They all said goodbye to Richard and left the trading post behind. With that, the big ticket item was taken care of.

“That’s half the boring stuff done,” Will said.

Now that the goods were all gone, Mongrel sucked the horse back into himself. With all six saddle bags attached, they seemed to work the same as the boys’ vests and went along with her. She’d have to ask Will how that worked at some point.

“I’m goin’ for a fuck,” Mongrel announced like he was headed out to buy milk.

“I suspected as much.” Will withdrew a potion from his satchel and handed it over. “There. Potion of fortify health. Should keep you from contracting anything lethal. Better prevent it than treat it.”

The Builder knocked it back straight away and smashed the ceramic bottle against the ground. “Thanks very much, brother. You sure know how to look out for a guy.”

“Once you’re done, take care of the food shopping. Let’s meet up at the Rosy Drake somewhere around, let’s say five?”

“Food. Drake. Five. You got it, chief.”

Mongrel wandered off, and the two of them were left to their own devices.

“Now we can have some fun,” Will proudly announced. “We’re in no rush, so I was thinking I’d show you around all the city districts and we’ll stop at some places along the way. What do you think?”

“I think that sounds like a date,” Bee said in her most teasing voice. “I love it, let’s go. Where to first?”

“Let’s look around the docks for a while. They’ve got some stuff on sale here.”

So they did, and Bee linked her arm with Will’s as he guided her along.

The Sheerhome docks weren’t exactly the most romantic place, with screaming sailors and screeching seagulls and an overpowering fish stench, but if this was meant to be a tour of the city, she wanted it to be thorough.

They crossed an arched bridge to the other side of the split docks and went to a curving line of stalls. There, peddlers sold everything from fish to jewelry to esoteric trinkets.

Bee dragged Will over to a stall where a man was loudly proclaiming that he was selling premium enchanted weapons for a reasonable price, motioning to rows of killing tools laid on top of a table against a cloth of rich red fabric. She assumed that he was talking out of his ass, but wanted to see for herself anyway.

She hefted a large war axe, unable to make out anything especially magical about it except, perhaps, that it was a little sparklier than she would have expected.

“Put that down, Bee,” Will said in a stern tone.

“Whaaat, I’m allowed to look.”

“You are. Just not here. Put it down.”

The merchant glared at him, but his look was instantly pacified when Will showed him his arm, and the twelve crystals that gleamed upon it.

Sensing Will’s marked displeasure, Bee put the axe back where she’d found it and let him take her further down the line of stalls.

“Those were knockoffs,” he observed neutrally.

Bee felt a little offended.

What does he think I am, stupid?

“Yeah, I mean, I knew they weren’t magic. I just wanted to look.”

“No, they were magic.”

“Wait, they were?”

“Yes. Just not enchanted.”

They stopped at a stall that sold jewelry, and Will picked idly at a case filled with a pile of rings.

“Okay,” Bee said impatiently. “What does that mean, Mr. Cryptic?”

“Sometimes, when a slave gets too run down to work much longer, their captors will force them to take the Soulbind passive, transferring a piece of that person’s soul into an object and imbuing it with power. When that slave dies, most of the power dissipates from the object, but not all of it. And there you go—one magic item ready to be sold on, created at practically no cost to you.

“The only problem is that this item will still contain a small piece of the soul it used to be bound to. And this tortured remnant will usually seek to enact vengeance on its next owner in any way possible. Which, as you might understand, is why I didn’t want you to touch it.”

“Oh. That’s really fucked up.”

“Yeah.” Will picked up a silver ring engraved with a leafy wreath that ran all along the outside. “What do you think of this? Would you want a ring?”

Bee blinked at the trinket, unable to really take it in. “Uh, sorry, I… I’m still kind of digesting everything you just said.”

“I get it. It takes a while to get used to the casual cruelty of this place.” He dropped the ring back on the pile and moved them along. “But eventually it just becomes background noise.”

In the end, they didn’t find anything at the docks except a packet of sugar-dusted jelly sweets that Will got for Bee to try. It had been a long time since she’d had any candy, even counting before she died, and the jellies were so sweet that it made her teeth hurt.

Still, she ate the whole packet, leaving just one for Will. If he wanted more he should have wrestled them away from her.

“Right, so Sheerhome is split into three districts,” he said as they were getting ready to leave. “The waterfront district, including the docks and the surrounding area, is called Seaside. The bit we went through to get here is called Topside. The third district is the part that’s built into the rockface, and that’s called—”

“Cliffside!” Bee guessed.

“That’s right, congrats.”

“Are we going there next?”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Yeah. There’s nothing too exciting going on there, but I figure just so you’ve seen it once, at least.”

They were just about to leave when Bee noticed something odd. What she had at first dismissed as just seagulls wheeling about in the sky above the docks, she realized looked much too large to be seagulls, and were only growing larger as they descended towards the waterfront.

“Uh… What are those?” she asked, pointing.

Will squinted up at the two oversized birds. “Diregulls. They’re a common type of monster. They breed on that island over there—the Roost.” He pointed into the very distance, where a small blotch of sullen green was visible against the choppy sea. “The lord sends people out to eradicate them every year or so, but they just come right back.”

“Okay, yeah, love the biology lesson, but aren’t they getting kind of close?”

They were low enough that Bee could make out their tooth-lined beaks and pale, dead eyes. They had to be larger than a man, with wingspans that couldn’t be far below ten meters. The flapping of their wings produced an audible whooshing in the air. One of them let out a shrill cry that echoed out over the docks, causing everyone to stop what they were doing and look up.

“It’s all right,” Will assured her, hands on hips. “Just hold on.”

The monsters were about to touch down just meters from where they were standing. Bee gripped the handle of her sword and drew it halfway out of its scabbard.

Then one of the birds was pierced by a black streak; a thick arrow with blood-red fletching and a barbed head the size of a man’s palm. The diregull let out a desperate cry and toppled out of the air, crashing into the ground headfirst with a dull thud and snapping its long neck sideways in the process. Its body sprawled gracelessly, wings half-unfolded. Its companion flapped its wings in a desperate bid to gain altitude and make scarce, but it was struck through the wing by another arrow and plunged into the water where it thrashed and screamed, shedding huge white feathers in its panic that floated about on the surface.

A woman emerged onto the dock holding an exceedingly sturdy bow as tall as she was. Stepping onto one of the jetties to get as close to the bird as possible, she pulled another arrow from a quiver on her hip, drew back the bow with a rippling of taut back muscles, and fired. She caught the monster in the throat, and it jerked about only a few seconds longer before finally going still, its mouth opening in a limp gape and bubbling as it began to take in water.

“The lord has sharpshooters posted around the docks for this kind of thing,” Will said. “You mind if we go down there quickly, actually? This is a good opportunity to score some Class 3 reagents.”

The second diregull was reeled in by a gang of sailors using long hooked poles and dragged out of the water, dumped next to the first. Will approached the woman who had killed them. Money changed hands, and Will had several deckhands come and begin preparing the carcasses, separating various bloody components into bags and smaller cases. Flight feathers, tongues, eyes, beaks. The animals were then split open so that their organs could be harvested, too.

“I’m having it all delivered to the Rosy Drake so that we can take it with us on our way back,” Will explained. “With that lovely business out of the way, let’s continue, shall we?”

It was, by far, the strangest thing that had ever happened to Bee on a date. But that seemed to be par for the course in this place, especially around Will. She managed to keep herself from laughing, but it was a near thing.

They climbed back up the zig-zagging stairs. Will had to stop about halfway, sweaty and pale-faced.

“Want me to carry you?” Bee asked sweetly.

“I’m good,” Will panted, hands on his knees. “Just give me a second…”

Continuing the rest of the way, they stepped off the switchbacks and followed a narrow path dug out of the steep cliff, with buildings on one side precariously built on poles and accessed via stairs. On the other side, past a thin handrail, was just open air; a hundred-meter drop and a sure death.

Bee wasn’t too worried about herself, but seeing Will hobble along ahead of her almost made her break out in a cold sweat.

Following the walkway into the mouth of the canyon, the sun was immediately blocked out by the high rock walls, and they were plunged in deep shadow. Lanterns hung from metal poles that had been hammered into the rock at even intervals, at least lighting their passage somewhat.

Here the buildings were carved directly into the stone itself, with doors facing the walkway and signs advertising various businesses.

“This is kind of like a financial district,” Will said. “Bankers and merchants and such who like to have their funds protected by a couple meters of solid mountain. Of course, that wouldn’t be enough to deter any semi-competent attempt at a robbery, but it’ll keep the rabble out. And they’ve got plenty of hired help to take care of the rest.”

Bee stopped to look at one of the signs, realizing something she hadn’t even thought about. “That’s very interesting and all, but I think I’ve got a problem.”

Will turned back to face her. “What’s that?”

“I think I might have had an aneurism or something.” She pointed at the sign. “I can’t read that. It’s all just squiggles.”

“Right, yeah. I probably should have told you about that. First of all, I don’t know if you can tell, but you haven’t been speaking English.”

“What.”

“Everyone who comes to Nifala gets a whole new language zapped into their head the moment they hit the Tower. The True Tongue is what the goddess called it. A little self-aggrandizing, but whatever. Now that I’ve said it, can you tell?”

“Uh…” Bee tried her best to pay attention. “Say something else.”

“Seven seasick sailors sailing swiftly.”

Somehow, he was right. It was like… a perfectly English-shaped peg in a perfectly English-shaped hole. It wasn’t quite English, but it was like it had taken up that slot in her head.

“When you come here, your native language is one of the first things to go. You get the spoken portion of True Tongue automatically, but you have to learn to read and write it. Some say it’s because Era wanted everyone to properly experience the beauty of the language by learning it firsthand. Most people just think it’s so that Scribes don’t get put out of a job.”

“That’s such a mindfuck,” Bee breathed. “Boobs.” Now that she was paying attention to it, the word sounded different. Weird. Funny. “Boobs, boobs, boobs.”

A finely dressed gentleman squeezed past them on the walkway, sneering as he passed. Bee blushed, and opened her mouth to offer an apology before stopping herself.

Fuck him, fancy-ass. Why should I apologize?

“You’re really turning up your sophisticated side for this place, huh?” Will said with a smirk.

“Shut up, creep.” She punched him in the chest—a little too hard—and he doubled over with a breathless wheeze.

She patted him on the back while he gasped for air and clutched at the handrail. The next several rich pricks that passed gave them almost exactly the same look as the first, and she greeted them with smiles and nods, explaining that her friend was feeling a little under the weather. They weren’t listening anyway.

“Right, where… where were we?” Will worked out once he’d forced himself upright. He cleared his throat and composed himself with a sharp exhale. “Basically, the literacy rate is estimated at like fifteen percent, and Scribes make up a good chunk of that.”

“But you know how to read, right? You have all those books back at the house.”

Will nodded. “It’s proven extremely useful so far. Almost everything I learned about the Concord and Nifala in general that’s not common knowledge, I learned by reading about it.”

“Please tell me you’re about to say ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ or some goofy shit like that.”

“Whatever. Stay ignorant, troglodyte.”

“What about that note for the divine vow?”

“I translated that into English for you. I had to use a dictionary to remember all the words, but yeah.”

“Huh. Always prepared, aren’t you?”

“I try. Additionally, the text you see in your head from the Concord isn't a language at all, but more like raw sensory impressions.”

Will had been right about the fact that there really wasn’t much to look at in Cliffside. At least she was able to look over the railing and see the river down below, the gurgling of its placid currents echoing all the way up to them. She could also make out a narrow boat traveling downstream towards the docks, holding cargo. It met with another boat coming the opposite way, and there was just barely enough room for them to scrape past each other.

She also shouted ‘Boobs!’ into the ravine, and giggled when her echo threw the strange word back at her.

“All right, this is when we get to the good part,” Will announced as they emerged from the canyon and began making their way uphill again. “Most of the fun stuff is Topside.”

“Good, because this was honestly becoming a really weird date.”

“Yeah, yeah. What do you want to do first? Shopping? Eating? Just seeing the sights?”

“I’ve had enough sights for now. How about some food?”

“Excellent choice, madam. Follow me.”