CHAPTER 49: INSATIABLE AMBITION

  Elias had barely slept a wink, and he hadn’t slept particularly well the previous night either. His exhaustion was a piling debt that would require repayment at some point, but it would not be settled today. Today was the day of days. There was a knock on the door, but this one he was expecting.

  “Good morning, Bertrand.”

  “You look tired,” Bertrand said, stepping into the great cabin.

  Elias had been first to board The Sapphire Spirit that morning, having given up on sleep as soon as the sun creeped through his window. “I made coffee.” He held up his mug.

  “Wonderful.” Bertrand headed for the half-empty coffee pot. “Hard to believe we’ve made it this far, isn’t it?” Steam fogged the window behind him as he poured.

  “It’s been a busy couple of years, my friend,” Elias reflected.

  Bertrand sat down across from him. “I had been grappling with this feeling that I had disappointed my father by stepping away from the family company. Last night, he told me he’s proud of what we’ve done, of the fact that we went out and built something ourselves, that I didn’t simply wait around to be handed a title I never truly earned.”

  “How is The Fairweather Company doing these days?” Elias asked.

  “As well as ever. You know my father. Steady hand on the wheel, that one. Actually, Sorea has been involving herself more and more in the business, which has helped cure both her boredom and my guilt.”

  Even a year later, Elias could never quite calm the tremor her name set off inside him. “Glad to hear it. Give Sorea my best.”

  Bertrand sipped his coffee. “You two met just the once last year, right? I doubt she even remembers you. Sorea is terrible with names and faces, a quality she’ll need to improve upon in her evolving role at The Fairweather Company.”

  Elias was quite sure she would remember him.

  Mercifully, Bertrand was quick to change the subject: “I want to say something before… everything. Whatever happens today, Elias, just remember that we’re okay. One day doesn’t undo every day that came before it. I hope we win too, but we’ve won so much already. Slow and steady growth is still growth.”

  “I hear you, but slow and steady will never land us a seat on council,” Elias replied.

  “Is that what you’re shooting for?”

  That and more, but he settled for “Why not?”

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  “I can think of a few reasons,” Bertrand opined. “You and I will never see eye to eye on this, will we?”

  “On what?” Elias inquired.

  “Your insatiable appetite for more, and my… reservations. Tell me, what’s the point of it all when you take it right down to bedrock? We have our own business doing what we always wanted to do. Sure, we could make a little more money, you could certainly rent a nicer apartment. I’m not saying we shouldn’t grow, but when is it enough?”

  Elias leaned back on his bench, hovering against the air, searching for an honest answer. “I don’t think standing still is something I know how to do,” he said. “Is there even such a thing as standing still? Aren’t we all just sinking or soaring in a hundred different ways? Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but always sinking or soaring. And I… I need to be a dragonfly.”

  Bertrand chuckled. “I thought metaphors were my job. If you’re a dragonfly, what kind of creature does that make me?”

  Elias grinned. “A sparrow, of course.”

  Bertrand exhaled into his coffee, balancing the cup on his lip, teetering on a thought. “Sometimes I question why I let you talk me into these things time and again.”

  Elias shrugged. “It’s worked out for us, hasn’t it?”

  “One day, it may not.”

  “Then let us hope today is not that day.” Elias held out his mug.

  They clinked their coffees. “May the gods of good sense give us another pass and fire their arrows upon our hapless opponents.” Bertrand looked proud of that one. “How long do we have?”

  “An hour before we need to take our position at the starting line,” Elias said. “We’re taking off from the second row today, which isn’t bad.”

  “Not bad at all.” Bertrand stood up. “I can hear Briley clomping around out there. I’m going to go ensure that our navigator has her head on straight. She’s more nervous than she lets on. Don’t tell her I said that.” He paused at the door—“Ever”—then disappeared behind it.

  Elias was perhaps more nervous than he let on too. Alone in the great cabin, he took a moment to still his flowing thoughts and focus on his breaths, which worked for about four seconds before they came bursting through the dam. He flailed between hope and doubt, strategy and reckless ambition. Nothing could be known until it happened, he told himself. He focused his attention on this basic concept—and lasted another four seconds.

  It was not just the race itself that concerned him. Even if they won The Emerald Cup, a relatively unlikely prospect in itself, the next step in his master plan had arguably even lower odds of success. He knew Briley held out little hope, and he suspected the others felt similarly. They would have twenty-fours to reach the Broken Isles before their would-be acquisition was signed over to another buyer, a timeline that seemed just shy of possible.

  Elias supposed that winning the prize money, even if they could not make the trip in time, was still a considerable reward for their efforts. It wouldn’t be all bad. They could find some other opportunity to invest in. But while that certainly sounded reasonable, even to him, it did not feel like enough. This one was just too good to pass up.

  He focused on his breaths.

  If Elias couldn’t quite quell the storm inside him, he could at least mark the occasion in his own secret, symbolic way. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a single relic, examining the mineral between pinched fingers, for no two were exactly alike. He stared into it—its jade mysteries, its amber promises.

  He closed his fingers over the coin until he could feel its sharp edges no longer, and then he stared at an empty palm. He had now consumed exactly one hundred relics.

  It was nowhere near the few thousand he apparently needed in order to ascend, but a hundred relics was more than he had ever possessed not so long ago.

  Elias walked over to the writing desk tucked into the room’s front corner and opened its single drawer, petting Islet along the way. He took out his notebook—brought for the long voyage he hoped to be making immediately after the race—grabbed a pencil from inside his coat pocket, flipped to a well-read page that practically flopped open on its own, and added another tally mark. He counted them in fives. One hundred in all. He was still nowhere near filling even a single page.