M McNally - The Sable City

The party took rooms in an inn before evening started to fill the place, and plans for a meal were put aside as people collapsed in the comfortable quarters. Most slept through the rest of the day, and the night as well.

Tilda awoke feeling very strange, and it was a moment before she realized it was because she was lying on a bed for the first time in weeks. She sat up and saw the shallow light of morning shining in through the wooden blinds. One other bunk in the room was occupied by the small shape of the Duchess Claudja, while the other two were empty. Amatesu’s was neatly made, Nesha-tari’s was a tangle of sheets and covers.

Tilda let Claudja sleep for the Duchess had told her she intended to approach the officials of the Codian Empire today, as well as the reason. The noblewoman from Daulic Chengdea would need her rest. Tilda washed up in a room at the end of the hall and looked at her face for a long time in a mirror above the basin. She could not decide whether or not she looked older but the plains of her face seemed sharper than she remembered, and the cheeks more hollow. Home cooking in Miilark could repair that, at least on the surface.

The thought of food sent Tilda rapidly downstairs to the common room of the inn. Nights on the docks went long but the mornings started slow. Uriako Shikashe sat alone at the bar and Tilda hardly recognized him until he nodded at her, for he seemed much smaller without his full o-yori armor. His swords remained as ever on his hips.

Zeb and Amatesu sat at a table by a paned window fronting the porch, and both smiled at Tilda as she approached. She glanced past them at the masts bobbing in the harbor, the warehouses and the blue water. If it was not Miilark, yet, it at least looked a bit like home.

Tilda settled into a chair and Zeb pointed at the mug on the table in front of him. The rich aroma of imported Xoshan coffee rose on the steam, as no self-respecting Soutermese drank the local Doonish brew.

“Oh, gods yes,” Tilda said, and Zeb raised a finger at the barman.

“You look well, Matilda,” Amatesu said.

“My friends just call me Tilda.” Tilda reached out impulsively and hugged the shukenja, who tensed for a moment but then patted her on the back.

“Even this miscreant looks almost presentable,” Tilda said, smiling at Zeb. He had shaved down to a heavy goatee and a light mustache, which together made him look like a fellow who could not quite make up his mind. He smiled back, and he looked more himself.

“So what has you three up so early?” Tilda asked, looking eagerly toward the bar for her coffee.

“We’ve been on the docks,” Zeb jerked a thumb. “Found Madame Nesha-tari an Ayzant boat, bound up Channel.”

Tilda blinked. “When does it leave?”

“Today. She is already aboard.”

“What?” Tilda was surprised to feel something like a loss at the thought that a member of the party was leaving the others so soon. She scarcely knew these people at all, it was true, yet after the last several days she felt close to each of them. Even the Zantish sorceress, Dragon Cultist, man-eating-monster.

“She says goodbye to everyone,” Zeb said, and Amatesu frowned at him as she stirred her own coffee.

“Madame Nesha-tari did not say this.”

Zeb sighed. “Well, it would have been nicer if she had, correct?”

“Doesn’t she still owe you all a great deal of money?” Tilda asked. She attributed the return of her Miilarkian interests to her proximity to the sea.

Amatesu looked unconcerned but Zeb sagged back in his chair and groaned at the ceiling.

“We had this out on the docks. The Madame feels we were paid, as the Shugak set aside big chests of money for us. Of course, the little blighters will kill us if we go back to collect, but the Madame seemed to feel that was our problem.”

Zeb rocked forward in his chair and looked miserably at Tilda.

“I was a rich man, Tilda. For about thirty seconds. The hobs opened a chest with two hundred and fifty gleaming pieces of gold in it, with my name on them! Not literally, of course, but you know what I mean? I just stared at it, and nodded okay. If I knew I was never going to see it again, I at least would have touched it. Actually, I would have stripped to my skivvies and rolled around in the pile, tossing coins in the air and singing tra-la-la!”

“That would have impressed the hobgoblins, I am sure,” Amatesu said solemnly, and Tilda laughed at them both.

“So what are you going to do now?” Tilda asked, holding out a hand to include Shikashe at the bar, who was now tucking into a plate heaped with enough fish to stock a small pond. The sight made Tilda even hungrier.

Zeb and Amatesu just looked at each other.

“No idea,” Zeb said, and Amatesu gave a small shrug.

“Something always comes along.”

“Aren’t you part of some military unit in Larbonne?” Tilda asked Zeb, who smirked.

“Sure, a mercenary outfit that sold me to a lion-monster and these two crazy Westerners. I don’t think they will miss me.”

“What about you…Tilda?” Amatesu asked. Tilda smiled at her, though she felt a qualm at the question.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I should talk to John.”

Zeb jerked his thumb at the window again. “On the porch.”

“What?” Tilda blinked, and looked outside. John Deskata was sitting alone at a table at the end of the wide, covered porch, facing the street with his back to the window.

“He came with us to the docks,” Amatesu said. Zeb cleared his throat and his smile faltered.

“I think he found a Miilarkian ship.”

A serving boy was almost at the table with Tilda’s coffee, but when he set it in front of her she excused herself from Amatesu and Zeb, and walked outside.

She did not step loudly, but John looked over his shoulder as she came. She passed him and turned to stand across the table. He had an inkpot and quill, and a few lines written on a parchment square. He did not meet Tilda’s eyes, but she saw that his were brown again. His tower shield, covered by a cloth, leaned against the porch railing with his small pack bundled against it.

“You found a ship?” she asked.

“Yes. Fast cutter of House Tagalai.”

“How fast?”

“Not fast enough. If we make good time I will still be late by two weeks.”

John had still not looked up at her, so Tilda sat down across from him.

“How much do they want for passage?”

“They are short a hand. I’ll work my way across.”

Tilda blinked. “What about me?”

John gave a sigh instead of an answer. Tilda reached across the table and snatched the parchment, rattling the inkwell. John made a grab for it, but stopped himself and let her take it.

The ink was already dry. It was dated at the top and written in formal Miilarkian in a surprisingly delicate hand. That actually made sense, Tilda realized, as of course John Deskata had been for all his early life the privileged son of a Great Island House, trained in calligraphy and other noble pursuits. The stilted words were bland, a dismissal of Matilda Lanai from all services and interests pertaining to the House of Deskata.

Tilda stared at John over the paper, and he sighed again.

“I was going to write more, to mitigate that. I have been sitting here for half an hour trying to think of something to say.”

“What is this?” Tilda hissed.

“Just what it says. You’re fired, Tilda. I’m kicking you out of the House.”

Tilda stared, both her hands on the paper.

“You can’t do that,” she said. “You don’t have any real authority.”

John met her eyes, and green or not his flinty stare was as much authority as he needed.

“I am Jonathan Malohan Deskata, the last man of the Deskata blood, and I am putting you out of the House, girl. Not that there is still a House to speak of.”