CHAPTER 47: SCARRED OBSTACLES

  A hard-won victory demanded a celebration, or so said Bertrand, and who was going to argue? The crew of The Sapphire Spirit collected in The Thirsty Eagle to knock back a few drinks, reminisce over the morning’s triumphs, and fantasize about what might come next. All were in attendance, minus the cat, though Gabby intended to bring her back a little something, pocketing broken-off slivers of her chicken breast.

  Iric ordered them a second round of meads, his drink of choice, as Briley objected to the mug set down in front of Gabby. Iric objected to her objection. “She is a young woman,” he said matter-of-factly. “If she is adult enough to keep our ship running, she is adult enough to enjoy a drink with her crew.”

  “One drink,” Briley replied.

  Gabby seemed less invested in the debate’s outcome, but she did appear to enjoy her mead all the same. Iric caught a twinkle of unexpected satisfaction in her eyes, clinking his mug against hers. “It is good, no?”

  Gabby nodded and took another sip, then asked, “Who’s that?”

  They turned toward the familiar woman sitting down beside a blushing if somewhat beaming Briley. Zeyna Darya settled in as if a strong breeze had carried her here straight from her tavern in Azir. She did not dress to accommodate the fashion trends of Sailor’s Rise because Zeyna did not dress to accommodate anyone or anything but her own intricately constructed self. They had spent a few evenings getting to know her over the past couple of seasons, always stopping by the tavern whenever they were in Azir—they did not have much choice if they wished to see Briley. This recently included Iric, who on their last visit had towered over the petite tavern keeper during a heated exchange on the nature of existence.

  The northerner was first to bring her a mead from the bar.

  “What are you doing here, Zeyna?” Bertrand asked on everyone’s behalf.

  “I wander where my heart takes me,” she said. “I’m in town for a week. Though perhaps I shall bring back a few bottles of this wonderful elixir to serve in my establishment.” She was referring to the mead in her hand.

  Iric’s satisfaction was as clear and true as the North Star.

  As Zeyna shared her many observations about Sailor’s Rise and its strange citizens—who she likened to “water lilies on a lake”—Briley looked increasingly uneasy. Elias initially assumed it had something to do with the presence of her Azirian lover, but she seemed distracted from their conversation rather than reacting to it.

  “Water lilies on a lake?” Bertrand required clarification.

  “Beautifully crowded from above, yet stretched thin over depths unseen,” Zeyna explained.

  Bertrand nodded approvingly. “That’s pretty good, actually.”

  The conversation carried on like this for another few minutes before Briley cleared her throat, then cleared it again.

  “So, we may have a slight problem,” she said, gathering their attention.

  They waited for her to continue.

  “Grayson wrote me a letter that arrived this afternoon,” she went on. “Apparently, the paper mill has another interested buyer. More than interested, in fact. She’s put an offer on the company. All things being equal, Grayson would still rather sell to us, but the situation is complicated.”

  “How complicated?” Elias asked.

  “He says his buyer is an impatient woman, and if she can’t close this deal in a week, she’ll purchase a competing mill instead. I wrote Grayson back, but his terms are clear: he will wait until noon a week from today. Even if we actually win The Emerald Cup, that would give us twenty-four hours to get to Hamford with our money. A typical vessel would take two days to complete that journey. A fast ship, a day and a half. But twenty-four hours”—she shook her head—“I’ve been thinking this through all afternoon, and I’m just not sure it’s possible.”

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  “I can overpower the engine once or twice,” Gabby inserted. “That will give us a temporary boost of speed. Not ideal for that kind of distance, but… we’ll see how she flies.”

  “It still may not be enough,” Briley said. For once, her expression was clear: she had already run the numbers, entertained the best-case scenarios, and in every single one they came up short.

  Elias, at least, was not about to give up on everything they had worked toward. The opportunity was too immense. He didn’t believe in destiny, but he believed they were destined for this. As they had experienced that very morning, great obstacles made for better stories past the finish line. “We’ll figure it out,” he said.

  Not everyone looked so sure.

  * * *

  After finishing their evening in the great cabin of The Sapphire Spirit and walking Gabby home—she had first fed Islet her pocketful of chicken slivers—their party dwindled to two. The scene might have made for a touching memory: Elias and Bertrand were ambling through Lowtown together on a vague path toward their respective beds, chatting the night away, trailing the lower city’s circular edge and taking in its underrated if obstructed views. Their bodies felt cold yet light in the tranquility of forgotten hours. Silence was its own kind of peace, his mother once said, but even the oil lamps softened the sharp edges of the district’s ramshackle facade.

  Yes, it had been a most relaxing excursion. Unfortunately, the relaxing part would soon be forgotten, for Elias heard something. Or someone.

  Bertrand noticed his friend’s reaction in turn before he, too, heard the footsteps. “Is someone following us?” he whispered.

  Elias said nothing back. He reached for the handle of his pistol. He had left his rapier back on the ship, preferring not to carry two cumbersome weapons when simply strolling through his own neighborhood. But the hour was particularly late, and to be fair, his neighborhood was not the best neighborhood.

  Two men appeared from the shadows behind them. Another stepped out from an easily missed alley. To their right, the city’s sheer edge ended any thought of escape.

  Indeed, Elias had no doubt that, whatever their intentions, these men were not friendly. Maybe he could sense this, or maybe it was just bloody obvious.

  The strangers surrounded them. A man with a scar on his chin, his eyes lost under the shadow of his tricorne, approached Elias and Bertrand. “I come bearing a message,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Elias stepped forward—and was immediately punched in the face.

  “That,” the man said, “is the message.”

  Elias covered his eye and cursed the gods, reeling backward into Bertrand, who stopped him from falling.

  Letting things end here, allowing this man’s message to be conveyed exactly as intended, would have been the easy end to this confrontation. They simply needed to say nothing, to flinch, to squirm, to submit. Bertrand was certainly cycling through the full gamut of a threat well received, and he was not the one who would be nursing a black eye.

  But Elias—Elias was furious. Elias was a collector. He straightened himself and asked, “Did Edric have you follow us all night just so you could punch me in the face?”

  The strangers turned. “Go to bed.”

  “He’s threatened, is that it? I saw he came in fourth place in his race. I bet it really grated him that we placed third in ours.”

  “Just leave it, Elias.” Bertrand grabbed his forearm, as if that would stop him.

  The man in the tricorne halted in his tracks, circling around to face them again. “You really should go to bed, kid.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Elias informed him.

  “Shall I deliver you another message, then?” The stranger rolled up his sleeves. His companions closed in around them once more.

  “Try it,” Elias said.

  And so he did—try it, that is. Elias dodged the swing with ease and countered with his own fury-laden punch. His pursuer recoiled farther than anyone expected, his tricorne landing on the ground by the younger man’s boots. Just as quickly as it settled on the dirt, Elias unholstered his pistol and pointed it toward one of the men behind him.

  The men paused. The one on the ground eyed his hat.

  Elias searched for something clever to say, but where wit normally resided, adrenaline flooded through. And actions were, in this case, louder than words. That would be doubly true if he had to fire his pistol, an outcome he wished to avoid. The last thing he needed was Edric Graystone pointing his finger, calling him a murderer, and paying off the police.

  Mercifully, his attackers did not want to be shot either. The situation had obviously spiraled out beyond the scope of their compensation, and so they adopted Elias’s silence and dispersed back into the shadows with one fewer tricorne.

  Elias picked it up. “Need a new hat, Bertrand?”

  It wasn’t a very nice hat, and also Bertrand may not have been in the mood. “Why did you escalate that?” he asked as they left the scene.

  “We’ve taken down pirates,” Elias replied. “Why should we let a few thugs push us around?”

  “Because not every fight needs to be fought.”

  “No offense, my friend, but you clearly never learned how to stop a bully. You don’t stop a bully by taking the punch and lying down.”

  “This isn’t a schoolyard. We’re adults now.”

  “Tell that to Edric.”

  Perhaps Bertrand had no response to that, or perhaps he was merely tired. Either way, he was ready for bed and said as much.

  And as they parted ways at the crossroads between Hightown, where Bertrand had lived his entire life, and Lowtown, where Elias still resided to save on rent, the man from Acreton had one last point he wished to make. “There will always be obstacles,” he said. “There will always be those who wish to stop us. The setbacks and punches will never cease. But I can take them all, Bertrand. Every last one.”