than life itself. He was terribly thin, and the clothes he wore were in rags. The sole of his one shoe was missing, and his foot was covered with blisters. There were cuts on his hands too, like a rope burns, making the captain wonder if he had been climbing some mountain somewhere.
Stranger still was that even before the young man had regained consciousness, another person came asking after him—this one a boy. He looked like an ankha starseer, or perhaps he was actually a sorcerer. He wore a long black robe that went down to his ankles, and he carried a staff topped with a heavylooking gem. Yet he was only eleven or twelve years old at the most. He, too, wanted to go north.
“You with him?” The captain asked.
The boy glanced at the pale face of the young man lying on the floor. “No, not with him. I merely knew that he was going north, and that if I followed him, I could go there as well.”
From the utter lack of concern in the boy’s voice, the captain concluded that he actually didn’t know the other man. When he had looked at him he hadn’t raised so much as an eyebrow. Pretty cold for such a young one, the captain thought.
But the boy who looked like a sorcerer said he had money. The captain, not being in the business of taking people at their word, took a down payment. He was about to ask how the boy had made the money when he thought better of it.
On second thought, I don’t really want to know.
The youngster helped himself to the paper bundle the unconscious man had held so dearly. He nodded and smiled as he examined its contents.
“What’s that, then?” the captain asked.
“None of your business.”
“Hmph, you sure are a brazen lad, aren’t you.”
“I’m a customer.”
The contents of the package appeared to be some sort of diagram, but of what, the captain couldn’t say.
When, at last, the young man regained consciousness, he began speaking earnestly and in a hushed tone with the boy. The captain brought food and water up to the office and caught snatches of their conversation. It was mostly the boy who was speaking.
“I heard about you from the Precept-King…”
“The mirror will be broken for sure…”
“I don’t care what it is you want…”
No matter what he said, the boy always seemed aloof and uncaring—though the words he said made little sense. The young man seemed utterly cowed and unable to put up much of a defense. Before long he was bowing his head and begging the boy to join him on his journey northward. It turned out that the young man’s down payment to the captain had been the whole of his funds.
He was going to take passage and leave me short half my income
for the month.
Because of the unusual circumstances, the captain took great pains to keep his clients in the office and out of sight. Thankfully, the boy and the young man did not seem interested in venturing outside at all. This worked well for the captain, who didn’t fancy spending any more time with them than he had to. Whenever he did have to say something, the boy favored him with a look cold enough to freeze a man solid.
The oddness of the situation grew daily. As it happened, the boy seemed quite well-heeled for his age, and his staff surely had value. The captain, for his part, began having thoughts about stealing the staff and selling it for some extra money.
Of course, the captain kept his thoughts to himself. There could be no way the boy suspected anything. But once when he was bringing his clients their meal, the captain’s eyes drifted over to the staff leaning against the wall. Quite suddenly, one of the crude desks that sat in the office leaped from where it was standing, slid across the uneven floorboards, and slammed into the wall between the captain and the staff. No one had pushed it; it moved by itself. The captain was shocked.
Chuckling to himself, the boy sat on the tattered sofa, dangling his feet over one of the armrests. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said. Then, just as suddenly, the desk jumped back to where it had been before. A jar of ink and an old pen stand clattered to the floor.
The gemstone on top of the staff glowed: first red, then a light green, then blue, and finally amber.
Furiously mumbling a prayer to the Goddess under his breath, the captain fled the room.
He really is a sorcerer. That really was magic. Oh, what have I gotten myself into?
Already it had been five days since these two strange clients had arrived.
Opening the door to the warehouse and going inside, the captain drew the security bar firmly shut behind him. This was his custom whenever he had clients. He began the climb up to the second-floor office.
Word had come at last. They would leave after sunset that night. To be honest, the captain was relieved. He wanted to get these two out of his office as soon as possible. On the other hand, the thought of spending two weeks at sea with the young sorcerer gave the captain indigestion.
It may be high time
for me to start looking for another profession.
He had made it to the first landing on the stairs when he heard someone yelp in pain. The captain froze.
What was that? Whose voice was that? What is that little sorcerer up to now?
For a moment, he didn’t know what to do. Should he run upstairs to see what the problem was? Or should he run downstairs to safety? In that instant of indecision, he heard another sound, this time more like a sobbing sigh. Then there was a shout, and the tinted glass window of his office shattered. A moment later, the door itself swung outward, slamming into the wall. Shards of glass fell down the stairs, coming to rest at the captain’s feet.
The captain looked stunned. If a cold wind—impossibly cold—hadn’t blown down from the top of the staircase, he might have stood there forever. As it was, the brisk sting of the wind on his face brought him back to his senses. He began crawling up the stairs on all fours, brushing shards of glass off his face, out of his hair and whiskers.
“Wh-what in the name of chaos was that?!” he shouted, fearfully sticking his head through the office door. Then, he sneezed. A wind cold as ice was blasting against his face. It felt like his ears would freeze off.
The boy was standing against the wall. Something was curled up at his feet.
A lump of ice.
It was shaped like a person. The body was twisted, and the expression on his face was one of abject fear.
“What…is that?”
The boy shrugged. “Your customer.”
“Th-th-that young man?”
“Did you have another?”
Still on the floor, the captain crawled like an infant over to where the boy was standing. “What happened? Why did he freeze? Why is it so cold in here?” The captain looked up at the sorcerer, his eyes wide. “Did you do this? Y-you cast a spell on him, didn’t you?”
“Not I.” The boy sorcerer shook his head. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was judgment.”
“Judgment?”
“Yes, you know, the wrath of the heavens and all that. Looks like the Goddess finally passed judgment on Dela Rubesi and this one here tried to escape. Quite clearly, he failed.” The boy sorcerer turned with a whirl of his black cloak and picked up the bundle of papers from beside the frozen man’s pillow.
“You can’t take that…”
“Why not? It’s certainly not doing him any good now. But I may have some use for it.”