On their fifth afternoon out of Laka’al, when their numerous empty water barrels are starting to become a concern, Tuanaki finally comes into view. It’s not a huge island, but not a tiny one, either. The surface is dominated by a dormant volcano, and sheer mountain ridges divide the island in distinct segments. In the largest space between two ridges is nestled a small but vibrant community that is clearly taking advantage of the abundance in the local waters. There isn’t much open area here for expansive farms, and it’s far enough south that the weather gets properly chilly in the winter. Come July, the ground will even freeze, and for once, Alice knows she’ll appreciate her leather jacket on the ground.
Instead of a proper skyport like the main belt islands, all Tuanaki has is a single landing platform in the middle of a large, empty clearing. The platform has a cargo lift and a small area to stand on while transferring cargo. Fortunately, there aren’t any other airships around, so the Nameless has no trouble finding a secure position to tether against. While Gunny is on the platform tying them down, Mal and Alice are standing on the deck, looking out over the town.
The arrival of an airship is clearly a big ordeal, and the pair can see a mob slowly growing from the townsfolk. “I don’t like the looks of that,” Mal says. “That’s the kind of mob that turns bad quickly.” He leans over the railing and shouts down to Gunny. “I’m coming down!”
“Me, too,” Alice says immediately.
“No, you should stay here,” Mal says.
“And miss the first bit of excitement in days? No thanks. And believe me, I’ve been in hairy situations before. I can handle myself, I promise.”
Mal sighs. “Fine. You can come, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when it gets bad.” Without further ado, he climbs over the rail and slowly begins to descend the rope ladder they’d slung over the side in preparation for Gunny to return. Alice follows him, and with the three of them crowding the watchtower, the townsfolk who approach them remain on the ground twenty feet below them.
Finally, their designated spokesperson arrives. He is a middle-aged man, decently but simply dressed. Clearly this man is used to speaking before a crowd, and has no trouble projecting his voice so the visitors can hear him clearly. “Hail, travelers! I am Gavin, the mayor of Tuanaki! What wares have you brought us?”
“We have brought no wares to sell,” Mal shouts back, and Alice is surprised at how comfortable he is to be addressing a mob that is quickly growing discontented. “We were blown off course tying to avoid blacksails, and we were hoping to purchase some supplies before heading on our way.”
There’s a brief swell in the noise of the murmuring crowd as the locals pass this information back and forth. Gavin quickly moves to quiet them, and he mostly succeeds. Then the quiet is broken by a raucous shout.
“Why should we trust an elf?”
From the top of the landing platform it’s hard to see who’s responsible. However, the effect is clear and immediate. The crowd erupts, arguing amongst themselves as much as directing their anger at the trio on the platform. The mayor is clearly losing his grip over them, so Mal does what he can to buy them a bit more time.
“We mean you no ill! All we want is to refill our water barrels, and then we’ll leave.”
Some of the assembled crowd nods thoughtfully, as if they believe Mal’s story is reasonable. Unfortunately, they’re the overwhelming few. They’re even treated to another shout from the back of the crowd, though this one comes from someone new. “Lies! You’re working for Fahrn! Well, you’re not going to spy on me, I won’t let you!”
As soon as her father’s name is said, Alice glances sharply at Mal. The captain ignores it, turning his back to the crowd. “Alright, back to the Nameless,” he orders, and shoes the women forward. Gunny starts to climb, but Alice hesitates.
She’s not the only one to have misgivings. “Wait!” Gavin shouts. Gunny keeps climbing, but Mal turns back to the crowd. However, it’s not Mal that Gavin addresses next, but rather the assembled crowd. “Is this how the people of Tuanaki treat a guest? Then no wonder we have so few visitors! Shame on you!”
Then, suddenly, the mayor doffs his hat, and squints as straight up at Mal as he can manage. “Captain, if you would be so kind as to lower you water barrels to the ground, I will personally see to it that they are refilled. What say you?”
Mal smiles. He reaches for Alice’s shoulder and pulls her clearly into sight as he speaks. “Well, I say that you’ll likely need someone to haul the full barrels back. Take this sailor here, she’s happy to help.” He gestures towards the cargo lift.
Alice shoots him a glare as she steps towards it. “You owe me,” she mutters.
Mal’s look is all innocence. “I thought you’d want an opportunity to track down your father,” he says. Then his mouth briefly twists into a smirk, but before Alice can say anything, Gunny is opening up the loading hatch from the inside.
“Mal,” she grunts, and he heads back towards the Nameless. He quickly rolls the barrels over to the cargo lift beside Alice. She tries to help, but she’s not exactly sure what she’s doing, and she feels like she’s more in the way. It takes a little while, but eventually Alice and a dozen barrels are all situated on the lift.
Then, Mal grabs her hand briefly, at an angle the locals can’t quite see. In his hand is a purse Alice has seen before, and she takes it without having to ask. “Insist on paying them,” Mal says just as quietly it as the gesture. “It doesn’t have to be much, but make sure it’s something.”
Alice nods, tucking the purse into the inner pocket of her jacket. “Got it, Cap’n!” she declares flippantly. Mal shakes his head, turning back towards the control wheel for the lift. It’s manually operated, and he begins turning it to lower Alice to the ground. With a dull thud, the lift eventually makes contact with the ground.
Mal sticks his head out over the railing. “Give a holler when you’re back!” he calls down, and then Alice is left alone with the people of Tuanaki.
At first, none of them know what to make of her. Some stare at her as if she’s going to spontaneously change shape, but eventually the group is convinced that she is not an elf. This means they quickly lose interest in her, but that has both advantages and disadvantages. After the crowd has cleared out from close around her, Alice can tell that the rest of the village is uphill from here, and the prospect of rolling all the barrels up it by herself is miserably daunting.
“Hail, sailor!” calls one of the only people still around. Alice turns to see the mayor standing beside an open cart, pulled by a pair of chestnut horses that eye the airship with obvious distrust. There is a gangly teenage boy standing beside the horses, and Alice smiles at them.
“Hello! Could I perhaps borrow your cart there?”
Gavin chuckles. “You may have my son as well. Victor, go help the woman with her barrels.”
Victor sighs with exaggerated weariness before climbing up onto the bench seat. He clucks to the horses and they approach the lift platform. Once there, he and Alice work together, quickly getting the cart loaded. Then Victor climbs back up into the driver seat. Alice promptly joins him, and then they’re off.
Their journey takes them up through the town, and Victor keeps his mouth firmly shut. At first, Alice tries to occupy herself by looking around, but there’s not all that much to see. Tuanaki really is a little nothing of an island. The biggest buildings are a general store, a church, and a town hall. There are quite a few houses, but they’re all simply made, and no one is fond of ostentatious decorations. Finally, when Alice thinks she’ll about go crazy if she sees another brown house with a brown door and a brown roof, she turns to Victor.
“So… you like living in Tuanaki?”
To her surprise, he actually responds. At first, she thinks Victor is just flapping the reins, but when he speaks she realized he was probably just trying to shrug. “It’s alright, I guess. It’s not bad, it’s just kind of… boring.”
“Really? I hadn’t guessed,” Alice says dryly. He chuckles a little.
“It’s not that bad, though. We’ve got everything we need, and the ships come by often enough. But I’m sure you’d think it dull, after being a sailor.”
“Oh, I’m not a sailor,” Alice says quickly, but as soon as the words are out of her mouth she regrets them. She knows immediately what question Victor is going to ask her next, and the worst part is there isn’t enough time to come up with an answer.
“Then what do you do?”
“I, uh… I mean I’m not just a sailor, I do bunch of different things.”
“Like what?”
She shrugs. “Anything, really. Within reason, of course — it’s not like I’m some expert tinkerer here to make a dirigible or anything. But I can carry, and read and write, and pretty much everything else you can learn in an afternoon.”
“You learned to sail in an afternoon?” Victor asks, shock. Alice grins at him.
“No, no. I’m really just hitching a ride with these guys. I figured I should pull my weight.”
Victor gives her a sidelong glance. “It awful looked like the captain was just offering you up,” he says, not quite meeting her eye. To his surprise, Alice just laughs.
“Yeah, I didn’t exactly volunteer. But I don’t mind that much, it’s only fair. And anyway, I’m looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“Fahrn.”
Alice is looking at her companion as she says this, so she can hardly miss the way he stiffens. It surprises her that mention of her father inspires such a reaction, but the truth is, she never knew the man. All she has to go on is her mother’s stories, and even Alice could tell they were rose-tinted recollection of better days. “Things were simpler then,” Helene would say, as if that necessarily made them better.
“Why are you looking for the elf?” Victor asks her quietly.
“It’s none of your business. I need to talk to him, let’s leave it at that. Do you know where to find him?”
“No,” he says firmly. It’s such a decisive answer that she falls silent, and they sit awkwardly side-by-side until they reach the large well that serves the town. Even working together, it takes a few hours to refill all the barrels. Then they load the cart back up and return to the clearing where the Nameless is waiting.
Once they’ve passed through town again, and they are in the clearing alone, Victor finally speaks about anything other than water. “Listen, I won’t give you directions, even if I knew them — and no one else would, either. But up in that airship of yours, if you look around, you’ll find him soon enough.”
Alice, who is caught up worrying about how they’ll get the barrels back on the lift, stares at him blankly for a moment. Then she realizes that he’s talking about Fahrn, and she gives him a small smile. “Thank you. Will you help me load the barrels back into the lift? And then don’t just disappear on me, okay?”
Victor looks confused, but Alice has already jumped down from the cart and walked around to the back. It takes quite a bit of work but they manage to get the lift all packed back up, this time with full barrels. Only then does Alice finally pull Mal’s purse from her inner pocket. She digs out a few silver coins and extends them to Victor. “For your help.”
He stares at her, shocked. “What… No, no, I couldn’t possibly take this. I don’t deserve it.”
“Oh, please. I could never have done that without you. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing so many odd jobs, it’s that you should never turn down a fair day’s pay just because it’s something you like to do.”
Dubiously, Victor takes the coins. “Thank you, miss,” he says. Alice gives him her most winning grin and then cranes her neck up towards the upper level of the platform and the Nameless moored beside it.
“MAL!” she bellows at such a volume that it startles one of the horses. Victor hurries away to tend to the beast, and Alice waits impatiently for Mal’s head to lean over the railing.
“Yes?” he asks, his tone and expression the picture of nonchalance.
“Bring me up, will you?”
Mal seems to consider it for a moment. “Yeah, alright,” he answers, and a moment later the lift shudders to life, bringing Alice and the water up to the platform.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
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Gunny is in the midst of stowing barrels in the hold when a sudden shout comes from the depth of the Nameless. Mal, who has been standing on the main deck and supervising the barrels from above, looms over the opening. “What?” he shouts down.
“We’ve got live cargo!” comes the reply. Mal frowns deeply into the dark hold — there’s a dozen different things she could mean and he’s not sure he likes any of them. Then comes another shout that worries him even more: “Bring your kit!”
“Alice,” Mal says quickly. She’s still standing beside the cargo, where she’s been trying to talk him into flying around the island in search of Fahrn. “Can you keep watch? Just shout if you see anything weird. I need to go make sure everything’s alright.”
She nods enthusiastically. “I’ve got it, go take care of whatever that is,” she says. “I’ll be right here, promise. I’m not about to go looking for Fahrn on my own.”
Mal grins at her and then heads straight for his cabin. He throws open his chest and grabs his medical kit. Although he’s got plenty of the basics, he doesn’t have a great variety of supplies. As an elf, he can’t receive a medical license, and without one, he has difficulty getting supplies any more advanced than bandages. Fortunately, the Sisters taught him how to make do on his own, so he has a small collection of salves and poultices to heal the most common injuries on a ship.
All these are kept in a convenient kit stored in his chest, and this he takes with him as he descends into the ship to find out what exactly is in their cargo hold. This time, that turns out to be a girl on the cusp of adolescence. Gunny has clearly been chewing her out, as she’s cowering under Gunny’s glare and trying to hide one of her hands behind her back. It’s not particularly effective.
“What’s going on?” he asks, his tone neutral but firm, and the women turn to look at him. From the look on the girl’s face, Mal can see she’ll be trouble. She looks more guilty for getting caught than anything else. And, once Mal gets close enough, he can tell she’s an elf. Given the way the townsfolk reacted to him, Mal has a good feeling why she’d want to get away.
“Found this stowaway trying to hide in the cargo,” Gunny says tersely. “She refuses to show me her palm. I found her because she yelped when she injured it.”
“Will you please show me your hand?” Mal asks gently.
“No.”
“¿Palhim?”
The girl looks startled when he changes languages on her, but she quickly recovers. “No. You’re not the boss of me.”
“I just want to help you. I have training as a healer.”
She thinks about this for a moment. “Fine,” she grumbles. “Take a look at that, why don’t you?”
As she says this, she thrusts her hand into the light. The bottom of her palm is badly cut up, like she crushed glass into it. Through the blood, Mal can see something faintly glowing.
He quickly gets to work. “What happened?” he asks calmly as he sets his kit on top of the closest crate. “Can you get Den to put some water on to boil for bandages?” he asks Gunny, and with an affirmative nod she’s off.
“I leaned on one of your tubes of glowing liquid,” the girl says. She doesn’t sound particularly remorseful.
Mal frowns at her palm for a moment instead of responding. Then he flips open his kit and digs around for some clean rags. Once he finds them, he takes the girl’s hand in his and carefully pats away the excess blood. “Was this before or after you pried one of my crates open?”
“It was open!” she protests. “I promise! I don’t have anything to get a crate open anyway.”
“Hmm,” Mal says. It’s entirely possible that in the excitement they’d forgotten to seal back up the crate they’d inspected — or, more likely, that they’d simply done it badly. However, none of that answers the most pressing question. “Alright, girl.”
“My name’s Rhai.”
Mal nods. It tells him more about her than her appearance does — she’s an enclave elf, if indirectly. No former slave would give their child such an obviously elven name. “Rhai, then. What are you doing on my ship?”
Finally, she looks somewhat abashed. “I wanna get off this stupid island,” she says. “I was just looking for somewhere to hide. I wasn’t trying to steal your stuff. Promise.”
“I’m not particularly inclined to believe someone who stowed away on my ship. And I’m sure you have a family who would miss you very much if you just left them without any warning.”
Rhai puffs herself up proudly. “I left Sami a note.”
“And the rest of your family?”
She makes a face. “It’s just me’n Sami,” she says. “That’s why I wanna leave. I’m bored here. There’s nothing to do, just listen to him drone on and on about independent sovereignty.”
Mal frowns. “You’d better be careful who you say such things to,” he says. “You never know who might be listening. And there are some islands where what you just said is enough to get you jailed.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” she says. “Even if that were true, we’re still on Tuanaki.”
“Which means I can still send you home,” Mal points out. “And that’s rather what I’m inclined to do.”
“Aww, come on,” Rhai protests, but she doesn’t get much further. Gunny descends carefully into the hold, carrying a bucket of water liberated from one of the new barrels.
“Here’s some water if you need it now. Mind if I work with Alice to get the last of the barrels in?”
“That’s fine,” Mal replies distractedly. He reaches for the bucket and she happily hands it over. With a damp rag and some clean, dry ones, he removes all the blood from Rhai’s hand. Doing so reveals that heel of her palm has taken on the shimmering, golden appearance of the liquid inside their mysterious syringes. The color is really the only sign that something happened — it’s too iridescent to be natural. Alice would probably call it magic.
“Does it hurt?” he asks.
Rhai shakes her head. “It doesn’t really feel like anything.”
Mal frowns. “Well, then. I think you’re alright to go home now.”
“But I don’t want to go home!” she protests. “I want to go with you.”
“No.”
“But—“
“No,” he says firmly. “I’ll drop you overboard if I have to. I’d rather just put you down on the platform. So which’ll it be?”
“Don’t leave me here now!” she says, and she actually sounds frightened. “If you’re going to leave me on the island, will you at least take me home?”
“I’m not particularly inclined to do any favors for someone who stowed away on my ship,” he says. Then something occurs to him. “Rhai, what’s your father’s name?”
“Lifahrn,” she says. “But why do you want to know that?”
Instead of answering, he nods. Then he asks Rhai a question of his own. “Do you think you can give us directions back to your father’s house?”
She frowns. “I know how to get back through the caves, but an airship’s never going to fit in there. I can tell you which direction though. We just gotta make sure it’s still light when we go over there, it’s hard to see in the dark.”
“Then we’d better get these barrels loaded quickly. Stay here,” Mal orders firmly, and he’s relieved when Rhai settles against the nearest crate. He works with both Gunny and Alice to get the barrels stowed as quickly as possible, but the evening keeps rolling on. By the time he brings Rhai up to the deck to point out their heading, it’s difficult for her to pick out. However, she manages to get her bearings and gives them confident if imprecise directions.
“That way,” she declares, pointing in a northwesterly direction, roughly towards the volcano. “Just over that ridge.”
Mal doesn’t know exactly how far that is, and he’s not particularly inclined to find out in the dark. “Alright, but I don’t think we’ll be able to take you tonight. You’ll have to stay on the ship for the night.”
Rhai looks far too excited by this possibility. Gunny, meanwhile, is aghast. “She’s going to do what?” Gunny asks.
“Stay on the ship,” Mal repeats, before glancing briefly at Alice. “Then we’ll take her back to her father, Lifahrn.”
“Oh, will we? And he wouldn’t happen to be the same Fahrn the townsfolk accused us of working for, would it?”
“I don’t know about that,” Alice says, “but I think it’s the same Fahrn I’ve been looking for.”
Based on Gunny’s ensuing frown, Mal didn’t tell her what happened when they visited the Professor — or at least, not what little they had learned. Part of Alice appreciates the privacy, but another just wishes that Gunny was in the loop. “You have reason to believe he’s actually here?” she asks.
“Yes,” Alice says, and fortunately, it’s confident enough to quiet Gunny’s protests. “Enough reason that I would really, really appreciate it if we could make a minor detour. I’m sure that I didn’t pay nearly enough, but hey, you can leave me in Aparo if it makes up for it. And I did get your water.”
“We’re going,” Mal declares. “We’ve got to take Rhai home anyway.”
“Normally, you just leave stowaways on the docks,” Gunny points out.
“And normally, I’m not leaving a defenseless girl in a town vying for a scapegoat.”
She glances briefly at Alice, but all Gunny actually says is, “Fine. But she better stay out of the way.”
As Gunny heads back below deck, Mal turns to Rhai. “Y’hear?
Rhai looks down at her feet, almost abashed. However, her gaze is averted for only a moment before it returns to Mal. “Can I go explore?”
Mal sighs. “Stay out of the way, and don’t touch anything.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rhai says. She gives the two adults remaining on the deck a small wave, and then disappears in the same direction as Gunny.
“I really hope I don’t regret that,” Mal declares.
Alive gives him a sly grin. “What, don’t think you could find her again?”
“No, no, it’s not that.” Mal explains what was hiding under Rhai’s bandage, and her explanation of where it came from. “I’m still not sure I buy it, but I will say the coloring lends some credibility to it. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Hmm,” Alice says frowning. “I wonder what it’s supposed to do… and why the blacksails were so intent on it.”
“Who knows?” Mal asks. Based on his tone, he doesn’t sound terribly concerned, and Alice can’t read him well enough to know if it’s a front. However, when he gives her a sidelong glance, she knows that blacksails are the last thing on his mind tonight. “So, I don’t think I’ll be able to get you any goldenfish tonight… but could I interest you in some wine?”
“Buying me off with liquor, I see,” Alice says, grinning.
Mal shrugs. “If it works…”
She elbows him, and he grins back. “I’ll just be a moment,” he says, and heads off for his cabin. Alice turns her attention back to the dark expanse of Tuanaki. The twilight shadows have lengthened considerably since she arrived back at the ship with the water, and she can’t say she blames Mal for choosing to delay their excursion til morning. However, she’s never been terribly fond of waiting, and the fact that this could be the last time she has to doesn’t make it any better.
Alice turns her attention back to the ocean. She approaches the rail and leans her forearms on it, admiring what view she has there. Tonight, the stars are clear and bright, and the ocean is even picking up a few spots of luminescence. It’s not quite as interesting as a twinkling city, but it’s enough to occupy Alice’s mind when she’s already had a rather exhausting day.
Meanwhile, Mal climbs onto the deck too quietly to draw Alice’s attention. Thanks to the lantern he carries in one hand, he can see more than just a vague impression of her in the faint starlight. She’s leaning on the railing and staring out into the dark depths of the ocean. The wind insistently tugs at her messy bun, which is threatening to break free at any moment. She stands far too stiffly to belong in the air, but she looks relaxed. Noticing the lantern light, Alice glances over her shoulder, and suddenly the picture is complete, all thanks to her smirk. “Enjoying the view?” she asks from the corner of her mouth as she turns back to the ocean.
“Hard to tell,” he says, closing the distance between them in a few strides. “You’re taking up an awful lot of it.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Hardly. But you can’t expect me to judge that view when I’ve got this one to distract me.”
Alice flushes under his attention, and Mal finds himself torn. On the one hand, he’d sleep with this woman given half a chance. On the other, she looks so small and uncertain he can feel every one of the years between them. So he sets the lantern down on the deck between them and then passes her one of two bottles he’s had stashed under his arm. Once they get the bottles open, Alice raises hers and they share a wordless toast. After a few minutes of silence, Alice says, “Thanks for sharing your stash with me.”
“Anything for a pretty woman,” Mal says.
“Better not waste it on me, then. I’m sure you’ve got far better prospects back on the belt islands.”
“But they’re there, and you’re here.”
Smiling, Alice shakes her head. “Oh, Mal. We’re liable never to see each other again after tonight. I’d love to make a go of it, but I don’t think it’s gonna work.”
“Hang on,” Mal says. “Are using the last night on earth speech to turn me down?”
“Since when is it our last night on earth?”
“Well, maybe it’s not mine,” he admits. “But you’re about to go sequester yourself on a distant outpost of an island. So I figured you might like a last taste of civilization.”
“And you’re supposed to be civilized?”
“I have my moments.”
“Ah. So you expect me to sleep with a man I’ve only known a week.”
Mal grins. “Only if you want to.”
“How courteous. No.”
He’s clearly disappointed, but he shrugs it off. “Ah, well. Worth a shot. Anyway, will you at least keep me company?”
“It’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to be,” she says. “And you’re the one who left, you know.”
“Ah, yes. But I thought the wine was making up for that.”
She grins. “It’s helping, certainly. But… Can I be frank?”
“You’re waiting to ask that question now?”
Alice elbows him. “Hey! I just wanted to confide an irrational fear.”
“That’s not being frank,” Mal points out. He continues even as Alice rolls her eyes. “That’s being irrational.”
“Fine then, never mind,” she says. She turns away, and takes another drink. Mal starts to feel like he overstepped, but before he can say anything, Alice speaks again. “Thank you for staying the extra night.”
“Sure. I’d rather leave at dawn anyway. I like to be able to see what I’m doing when I leave a strange port.”
“Fair,” Alice says, and they lapse into silence again. It’s not uncomfortable, but they’re both trying to come up with things to fill the space. All that Alice can think of is stupid, shallow questions, and she can’t bring herself to ask them. Too much is going to change tomorrow, and she doesn’t know how knowing Mal’s favorite color is going to help her with that.
Finally, Mal breaks the silence. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you look pretty concerned. If you’re having second thoughts…”
Alice shakes her head vehemently. “No. I’ve worked too hard…” She gives Mal a little smile. “If this all goes south and I have to hang out on this island for six months until the next supply ship comes in, I’ll do it. I’m flattered you care, but I can take care of myself.”
“Well, then. If you don’t want to talk about it—“
“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it,” she interrupts. “It’s that there’s nothing to say. I’ve been planning this moment for four years — and thinking about it longer. I get it. I know what I’m going to say. It’s the waiting that’s killing me.”
“Fortunately, that’s what the wine is for,” Mal says, and Alice grins. She takes a swig from her bottle, and slowly but surely it does its job.