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Chapter 32

Welcome to Neo Esteban

MMS (Manoran Mercantile Service) Lady Bremerton was a three-mast vessel, slightly longer and more narrow than the Sharkbite. Her forecastle featured a heavier arbalest on a pivoting turret, and her crew would let neither Kismet nor I anywhere near their bear.

Otherwise, the ships were largely alike. As a government vessel, the Bremerton had more severe and restrictive discipline. That, and their sea-warlock, Gordon, didn’t want me anywhere near the bow, so I had to fail (mostly) at splitting waves from the stern.

Other than spending our first evening at dinner with Captain Cody Fawkes, we were expected to remain in our rooms whenever anything interesting was happening. I still went to the stern daily for wave-splitting, engaged in mixing and converting mana after that, and engaged in the meditations that replenished my psi points after that.

“I don’t see why you don’t just use your taint.” Madonna told me. “It’s not like there’s any way to be rid of it. Besides, while my soul is damned, yours is also. You should be practicing fire magic.”

.....

“I recall some-wife telling me that a wooden vessel was not the ideal place for such things.”

“You are way too happy with your feeble water magic.”

I put a wooden splinter into my bowl of water.

“Spirits of flame and spark, hear my plea, grant my request. I, Rhishisikk, shaman and elementalist, request your aid. Light this piece of tinder. Ignition!”

There was no reaction.

“Your incantation is wrong and silly.” She said. “Do you really think a spirit of the flame is here? Between islands, firmly above the ocean?”

“Fires of hell, bound to me and subject to my commands! Hear me, fear me, and obey, for I am Blacksoul Madonna, and I command you incinerate that insignificant twig. Infierno!”

Again, nothing happened. “Something’s wrong with your twig or your water. That should have bathed you in flames.”

Which explained why it failed. The pact between us clearly had its loopholes, but direct magical attack was no longer among the threats I had to face.

“Have you considered that what’s wrong with my magic might also be affecting yours?”

“I’ve considered it, but I’m much more in tune with my inner flame than you are with any lesser magic you command.”

“Do the sailors seem unusually loud to you?”

“Quit changing the subject.”

I opened the door, and found that the sailors were unusually loud. Kismet also had her door open.

“Kismet?”

“No clue.”

“Weapons ready.”

I knocked on Narces’ door.

He was already equipped, and had his spear out. “Cover the women, we’re going topside as soon as I have my shield and my wife is ready.”

I turned back to my room to catch my shield in the face.

“Wife ready. Get your shield on.”

“Kismet, come when Gamilla is ready.”

“Rhishi, we’re waiting on you.”

“Okay.”

We went topside.

“Ambassador, get off the deck!” The foresail was pierced and lightly singed. There were a few suspicious blood stains, and the archers were firing heavily to port, or left.

A quick look that way revealed a one-mast cog flying a black flag.

“What manner of idiots are attacking us in that thing?” I asked.

#

“Ambassador! Get off the deck, we are in combat!”

“Mate Garrett! Escort the ambassador and his staff to their quarters. They are NOT to return to the deck until this is ended.”

“Aye, bosun.”

So, we were under the deck for the only event of note. When we arrived in Neo Esteban, the Lucky Mutt was behind and to the left of us, surviving crew now pressed into Manoran service.

We thanked the captain for seeing us safely to Neo Esteban, and set about learning that outside of the docks, nearly everyone spoke Neonese, and only Neonese.

After half a day’s futile attempt to get a room, we hired one of the local guides from the docks. Sandra’s cousin owned an inn, and she was happy to take us there.

The prices were... well, far too expensive. I was just about ready to declare them an enemy of the empire and just let my wife burn their entire cesspit of a town to the waterline. But it was night-time, and things rarely looked as bad in the morning.

They came for me before dawn, in heavy mail and plate boots and gloves and helm. I didn’t recognize their heraldry or what they said before literally carrying the wife and I out of the inn.

“I can burn these pus-bags, right?” Madonna demanded.

“Be on standby.” I said.

She cussed in a manner that would have inflicted serenity damage. “They aren’t even trying to feel my butt!”

“You are four, that is probably a good thing.”

“Just let me burn them!” she demanded.

“No. Not until they do something hostile.”

“We are being carried around like SACKS of FERTILIZER! I feel they are hostile.”

They carted us to one of their temples, sat us down in the pews, and splashed holy water on us.

I sighed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they wanted.

They tried the holy water again, before priests came with oil. Not boiling, again just blessed. Since we were no longer being restrained at that point, I wiped the oil over the dome of my skull, polishing my scales.

I thanked them in what little Neonese I knew.

“Ughr! Now I have to wash my hair!” Madonna complained. “Religions are the worst!”

And so, with a brief apology, they showed us back to our inn. Our room had been looted while we were gone, in part because our companions were waiting downstairs in the common room.

“Had us worried, ambassador.” Gamilla said.

“Do any of us know enough Neonese to ask what all that was about?” I asked.

“Religious nonsense.” Madonna said. “Trying to burn us with holy water. Only works if you have the Sancta Argentum, or silver dissolved in holy water. Cheap ass bastards.”

#

When soldiers clad in the governor’s heraldry picked us up off the street shortly after breakfast, I expected to get a brief idea of what was going on. Again, there was no attempt to communicate beyond shouting even louder in Neonese, and then shoving us around in the direction they wanted us to go.

They sat us down at a wooden table with a severe-faced man sitting at the head. He tried speaking at us in Neonese and Loud Neonese before sending for a maidservant who spoke accented Furdish.

“The governor says who you are.”

I almost asked who he thought we were before picking up on it. The word order was different between the two languages.

I pulled the packet out of my inventory. “I am diplomat of the Tidelands, also known as the Red Tide, a sovereign nation-state of some eight thousand people.”

He looked over our credentials.

“He says these are not proper diplomatic credentials, authorized by the King of Neonen. He says to go back to your dirty hick village in the north.”

“He sounds hostile...” Madonna said.

“I am curious, then, why he desires to speak with us.”

“He says you are liars, and that you are actually a merchant company selling red axes?”

Gamilla produced that packet. “Red Axe Trading Company, representing the mercantile interests of the Tidelands.”

“He says merchants cannot be diplomats.”

“I’ve gotten more diplomacy done as a merchant than as a diplomat.”

“He says do the Makura enjoy your diplomacy.”

Oh, so he’d heard about that.

“The Makura just want to feed their children. They only offer violence against those who won’t pay the toll.”

“He says paying tolls to animals is a waste of goods. Everyone will be happier once his merchants arrive at the bay and poison the Makura.”

“By the gods.” I said. “I’m so glad we established with them how to tell us from other merchants.”

.....

I noticed her translating rapidly to the governor.

“He says there will soon be no Makura in Makura Bay.”

“Oh, he’ll soon have no merchants in Makura Bay. They don’t often do it, but Makura can swim.”

“He says the crews of his merchant friends can fight Makura.”

“Underwater? His marines are far better than any other colony’s, then.”

“He says if they stay underwater, they are no threat to sailors above it.”

I folded my hands above my parcel, began bundling it back up.

“He says you have more to say.”

“Ships are wood, wood that exists partly under water.”

“He says a well-built ship hull is proof against Makura claws.”

I blinked. “Gamilla, do we have a hundred silver lucras? Put it on the table.”

I placed the diplomatic packet back in my inventory. “Tell the governor that if that was an offer to bet, we accept it.”

#

I am told that in several worlds, the Furdish and Neonen evolved near if not adjacent to each other, and that they thus have similar linguistic roots. So sorry, but that just isn’t the case in Athal.