Four days. That was how long we would have to stay in the city before our boat to Ocean Spires departed.

I could survive in the city for four days, probably.

I spent the entire next day holed up in the inn’s room studying the spell guide that Yushin had given me.

Yushin studied from her own books, cast enshroud on me, and helped me work through the spell guide. After a while of this, we would alternate to me teaching her the spells I knew and she didn't. We were starting with cantrips, so I was working my way through teaching her the northfinding exercise.

Cantrips were relatively easy to pick up the basics of, but they were hard to master. Where I could just use the tiniest thimbleful of ether to whip up an arrow that traced the earthfields northward within seconds, by the end of the day, Yushin’s arrow took over a minute to calibrate itself to point northward.

Jackson… called us both boring, and left to go do his own thing. When he returned to the inn that evening, it was with a woman on his shoulder, and tickets for the ship that he’d asked about the night before. It was apparently called the Azure Beetle. Yushin and I paid him back for our tickets without complaint, and then left him for his date.

The second day passed in much the same fashion, and by the evening of the third day, I was confident in being able to cast enshroud without failure. It took me the better part of ten minutes, but I was able to merge together the aetheric flows and layer the multi-pronged divination suppressing spell over myself. Yushin had mastered the northfinding cantrip and had moved on to the lifeberry spell, which she said was the most difficult first circle spell she’d ever seen.

That was gratifying, in truth. After the comments Yushin had made about this region being low in ether, lacking good schools, and all-around being known for being the easiest spot to score a scholarship, I’d begun to doubt my own casting skills. Seeing Yushin struggle to form the spell, even though she had substantially more ether, spells, and experience than I did gave me a perverse sense of pleasure.

“Okay, that’s it,” Jackson said that evening. He had no date this time, and all three of us were eating in the common room, with both Yushin and I reading. We looked up.

“What’s it?” I said, a touch of annoyance entering my tone.

“I’ve had enough,” he said. “You’re in the largest city in the hold, and I don’t think either of you has looked outside of the inn since we arrived. I know you two have each other to entertain yourselves, but you’ve got to see the sights!”

“This is barely even a city,” Yushin said. “In fact, it’s more of an overgrown village. Golden City is a city. Over one and half a million people live there. This isn’t even a hundred thousand, and the ether is pitifully thin.”

I hadn’t been in a truly big city since I was a kid, and this smaller city was still enough to make me anxious. Plus, even with enshroud wrapping around my bloodline, false face disguising my appearance, and a mixture of herbal tinctures to hide my scent, I didn’t want to risk running into one of my siblings while out and about.

“Ughhhh, please? By Effervesce, you can’t just spend the whole time cooped up. Do you even know the way to the docks?”

“You can lead us,” I said, but an idea was starting to stir in the back of my head.

Summerbone and the Citadel of Ether were both far from Dreki island, but the Citadel was a lot bigger, richer, and ether rich, which meant that any siblings that had decided to flee is island were more likely to be there than here. I was leaving Summerbone tomorrow, too, and would be on a ship.

This would be the ideal time to test out my defenses. If I got sniffed out here and managed to escape, then I’d be able to use what I learned to refine my disguise and hide better in the Citadel.

But if I arrived in the Citadel without a stress test, then I’d be running in blind, and more likely to be caught.

Of course, there was the chance of not seeing my family, which wouldn’t provide information, but also wouldn’t hurt me.

There was also a risk of my disguise not working, and getting caught. That had almost happened several times, especially in the beginning, but I’d gotten good at hiding. As long as it wasn’t one of my elder siblings, the ones who were from several generations ahead of me, I felt confident I could escape.

And if one of my elder siblings, like Chloe, was here, she probably could have tracked me down from halfway across the region, and so it wasn’t even worth worrying about. It was like an ant worrying about the possibility of a tsunami.

“Fine,” both Yushin and I said at the same instant, then glanced at one another. She grinned, rubbing her scales in a nervous gesture.

The following morning, Jackson dragged us all around the town, to see the various sights.

He brought us to the worship square, which had shrines and temples for various deities, demigods, powerful spirits of Etherius, and more, where we left a couple of offerings at the shrine for Magyk, and Jackson burnt an absurd amount of incense for Effervesce.

He brought us to the park in the city, named after some local rich tree-folk who’d brought up the land and used it as a preserve for nature. That was actually pretty refreshing, as a break from the overwhelming city.

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He brought us to a street filled with people selling food from their wooden carts, or from over small fires, which was a mixed bag. Even keeping my bloodline suppressed and enshrouded, my sense of smell was leagues ahead of a normal person’s, so there were some carts that I refused to eat at entirely, while other carts I devoured the greasy-yet-good food, especially an old woman who was selling meat pies out of a rundown wooden cart.

As the day wore on, both Yushin and I started to relax. Nobody had given either of us any indication they thought we were anything other than human – or serpentine beastfolk, in Yushin’s case – and I hadn’t seen a sign of my family.

It was only when we headed to the docks, to check where the Azure Beetle was, that things went wrong.

A ship, long, sleek, and expensive, with three sails and a pitch black coat of paint was docking near us, while the Azure Beetle was loading its cargo up on the far side of the harbor. That alone wasn’t too shocking, but when the silk sails – seriously, was canvas not acceptable? – were being rolled up, I spotted the flag, and my heart went cold.

The Dreki Island flag was flowing in the wind, vibrant and proud.

Then the gangplank thumped down onto the docks, and I spotted one of my oldest brothers strolling down the docks.

My mother had many children. Many, many, many children. And that was to say nothing of the grandchildren, nieces, great nieces, nephews, and so on and so forth, many of whom also carried enough of the bloodline to be considered a member of the Dreki family.

There were enough Dreki that it was easier to break them up into generations than it was to try and remember all of them. I was from the sixteenth generation, and I thought it was likely that the eighteenth or nineteenth generation was either growing up, or about to happen.

I didn’t have everyone from each generation memorized, since there were too many of them, and the last time I’d sat down to memorize them was ten years ago, and even then, there had been close to two hundred members of the sixteenth generation, even if most weren’t directly children of my mother.

All of this meant that the only Deki family members whose names I could remember were those who did something truly memorable, or were really old.

Gerhard Dreki was both. He was a member of the fourth generation, and had torn apart a rebellion on the island more than eighty years before I was born. No spellcraft, as far as I was aware, but he was absurdly gifted with the use of our bloodline, and had used that to shred every member of the rebellion to ribbons with his bare hands.

The moment he stepped onto the pier, everyone could feel it. Even Jackson, who was entirely human as far as I could tell, stepped back when Gerhard Dreki glanced around.

I started to sweat, frantically telling myself that this was a good thing, and that this kind of stress testing was exactly what I’d been hoping for. Right? Right?

Except, I’d been hoping it would be with someone a lot weaker than Gerhard.

A loud splash broke the silence, and everyone on the docks whipped their heads to look. A sailor who had been up in the masts of their ship had frozen, then struck the water when their grip loosened. The only reason I knew this was because their crew-mate fell off a moment later.

Gerhard let out a sound amusement, one that was almost a laugh, but a little too dignified. The sound seemed to resound through the entire docks, and Gerhard strolled away, the enthralling presence fading away some.

I was tempted to turn and run, but that would have been far more suspicious than anything, so I allowed Jackson to start leading us down the pier.

But Gerhard started walking our way.

My sweating redoubled as he got closer, and closer.

Then he passed us by and kept walking, and I almost let out a shuddering sigh of relief. If my disguise could fool a fourth generation getting within arm’s reach of me, then it was–

“Wait,” Gerhard said, doubling back to look at us, and my heart froze.

“Can I help you sir?” Jackson asked, sounding more respectful than I’d ever heard him.

“Why do I… there’s something off about you all,” he said, sweeping his gaze over all three of us.

“Is it my divinity?” Jackson asked. “I walk in the light of Effervesce, and he has gifted me with two of his divinities, a boon that allows me some small power to heal, and one that makes my flame burn more potently.”

“Maybe,” Gerhard said, frowning, then shifted to Hua-Long.

“Are you a member of the Divine King’s court?” he asked Yushin, who bowed her head and responded in kind.

“My mother worked as a servant for the Divine King’s court, sir, but I would not dare to suggest it would be possible for one of such a noble peerage as yourself to have recognized the daughter of a mere servant, sir.”

Gerhard’s face seemed to relax for a moment, then he sniffed the air twice and spoke in the common tongue again.

“Is one of you a smoker? There’s a touch of hemp, tobacco, and mint in the air, and it’s… strange. It’s like it’s clogging up my nose.”

That was exactly the point of the tincture I wore, but he’d thrown me a rope, and I was happy to take it.

“I do occasionally smoke, in various ways,” I lied, “I’d be happy to recommend you my personal blend, if you’re interested?”

“Gods and hells no,” Gerhard said. “In fact, it’s the opposite. Go take a shower, and never touch that stuff again. Especially the hemp.”

“Doesn’t the mint cover the smell?” I asked, feigning innocence.

“No, it just makes it smell like mint and hemp,” he said, then stepped forwards, picked me up with one hand, and threw me into the water. I smashed into the surface, then sunk beneath the waves, and I let out fake gasps and flailed my arms, but I could see Yushin rushing over to me.

Jackson, on the other hand, stepped forwards, angry and saying something to Gerhard. He lashed out in a punch, but Gerhard caught it, said something about healing – it was hard to tell what, with water in my ears – then used it to spin Jackson around.

Gerhard pressed a single finger to Jackson’s elbow, and the joint snapped, the sound audible even underwater. Jackson let out a scream, and Gerhard backhanded him in the stomach.

Jackson was thrown into the air, sailing out over the water until he slammed right on top of me, with an accuracy no normal human could have managed.

As we both sank beneath the surface of the waves, myself for the second time, I pushed Jackson up. As much of an overzealous pain as he could be, he had defended me, and that counted for something.

When we both emerged above the water, and Yushin helped pull us onto the docks, while Gerhard strolled away. The moment I was on dry land, I reached into my pouch, very glad it was waterproof, and dabbed more of my tincture on around my neck, armpits, stomach, and groin, then let out a sigh of relief.

Jackson was cursing like a sailor as he worked through a prayer to his god, and golden light flowed into his arm.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’ll… be fine…” he said. “Just… Painful. That a–”

“You were lucky,” Yushin said, shaking her head. “You attacked a foreign diplomat. It would have been within his rights to snap your neck.”

Jackson’s dark skin didn’t pale, but it did get a shade less dark. The truth was, I agreed. Gerhard must have been in a pleasant mood, because he usually would have killed anyone who dared to attack him.

As we headed back to the worship square to try and find a god or mage willing to help finish Jackson’s healing, since the boon of Effervesce was exhausted, I had to hide my joy, since I knew Jackson wouldn’t understand.

Yushin’s spell had worked!