"But what happens if the ships here refuse to leave the port until after the storm season is over?" I pointed out the flaw in his reasoning. "That would take at least another month for that to happen."
"Well, ya haven’t taken into consideration the other factor which makes traveling by sea far better." The Dwarf shot me a wink, as I stared blankly back at him.
"Out with it already."
"Fine," he said, throwing his hands up in the air. "I thought you Humans liked your dramatic reveals." He shook his head, and pulled out a map from his backpack. "Here."
"What am I supposed to be looking for?" I asked, raising a brow.
"The city of Jahar’taw, Capital of the Taw Kingdom, and where King Adilet resides."
I carefully took the map from Gennady’s hands, and looked over it. "It’s… a coastal settlement," I said after a moment of scrutinizing the map; I finally realized what he was trying to tell me. "We can head straight to the Capital of Taw if we took a boat!"
"Exactly."
I glanced back up at the Dwarf, and saw his eyes sparkling. "Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?" I asked. "This is incredibly efficient."
He snorted. "Hah, ‘course. I’m a Dwarf, after all."
I rolled my eyes, but did not comment on that; I turned back to the map and looked at where we were. Laxis was not the largest country out there, however it was still sizable. It was almost surprising that it was having as many internal problems as it was, despite having very few enemies beyond its borders. I would have thought a country with fewer threats from the outside would be more stable on the inside.
"So," I started, "what about the pirates?"
"What do ya mean?" Gennady asked, leaning back on his chair.
"Who exactly is going to be willing to transport us to Taw, past the pirate infested waters surrounding Laxis?"
"We’ll figure it out later," he said, waving his hand nonchalantly. "But I reckon we’d hafta hire a couple of smugglers and the like to bring us out."
"Smugglers?" I felt my forehead crease into wrinkled lines.
"Yes." The Dwarf began to explain, "You see, most likely regular sailors and merchants would wait out for the storm season to blow over. Neither pirates nor any sane sailor would dare risk their ship out during a bad storm. This just means that on clear days like today, pirates would be a lot more active in patrolling the trade routes, looking to intercept any fool who decides to attempt to cross the sea.
"However, if we hire a band of smugglers to bring us out of Luke, pirates would be less likely to attack us. Most pirates would be affiliated with a smuggling group or two, to bring their illicit goods into the city. If they attack their own smugglers— well, that’s just a bad business move, y’know?"
I nodded, considering this.
"And you think you can find trustworthy smugglers to bring us to Taw for us?"
"Not all the way to Taw," Gennady corrected me. "Just partway through— far enough to get away from the pirates, and board a proper ship to finish the voyage."
"The question still stands," I said.
He stroked his beard in thought. "It’ll take some time, but I’ll be able to do it. I know my way through the underground, and I bet ya I can find someone willing to do this job for us within the week."
"If you say so."
I did not fully trust Gennady for some reason, despite knowing him for a week. Or perhaps I should rephrase: I had only known him for a week, which was why I did not fully trust him just yet. Whichever the case was, I felt like I should still be somewhat leery of the man.
I had paid him almost a hundred gold coins to escort me to the Taw Kingdom, and while that certainly helped to abate some of my uncertainty regarding the situation, I still did not feel fully at ease about the things he did when I was not around. After what happened in the Free Lands with Victor as well as what happened with the slaves, I tried to keep my eyes on Gennady at all times, even if that was not physically possible.
The Dwarf eventually retired to bed once our discussion was over, while I stayed up to practice my drawing skills. I drew the four same symbols over and over again, until my hands and fingers ached all over, but I still continued.
When I first started doing this, I had only drawn the runes of the same symbols in succession: fire, fire, fire; water, water, water; earth, earth, earth; or air, air, air. Now, however, I was drawing the different symbols in tandem with one another, mixing up the combinations to varying degrees.
Fire, fire, water, air.
Water, earth, fire, air.
Earth, earth, air, earth.
Earth, air, air, fire.
From what I had studied in the books Gennady lent me and from what he told me himself, all four symbols could theoretically be put together in a rune and create something. However, there were certain pairs that almost always went together more often than with others. These pairs were:
Water and earth. Earth and air. Fire and air. Fire and fire.
The last pair was an oddity in that they were both the same symbols. Gennady seemed to postulate that this was due to how the fire symbol seemed to generate the most amount of
