Derek Ward

I don’t know if I can adequately explain why the Night of Fire and Blood happened, Mr. Ambassador, but I will try. It is important to understand the depth of feeling among the population when the infant princess was born. She was the promise for the healing of the Jeweled Empire. Her kidnapping shattered that hope among everyone, but particularly among the commons. As commons, they had no other way to express such base emotions. It was very unfortunate that it was the dwarven and human residents of Lisandra who were the primary victims. – Ambassador Rela during the initial negotiations for re-opening trade between the Jeweled Empire and the Republic of Marei

RIN

A day later, Rin was on a ship to the Jeweled Empire. Bruno didn’t get the sorcerer’s name, but he found the ship the sorcerer boarded and where he was heading. Bruno was surprised that the locals did remember the odd man wanting passage to Black Cove. According to the people Bruno talked to, the sorcerer acted like he got his information about Fools Port and smugglers from a paper novel. Most of the smuggler crews brushed off the sorcerer because they didn’t trust him. One of them finally agreed to take him to Black Cove at an exorbitant cost. The man didn’t even bother haggling, which caused a lot of talk down around the docks.

Rin hated the ocean. He hated the smell and the constant rocking. His father’s family made their livelihoods on the sea for generations. The blood that yearned for the spray of the ocean skipped him. Nausea kept him from eating much since walking on to the ship, which didn’t help his mood.

Neither did the medallion pulsing happily as the Sea Dancer slipped through the waves to the Jeweled Empire. Rin grasped the small gold disc from beneath his shirt. It was a few centimeters in diameter and thick like a Kingdom guilden coin. One side was inscribed with the thanks of a grateful empire. That turned out to be a lie. On the other side was the promise to return. He looked hard at those elven words. Pain and anger threatened to rise up from where he buried it. As far as Rin was concerned, that promise was broken a decade ago. He was only going to the Empire to find the sorcerer and bring him to justice. Everything on that continent could burn as far as Rin was concerned. He thought about throwing the medallion into the sea, but his hand stopped as soon as he started to take it off. The flash of a familiar face in his mind’s eye stayed his hand.

A soft cough startled Rin. He tucked the medallion back under his shirt before turning to face the ship’s ancient sailing master. There was something familiar about the wizened man, but Rin couldn’t place it. The man was short and stooped, with a few whisps of gray hair peeking out from under a weathered top hat. He gave Rin a toothless smile and straightened his worn topcoat.

“Captain’s compliments, and we should be in Black Cove tomorrow afternoon,” the sailing master said, “Provided the Protector continues to send us the good winds like He has.” Dutifully, the sailing master fingers danced in the Sign of the Protector.

“Thank you,” Rin answered politely.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, this should be an interesting homecoming for you, sir,” the sailing master said quietly. The words jolted Rin.

“Excuse me?” Rin asked, his voice dropping to a warning tone.

“You don’t remember me, but I remember you,” the sailing master said, giving Rin another wide smile. “Of course, forgetting you would be hard. You’re a spitting image of your poppa.” The sailing master gave Rin a knowing look.

“You knew my father?” Rin asked, surprised by the man’s words.

“Everyone who did business with the pointy-ears before the Night of Fire and Blood knew your poppa. Man was a genius trader. He knew every elf merchant in the city and kept us out of trouble too many times to count. When those bastards lynched your folks, the crews of all the Mareian ships in Lisandra Bay were ready to charge into the city to get revenge. If those elf soldiers didn’t stop us, that is. Of course, we thought you were dead too at the time.” Most of Rin’s memories of his parents were just fragments. Except for that night. Those were crystal clear. The terror of his parents’ screams as the mob hacked them apart. Rin’s breathless run to find help. Finding that help. Rin stomped down on that last one. He wasn’t ready to think about the old dwarf yet.

“Sorry, son. I didn’t mean to drudge up bad memories,” the sailing master said, breaking Rin’s reveille. “I just remembered how happy Captain Lucius was when you turned up alive. Fifteen years after the Night of Blood and Fire, and there you were, standing on that dock in Lisandra, asking for passage back to the Republic with a bag of elf gold.” Rin’s mind clicked on when he’d seen the sailing master before.

“You were on the Consuls’ Trader!” Rin said, astonished at the turn of fate that brought the two of them back together again.

“Oh, aye. Before your grandmother – that dark-hearted bitch, if you’ll excuse me from saying so – blacklisted us all for ferrying you back,” the sailing master said. “We heard you and her parted ways, uh, less than amicably shall we say, before she decided to make us all pay for it.”

“You mean when she declared vendetta?” Rin replied, with dark humor. His throat suddenly became tight. “I’m sorry. It never occurred to me she would take it out on all of you. I was just trying to stay alive at the time.” Rin remembered cautiously walking up to Captain Lucius at the Trader’s gang plank. After a few minutes of stumbling through barely remembered Mareian, the tall man dressed in blue jacket with heavy gold embroidery snatched Rin and dragged him onto the ship with a wide smile. The fortnight sailing back to the Republic was a happy time. Rin was treated like a long-lost son or younger brother. Rin added another large tick-mark in the book he kept in his head. Someday, his grandmother would pay for all the harm she inflicted with her vendetta.

“Don’t apologize son,” the sailing master said, “Any of us would have done it, even if we knew ahead of time what it would cost us. We owed your poppa that much.” The sailing master’s words made Rin pause. For the past ten years, Rin assumed the Trader’s crew treated him so well because of his grandmother. Had it been because of his father instead?

“If you don’t mind me asking, son, where were you all those years?” the sailing master asked, “The captain told us it had something to do with all that ruckus when the elves got their princess stolen.”

“I grew up in the dwarven lands, then got caught up in something I thought was a good idea but turned out bad. In the end, I just wanted to get away from everyone in the Empire,” Rin answered. He hoped he hadn’t offended the older man with such a cryptic answer, but Rin didn’t like talking about his life there. The sailing master just nodded. The two of them were quiet for a minute, listening to the sounds of a ship underway.

“So, what’ve you been up to since we dropped you off on the docks?” the sailing master asked, breaking the silence. “Besides upsetting your grandmother so fiercely?” If anyone else asked, Rin would have told him the carefully prepared cover story of being a bounty hunter chasing down a mark. It just seemed wrong to lie to a man who lost everything helping a desperate eighteen-year-old kid.

“Joined the rangers,” Rin answered, trying to keep his voice casual. The sailing master was quiet for a long moment. Rin started to second-guess his decision.

“Good profession, that,” the sailing master said, as if Rin said he was a bookkeeper or a farmer. The two men stood in silence, looking out at the horizon. The winds were picking up briskly. It looked like the sailing master’s prediction about the timing of their landing was correct.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I have to ask your name,” Rin said.

“Kromer, son. Jonas Kromer,” the sailing master answered.

“Well, if it means anything, Mr. Kromer, I’m truly grateful for what you and the crew did for me,” Rin said, extending his hand, “If there’s anything I can do for you, please ask.” Kromer grasped Rin’s hand in an iron grasp.

“I might hold you to that if the Republican Navy’s feeling a bit frisky before we make port,” Kromer answered light-heartedly, “Having a ranger vouch for us might just keep them for peeking into some of the holds.” Kromer winked mischievously. For the first time in weeks, Rin felt some of his burdens ease as he laughed at the small man’s half-joke.

Within a week, the Sea Dancer approached Black Cove. According to hack adventure paper novel writers, Black Cove earned its name for being an illicit port for smuggled goods and reveling pirates. In truth, the name came from the black, volcanic sand ringing the harbor. Despite the name’s mundane origin, Black Cove did its best to live up to its infamous reputation. As the Sea Dancer glided into the harbor’s waters, Rin saw at least three ships on the Republic Navy’s “sink-at-all-costs” list, including the infamous pirate ship Night Stalker.

The Sea Dancer slid into one of the many rough-built slips cramming the port. Sailors scrambled down the brig’s sides to secure the ship’s lines. Rin watched the activity. The captain made it clear that for the pittance Rin paid for his passage, he could wait until after the crew offloaded the far more valuable cargo. Time was money for smugglers just as it was for legal traders. The quicker the cargo was off loaded, the quicker it got sold, and the sooner the crew could spend their shares. The whorehouses and gambling dens beckoned from across the wharf.

The wait gave Rin time to study the other ships tied up at the dock. Three slips down was the ship that carried the sorcerer to Black Cove. He committed the faces of the ship’s sailors to memory. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be forced to be too rough when he questioned one of them. Rin always preferred when people cooperated. Violence took valuable time. Rin needed to find the sorcerer and get off this cursed continent. Finally, Jonas Kromer told Rin he was free to leave the ship. Rin shook Kromer’s hand one more time before slinging his saddlebags over his shoulder, picking up his saddle, and leading his horse down the gangplank.

As soon as Rin’s boots hit the dirt road at the end of the dock, a wave of power shot through him. Rin momentarily lost his footing. The medallion’s pulse was stronger than ever. The damn thing thrummed like a drum through Rin’s body. Holding tight to his horse, the pulsing subsided. As the pulsing quieted, Rin realized he felt different kinds of pulses through the medallion. Five different kinds.

Protector damn it all, it’s them! With just a bit of concentration, Rin could discern which pulse belonged to who and how close they were. His eyes widened. One was close. Very close. Rin concentrated on the pulsing, and he knew who it was. Of all people, what was he doing here?

Rin shook himself. Fate, planning, or coincidence didn’t matter. Rin was here to find the sorcerer and bring the man back to the Republic – alive or dead. Everything else could wait. The thought stopped him in his tracks. Did he want to see the others? No. Just finish the hunt and be done with it.

Besides, they didn’t need me once Illana was returned. Why would they want to see me now? Just thinking her name sent a pang of familiar hurt through him. Pushing the pain back down, Rin grasped his horse’s leads and walked into the town. It was time to get to work.

The port side of Black Cove looked more Mareian than elven. The wooden buildings thrown up beyond the docks had the Mareian squareness and harsh angles. Even the streets were laid out in the familiar Republican squares. Rin chuckled to himself at the contrast of the orderly nature of the town to the rowdiness of its denizens. It took a few hours, but Rin singled out one of the sailors for interrogation. Rin watched from the shadows as the man walked out of a whorehouse, stumbling back towards the public house where his crewmates waited. From the cut of the man’s clothes, he was the ship’s second or third mate. Senior enough to have useful information, with just enough experience to know better than to fight with a ranger, and just young enough to forget to bargain. Rin scruffed the sailor by his jacket collar and yanked him into the alley next to the public house. Nice thing about illicit ports, everyone ignored anything not happening to them or their crewmates.

“What under the Protector’s Eyes?” the sailor blubbered as Rin slammed him against a wall.

“You had a passenger on your ship. I want to know about him,” Rin said with a calm tone. The sailor lunged with a rigging knife. Rin sidestepped the drunken attack with contemptuous ease before grabbing the sailor’s arm and twisted it behind his back. A sharp squeeze and the knife dropped to the dirt ground. The sailor cursed and struggled. This one had more fight in him than expected. Frustrated, Rin slammed the man’s face into the wall with a bit more force than he intended. The familiar wet crunch of a broken nose was followed by a muffled cry of pain.

“I will say this once,” Rin said in the same calm tone, “You will tell me about your passenger. You don’t have a choice about that. Your only choice is exactly how mangled your body will be before you tell me. I would prefer not to go through all the trouble of crippling you.” The sailor stopped struggling. Common sense was finally emerging in his alcohol-soaked mind.

“Who are you?” the sailor asked, spitting blood across the wall.

“Ranger,” Rin answered. The sailor froze. According to the stories, rangers would go anywhere and kill anyone who tried to get in their way. While the first part was mostly true, the last part was just hack writing. Still, the mythos was useful on occasion.

“Sweet Protector, we didn’t know he was hunted!” the sailor said, starting to weep. “We thought he was just one of those Kingdom nobles trying to escape their civil war. I swear, we didn’t know he was hunted!”

“Why did you think he was a Kingdom noble?” Rin asked, loosening his hold just a bit.

“His accent. He was trying to sound like he was from the Southlands, but it was just a bit forced, you know. Like one of those stage shows. We’d seen another of them nobles use it when he was trying to get to the Southlands,” the smuggler said. Rin added that fact to the little he knew about the sorcerer.

“Where was he going?” Rin asked.

“The Poison Well,” the smuggler answered, “It’s a public house up in the elf part of town. He gave us each four gold senatiums to forget him. Not enough when one of you comes asking, though.” Rin released the man. The sailor pulled out a handkerchief and held it up to his bleeding nose. Rin picked up the man’s knife and handed it back.

“What’s his name?” Rin asked.

“Smythe,” the sailor said, shrugging his shoulders. Smythe was one of the most common surnames in the Kingdom. On Torra, that would have made the hunt more difficult. There were so many Kingdomers fleeing their civil war. Humans were rare enough in the elven lands that it wouldn’t matter what name the sorcerer was using. Someone would remember him once he left Black Cove.

“You will not speak of me or that your passenger is hunted. If I catch wind otherwise…” Rin let the sentence trail off. Better to let the man’s imagination fill in the details. The sailor nodded with a jerk before sprinting out of the alley. Rin looked up the road to the elven side of Black Cove and grimaced. It could never be easy. He untied his horse’s reigns and started to trudge up the road towards his medallion’s pulsing.