The oddness of the situation grew daily. As it happened, the boy seemed quite well-heeled for his age, and his staff surely had value. The captain, for his part, began having thoughts about stealing the staff and selling it for some extra money.
Of course, the captain kept his thoughts to himself. There could be no way the boy suspected anything. But once when he was bringing his clients their meal, the captain’s eyes drifted over to the staff leaning against the wall. Quite suddenly, one of the crude desks that sat in the office leaped from where it was standing, slid across the uneven floorboards, and slammed into the wall between the captain and the staff. No one had pushed it; it moved by itself. The captain was shocked.
Chuckling to himself, the boy sat on the tattered sofa, dangling his feet over one of the armrests. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said. Then, just as suddenly, the desk jumped back to where it had been before. A jar of ink and an old pen stand clattered to the floor.
The gemstone on top of the staff glowed: first red, then a light green, then blue, and finally amber.
Furiously mumbling a prayer to the Goddess under his breath, the captain fled the room. He really is a sorcerer. That really was magic. Oh, what have I gotten myself into?
Already it had been five days since these two strange clients had arrived.
Opening the door to the warehouse and going inside, the captain drew the security bar firmly shut behind him. This was his custom whenever he had clients. He began the climb up to the second-floor office.
Word had come at last. They would leave after sunset that night. To be honest, the captain was relieved. He wanted to get these two out of his office as soon as possible. On the other hand, the thought of spending two weeks at sea with the young sorcerer gave the captain indigestion. It may be high time for me to start looking for another profession.
He had made it to the first landing on the stairs when he heard someone yelp in pain. The captain froze. What was that? Whose voice was that? What is that little sorcerer up to now?
For a moment, he didn’t know what to do. Should he run upstairs to see what the problem was? Or should he run downstairs to safety? In that instant of indecision, he heard another sound, this time more like a sobbing sigh. Then there was a shout, and the tinted glass window of his office shattered. A moment later, the door itself swung outward, slamming into the wall. Shards of glass fell down the stairs, coming to rest at the captain’s feet.
The captain looked stunned. If a cold wind—impossibly cold—hadn’t blown down from the top of the staircase, he might have stood there forever. As it was, the brisk sting of the wind on his face brought him back to his senses. He began crawling up the stairs on all fours, brushing shards of glass off his face, out of his hair and whiskers.
“Wh-what in the name of chaos was that?!” he shouted, fearfully sticking his head through the office door. Then, he sneezed. A wind cold as ice was blasting against his face. It felt like his ears would freeze off.
The boy was standing against the wall. Something was curled up at his feet.
A lump of ice.
It was shaped like a person. The body was twisted, and the expression on his face was one of abject fear.
“What…is that?”
The boy shrugged. “Your customer.”
“Th-th-that young man?”
“Did you have another?”
Still on the floor, the captain crawled like an infant over to where the boy was standing. “What happened? Why did he freeze? Why is it so cold in here?” The captain looked up at the sorcerer, his eyes wide. “Did you do this? Y-you cast a spell on him, didn’t you?”
“Not I.” The boy sorcerer shook his head. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was judgment.”
“Judgment?”
“Yes, you know, the wrath of the heavens and all that. Looks like the Goddess finally passed judgment on Dela Rubesi and this one here tried to escape. Quite clearly, he failed.” The boy sorcerer turned with a whirl of his black cloak and picked up the bundle of papers from beside the frozen man’s pillow.
“You can’t take that…”
“Why not? It’s certainly not doing him any good now. But I may have some use for it.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t belong to you, boy,” the captain said, deciding that perhaps this boy was just a boy after all, and in need of a scolding.
The black-haired sorcerer raised an eyebrow. “Nor to him,” he said, pointing the rolled bundle of papers at the block of ice on the floor. “He stole it from someone else. He didn’t write it himself, that’s for sure.” He shrugged. “So, when do we leave?”
For a second, the captain had no idea what he was talking about. “Leave? Ah, this evening. Leaving at night would be better, but there’ll be no moon in the sky, and it’s too dangerous to sail out in the dark. We’ll wait until the branch guards have finished their rounds, and set sail.”
“I see. More waiting. Great.”
The captain shivered, half from the cold, half from fear. “What do we do about this…ice?”
“Leave it. Ice melts.”
Melt? The captain recalled the young man’s face. He had last seen him that morning. “Won’t it, er, bleed?”
“I don’t think I’d worry about that, but if it bothers you, I can easily clean this up.”
The captain swallowed. His mouth was suddenly very dry. “What if the branch…finds out?”
“The branch? Oh, right, those Highlanders or some such rabble,” the boy sorcerer said, sounding not at all concerned.
“Yes, them. If they decide to search us, we won’t be able to leave. Get on their bad side, and things won’t be easy for either of us.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t leave a trace of my work,” the boy said with a grin that sent another chill down the captain’s spine. He gritted his teeth, regretting for what must have been the hundredth time taking on such a client.
Just then, something banged on the door downstairs hard enough that the captain feared the bar might fly off the latch. Someone was shouting from the street outside. “Captain! You up there? Open up! Branch chief wants to ask you some questions.”
The captain looked at his client. He could feel his stomach rise into his throat, but the boy seemed calm as ever. “It seems we have some visitors,” the boy said, standing. “Could your ship leave this moment if it had to?”
“A-aye, she’s ready for sea.”
“Then let’s leave.”
“But we won’t make it out of harbor with the branch following us.”
“You just worry about getting us to your ship. I’ll get us out to sea.” The boy sorcerer picked up his staff, and the gem on its tip flared brightly.
Wataru, Meena, and Kee Keema parted ways with Jozo in the forest along the border gate between Arikita and Bog. Jozo offered to take them all the way to Sono, and he even flew over the border once, but after they passed a few villages, they noticed they were causing quite a commotion on the ground. Dragons were rare creatures, but in industrialized Arikita, they had been largely relegated to the stuff of fairy tales. Jozo told them that the air in Arikita was the dirtiest of any place in the southern continent. Dragons tended to steer clear of the area, thus the general surprise at their passage.
With people already astir, the last thing they wanted was to cause any further trouble. Nor did Wataru want to involve Jozo in problems not his own. So they turned back, allowed Jozo to return to the Isle of Dragon, and made their way to the border on foot. Once at the border’s gatehouse, they decided not to share their experiences at Dela Rubesi. Instead, they talked about the warehouse in Sono. A karulakin messenger was dispatched to the branch office. Wataru, Meena, and Kee Keema set off after him.
When they arrived at the branch in Sono, everyone had already left for the warehouse. The only ones left behind were a director and a communications officer. The sailship company bearing the mark of the yellow fist was a small operation run by an old ankha sea captain, who apparently had been involved in several smuggling operations. Wataru was relieved to hear they were on the right track, but he caught Kee Keema scowling out of the corner of his eye.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.
“I’ve got a feeling that the branch here has been letting this smuggling stuff slide for while,” the waterkin whispered back.
Wataru had heard of similar things happening in the real world. Sometimes it made more sense for the police to cooperate with crime than try to stamp it out. “Still,” he assured Kee Keema, “they’re doing everything they can to stop it now—high chief’s orders and all.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
It wasn’t long before one of the Highlanders who had gone to the warehouse came running back. The captain wasn’t there, he reported. Still, there were signs that people had been living in the second-floor office, and something else…
“It’s a little hard to believe, but there’s someone up there, frozen. Or rather, it’s like a lump of ice in the shape of a person.”