The captain of the ship, or the owner, if he was to be believed, was a dwarf of a man. He had a few inches on Seth and was the first adult Seth didn’t have to tilt his head up to look at. At best he was an inch or two over five feet, and this was an estimate of generosity.
The man introduced himself as Nathan, to Seth’s disappointment. Call it childish, but he’d been hoping for something more sailor like. Now that he thought of it, he doubted he’d ever met anyone who worked on a ship. The Baron and the government had their own navy, so to speak, but not even a whisper of them had ever crossed his ears.
Nathan was one of those men who looked both young and old. His beard was kept in a short trim, and while his skin was weathered, it didn’t seem so old. Its dark tan seemed something born to weather the sun, perhaps born in some southern region outside the Barony.
When Nathan spoke, his teeth were not yellowing and his breath did not smell like the grave of a million sea creatures. He had no missing limbs, no hook hand or wooden leg. He did bear scars that crisscrossed his arm and one that marred his face, stretching the length of one side of his jaw but naught else that was noticeable. There was a subtle tang of sea salt in his smell, but mostly he smelled of something sweet, like chocolate. Seth attributed this to one perfume or the other.
Suffice to say, the man was nothing like shipmasters in Jonathan’s book.
“And who would you be?” Nathan asked, standing before Jabari, his girth and beard the only thing setting him apart from a child.
“Your new employer,” Jabari answered.
Nathan shook his head at this. “Don’t have no employer, don’t need one either.”
“I never said you needed one.”
“Well, I’m telling you I don’t have one either.” Nathan spat to the side but didn’t turn away. “We move goods and that’s all.” Now he looked around them, eyes narrowing in search. “And seeing as you lot damn right have none, you don’t even qualify to be talking with me on the subject of business of any kind.”
“We are headed for an island, north of here,” Jabari said simply.
“Are you deaf, man?”
“It’s somewhere to the north pole,” the priest continued, as if the man obliged him. “I will be your navigator on its path. Where I point, you will go. When we meet our destination we will part ways.”
Nathan watched him, confused. Finding no logic in the man, he turned his attention to Seth. “Is something wrong with him in the noggin?”
Seth kept his attention quiet. He shuffled a mild step back, eyes kept down and away, hoping it told the man he had no part in this conversation, nor was he willing to.
With a sigh Nathan turned back to Jabari. “I isn’t going north.”
“For ten thousand marks you are,” Jabari replied.
Seth’s jaw dropped and Nathan staggered as if physically struck.
Who in the hell offers ten thousand marks for a ship ride?
The mark system was a post crack introduction in the economy. History taught that every country before then had its own currency. Before that, they had had a united currency of gold. When the world fell to chaos, all had gone moot. The currencies of countries held no sway because even the countries held no unity.
Most countries had fallen to simple colonies; gatherings of people who’d survived the crack and established their own governance. Even the land they stood upon, the once great country of the united states, was a shadow of itself, barely half the size of what it had once been, with a size of ten states to its once fifty. And even that was not measured in states. Boundaries had been lost in the chaos and now they were simply nineteen regions, half of which succumbed under the fiefdom of the Baron of the Deep.
Seth’s lessons taught him that the country was larger than those states, however, and the land size of the old maps was no longer viable, the first crack having brought new land with it. The world in its wake was seventy percent more of unexplored land, and no one was capable of predicting a near estimate for how much the water body had grown. This was partly the reason for the adventure society. While the hunters went from place to place hunting soul beasts and reia beasts, adventurers were those who went far and wide mapping new areas, redesigning the world map.
As for the currency, what had once been the western world had created the mark system. They regressed to the use of precious metals. Irons were forged into coins as the lowest denomination used to handle the basest of needs. Silver was its immediate superior, a single one amounting to a hundred iron coins. Gold came next in the hierarchy, carrying out larger transactions, mostly heard of in the purchase of houses and cars and dracnis and the like. Even magical equipment of swords and shields and armors of significant quality fell under this purview.
Marks, however, where in a league of their own. They fell into the purview of massive business endeavors, each one priced at a hundred gold. They were the only currency denominations made of something akin to paper, though it was not. They were used in large scale business endeavors. Regions measured their treasuries in marks, ten thousand being the average account for a poor region’s monthly budget plan. With ten thousand marks a man could buy his way into government quite easily. Seth doubted even the Baron of the deep had ten thousand marks to his name monthly.
“What say you, captain?” Jabari asked into the silence of their shock.
Nathan’s frown replaced his shock quickly, then distrust slithered into place. “I need to see—”
Jabari reached into his pocket, retrieving a bag too large for its tiny space and held it out to the captain. It was large enough to rest on his palm and Nathan took it from him gingerly.
“Ten thousand marks in cash,” he told the captain.
“Y… You know,” Nathan stammered, trembling hands opening the bag, “it’s not wise to let another man simply take your ten thousand marks so easily. He could have ill intentions.”
From it he pulled a rolled up wad of brown bills. Seth estimated at least a hundred marks in the single wad held together by a simple band of rubber.
“Do we have a deal, captain?” Jabari asked, unperturbed.
Nathan nodded in jerks.
“Boys!” he barked a moment after, and the commotion of workers going about their businesses on his ship slowed. “Toss the goods.” A small grin creeped into his face as he turned to his ship. “We’re going North.”
Jabari nodded once and proceeded towards the ship. Seth followed diligently.
“Also,” Jabari said casually as he passed the captain, “I let you take the bag because I can take it back whenever I please.”
………………………………..
Nathan cradled his bag of marks in both hands like an egg. If he were a con man this would be the score of all scores, the likes of which would retire him.
He spared a glance at the crates his men were offloading and felt neither remorse nor fear. Lord Dinklebottom would be displeased with his choice of last minute rejection but the Lord’s displeasure was a paltry discomfort in the presence of the reward in his hand. With this he would be a made-man. A captain to be envied.
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He turned his head away from the offloading men to his new employer. He had gotten neither name nor destination. He knew nothing of the child that followed close to the man’s heels either. Their relationship could’ve been anything. But one thing was certain, it was not one of blood. The boy was of pale skin, baked to something almost tan from time under the sun, where the man was brown as those of African descent. His hair was wooly and cut short where the boy’s was shoulder length, wiry, and unruly. He doubted it had seen a blade of any kind in months.
Another thing he was certain of was that the man was souled like Durden, his souled employee he kept around for security. There were no normals with eyes like silver, after all. For a brief moment he wondered who would win in a fight: the rich employer or his souled employee. He didn’t dwell on the thought much, though, his mind wandering in the potential of ten thousand marks. It was retirement money, but only those who didn’t like what they did thought of retiring. He was only thirty-five and loved what he did; retirement was far from his mind.
Retire? No, he grinned. This will make me king of the docks.
With this he would be among the big names. Gone would be the days of collecting every and any job, bowing and genuflecting to the powerful. From now on he would choose his trips, turn down the request of those that disrespect him or would choose to haggle a perfectly reasonable price. He would be a name to quake the hides of other captains. He would start small, though. When he returned, he would buy another ship, the first in his future fleet. No need creating a fleet at once and spending all his new earned money. After expanding his crew, he would take his ship, The Old World, to a reputable fixer, probably one of those soulsmiths, and have it worked on the way it deserved. Replacing it would probably be cheaper, but The Old World had a place in his heart.
The Old World was a relic of the world before. He’d found it marooned on some desolate island when he’d been naught more than a first mate under his first employer. The moment he’d returned to land, he’d hunted down the people he trusted the most, men of strong skill and knowledge, rented a boat for an annoying sum, and made sail back to the island. Patching up the ship was a haphazard job, but it had been done right enough. Eight years now and he was still spending money patching it up. Today, it was an abominable hybrid of wood and metal. But it was fit for the sea.
His employer and the young boy walked the plank up to the ship in silence. Where the man walked almost like royalty without the air of condescension and kept his attention forward, the boy walked awkwardly, almost as if trying to hide a limp or like his balls were caught in his briefs the wrong way. The way his head turned with each step, surveying the docks, focusing on anything and everything, from the men plucking out barnacles from the ship’s prow to a group of men in a game of knots to a man hassling a woman, gave Nathan the impression of a child sheltered for most of his life. But his malnourished form, unkempt visage, and awkward steps, spoke more of a child no visitor to a hard life. It worried him, but not as much as the thought of the boy falling off the plank if he didn’t keep his damned eyes on it. None of his crew would be happy to go diving after the boy.
“So which way we headed?” he asked the man when their feet were secured on the deck.
“North,” the man said.
Nathan scratched at an itch in his beard. North was anywhere. “Any particular part of north?”
“What you have in your hands dictates I point and you sail. We go north.”
Rude, Nathan thought. Then again, for this much money as payment the man could sleep with his wife twice a night for the duration of the journey, if he pleased. Then it’s a good thing you don’t have a wife or she would’ve left you long ago.
………………………………
The first thing Seth noticed was how unsteady the ship was beneath him. But while he struggled to keep his feet beneath him, the men walked and ran and laughed as they went about whatever they were doing.
There was a man held aloft in the most outrageous display of acrobatics. Ropes in hand, he scaled the main mast, seeming to fly with each jump each time he got to the top and leapt off. The ropes guided his path on every decent, swaying and curling as he moved, his feet in the air as much as it hit the solid mast for his next leap. The sails came unfolded, then rewrapped, every time he moved, commanded by the rope in his hands.
That the ship was a monstrosity of metal and wood in odd places that seemed ready to fall apart at any time yet these men worked about it without care gave a whole new meaning to the word trust.
Jabari exchanged brief words with the captain who walked away with a glint in his eyes and money in his hands. There was something almost perverted about his attention on the money but Seth didn’t hold it against him.
Expressionless, as was the way with him, Jabari turned away from the chaos and walked past him. Seth followed in a hurry. On the swaying deck of the ship, walking as Jabari had taught him was more difficult than most things.
He’d held the tiniest bit of curiosity when he’d seen the ship simply because he’d never been on one. Now all he wanted to do was get off the unbalanced contraption.
Regardless, one unstable step after the other, he followed Jabari.
Jabari led him into an opening in the ship’s deck that bore descending stairs which in truth was more or less a simply repurposed ladder. While it thumped with every step he made, Jabari walked down it with the sound of falling hay. Not for the first time, Seth envied the man’s penchant for silence in its absolute.
They passed more workers as they moved, the stairs flattening out to even ground of thick metal. A few gave them no attention, their devotion focused solely on one task or the other Seth could not hope to understand. Most, however, wore surprise or bafflement. There was one who’s jaw dropped at the sight of him.
“They don’t have a guide,” Seth heard one man with a patchwork of brown hair on his head whisper.
His companion shrugged, uncaring. “Cap let ‘em onboard. Says they paid well enough.”
“We’re moving people now? I thought we were against that.”
“That’s your problem, Mack. You think. And you ain’t e’en good at it.”
Seth watched Mack as they passed and the man refused to relent. “You know human cargo are the worst. They have emotions,” he said with disgust. “Always wanting you to do something this way and that. Its repulsive.”
“How you got employed here after I left you in Baldie’s ship is repulsive,” the other man spat. “Now git to work. I ain’t git time for your babbling.”
Mack turned away, shuffling deeper into the ship as Jabari led Seth down another part, mumbling: “They better have paid enough for ten hookers.”
Fancy ladies, Seth thought as he lost sight of the man. Derek always said they didn’t like being called hookers. Calling them whores was asking for a fight. Pre-crack history claimed there had been a time when there had been a more civilized and even celebrated version of it that wasn’t exactly it in the truest sense. In it the women had had all the powers. He’d not been interested enough in it when his brother had been impacting the knowledge to learn further. But he was certain Jonathan would know.
The thought of his brothers soured his mood, cowed him adequately. He didn’t notice when his shoulders slumped and his head tilted into a bow. Still, he followed Jabari.
They passed a corridor, deluged a few doors and scaled two repurposed ladders. It showed that the insides of the ship were more metal than wood, creaking less and groaning more.
The journey came to an end at a tiny room unfit for two. Its door was made of rusted metal and its handle announced their arrival with a banshee’s shriek as Jabari turned it.
“We depart soon,” Jabari said when they were inside.
Seth merely nodded. Silence in his discomfort was a battle for two, fighting it alone felt like a handicap. Still, he stifled his complains and stood in the heart of the room, listening, fighting his urge to gag at the smell.
“When we arrive,” Jabari added, no sign of discomfort on his person, “You will answer to Seth Al Jabari when asked your name. You might want to find some honor or pride in your family name, but I tell you this; no one of power in the seminary will care. Announcing your heritage will do naught more than make you enemies amongst your peers.”
A question came to Seth and he asked: “What does Al Jabari mean?”
“It is a title existing in two cultures with different meanings,” he answered. “To the Nandake sect of the burning path it is the title given to the first born, heirs to the patriarch seat. For the sect of the dying waters it is a title given to an adopted child in a family of little to no import.”
Burning path and dying waters. Seth had never heard the names. “So… which one is it?” he asked.
Jabari shrugged. “Whichever one you want.”
Turning away from Seth, he eased himself to sit on the unadorned ground. Seth read this for what it was. Their conversation was over.
Before he could decide what to do, the ship lurched beneath his feet. The suddenness of it almost threw him off. He frowned at it as he moved his feet, finding stability in the unstable. It wasn’t rocket science to know they had moved.
Sparing Jabari one more glance as he, too, sat with his back against the wall, he wondered how the man intended to lead the captain from here.
Thirty minutes into the trip, beaten by the steady companion of Jabari that was silence, he willed himself to sleep and failed. The discomfort of the trip weighed down on him.
Hey, his mind whispered. Seth Al Jabari.
He sighed inwardly. Was his mind mocking him?
Guess what? It asked.
"What?"
We really, really hate ships.
"Why?" He asked, confused. And when it said 'we', was he a part of it or was it referring to just the other fragmented minds?
As if he isn’t also a fragment, something murmured.
Seth couldn’t place which mind this was, but the insinuation bothered him, though not as much as he felt it should.
"Why do you hate ships?" He repeated.
First, shut up, a mind thought and Seth knew it was chiding the other. Second, it addressed him. You’ll see soon enough.