When Ester Ivory arrived in port, Captain Kolto took over many of the tasks that Kalen had planned to do himself. He was a little embarrassed, but more than that, he was relieved. The sight of the main harbor city of Circon growing and growing on the horizon had left him speechless at first, and even as they disembarked and a pair of sailors helped Yarda into the back of a wagon that had been brought for her comfort, he was still as stunned as if he’d just taken a blow.
He had been told all his life how large continent cities were. But being told and seeing it for yourself were two different things. Every soul in Baitown would not outnumber just those people Kalen could see working around the docks. There were twenty ships as large as Ester Ivory in port, and countless smaller vessels.
It was mid autumn, and though Kalen had heard a couple of sailors mention rumors of a poor harvest in the country famous for its agriculture, he was sure they must be wrong. Save for the ocean at his back, there was nowhere he could turn without seeing mountainous piles of grain sacks being loaded onto ships or ported into warehouses.
“Nice weather for this time of year,” Kolto told Kalen, squinting up at the clear sky and the warm afternoon sun. “Circon’s cold for my taste in the winter, though I suppose you’ll be fine coming from Hemarland.”
“Hopefully I won’t still be here,” Kalen said. “I’m sure my master will come before the month is out.”
She probably doesn’t even know she’s my master yet, he thought desperately. He hadn’t expected to see Arlade standing before him the second they docked. But he’d wanted to. The idea of waiting for her was more intimidating than ever now that he’d seen where he’d have to wait.
I’ll get lost for sure. Why have they shoved so many buildings together like this? It’s ridiculous. They should have turned it into a hundred different villages instead. And where are all the trees? They must have chopped every one of them down to build all of this. A land without trees is unnatural.
He knew he was being absurd, but he held onto his opinions all the way through the city to the inn the captain had selected for them on the recommendation of the harbormaster.
“I’ll be paying for us both,” Yarda said firmly when Kalen started fishing around in the luggage for his money.
“But you already covered the price of the voyage,” Kalen protested.
“I’d have paid that myself, anyway, wouldn’t I?” she said, the wagon rocking as she heaved herself out of it and stood looking up at the sign swinging over the inn door. “My trip was already planned, and you have only been good company along the way.”
The captain even negotiated the night’s price for them, depriving Kalen of his chance to use the “training” Lander had inflicted on him before he left home. So Kalen practically ran to haul up all their belongings to the small but clean room at the top of the narrow stairs, wanting to do the last useful thing he could find for himself.
Yarda decided to wash up and rest soon after they arrived, and Kalen met the captain back downstairs. “I’ll see you before we sail again,” the man promised.
“You don’t have to come all the way here,” Kalen replied. “I know you must be busy. And I can make my way to the docks to see Ester Ivory off.”
Kolto smiled at him. “We’ve enjoyed having you aboard. Come by any time while we’re still here and talk to a crewman if you need me. I’d like to know if you have word from your master, as well. It would set my mind at ease.”
“Thank you. I’ll let you know if she’s written anything.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to send your magic jars back home through the churchmail?” the captain asked. Kalen had left the recording jars he’d made for his family and Yarda’s on board the ship. “I’m happy to take them to Hemarland myself. But it’ll be a nearly a year. We’re straight home for the winter after this, with no stops on the way.”
“I know,” said Kalen. “But I have the letters to mail, and I can always record another jar and send it faster if I want. It’s nice to be sure those two will make it, even if they make it late. Yarda recorded so much on hers.”
The captain nodded. “It seems wise to me, too, when you put it that way.” He stood from his chair by the inn’s hearth, and stretched. “You remember the name of the doctor? Ah, I shouldn’t ask. You take good care of your cousin, I know.”
“Doctor Meluda of Rye Street, in the house painted yellow,” said Kalen. He’d helped one of Kolto’s sailors out a few years ago. “I remember.”
“If you have trouble finding him—”
“I’ll find him,” Kalen said firmly.
The captain held out his hand and Kalen shook it. “Aye, young man,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
#
All the way to the Church of Yoat, Kalen was absolutely convinced that he would be beaten and robbed at any moment.
This is all Lander’s fault, he thought, blushing and nodding an apology to a girl he’d almost run into in his haste to move past a dark alley. Even Veern and Terth could rob you, Kalen. You’ll be so distracted singing your magic spells while you walk that everyone will know you’re an easy mark, Kalen.
“As if I’m going to start singing cantrips in the middle of a street,” he muttered.
He’d already decided his favorite type of spell was unusable until he knew just how much attention cantrips might garner. Zevnie had been able to feel him casting For germinating grain when she was close enough. Arlade had been on the beach that day, and she hadn’t; so it probably wasn’t something that could be detected over long distances, but how was he to know how near he was to another practitioner in a city this packed with people?
He only got lost twice on his way to his destination, and both times, he asked women his mother’s age to point him in the right direction. “Such a devout boy!” one of them said.
Kalen didn’t see any reason to correct her.
In Circon, Yoat and Clywing had their churches side by side. The red stone buildings were low but massive, and they curved around a central courtyard. At the back of the complex, there was an Office of the Post, which was as big as the entire Church of Yoat on Hemarland.
Kalen had to keep telling himself not to gawk at every little thing or lose himself in the city’s pace as he followed a bald man wearing long brown robes back. He tried to look like he knew what he was doing as he entered the office. There were two men sitting at stools behind a tall counter, with iron bars separating them from a group of people who were waiting their turns to send or receive their post. Both men wore flat fabric caps with a silver charm pinned to the front—one for Yoat and one for Clywing. Behind them were shelves filled with books and scrolls, cabinets, and a huge iron box covered in magepaint that Kalen guessed was some kind of protective storage chest.
Feeling a little nervous at the busyness and seriousness of this place, he watched the other patrons carefully. Save for a man wearing a bloody butcher’s apron, most of the people were well dressed compared to those he’d passed on the street. Kalen glanced down at himself. His summer tunic and trousers were sturdy, but they’d seen a lot of use given his refusal to open up the two packages of newly made clothing from home.
Well it’s fine, isn’t it? At least I don’t look like I’ve been gutting sheep all day.
Kalen listened to the conversations everyone ahead of him had with the men at the counter. They were all sending or receiving letters and packages. One fellow in velvet pants asked about portaling a bottle of wine somewhere, and the man working behind the counter rolled his eyes and named a price that made Kalen’s mouth go dry. If he took a third of everything his parents had given him and handed it over, he could apparently have a bottle of wine sent by portal to the Republic of Laen.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The man in the velvet pants looked aghast and staggered off with his bottle still clutched under his arm.
“He was in here last month, too,” said the man who’d told him the price. “How much of a drunk do you have to be to think the price for portal mail would have gone down since then?”
A couple of people chuckled.
“Clywing’s going to keep the Orellen grave robbers clutched to her bosom for coin a bit longer, eh?” muttered the butcher.
“Don’t think I won’t have you thrown out for blasphemy and spreading lies,” the clerk said sharply. “Raising of the dead is not within the scope of man. Not even practitioners. Those rumors were started by the Leflayn family to justify a genocide. Such is the position of Clywing and Yoat.”
“Ain’t holding that position in other countries, I hear.”
The clerk slapped the counter and stood. “Get out. Walk your post wherever it’s going. May Clywing have mercy on you for sullying her name.”
His partner sighed as the butcher stalked away. “It’s getting tedious to hear that argument every time someone mentions portal mail. Who’s next?”
Kalen was frozen in place. There was a roaring in his ears.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” a woman asked him. “Boy? Hello?”
“Yes, it’s my turn,” he said woodenly. “Thank you.”
It still took him a second to force his feet toward the counter. “I’d like—” to run away, “—to check on some letters,” he said. “Yoat 843:12 and 843:13 out of Hemarland.”
“Ugh,” said the man, rubbing his ink stained fingers against a damp cloth and standing up. “Island mail. Never gets labeled right at the outset. How long ago was it?”
“Three and a half months,” said Kalen.
The man pulled a stack of papers bound with rings off a shelf and scanned a few pages, then shook his head and reached for another. After a couple of minutes, he nodded and returned to his stool, where he checked yet another pile of papers.
“You’re lucky they came through Circon or I might not have news for you. The one bound for Makeeran left Tothport two weeks ago. You probably won’t have more news of it than that until you get a reply back, if you’re expecting one. The other one…” He scratched his cheek and stared down at something on the page in front of him. “Well, frankly they shouldn’t have let you send it. It was irresponsible of them. But they probably didn’t know better.”
“The one to the Archipelago?”
The other clerk—the one with the Yoat pin on his cap—lifted his eyebrows and turned on his stool to examine Kalen curiously. “He tried to send a letter there?”
“Is that wrong?” Kalen asked.
“No churches in that place,” said the Yoat clerk. “Not a single one.”
“Churchmail doesn’t go there,” the Clywing clerk who was helping Kalen agreed. “No call for it. No ships bound there. I’m sure there’s some way for them to receive messages from the continent. They’re all practitioners, aren’t they? They’ll have their methods, but their method isn’t us.”
“It’s like you tried to mail a letter to the moon,” said the Yoat clerk, still staring at Kalen while he left his own customer to huff in annoyance. “Who were you sending it to?”
“Don’t answer him. It’s none of his business,” said the Clywing clerk, still scratching at his face. “Anyway, it looks like we stopped your letter here. I’ll dig it out of the undeliverables pile for you when I have a moment. Come again tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll give it back.”
No. I don’t want it back. I want it to be on its way to Arlade. It was only the backup letter—a threat, in a way, to make sure Zevnie kept their bargain. But it still felt like Kalen’s chances of even reaching the sorcerer had been halved.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Do you know how long the other letter will take to reach Makeeran?”
“Six weeks at the soonest would be my guess,” said the clerk. “But it’s only a guess. We really don’t get that many island-to-island messages through here, you know? Churchmail used to be a land and portal service, and now it’s nearly all an overland service. Ship captains don’t really work for us directly, and they do what they like when they cross the Mage Line.”
Kalen tried not to look devastated, but he must not have managed it.
“But Yoat will naturally refund your money!” the clerk said hastily. “For the undeliverable letter. Won’t they?”
The Yoat clerk shrugged. “I guess that’s fine? Since it was our church that let him send it.”
“How much would it cost to send a person to Tothport? Or to whichever large port on the other side of the continent is cheapest?”
“By mail?” said the Clywing clerk, looking confused. “We’re not a coach service.”
“By portal.” Kalen suspected it was a stupid question, but he had to ask. Just in case. What if it was the exact same spell that would be used on the bottle of wine and therefore it was the exact same price? If he had to, could he ship himself and Yarda there?
“Clywing only has a team of four here,” said the clerk. “They don’t send people.”
“If he scrunched up he’d fit in a small grain bag. Isn’t that about the size they’re handling per delivery?” the other one said with a chuckle.
“Never mind,” said Kalen. “I was only curious. I’ll come back for my letter tomorrow.”
#
Well, now I know, he told himself as he headed back toward the inn. I know so many things I needed to know. This is good.
But it didn’t feel good.
No, it is. It really is. This isn’t the worst outcome at all.
A letter had safely crossed to the opposite sea. It was on its way to Makeeran. It would reach Zevnie’s family, then Zevnie, then Arlade. Arlade would come. She might come just to get her crystal skull apprenticeship token back, but she’d come. And she’d help Yarda.
She’d helped Kalen’s parents for free. She was odd, but she wasn’t an uncompassionate person.
How does Zevnie’s family get a message to her?
She’d said they could do it “more easily” than Kalen. What did that mean? Why hadn’t he asked? Was it some magical device? Would it happen at once when the letter arrived or would it take more time?
And this was a good place for Kalen to stay, wasn’t it? It sounded like it hadn’t changed much since Lander was here before. Circon was so close to Swait, but they still had church-protected portalists. Four of them. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something.
Their funds would hold out fine, too. The inn wasn’t expensive. They could stay for months if they had to.
But it sounds like we might have to.
“Yarda,” he whispered when he entered their room some time later. “Are you awake?”
She was lying on the too-small bed with a spare skirt folded over her eyes as a shade. “Mmm,” she said. “So many noisy people outside, aren’t there? Goodness, a real city is a fine thing to see.”
Kalen sighed. Of course she’d have a positive view on being kept from her nap by sounds from the street.
“If you don’t mind talking, I wanted to ask you something,” he said, sitting down in the room’s one hard chair. “When you were planning this trip, before you knew I’d be coming along with you, what were you going to do when you reached Granslip? Were you going to head straight across Circon as soon as you arrived? Or maybe down to Swait and over?”
That second had to be it. It was the fastest way. Or it had been…maybe things were different now.
“Bad news about your letter?” said Yarda, not lifting the cloth over her eyes.
“Not really. It’s just taking longer to reach the people it needs to reach than I hoped. It will be at least a couple of months before Arlade gets here. And if she’s busy, or she decides to wait until spring, or the ship with the letter goes down on the way to Makeeran…why don’t we leave another message for her here with our route on it? We can go ahead and set off toward the Archipelago together, and that way, even if everything else goes wrong, we’ll be that much closer to our destination.”
After he’d said his piece, Kalen held his breath, waiting for her reply. It was a long time coming.
“I think we’ll stay here,” she said. “The trip I had planned was a hard one. And I am not as well as I hoped to be. And you might outrun Arlade wizarn, trying to take me off to the Archipelago on your own. How is she to get to her new apprentice if he is running here and there by the time she knows he is looking for her?”
Kalen slouched in the chair.
“Yarda, the person I sent the letter through…” He pictured Zevnie’s face in his mind. It was surprisingly clear considering how long it had been since he’d seen her. “She’s ambitious. She’s also proud and she promised, so I think she’ll pass the message to Arlade. But there’s a chance she won’t. I knew that when I sent it. It doesn’t matter to me if we outrun Arlade. My apprenticeship can start whenever it starts. We can go to the Archipelago and I can train with some other teacher even, while the healers there help you.”
Yarda’s lips quirked up. “I think I will stay here,” she said. “And give Arlade wizarn her chance to come. Mayhap there is a healer to help me in this big city, in addition to the captain’s doctor.”
“Why are you smiling like that?” Kalen asked, wondering if she’d understood what he said. “This is a very serious decision.”
“Before we left, Shelba said to me, ‘Yarda, for all I know Kalen is not going off with plans to meet a master at all, but to buy up all the books on the continent and read them to himself.’”
Kalen made an affronted sound. “I am trying to meet up with a master! Almost just like I told her!”
Yarda lifted the cloth from her eyes to wink at him. “‘But you’ll have no trouble from him,’ she told me. ‘Everyone says Jorn and I have spoiled him, but I can’t see it. He is always trying to be good in some way or another, even when he is carving up the walls or scaring people with his spells.’”
“I only painted on the walls.”
Yarda chuckled. “I’m glad we’re traveling together. And I’m sorry to be more of a burden than I meant to. But I do think it’s better to rely on your ambitious friend and rest here for a while.”
“You’re not a burden,” Kalen said quickly. “And if you want to find a healer here—a practitioner one—I’ll help you.”
He was already planning a new way forward in his head. If they were staying here for sure, then…
He stood up.
“I think you can wait until tomorrow to go looking for a healer,” said Yarda. “It’s late in the day for that.”
“I’m going to a book shop.”
“A book shop?”
“If there’s a place that sells books for practitioners, they’ll know about any healers. And they’ll have other things I need.” Kalen felt a tightness in his gut that was half excitement, half nerves. “If we’re not traveling for a while, I can practice magic. Not like on the ship. I can really do it.”
In a city this big, there had to be a wind spell. On a scroll, in a book, tucked away in someone’s head. Even if it was just one, even if it was hard or old or it did something ridiculous—Kalen was going to find it.
And he was going to make it his.