Willem couldn’t quite breathe.
“There,” she said. “Still want me?”
He moved his lips, but no sound came out.
“You’re pathetic,” she whispered as she brushed past him and disappeared behind the dying potted plants.
A drop of cold rain hit the bridge of Willem’s nose and made him flinch. He took a breath and sighed.
“Yes,” he said to the cool night air, to the rooftops of Innarlith, “I still want you.”
6
l2 Alturiak, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR) First Quarter, Innarlith
The brutish man came at her with a hook, but it was his smell that Ran Ai Yu found most disturbing. They all smelled bad, as though they were rotting from withinand they looked it too. She’d fought animated corpses that didn’t stink so bad.
She slit the dockworker’s wrist, and the hook clattered onto the pier. She didn’t recognize any of the words that spewed at her from his mostly toothless mouth, but his intent was clear.
“You will stop this,” she said to the wounded dockworker while she kept him at bay with her sword. “I will pay you fairly.”
Another string of unintelligible curses followed, and the man made the mistake of reaching for the hook. She cut him again, and he backed away.
“I don’t want to kill you,” she said.
Another dockworker fell at her feet, pushing the man she’d cut even farther back from her. That man held some kind of crude club and had been kicked in the face hard enough to flatten his nose and soak his face with his own blood.
Ran Ai Yu glanced back in the direction the bloody man had come from. Lau Cheung Fen stood with the great porcelain ship Jie Zud behind him. He stood on one foot, the other hanging in front of him, his knee at waist level. The morning sun shone from his shaved head, which sat atop his unusually large neck in a loose, comfortable way, as if suspended from above by a wire.
The little hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
Something hit her on the side of the face. Her teeth rattled, and her vision flared white, but she was still able to get her blade up fast enough to slap away the second blow. The man she’d cut had been joined by two more, as ragged and reeking as he. Though it was barely past dawn, they were drunk. Ran Ai Yu heard her passenger kick two more men. She could only hope that he could take down enough of them to get to her before the two dockworkers that fast approached her joined the three she did her best to fend off. They were drunk, slow, and brutish, but five was too many for her.
“I will pay you,” she said.
Her face felt hot. The horrible men leered at her like hungry dogs.
“You’ll pay all right,” the man she’d cut growled at herperhaps he was a dog. “But not with coin.”
Ran Ai Yu shifted her weight back onto her rear foot and set her sword blade parallel with the pier. She looked the lead thug in the eyes, sensed he was going to shift right, and that’s what he did. She let him step into the sword tip, but didn’t stab him. The blade only went in the barest fraction of an inch. She didn’t want to kill him. If she killed him, she’d have to kill the rest of them.
His two friends lunged at her, and Ran Ai Yu stepped back a few fast steps. Then one of the men fell flat on his face. She watched a stone roll along the wood planks, and blinked at it.
When the second man fell she relaxed her stance, and let her sword arm fall to her side, the blade crossed in front of her legs. She stood like that and watched Ivar Devorast knock the other man to the ground with his fist. He smiled at her over the man’s limp form, and she smiled back. A thud from behind her turned her attention back to her passenger. Lau Cheung Fen, like Devorast, stood over the unconscious bodies of drunken dockhands. “Miss Ran,” Devorast said.
She turned back to face him, sheathed her sword, and said, “Master Devorast, is good to see you once again.” Lau Cheung Fen stepped up behind her, and she added, “May I present my passenger, the honorable Lau Cheung Fen of Liaopei.”
“Mister Lau,” he said. “Are you injured? Do you need any further assistance?”
“Your manner…” Lau said. “So like Shou.” Devorast just looked at him.
“We will require a crew to unload our cargo,” Ran Ai Yu answered. “These men tried to…” She paused, searching for the word.
“Who is this manfLau asked her in Kao te Shou, their native tongue.
She looked at Devorast, but detected no outward trace that he was offended by Lau’s speaking in front of him in a language he did not understand.
“Master Ivar Devorast is the man who created the great Jie ZuoV’she answered in the Common Tongue of Faerun.
“Ah,” Lau responded, and his head bent low on that strange long neck of his. His eyes glittered black in the sunshine. “You are the great genius. It is truly an honor to meet you, Master Devorast.”
“Master Lau is a most important dignitary from my province,” Ran said in hopes that she could help Devorast frame his response properly.
“Thank you, Master Lau,” Devorast said, but his eyes stayed on Ran Ai Yu.
“You have built many such ships, then,” Lau said. “I should purchase a number of them. Though my home is far from the sea, many in Shou Lung have commented on the strange and wonderful ship of Ran Ai Yu, and would pay much for one of her kind.”
“There are no more of her kind,” Devorast said before Ran could say the same thing.
“You have sport of me,” said her passenger.
“No,” Ran Ai Yu cut in. “He has built only this one, and will build no more like her.”
“This is true?” he asked Devorast.
“It is,” was the Faerunian’s only reply.
“7s this some secret the white men seek to keep from us?” Lau asked in Kao te Shou.
“With apologies, Master Devorast,” she said, then turned to Lau. “It is no secret. He is a very unusual man, and that is all. He will likely find it rude, however, if we continue to speak in a language he does not understand. With respect, Master Lau, he is a friend and important trade contact.”
“Indeed,” Lau replied, then bowed to Devorast. “Please accept my most humble apologies for my rudeness, Master Devorast. Perhaps you would be so kind…if you no longer build your tile ships, what is it that occupies you? Perhaps if it is one of a kind as well, I might have it instead.”
“It’s a canal,” Devorast replied.
The two Shou merchants exchanged a glance.
“Pardon me,” Lau said. He asked Ran Ai Yu, “Kuh-nahl?” She gave him the word in their language, and he nodded. “Well, then I will not be able to take it with me. Pray, where is this canal?”
“Northwest of here,” he replied.
“To connect the Lake of Steam with your great Inner Sea,” Ran Ai Yu said. Devorast nodded.
“This will be a mighty boon to trade,” said Lau.
“For me,” said Devorast, “it’s a canal.”
“I should like to see it,” Ran Ai Yu said. A memory tickled the edge of her consciousnessa similar conversation that she had had with Devorast when she’d last seen him.
“I should like to show it to you,” he said. “But in the meantime, we should see to a dock crew for you.”
“Is this the way trade is always conducted here? With such violence?” asked the tall merchanta man Ran Ai Yu had her suspicions was no human at all. He gestured to the fallen dockhands, some of them beginning to rise.
“It was not so when I was last here, two years and three months ago,” said Ran.
