I.iii

Driftwood

Kal packed her belongings—including the strange ring and a lot of smoked fish wrapped in palm leaves—into a waterproof sealskin bag, which she threw into the bottom of her coracle. She wasn’t much of a sailor, but she didn’t need to be—the coracle was almost spherical, and if she picked the right current to launch herself into, she could be in Port Black in three days, with little to no effort on her part.

Port Black! Scene of old battles and former lovers; Kal hadn’t been back for almost a year now. She had meant to, but the longer she put it off, the more she wondered if she would ever go back. She was happy alone, and the longer she spent in her new home, the further behind her she could put her old life. But now … her old life had come to find her instead, and all she could do now was to follow the trail backwards and attempt to find whatever it was that had sent assassins after her. She had to find whatever tiny ember in her past she had failed to rake over and left burning.

Find it, then stamp it out.

Port Black had once been a pirate town, but now the pirates had been thrown out and mostly honest trade was once more the order of the day. The Republic had reached out with its grasping claws from Amaranthium, three thousand miles away across the Silver Sea, and claimed Port Black as its own. The new governor enforced Republic rule, and all its associated tariffs, laws and embargoes.

And now, as Kal floated alongside the wharf, evidence of the town’s new status was clear. Frigates and clippers were anchored with their prows facing land, rather than out to sea for a fast getaway. The shouts and insults of criminals hawking stolen goods had been replaced by the shouts and insults of fisherfolk, merchants and traders. New wooden warehouses and brick guild halls were sprouting up everywhere, putting the old ramshackle taverns and stone smugglers’ dens in the shade. On the lush hills above town, trees were being cleared for outrageously palatial mansions.

And over the town hung, a cold grey mist. Instead of rolling down the hills or blowing in from the bay, it seemed to rise up out of the center of town itself. It meant nothing to Kal, and so she ignored it, but in hindsight it was the first warning that she maybe should have stayed on her island.

She abandoned her coracle (like umbrellas in Amaranthium, you never owned one, you just borrowed one from the communal pool)  and sprang up onto the quay. Kal could have bought (or stolen) anything she wanted right then and there—from tea from Indux, to Nubaran coffee; dark wood furniture from the Junglelands, or one-hundred-percent-proof zalka from Zorronov. The world’s bounty was on display, but right now she craved something simpler … and cheaper.

The sun fought its way through the mist and cast a soft light on the brightly painted buildings; it was almost picturesque, but the streets were a bit too busy with people in a hurry, and glancing down an alleyway Kal saw stray dogs rolling about and fighting over bones. The old colourful murals of laughing devils and tricksy demons from the island’s folklore had now been left to fade, and they now somehow looked appropriately menacing. Kal shivered as she bundled down a street where the sun didn’t reach, and she swore when piss dripped from a gutter above and hit her arm.

Following her nose, she dropped into a new (to her) harbour beer hall. A large brick and timber cube with a rough faded facade nailed on. A sign painted in bright white load line paint spelled out DRIFTWOOD.  Inside, sailors and captains were eating and drinking on long shared tables, and boys and girls hauled plates of steaming food and yellow ale to the tables. Further back in the cavernous space, a band was making a lot of noise with fiddles, and people were dancing and standing around other tables of people playing cards. A group of loud, drunk sailors were throwing darts and knives at targets on the back wall. Men and women dragged women and men in and out of private booths on either side. Was there anything that didn’t happen here? It was definitely Kal’s kind of place: somewhere she could blend in, observe, pick up rumours and gossip, and hopefully enjoy a decent drink.

A man in a spotless apron (Kal deduced he worked here, but not in the kitchen) directed her to a stool at the end of the emptiest table.

‘Lamb?’ she grunted. Making polite conversation was something she was going to have to relearn after so long away from civilisation.

‘Spiced shanks, so soft they’ll fall off the bone if you so much as look at them,’ the fake cook said.

‘Bring me two helpings,’ Kal ordered. She was always hungry at the best of times, but now her mouth was literally watering at the prospect of something to eat other than fish or tough, stringy wild boar.

The food came in short order. It wasn’t the divine delicacy Kal had been promised, but it did the job. As she wolfed it down, she scanned the tavern, watching people come and go, and listening to the chatter and laughter.

When she had licked her plate clean and downed a few weak beers, Kal felt ready for action. She needed information, and therefore she needed to talk to people. And the best way to talk to several different people at the same time who all had their ear to the streets was to drop yourself into the middle of a table of gamblers.

Kal had half an eye on a rowdy table of four, and when one guy went broke and got up and shuffled away, tail between his legs, Kal drained her pint and hurried over to claim the empty seat. The men and women at the table were well-dressed and well-funded, and all three of them gave Kal a suspicious glance. Perhaps she should have bathed first. But when she emptied her life savings onto the table, the game resumed as if time was short.