Aleicree's reading was eventually interrupted by the ringing of the shift change bell, which was also the ringing of the chow bell. All through the crew quarters, the afternoon shift of seagons roused from their slumber. Aleicree put away Sea Gods' Laws in zir small coffer of belongings (not the larger chest that held decades of correspondence) and got up to join them.
They’d sailed into some rain. The waves rocked the ship, but Aleicree had been ignoring that by long practice. When the shift change happened, the wind magic briefly relented, and wild winds slewed the whole ship out of line, setting the navigator to a struggle. They were in safe waters, but it made for an unpleasant deck crossing to the galley. Part of the crew had to delay going for their meal as there was a surplus of work to be done on deck keeping the ship running in the rain, but none of that applied to zir.
Sometimes zie skipped meals; they were served hearty for hard-working seagons, and in a physical sense, Aleicree was not hard-working at all. There was no muscular demand within the task of wind-weaving. It was a task of the mind. Today zie caught the smell of spicy fish noodles. This was not a day for skipping meals. This smelled too good to pass up.
While waiting to be served, zie asked one of the other seagons, "Do you know what good we're carrying from Griolor?"
"Packed, salted meat for distribution to the cash croppers of Rhakanin. Believe they find it a delicacy," came the reply.
"Aye, good for hard work!" said another seagon in passing.
Aleicree was at the front of the line then, and the comment almost made zir laugh into the fish noodles zie'd just gathered from one of the kitchen's great serve-yourself bowls. The salted meats of Griolor were nominally for long sea voyages, but any respectable sea captain carried three shifts of wind magic. That made their voyages swift enough for fresh foods and left them carrying preserved meats as a delicacy for farmergons!
After the meal, Aleicree stretched one last time and then meant to be soon again being the wind. This time was slightly different. Zie found that zir space was occupied. A red and gold vashael was being bound into it just as Aleicree usually was. The blindfold hadn't been placed yet; it was placed last and removed first. "Are you the student windmage?" Aleicree asked, stepping to the front of the room and into the new dragon's line of sight.
"I am, I'm Rhaokir," said the vashael. Aleicree could tell they were both hermaphroditic, like a third of dragons. Pronouns usually matched scents in this respect, and necromantic alterationists took on most of the few exceptions. They were almost certainly both 'zie/zir'.
Aleicree dipped a hand and a wing, then swept them to the side. "Welcome to the Serene Chordalite," zie said.
Rhaokir eyed the fluff about Aleicree's neck. They were both wearing windmage uniforms. "You'll be the officer windmage of the evening, then?" zie asked.
Aleicree settled self-consciously to all fours. This was a very low stance for a vashael, and not at all officer bearing, but being called an officer felt wrong. "I am," said Aleicree, acknowledging verbally what zir body language denied.
"Then I hope I perform adequately well," Rhaokir said.
Aleicree smiled as zie replied, "I hope I can meditate well without bindings."
The blindfold was placed upon Rhaokir's head, but the red and gold vashael said one more thing before dropping off into a meditative trance: "It's a relief to hear you say that. I failed the course I took on walking meditation." It was a relief to Aleicree as well. They were similar in that respect.
Then Rhaokir fell still, fully bound to the floor and blindfolded, and Aleicree experienced the wind picking up everywhere over the ship at once to fill the sails as Rhaokir became the wind. Even in the windmage room upon the forecastle, Aleicree's amicus breeze was plucked at by Rhaokir's will.
Aleicree for zir own part had to shadow Rhaokir that first shift, and so reserved a portion of zir mind to stand still while attempting a meditative trance. It didn't work well. Zie had not the slightest difficulty doing this unbound on land - had indeed settled upon the skill in childhood - but zie was not used to countering the rise and fall of the ship while being the wind. It took some time to achieve, adding the need to remain standing under zir own power while the ship moved underfoot.
When zie managed it, zie felt a great looming darkness. It was very strange. Rhaokir's meditation was touched with the awareness of non-sight and non-movement, as though Rhaokir were projecting the experience of being bound into place through the steady wind itself. It was a paradox for the moving wind to project stillness, but Rhaokir was doing it.
Yet what cause did Aleicree have to complain? The wind blew steadily.
The time zie spent bound up boneless on the deck never wore on Aleicree. Ordinarily, this job was a way to spend the day playing and get paid for it! Being the wind was fun. Dropping in and out of trance constantly while losing zir focus was less fun. Hours of watching Rhaokir do it all subtly wrong wore on Aleicree very rapidly. Zie wished zie had some light seagon duties to occupy zir day as Kajir did.
Despite Aleicree’s irritation, the student windmage did not slip control even once, so Aleicree eventually stopped going repeatedly back into temporary trance states to check. Zie thought instead about the book zie was studying. Zie had read so much in zir life that Sea Gods' Laws was only likely to take three days. With little cause to remain in the windmage binding room, zie exited onto the forecastle and started looking for off-duty seagons to canvas for books that zie hadn’t read.
This endeavour saw no success. Some of the seagons were so shame-faced zie wondered if they were literate.
When Aleicree went back to the forecastle near the end of shift, zie found a black vrash standing anxiously in the rain outside of the door. Zie recognised this sailor as Chraiteng the Lifebinder, who had once been a necromancer yet who gave it up before it killed him. He could still work small healing spells to deal with aches and minor injuries.
Aleicree moved to the door and opened it. Chraiteng stepped inside out of the rain, his dark scales dripping. There was room for three dragons in the windmage room, although only just. They stood partially over the bound form of Rhaokir.
Call it a test, zie thought. Can Rhaokir meditate while we're talking?
Aloud, zie asked, "Why are you hovering near the windmage room?"
"There's a strange aura about the ship," he said. "The crew can't tell, but I traced it here."
"That's Rhaokir's altered meditation," Aleicree replied, pointing a finger at Rhaokir's head. "Zie’s doing something weird with the wind trance.”
Chraiteng stood for a moment thinking about that. His cheek was quirked down by a minor frown. "I'm not sure about the Fate implications from that. I'm not a geomancer. I just... felt the dissonance. Between myself and others. I'm… Uh, I’m dropping out of the ship's order."
“How can you be dropping out of the ship’s order?” asked Aleicree, unsure what he referred to.
"It’s a, uh, mystic issue," Chraiteng offered hesitantly, turning a hand up. "Maybe it's nothing. I'll get back to work." He shuffled out of the room and back out into the rain on deck.
The rest of the shift passed without incident. Remaining in the binding room, Aleicree was still there when the chow bell rang. Shiowatha showed up soon after, and zie let Shiowatha take the blindfold off of their apprentice. Aleicree helped with removing the rest of the bindings. Soon Rhaokir was standing again on the deck.
Aleicree bid them go to the galley without zir, and then when they had departed zie contemplated the dark skies through the slits upon the wall of the binding room. On an ordinary night, zie would fly for exercise as zie had near Griolor. That flight would be unpleasant with storm clouds in the air.
Zie wanted to stay up and return again to sleeping through the morning shift. This was easier thought than accomplished, but there was a tool aboard that could help. Zie sought out Captain Kagnir's cabin and knocked upon its door, then was greeted by Kagnir looking at zir dourly. "A poor hour, Aleicree," he said.
"I thought I might be forgiven as the night shift has just begun," Aleicree said, dipping zir head deferentially. The captain worked on both the afternoon and evening shifts, then slept through the night shift, so Aleicree was intruding in the first hour of what was his sleeping shift. Zie had little choice; zie sought something in his cabin.
"What do you need? Be quick," he snapped.
"I need a waking puff, Captain," Aleicree said with zir head still low. Zie touched zir hands to the deck and stood on all fours. Aleicree felt small in spirit and did it more than other vashael.
"No. Those are special dispensation only," he said, and started turning away.
"Wait, dock my pay. I'll pay double! They're available in every port!" said Aleicree hurriedly. This was true as far as zie knew.
Captain Kagnir hesitated, then shrugged. "Fine. It's your money," he grumbled, and came back a moment later with a small muffin whose top was coated with a candy shell. He handed it roughly to Aleicree, who stood again on two legs to take it, then he closed the door behind himself.
Aleicree tossed the muffin into zir mouth and bit down. It was a rather bitter pastry despite the look of it. It needed all the sweetness it had to be edible. If zie didn't know what it was and were eating it only for pleasure, zie might have spat it out as a bad dish. As it was zie walked away chewing reluctantly and swallowed en route to the galley to get a ration of water and wash the flavour out.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Even as zie drank that water, zie felt alertness returning to zirself as though zie hadn't been awake all day at all. This was the power of the waking puff.
Freed for a few hours from the need for sleep, Aleicree slipped on a safety harness again and took flight once more. Night flying was harder than day flying. Without the sun, there were no good thermals. By the grace of the amicus breeze, it wasn't too bad. Aleicree didn't have to see the details of their bodies to know that the vast majority of the dragons flying at night would be vashael.
They were out near Lorniven, as Aleicree knew by having been on this particular voyage many times. Lorniven was an uninhabitable grassland; anything built within it vanished in a day. That left the land an inky void from the deck of the ship. Yet high above like this, it was possible to see very far across the land, and there were distant towns all lit up. Griolor was due east and a little south on the far side of Lorniven’s murk. Northeast of them there were three little fishing villages on the coast, not quite large enough to host the kind of ships that trafficked between Griolor and Rhakanin, but still showing up against the clear night. Due north was Rhakanin itself, a proper blaze to show its wealth.
The night shift would do all but dock; the morning shift would handle that. Aleicree would be asleep by then. When zie tired of flight, zie landed on the deck again and stepped lightly past the slumbering morning crew to zir own space in the sleeping hall. Fetching out an eternal lantern from zir chest zie hung it up, and then took out Sea Gods' Laws to read quietly until the waking puff wore off.
Zie got past the chapters describing individual settlements swiftly enough that night and started reading of the first treaties between the sea gods. For there was a substantial regularity of climates upon the sea and negotiated guidelines for such things as how the winds were to blow in different latitudes. All Theoma could be navigated without wind magic by those who had studied the laws of the sea gods, the book boasted. There in the margins a cramped bit of writing said, "Being able to do this is called curse-rating." This intriguing marginalia note at that point in the book made Aleicree wonder if Kajir had taken some of his notes within Sea Gods' Laws.
Likewise to the great regularity of the winds, and important to land climes, there were agreements among the sea gods to allow certain weather events to pass by strengthened. For most rain systems grew stronger over the sea, and thus land theomes near the coast were often beset by what the book called maritime rains. These were the orders of organisation of the higher clouds, Aleicree recognised; in the course of zir day-to-day work at being the wind, zie did not reach so high as to disarray the weather systems overhead, but rarely extended zir invisible aery presence above the top mast of the Serene Chordalite.
The book spoke a great deal about meteorology from its particular perspective that blamed the sea gods for all processes. As zie read it, Aleicree contrasted it mentally with one other textbook that zie had read at the windmage academy: Missing Meteorology. The author of Missing Meteorology had studied the processes of Missing theomes. By finding a Missing/Missing pair of theomes, where both the land theome and the coastal theome adjacent to it were Missing their land gods, they had demonstrated that the land theome received a breeze by day, while by night the wind blew out towards the sea.
Missing Meteorology was why Aleicree knew about land and sea breezes. Had zie only read Sea Gods' Laws, zie would have thought that land and sea breezes were solely the result of geomantic negotiation between the land and sea gods. Zie believed based on reading both that the sea was governed to a substantial effect by the dynamics of Missing theomes, and so zie wished zie had a copy of Missing Meteorology to show to Kajir. Perhaps next time the Serene Chordalite completed a circuit and returned to Griolor, zie would acquire a copy of that old textbook to share with Kajir then. The notion struck zir again: if zie actually changed careers, zie might have to arrange for one to be delivered to the ship. Kajir would be an interesting contact to keep, and the gift would make zir memorable in correspondence.
With that thought, zie stowed the lantern and the book away, and curled up to sleep with zir chest, coffer, and pillow.
The ship arrived at Rhakanin early the next morning while Aleicree was asleep through the morning shift, and the seagons were released for a market day. Every time the ship made port, it stayed for a day; such was the regulation of the schedule of the Serene Chordalite as well as many other merchant vessels. This was the chance for the captain and crew to load the next cargo. Great wind-powered cranes rolled in upon the wharfs to accelerate the loading and unloading of the ships, but ship windmages were off-duty for this interval; the port labourers controlled the winds that powered their own machinery.
Those who worked the morning or afternoon shifts to unload or load cargo were released in the evening and through the night as well to provide a chance for the crew to let off steam if they wished to do anything with their time and money.
Aleicree... had no idea how often they wished to do anything with their money. The market days didn't drain zir own coffer much of the weight of currency within it. Zie did not drink, revel, or eat expensive meals. Paying double for a waking puff to fix zir schedule was an unusual expense. Zie most typically visited the offices of scribegons looking to buy books from them, and that was actually profitable for Aleicree. Books were common enough to find a few for sale at most decent ports and rare enough that patience plus a lev-i-quill could turn blank ones into a side income. This part-time scribegon work felt good and useful!
Zie woke in the afternoon again with the shift change bell. This time it was not the chow bell, as no meals were served aboard ship while it was anchored in port. Coming out onto the deck, zie saw the sky was dreary overcast overhead, spitting a few drops here and there as a light rain fell.
Despite the weather, the docks were greatly active. Aleicree walked into town past the looming, windmill-festooned cranes that were picking up giant crates from rolling carriages on the wharf. Vashael meditated on platforms to control the winds that actuated the machinery, and melodic chiming rang out to warn the crews when a wind shifted.
The scribegons at Rhakanin were exceptionally prosperous. There were a lot of dragons in the vicinity of this city, and the local market for books stretched all the way along the river Joylim. The scribegons had a lot of business to occupy themselves with as they sold the kind of books that were most popular among the farmergons on the river. The sales were mostly lampoons and cookery books, alas. Comedy and cookery held little interest to Aleicree, but such books were common in many households; countless dragons who considered their reading ability of no great import could yet read enough to appreciate a funny story or a cookbook. Publishing for the Rhakanin market was a real trade pursued by a few authors!
Aleicree, for zir part, was unwilling to copy a lampoon or a cookery book, because they were not useful books. They were easily sold, but they did not make dragons better at anything essential. Zie would rather copy something else, and browsing at a local scribegon shop, zie found a farming manual. These were also good in the local market, for obvious reasons.
This would be a book that zie would almost certainly sell if zie copied it; it needed to go into the hands of some farmergon who would make good use of it. Theoma could always use more farming manuals. Talented farmergons freed the unskilled from farming. Everyone could get more of what they wanted out of life if the farmergons knew what they were doing.
While there, zie asked the scribegon, "Do you have anything on geomancy?"
"I have a copy of The Directory of Querent-Querent," said the scribegon. "Will that appeal?"
The Directory of Querent-Querent was a famous, and supremely basic, work of nonfiction. It was largely a collection of heavily reproduced Tachamundi city maps with offices of Querent-Querent highlighted within them. It also contained short descriptions of the offices within different cities across Tachamund. Aleicree had read it before, but although it had nothing to teach about geomancy as such, it was a good resource for finding books on geomancy. Querent-Querent nominally promoted trade, tourism, and migration rather than geomancy as such, but it was an organisation of geomancers. When you visited a library of Querent-Querent, 9/10ths of the librarians were actual questing geomancers who were trading a few years out of forever to be librarians in exchange for some spell or magic item.
The reliance of The Directory of Querent-Querent upon maps meant that Aleicree could not copy it by lev-i-quill; the fact that the book was heavily reproduced already meant that Aleicree could not expect to retrieve much value reselling it. It held nothing for someone who was already capable of finding the libraries of Querent-Querent without it. Zie didn't want it.
Still, zie persisted to the scribegon with, "Do you have anything for practising geomancers?"
The scribegon shook his head. "I spend my days copying lampoons for farmergons," he said. Aleicree was aghast. I could never be just a scribegon, zie thought. Copying lampoons day after day sounds soul-killing. Perhaps misunderstanding zir silence, the scribegon continued, "There are few geomancers along the whole river Joylim."
That seems too great a claim, Aleicree thought. Surely there was no region in Theoma that was without geomancers. Who could resist the lure of the trade in spells and magic items? Yet there was nothing to be gained in arguing the point, so that Aleicree bought only the farming manual and three blank books. One for if zie copied Sea Gods' Laws, another for the farming manual, and a third just to have on hand.
Zie also refreshed zir stock of loose writing paper, ink, and envelopes. All of this was quite expensive, but... well, writing letters was not so expensive a hobby when it was zir only expense, as it often was. Zie'd been saving up for quite a few years despite keeping in contact with others through the post.
Through Rhakanin zie went back to the ship, zir business on land concluded, while about zir the city streamed about to other entertainments of the evening. Aleicree was a proudly practical dragon with no use for any of that.
Zie spent that evening reading zir new farming manual and holding open a blank book for zir lev-i-quill, taking only a few brief breaks near the start to look up terms in zir dictionary. All evening and into the night zie read at the measured pace which zir lev-i-quill could keep up with, getting through perhaps a fifth of the book in this way. The enchanted quill wrote far more swiftly than Aleicree could write with a natural quill, though still not quite as swiftly as the traverse of zir eyes, thus requiring this practised pace to copy a book with it.
Had zie started on Sea Gods' Law zie would have gotten less than a tenth into it, for Sea Gods' Law was a much thicker book.
The farming manual went on at length about soil types and how they impacted plant growth. Aleicree supposed it was the sort of thing Denziu had known for decades by then, and though zie was sleepy after the work zie switched tasks to writing a letter that would be good for Denziu. Zie wrote of the book and what it contained, then just in case mercantile Denziu had never thought to do it with zir spare time, zie wrote of the work of copying a text by lev-i-quill. Zie wrote of zir pride in selecting a practical text, and then that zie wished zie had a dozen lev-i-quills with stands to put the books upon. "If either of us should ever found a scriptorium, we should acquire from geomancers that it be done swiftly and well. We could make a real contribution to learning in Theoma," Aleicree finished.
When zie was done with the letter, zie was very happy with it, for it was a letter written very much to Denziu's interests in soil without any of the tiresome details of seagon life that everyone zie knew had grown sick of. The whole chest of letters was Aleicree’s joy. Someday, zie would pay a bookbinder to create an epistolary archive of zir travels upon the Serene Chordalite, and so thereby keep the memories far more indefinitely than they would keep in zir head alone.
Only when the letter and its necessary duplicate had dried and were ready to be stowed in the chest of letters did Aleicree curl up around zir precious belongings for sleep.