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“By the Thief’s guile, this place is always so stifling.”
Jelena sat under a palm-fan lean-to, at some undisclosed point along the river delta.
“This is the birthplace of your Thief,” Enkidu said. “His homeland. Why would you invoke him to forsake this place? He likely enjoyed the climate. Was acclimatized.”
“It’s just…” Jelena fanned her face. “Ah, the humidity doesn’t sit well with the ol’ eyepatch.”
“Your hometown was hot,” said Enkidu.
“It was a dry heat.” Jelena scoffed. “Much more manageable. And Menu forbid the blasted eyepatch gets wet.”
Outside, the infernal blare of some kind of dire-cricket droned over a moss-ridden bayou.
“Why,” asked Enkidu after a while.
“Huh? Why what?”
“You swear on the Menu.”
“As does everyone else.”
“… They have not forsaken this Menu. You have. Even blinded yourself in one eye.”
Jelena sighed. “Just… force of habit, I suppose.”
What more could she say? Merely rejecting the Church of the Menu didn’t automatically come with some brand-new worldview, let alone cultural mannerisms. She wasn’t like Enkidu – she didn’t just leap out of a tree one day, a grown adult with zero ties to anyone or anything. They’d sold most of those relics they’d scrounged up for quite a haul.
Jelena tossed about a fat coin purse in her hands. Any Branded individual would identify it as thus:
Fat As Possible Coinpurse x1
Description: Near-Bursting! Contains… 56780… gold. Don’t spend it all in one place.
... but to Jelena, it was just a hefty bag full of gold.
And of course, they still had the two most valuable relics on hand. Never know when a high-rolling buyer would show up…
The woman in the eyepatch smirked. “’Course you and I walk the path of the Thief, Menu or no. It’s as much a lifestyle as a class, yeah?”
Enkidu growled but otherwise gave no response.
“Ah, following the pilgrimage route brings me back.” Jelena sighed, looking out over the swamp. “Heading towards home is always such a melancholy feeling. Still, will be good to get back to more arid climates. This place always makes me sweat something awful. Ay, if only Firefield had a proper hot spring. Almost want to double back…”
Jelena’s voice trailed off.
“You’re thinking of the sewer guard.”
“Am not,” Jelena lied. “Just, seems familiar is all.”
Or maybe their pursuer just had an incredibly generic face. No matter, not like he’d dare brave the swamps, the miles of endless farmland, and the desert beyond to pursue them this far. Probably sent word out about their general appearance at the junction and went back home.
“What were you?” Enkidu asked in a deep tenor.
“Huh?” Jelena snapped up, alert. “Was I what? Wasn’t dwelling or anything, honest. Certainly not about the sewer guard.”
Enkidu’s face was, as always, implacable beneath his hurricane of hair.
“In the Church. What were you?”
“Oh.” Jelena hoped he wouldn’t mention their erstwhile rival again. “What did I do in the church? I’ve said several times I was at the orphanage back in Japella.”
“Your class. What was it?”
Always so blunt and yet so obtuse with her rather wild companion. Jelena leaned back in her cot.
“Oh? It was cleric,” she said dismissively. “Managed to class into it right after the pilgrimage. Ah, traveled with the convoys right down to Riverglen and took the route up to Firefield, then back home. Few years ago now. Why that…”
That was why she remembered that fellow. The pilgrimage – that first station in the sewer. Jelena chuckled at the thought.
Ah, just one pilgrim of countless thousands that year. Doubt he remembers me though.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
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“Welcome to Port Town!” said one of the gate guards with surprising enthusiasm given it was his only job duty.
“Not sure what I was expected out of the name…” Sarah said.
“This is one of the largest towns on the itinerary,” Calaf explained. “Now, I’ve never actually been, but they discuss it in school.”
“What’s a school?” asked Gerard.
Calaf did a double take. The church handled all education from age six to eighteen or so. Ensuring future pilgrims were raised with a correct and proper view of history and how the various stations operated with each other. And of course, this educational regimen provided proper lessons in the utter infallibility of the church and its teachings. But there were still some places where this selfless act of charity did not yet reach.
“Look, Port Town is our lifeline to the rest of the world,” Calaf explained. “Everyday missionaries board boats to go spread the Holy Interface to all corners of the worldplain.”
Why, Calaf’s gestalt pick-me-up group didn’t even know that the world was flat! Oh, when he was much higher level and in more esteem with the church, he would have to ensure that whatever town they hailed from received a proper orphanage and study hall.
Port Town was grimy. The swamp did not enjoy being drained out and kept at bay. It wanted back in, frequently.
And multiple fingers of the fanned-out river delta passed through the city. Squat, flat boats drifted down the river, bringing foodstuffs up from farmland on less dire-gator-infested ground further up the river.
A wall – however squat – and rivers, however murky and wide. No wonder Calaf somewhat felt at home in this town. In the ways it was unfamiliar it was truly unfamiliar, but in the ways that mattered it was just like home.
That stifling pressure of humidity beating down on him was new, though. Never got this steamy back in Riverglen.
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First thing the group needed to do was sell off all the dire-gator skins and dire-cassowary pelts they’d managed to scrounge up in the swamp.
Calaf hauled his portion of this bounty to the market and then sold them off in addition to a quarry’s worth of plainskarst he’d had crammed into his inventory for the past week or so.
In the junction, this common building material sold for a mere gold piece per pop. But here, out of its element…
“Well hot damn!” said a merchant. “Give ya 20 a piece, easy.”
“Well, I’ll pay 22 a piece!” said another merchant. “It’s so rare we get quality building materials down here.”
Calaf was a one-man city wall subcontractor. And his market manipulation would largely fund his journey for the next four or so stations.
Alas, despite his money problems being behind him, there was not much to spend it on. Steel weaponry still ruled the day even here, so far from Granite Pass. So it would be until Firefield.
Newly loaded with coin, Calaf marched directly to the local bank. Again, the Holy Church of the Menu offered basic banking features as an act of charity for its flock. No interest could be gained, as the Interface didn’t quite handle that kind of calculation. But it would preserve his new treasure horde should he die, be indisposed, or be otherwise beset by highwaymen. He could always withdraw it all in the next town when it came time to upgrade his kit.
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With banking and market duty done, the group reconvened near the coast. Boats of all kinds gathered at the edge of the river and in a natural port hemmed in by a cape. This is where food was loaded from the shallow river boats into larger seaworthy ships for transport to outlying smaller settlements off the path. Everything north of here was serviced by a network of snaking rivers. But even Riverglen had a small port some miles south and west that allowed for trade with this region, the breadbasket of the world.
There was nothing technically stopping Calaf from hopping on a boat and heading back home, or for him to have taken a boat here. But it was not exactly sporting in the spirit of the pilgrimage.
Along the coast was a series of inns, mostly servicing gruff sailors than relatively low-level pilgrims. The group turned inland and followed a riverside path until they found a less… rowdy inn to spend the night.
“So where are all the farms?” the pick-up group asked, several times once they were settling into a cozy little inntop loft.
“Further north. Up and out of the swamp,” Calaf said. “You’ll pass them by on the road during the next leg of the journey.”
There were pilgrimage-related activities they could partake in around Port Town, of course. It was the birthplace of the Scout, so it was said, and that brought with it a series of shrines and churches that dotted the canals. Sewers were here, too – a twisting labyrinth of drainage tunnels beneath the town. Far more dangerous than Riverglen’s relatively tame underground sewer system.
Exhausted from the long day’s swamp traversal, the party retired.
Calaf sat there for thirty or more minutes. Let the others fall asleep. Then, when he was certain he wouldn’t be disturbed, he rolled out of his cot and went out into the night.
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Port Town was still lively enough after dark. Unlike all the other towns so far, populated largely by pilgrims eager to get to their inn to rest well for another day’s travel, Port Town was bustling with more secular activity. The docks themselves were just the most obvious and loudest example.
If rumor were to have it, there should be a guild of cutthroats in town, those who would have no moral scruples about taking artifacts stolen right out of the hands of a poor, selfless Pryor.
Calaf walked through the darkened streets, passing by numerous other figures on their own furtive quests.
Few torchlights were out this late at night – the whole town was made of wood, after all. Instead, most travelers merely used one of the more utility-minded blessings of the Holy Interface: night vision!
Doors and a few windows glowed with a slight greenish outline. Many more were outlined red at this hour – locked. Benches and other public use spaces were an inviting bluish.
Pursuing this lead in any other context other than attempting to bring un-Menued apostates to justice would be so incredibly sinful. But Calaf was on a mission, a pursuit of a trail that honor demanded he dare not lose.
Even so, he almost missed his mark.
A nondescript wall, one of only a few made of stone in these parts, designated a deep and sunken cistern. There was one wooden door high up, accessible only by winding stone steps. It was locked tight. But, down on street level, half-covered in the dirt, was a lone tiny stone amidst mud and straw. A sliver of green designated an intractable object – so small that even with the Interface it would be so easily overlooked.
Calaf ‘clicked’ the rock with his boot and it sunk in. There was a muffled gliding of stone along stone, and a man-sized false wall opened three paces away.
At last. He was making progress.
Rumor had it that the thieves’ guild met in secret in the scarcely patrolled and occasionally flooded drainage tunnels of Port Town.
If anyone could have the desire, resources, and ability to sell pilfered church relics, it would surely be found here.
Calaf gazed into the tunnels beyond. It was dark, even the Interface just barely highlighting the surroundings. Still, the young knight took a step forward, keeping his weapon and shield at the ready to fend off any traps.
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