CHAPTER 37: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

  The footsteps were his mother’s, and Elias was sleeping in late again. And so long as he kept sleeping, a deeper part of him knew, that illusion could remain his reality. But living in a lucid dream was like holding onto sand, and slowly but surely he could feel the fantasy trickling through his fingers.

  In its place were blanks that needed filling, a puzzling prospect for a groggy mind.

  He started with sound. The footsteps were heavy, booted, and intermittent, always followed by a closing door and the thunk of an iron bolt. They were definitely not his mother’s.

  He opened his eyes, his vision blurry, the world around him a murky fusion of gray and brown. The right side of his face was cold. The hard, stone ground he lay upon was definitely not his bed.

  He tried to push himself upward, but his body was still weak, and perhaps even more worryingly, he could not separate his hands. They were bound together with something coarse, rough against his wrists. Rope. No, this definitely was not home.

  Elias rocked his body into a sitting position as he surveyed the small, windowless room he now found himself in, his memory stitching itself back together like a healing wound. The Sapphire Spirit had been flying over the Katumala Territory low on fuel, he recalled. They had spotted what looked like a village in the middle of the forest before landing in a nearby river. Elias had ventured into the woods with Bertrand and Jalander on a quest for cobrium. There had been a geyser—and then a dart in his neck.

  What sort of community exists in the middle of nowhere, roadless and disconnected from the world, they had wondered? A community that did not trust uninvited visitors, it would appear. On the bright side, he wasn’t dead. They were not complete barbarians.

  Though they were hardly refined interior decorators, if his unadorned room was anything to go by. Its stone walls were rough and uneven, and Elias quickly surmised that he was likely in a cave. The plank door had been bolted shut, and he was presently all alone, waiting for the footsteps, save for a single wooden chair that had likewise seen better days.

  Where was Bertrand? Where was Jalander? Locked away in similar rooms, he hoped, unless of course their captors had only needed one man alive. Unless he was here merely to give them information, a lemon to be squeezed, drained, and discarded.

  His worried thoughts were probably not helping matters. When he heard footsteps approaching the door once more, he considered but decided against equipping himself with the chair. It would not have worked very well with his hands bound, nor would he have made a positive first impression. His actual weapons, his pistol and his rapier, were nowhere in sight.

  He heard the iron bolt again. Gravity alone seemed to open the plank door on its squeaky hinges, and in its empty frame stood a woman with ashen hair and a mossy cape.

  The woman approached and analyzed him, holding back her words. Elias started to stand up, but vertigo warned him against it. He fell back on his ass, trying to make it look intentional. The woman seated herself on the solitary chair, closer to his level but still staring down at him with eyes of an uncommonly pale gray.

  “Why are you here?” Her voice was deep and raspy, though Elias could not quite discern her age. She looked as old as seventy and as strong as thirty, her terracotta skin lined but taught, her brow heavy but her gaze sharp.

  “Cobrium,” he told her, his parched voice sounding a little raspy too.

  “What do the Valshynar want with us?”

  “What?” Elias looked as confused as he was.

  “Do not waste my time, child.”

  “I’m not a child.” Even at a time like this, the comment visibly offended him. “And I’m not Valshynarian. Our airship was low on fuel. We saw your village from the sky and thought maybe you would have some to spare. We can trade. We have relics.”

  “I do not believe you,” she said.

  “And why exactly do you not believe me?” He shrugged his shoulders, his hands still bound behind him.

  “Because I know what you are. Your Southlander friend too. We have made a home out here so that we may live peaceful yet honest lives. We harm no one. But that is not enough for you, is it? Nothing is ever enough for you.”

  His situation, while still wholly terrifying, flipped like a coin. Now it was not only scary but also ironic—funny, even—though he questioned whether he could really tell this woman the truth. She already assumed he was Valshynar, he supposed, and he could sense it now: that she was like him. Older and almost certainly more powerful, but a collector drafting her own destiny in the shadow of their omnipresent torchlight.

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  “You and I are of a kind,” he told her in the end. “I discovered that I could consume relics a year and a half ago all on my own. Or not entirely on my own. Jalander is an old friend of my father, and he found me after I moved to Sailor’s Rise. He has kept my secret safe from the Valshynar ever since, and I know he will keep yours too.”

  Her gray eyes narrowed. “Why should I trust you?”

  Elias was desperate for evidence, but his pockets felt empty, and his hands were still bound behind him. The only item he could reach was the ring on his finger. They had left him that. Though come to think of it, perhaps the memento would mean something to her. “My ring,” he said, nodding backward. “Let me show it to you.”

  The woman stood up from her chair and walked behind him. He could feel her grabbing his hand and twisting his ring, but she did not cut him free—not yet.

  “Do you recognize the signet?” Elias asked her. He could tell she was still glaring at it.

  “Your petty schools were never my concern nor any concern of my lineage,” she eventually said, standing back up, circling him rather than returning to her seat. “We learn from the history of this planet, from stories passed down over centuries. We are keepers of knowledge. The Valshynar are controllers.”

  “I agree,” Elias pleaded with her. “Whatever you think of the Five Great Schools, why would a dogmatic Valshynar wear an old, dented Serpent Moon School ring?”

  “Your former schools were not so great, and they numbered far more than five,” she said, pacing now. “I do not know. Perhaps it is an old souvenir of yours.”

  “It was a gift passed down to me from my mother, but it once belonged to my father,” he explained. “I didn’t know what it meant at first. I do now.”

  In response to this revelation, she said nothing, though her ceaseless pacing slowed.

  “Where are my friends?” he asked.

  “In other rooms,” she answered. “The large one does not seem to know anything.”

  “He doesn’t,” he assured her. “Trust me. Bertrand is just my business partner. And if I were Valshynarian, why would I have a business partner at all, especially one who clearly knows nothing about any of this? You understand how they operate. They would never allow that. I’m just like you: living my life outside their grasp, praying I slip through their fingers.”

  She finally stilled, standing directly behind him, her breath on his neck. Elias felt the tension around his wrists slacken as cut rope fell to the ground and she told him to stand up.

  He managed standing with far less difficulty this time as he stretched his cramped limbs and rubbed the red marks that had formed around his wrists. “Thank you,” he exhaled. “I’m Elias, by the way.”

  “Mitra,” she replied, beckoning him toward the open door. “I cannot spare much cobrium. Come.”

  Elias let her lead the way, checking his pockets as they walked. They had left him no relics nor even his compass—only a missed copper in the deep divot of his front pocket. He pulled out the tarnished piece and flicked it into a whirling blur. The coin crested his shoulder and landed soundlessly in the hand behind his back.

  * * *

  Elias was relieved to see his friends in good health, but his fascination took center stage as Mitra led their reunited party out of a dank cave and into the wider village, for a village it was. Its wooden structures were basic but solid, built with entire logs and stone chimneys: the source of the smoke they had first spotted from the sky. Its inhabitants wore the same mossy capes—practical and ideal for blending into a forest—but their physical similarities ran no deeper than their clothing. Like certain districts in Sailor’s Rise, this tiny village was the world in a single place, a community of diverse lineages that could have branched out like a willow tree over the Great Continent, an unusual quality for an extremely remote town. Elias guessed that no more than a hundred people lived here, and at least a dozen of them were staring at him.

  “They are unaccustomed to outsiders,” Mitra said, “though we are not entirely cut off from civilization. We have a small airship hidden in the forest nearby, which we use only for essentials and emergencies.”

  They stopped at the heart of the tree-ringed village: a naturally formed, stone-lined pool, steam rising from its turquoise surface like morning mist. Two villagers were lounging in its waters, looking less comfortable than they probably would have liked.

  “They are friendly,” Mitra said to them, which seemed to assuage any concerns. Such was their trust in her, apparently. “You said you needed cobrium.” She turned back toward Elias, Bertrand, and Jalander. “We may have some to spare. Perhaps enough to get you back to Sailor’s Rise, though I cannot be certain. What can you trade for it in return?”

  “Relics,” Elias said. “We can pay you a fair price, not that we’re in a strong position to negotiate, I realize. We also have a lot of nickel on board, but the nickel is a client’s shipment, and I would really rather not lose their business.”

  Mitra pondered this until her quiet contemplation grew almost uncomfortable. “Keep your relics,” she said at last. “We occasionally find ourselves in Sailor’s Rise. One day, I will ask a favor of you, and you shall repay me then.”

  As Elias had mentioned, they were not in a strong negotiating position. He and Bertrand exchanged an uneasy glance, each looking resigned to the only offer on the proverbial table. They agreed.

  “The cobrium is stored aboard our ship, so we will require a couple of hours to retrieve it,” Mitra told them. “Make yourselves at home until then, and feel free to enjoy the hot spring.” She gestured toward its inviting waters.

  Bertrand was already eyeing it. “I didn’t bring anything to wear.”

  “Then wear nothing,” Mitra said. “Look where you are.”

  They were, indeed, in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere. Elias noticed that the villagers already submerged in the pool, a man and a woman, were as naked as newborns, the water blurring only the finer points of detail. It would take Elias a second to adjust. Shame was a popular commodity in Sailor’s Rise.

  For his part, Jalander needed no adjustment nor further invitation. He was already peeling off layers. “We have hot springs in the Southlands,” he said, kicking off a boot. “I have missed them dearly.”

  Before Elias could work up the courage to break himself free of yet another albeit more socially constructed prison, Mitra rested a hand on his still-garmented shoulder. “I could use help retrieving the cobrium. Would you care to join me?”

  Elias kept his clothes on and nodded a very assured nod.