Chapter 19

“At the center of the political system between the vast empires of Rhea and Phav is The Gorge. The Gorge is a mighty fortress spanning a wide valley, the gap lying between two mountain ranges. It is the easiest way to cross between the empires Rhea and Phav. The power of The Gorge comes from its unique geography, neutrality, and the agreement that all potential Imperial Academy students be screened there.

The Gorge admits or denies students entrance into the academies, irrespective of any concerns or wants of the empires themselves. Where the empires would want the academies flooded with students, The Gorge selects what they deem an acceptable number, the same number for each Academy. Afterwards, the students travel to the academies: Sorcery in Phav and the Kinesis in Rhea.”

—The Gorge, page 129

Three weeks after Natali spoke secretly and alone with each of the boys, the Cristina finally docked. They had waited patiently for it, having sold the candlesticks which allowed Seff money for a better apartment. Since Falahgo had insisted she not go along on this night thieving expedition, she stayed safely in bed.

Yet hour after hour that night, she could not sleep. She was restless, turning and tossing in her bed. The minutes seemed to drain off like dew droplets forming on glass. The night was slow and torturous for her, and what was worse, Falahgo checked on her semi-regularly, to ensure she hadn’t sneaked off. Eventually, she drifted off.

* * *

The boys arrived at Belladder Commercial Port and Harbor shortly after midnight.

It was a massive harbor, holding ships and boats of all sizes: fishing boats, cargo ships, barges, sloops and corvettes, brigs, luggers and the much larger barques.

Having neglected to scout the port beforehand and having no idea where the Cristina was docked, Seff and Reyn spent hours looking for it.

The lookout crews who spotted them on the piers eyed them suspiciously as they searched, and in the end, they could not find the Cristina. Even if they had found the right ship, they would have been found out by several of the other crews who watched them walk up and down the piers, whispering.

A few of the crews even approached them with questions. The few nondescript answers they gave about meeting someone bought them some time, but they could not wait around forever.

Eventually, Reyn and Seff decided to leave, avoiding the risk of exposure to much harsher scrutiny.

When approached by Natali at school the next day, Reyn told her what had happened.

“You couldn’t find the ship?” Natali asked.

“No.”

“Return to the docks during the day and ask a passerby where the Cristina is docked. After you scout out the location, return unseen at nightfall. If needed, rent a small boat, position it along the coast, and row it up to the side of the Cristina to board it.”

Late that afternoon, Reyn and Seff stood talking in Cristina’s shadow. With four masts—three reaching over a hundred feet tall—she spanned over three hundred feet. There were eleven deck hands visible unloading heavy cargo. A heavy crane’s line took cargo from below decks through a massive opening and lifted the cargo up and out of the hold. No one with any type of rank or privilege could be seen.

Reyn and Seff stood, in awe of the ship’s immensity. Painted black, the ship was monstrous in a real way. The masts were several feet in diameter; the bronze figurehead spanned fifteen feet long; the crane hoisting crates and cages out of the ship was eighty feet high.

Reyn prodded Seff, and they both left together, never looking back. When they were safely at Velro and Reyn’s home, they started talking.

“That’s impossible to do,” said Seff. “I don’t know what Natali was thinking, if she wanted us to rob that. We’d be caught before we even opened a door. There’s crew swarming all over the deck.”

“We just need to sneak onto it,” said Reyn, pouring himself water.

“And avoid the forty sailors that will be walking around eating, preparing cargo to be lifted off the next day, and oh, the guards.”

“Well, I guess we can’t get on by the dockside, because there’s only one way up to the ship, and it looked like it had three guards or sailors on it.”

Seff got up off the chair and headed to where Reyn was drinking, “Yes, the gangplank is no good. If we get the small boat, we might be able to row up next to it, climb up the side and sneak onboard.”

“I looked at the sides, and I didn’t see anywhere that had hand holds like that. There probably isn’t anything like that, because if someone needed to get onboard, the crew would just throw down a rope ladder.”

“So, we can’t rob it,” Seff said, getting a hunk of cheese and bread.

“What if you just set fire to the harbor?”

Seff gave Reyn a look as he walked back to his chair with the food, “I can’t just set fire to the water.”

“No, I meant the ships in the harbor. Just fire off ten or twenty fireballs. You could even make them small—does it really matter? They just to need to cause a distraction.”

“That wouldn’t work either, because then the entire crew would be awake and trying to sail their precious boat out of the harbor.”

“If they’re sailing it out of the harbor, then I don’t think they’ll be paying attention to us as we rob it.”

“Rob the ship when the crew is awake and running around everywhere?”

“We set fire to everything, and then sneak on board and rob it while they’re sailing it out from the harbor.”

“But we’d still have to get on board, which leaves us at where we were before. We can’t get on board. And off. We have to get off too.”

Reyn got a piece of paper and pencil from his backpack and started drawing, “We get a grappling hook and grapple onto the side after we sail up to the ship in a small boat.”

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“You don’t think they’ll notice a loud thud as the grappling hook impacts the deck?”

Reyn drew a large circle with little fires scattered about the circle, “You’ll have set fire to every ship around them. The noise is going to be loud—probably a lot louder than what Goff’s was projecting, and that was a fiery roar.”

Seff grabbed the pencil, “Even if we sneak on, we’re going to get noticed. We don’t belong.”

“We just dress up like we’re some of the sailors. It’s night, and no one is going to notice us. On top of that, the captain won’t even be around. He’ll be up top trying to order everyone around to try to save his ship from catching fire.”

“Hold on; why don’t we just set fire to the Cristina to begin with?”

“Maybe we can do that as we’re escaping.”

“Why not just do it at the beginning?” Seff said.

“All the crew will be watching it, and they’ll notice if anyone is on the deck. Plus, the first thing they’ll do is try to unload anything valuable from the ship before it sinks. We don’t want them rescuing our loot.”

Seff started adding to Reyn’s drawing with a large arrow signaling movement, “So we’re going to make them try to sail the ship out of the harbor before the flames spread to their ship, yet we’re going to be laden with the loot and we won’t even have a boat that we can climb back in. At best, we can tie it to the Cristina, jump into the cold water, and climb into our rowboat.”

“We can get a waterproof sack, put anything we rob into it, and then tie it off before we jump into the water.”

“The very cold and frigid water of Belladder? We’re going to die. I’m more worried about us than worrying about everything we steal being dry and buoyant,” Seff said.

“We don’t want the maps or charts or whatever else we steal to get wet.”

“But all the crew is going to be awake. Do you really think they’re not going to notice two teenagers plundering their ship?” Seff said, drawing circles on the edge of the paper.

“They might, but how else are we going to rob it?” Reyn asked.

“We can’t do the grappling hook trick without noise to distract. So, I could just cast a few lightning bolts in a row—like five of them at a random ship. That would make tons of noise. Then I could just send a fireball over to one of the other ships. That would be very distracting, and then you could sneak below while everyone is distracted.”

“That might work, but what happens if I get caught?” Reyn said.

“On second thought, you don’t have the training that I do, so that probably wouldn’t work,” Seff said, scribbling out the drawings and turning the paper over to start over.

“You could teach me some spells, but that ship might set sail by the time we get back to rob it.”

“I don’t want to wait another three or six or however many weeks it takes to get back. We set fire to every ship in the harbor; we climb aboard the Cristina; we try to sneak our way past everyone; and we rob whatever we can from the private cabins,” Seff said, trying to draw what he had just said.

“I guess. Are you bringing your staff?”

“It’s too big to hide. If I brought it and anyone from the crew saw me, they’d raise the alarm immediately. It’d probably be best if I just brought my sword and wand.”

“Which is how many spells?”

“Five.”

“So, if we get more than five people attacking us, we run?”

“Yes.”

“And when we’re ready to leave, we climb back in the boat?”

“Yes.”

The quarter moon helped Reyn and Seff enter into the vast harbor silently and unnoticed. They could barely see their breath in the dim harbor light. It was past midnight, and the only people stirring were the watches on the various larger boats. The soft light of their cigars and pipes could be seen from afar. The lights seemed to move and congregate to certain spots on each of the ships.

Reyn and Seff rowed a small boat that they had rented for a few days.

When they were getting close to the Cristina, they rowed ever so slowly as to reduce the noise from the oars hitting the water. When they were twenty feet away and mostly hidden by her sheer magnitude, Seff began casting fireballs. They were very small—not larger than a plum. He began laying them just above the waterline next to the boat, causing an eerily lit line of turquoise water with orange highlights.

After he had six, he sent them flying fast and low on the waterline. After they were hundreds of feet away, he sent them straight up. One of them blinked out, but the other fireballs stayed alive. Seff then sent them to five ships he could see while aiming for their rolled sails. One fireball inexplicably zoomed past all the rigging and hissed into the water. Another one hit a mast and fizzled. However, the other three hit successfully, setting fire to the sails of three ships.

There were some cries from around the harbor when they saw the fireballs fly up, but after the fireballs lit the sails, orders were shouted immediately. The groups of small hovering lights scattered and disappeared as sailors put out their smokes and ran to either see the fires or help put them out.

Seff thought about sending up more fireballs since he had failed to set fire to as many ships as he had planned, but he dismissed the thought. They needed to get going. They rowed the last few feet to the ship and tossed the grappling hook over to the side of the ship. It caught the railing on the first try. Soon, Seff was peering onto the deck. There were a gaggle of sailors on the stern pointing and laughing, while there were none elsewhere on deck.

“It’s clear,” said Seff as he climbed on board with Reyn following shortly thereafter.

They were dressed in dirty, used sailor clothes that fit them. However, Seff and Reyn weren’t heavily built and older like the other sailors, and that fact worried Reyn. If anyone saw them, would they know they weren’t part of the crew?

Both crouched and looked around for the door to go down below.

“Let’s be sure not to set fire to this ship,” Seff whispered. “We don’t want any of the crew waking up. I don’t think we could talk our way out of any questioning. I’ll have my wand ready all the time, so if we get into a situation, I’ll just lightning bolt them.”

“Did you learn how to stun?”

“No, I didn’t learn. No one’s around to teach me.”

“Natali’s not going to be happy if you start killing half a dozen sailors right after she told you not to.”

“She’s the one who told us to rob this monstrous ship. Hey, look,” Seff pointed.

Some of the crew could be seen jogging off the ship and down the gangplank towards the other ships on fire. The remainder could be seen still watching the fires of the other ships. The fires had spread from the sails to the masts, casting gorgeous orange halos across the sky.

“Those boats may sink,” Reyn said.

“Who cares? Let’s go over there and go down,” Seff pointed to a door.

They crouched and scurried their way to a door on the bow end of the ship. They opened it and found a ladder leading down.

When they closed the door behind them, it was pitch black. They barely made it down the ladder.

Seff cursed.

“Just light a fireball and see if we can find a spare lantern somewhere,” whispered Reyn.

Seff did exactly that and soon found an entire line of lanterns off to the side on some pegs. He lit one and looked around.

Passageways led both forward and back with barrels and crates scattered and stacked everywhere. There were no other lanterns lit anywhere.

“We’re at the bow, so let’s keep going forward before we try to cross over to the stern section,” Seff said. “The stern is probably where all the good cabins are, but let’s see what’s in the bow first. Also, just wait here while I shield us—just in case.”

Seff finished after a few minutes, and they walked quietly but swiftly through the bow only a few feet before they came to three different doors. One had light coming from underneath the door, but the other two didn’t.

Seff pointed to one of the dark doors, and Reyn slowly opened it since Seff’s hands were full with lantern and wand.

Whimby sat staring at the orange glows lighting up the harbor. He smiled. His heart warmed, even though a cold breeze chilled his bones. He sat on an ancient gargoyle head and so leaned down and whispered into its ear, “There they are. They’re still running amuck; unbelievable.”

Whimby’s travels had led him through city after city without even a shred of evidence for the boys’ existence, until he had arrived at the coastal city of Pahlem. There he had checked with the dock. A man there remembered the boys and their father. They had stood out to him. The boys looked nothing alike, yet both had the same black eyes. Surely, they were brothers in very close age by a different mother maybe, the man had commented. The man remembered them boarding Arbella.

Looking up the destination of Arbella, he saw that it was a trading ship bound directly to Belladder. He arranged to be on the first ship out to Belladder.

There the thieves’ guild had told him about a boy sorcerer who fit his description. The boy had asked about selling stolen goods. The guild hadn’t seen him before and he was a sorcerer, so they had declined to buy his stolen goods. The boy’s name had been Seff.

After obtaining a description, he went off to every surrounding town and asked about the boy sorcerer, Seff. It seems he had made contacts everywhere in order to sell goods, yet he hadn’t been around very much after the initial contact. However, the descriptions got to be better and better, as he had been seen by over fifty different people who were more than happy to give their version of a description.

One man—for an additional five silver—told him in which city Seff lived. Whimby felt like patting him on the back, killing him, and then taking the silver back. But, Whimby wasn’t as wild as he used to be. The word diplomacy rang through his head, calming him. He had walked away.

And now, back in Belladder, an inexplicable fire had come down upon the harbor. He knew this town, and so he also knew there were only three ways out of the harbor. Two were paved with stone, but the third was a narrow wooded trail.

Whimby stretched, cracked his cold knuckles and began the long descent down to the ground.