CHAPTER 27: SMALL TREASURES

  As evening approached and after enough blood had been spilled to satiate even Briley, the three young traders sought out another kind of red liquid. Though their pixie-looking tavern keeper had another theory: it was known in Azir that red wine was the blood of gods, she said, too strong for mortal men, which was why it drove them silly and senseless. She filled their clay goblets to the brim and slid forward each patron’s divine toxin as if performing a playful ritual.

  Bertrand paid as Briley secured a small table in a back corner of the bar. They had returned to the Garden District for dinner and now drinks, in a spacious tavern down the road from their economical inn. Buildings here had more room to breathe compared to the cramped quarters of Sailor’s Rise. The wooden tables were longer, the ceilings higher, the space between customers easier to navigate. Azirians also had a preference for wine over beer and mead, Elias observed, sipping a satisfied sip.

  “Are they playing Sirens?” Bertrand was looking two tables over. Sirens called to him like, well, the name of the game. He could seldom resist her enticing melody.

  “Looking to make some more coin while you’re here?” Elias asked.

  “I’m not sure they’re even playing for relics.” Bertrand stared a little more closely, until he caught the candle-lit glimmer of the world’s favorite translucent currency. “What if they’re more serious players here? What if I only think I have a knack for the game because Sailor’s Rise is a city full of Sirens amateurs?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Briley said.

  “Just don’t bet too much,” Elias added, not that he needed to. Bertrand was the most risk-averse among them.

  Even so, it was the game itself that tugged at Bertrand like a kite caught in the wind. He resisted its pull a while longer, until they could see the bottom of their goblets and Briley promptly returned to the bar for another round—and Bertrand, Bertrand would be “right back.”

  Elias drummed his fingers into the semblance of an expanding song—he had always felt he could have been a musician, if only he’d learned to play an instrument and time was not so finite—while waiting patiently for his friends to return.

  Minutes passed.

  Elias crossed his arms and looked first to Briley, who surely should have been back by now, drinks in hand. She was still speaking to the talkative tavern keeper, three freshly poured goblets sitting on the bar between them. The barmaid was a slender, attractive woman of twenty or so, standing no taller than Briley’s chin as she leaned forward on her elbows and laughed hysterically. When had Briley ever said anything that funny, Elias wondered? He considered wandering over but, for once in his life, thought better of it.

  Instead, he turned his attention to Bertrand, who had questioned whether his skill at Sirens would apply across cultures. He needn’t have worried from what Elias could glean, seeing that Bertrand had already harvested a pile of relics larger than the modest one he had brought to the table. Elias doubted he would be “right back.”

  Indeed, he felt a little abandoned, a little insulted, a little thirsty.

  He was staring into his empty goblet when he heard the sound of someone pulling back the chair beside him. He looked up, expecting a familiar friend, and instead found himself staring into the deep, almond eyes of an unfamiliar acquaintance. And yet, unfamiliar though she was, and despite Elias having only spoken to the young woman twice before, she had since taken up residence in that most pleasant neighborhood of his overindulgent imagination.

  “Abigail,” he said her name.

  “Hello, Elias.” She was sitting a foot from him, perhaps to make clearer conversation. The Sirens table was growing rowdier.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

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  “I was walking by this tavern and a dozen others just like it, searching for something to do, and then I saw your sizable friend through the window.” She nodded toward Bertrand. “He seems to have a talent for the card game. I’m not a bad Sirens player myself, you know. Thought I might join him, but then I saw you, sitting in the back corner of the bar all alone, once again in need of social rescue.”

  “I’m hardly drowning,” Elias replied. “On the contrary, I am positively parched, but Briley is holding my drink hostage.” He eyed his red-haired friend at the bar as Abigail followed his gaze to the source of his scorn.

  “Who is this Briley you speak of?” she asked.

  “My business partner,” he said, “and my friend. She, Bertrand, and I started our own venture this past winter. The Two Worlds Trading Company.”

  “Of course.” Abigail raised both eyebrows. “You and your new ship.”

  Right, Elias remembered, his smitten heart sinking slowly into the acidy mire of his stomach. She was a Graystone. Was that the real reason she had come over here, he pondered, to gather intel, to plot her revenge. She did not seem like the type, but then again, he barely knew Abigail Graystone, hardly more than he knew her unlovable brother.

  Elias didn’t know what to say, but evidently the expression on his face said quite enough. What he did not expect was for her to laugh. “Oh, I don’t give a shit about that,” she said, quickly clearing the air. “Actually, I rather think they got precisely what they deserved. I told them this whole junkyard scheme of theirs would eventually backfire, that they should just pay their damn taxes, but my father is always looking for another inch of growth—wherever it can be found—and my brother is perpetually trying to prove himself. They’ll grow themselves back into the ground if they’re not careful, but no one listens to me.”

  “Why don’t they listen to you?” Elias asked, his relief exiting in a chuckle.

  “My father is an old, old-fashioned man,” she explained, “and my brother is simply too self-occupied to consider anyone else’s opinion.”

  “I take it you’re also in town for business?” he inquired. It made sense now that he thought about. Elias had been surprised to see her here, over a thousand miles from Sailor’s Rise, and yet the modern world, as he was starting to learn, wasn’t so much a map of geography as it was one of trade routes.

  “I like to tag along sometimes,” Abigail said. “The Graystone Company has been Sultan Atakan’s largest international importer and exporter for two decades now. My brother and I are half Azirian in case you hadn’t heard, on my mother’s side.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Elias admitted, though he could see it in her features. “The Two Worlds Trading Company is not one of the sultan’s largest importers and exporters, but if we can fly out of here with a single a contract, I’ll call that a success. I dare say we’ve earned a success.” He stared once more into his empty drink.

  “Starting a new business is never easy,” Abigail said, “or so I hear.”

  “You heard right.” He practically sighed the words. “Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think it would be stress-free. I just didn’t think we’d get attacked by pirates on our first cross-continental trading voyage.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “I’m sorry to hear that—and yet grateful you’re still here to tell me the tale.”

  “That certainly makes two of us. I wish I could say it wasn’t as serious as it sounds, but honestly, we barely made it out of that one alive, and not everyone did, but it was either us or them. The experience has been… hard on those two.” The truth of that struck Elias as he said it. “I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge Bertrand enjoying a few rounds of Sirens or Briley flirting with the barmaid. They deserve whatever small treasures Azir has in store for them. Perhaps I just need to order my own damn drink.”

  “You speak as if you’re their parent rather than their peer,” Abigail observed. “What about you? What small treasures lie in wait for lonesome Elias Vice?”

  “Well, your company is golden, Miss Graystone.” He couldn’t decide if his response sounded a little too sarcastic or boldly flirtatious and thought it best to let the mystery be.

  “I have an idea,” she said, doing likewise.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Let us go for a walk.”

  He nodded and smiled, and she smiled back.

  It was, after all, as good an idea as any. Elias stood up first and gestured toward the open door on the opposite side of the tavern. Abigail rose to her feet, a little shorter than the last time they had met absent her heels and once again better dressed for the occasion than her male companion, in a breezy, cream-colored linen one-piece. Elias looked as he often did, always cycling through the same frumpy white shirts, the same tan breeches—heaven forbid he spill something on them. Their brown color mostly hid the blood stains he had not yet completely cleaned from the fabric.

  They passed Briley on their way out, and Elias stopped to grab his drink from the bar. “Just going for a quick jaunt.” The tavern keeper met eyes with him. “I’ll bring this back,” he assured her, handing the goblet to Abigail before grabbing a second full one for himself. “Buy another on me.”

  The barmaid was already pouring before Briley could turn around and order. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

  Briley glanced back at Elias, not only red from the wine that so easily set fire to her pale complexion, but—yes, her business partner was sure of it—blushing too.

  Elias winked with his eyebrows, Briley scrunching hers in response, as he turned back toward Abigail and the bustling streets of Azir. They stepped outside into the evening air, so perfectly tepid that it felt like an invitation, wondering which torchlit path to follow.

  “Where do you want to go?” Abigail asked him.

  Anywhere with you, Elias said to himself. “Anywhere,” he said to her.