The System Seas

They strolled back to the town. Word seemed to have gotten around to the guards, who left them alone. So did most of the people on the island, although there were some notable exceptions.

“Marco! You idiot. You can’t just walk by my stall like that. What would your father say?”

“Widow Montrar,” Marco said. “It’s been a long time. You look as young as ever.”

It was true, in a sense. If the widow looked like a shriveled leather belt given life, it was also true that she had always looked that way. Marco had figured whatever beauty Tatric had seen in her was remembered from an earlier day, and vice versa. He could see how that was possible now. However old he and Aethe managed to get, he was pretty sure she’d always look the same to him.

“Of course not. I just had forgotten where it was.” Marco grinned wide, shocked to find the smile was genuine. The woman’s food wasn’t particularly good, and her stand wasn’t particularly comfortable or fancy. It was, however, a place he was welcome in his hometown. Suddenly, things felt a little better in a visit he had expected to be almost all difficulties. “See her menu, Riv?”

“Just regular food. But where are the prices?”

“That’s the thing. There are none. The widow’s rule was always that she just fed people for whatever they had on them.”

“This boy used to bring me a copper and eat a gold’s worth.” She shook her head. “Times aren’t as good, but I still price the same way.”

“Oh. Ha.” Jane hadn’t been around them for very long, but she knew enough about The Foolish Endeavor’s budget to have an idea of what was going on. “You know, normally, that would be a terrible idea. But I think you are about to make up whatever deficits you might be running.”

The widow spent the next hour making them food, trying desperately to figure out how to not feel like her long-standing pricing policy wasn’t robbing her customers blind. She never stood a chance. Most of the crew’s money was on the ship, but even their pocket money was more than the stand probably made in years. The woman wouldn’t even talk to them until her entire stock of food was laid out before them, more than even Riv and Jane could make a significant dent in.

Finally, her gold-driven panic waned, and she was able to carry on a conversation, at least almost.

“You know I can’t keep this,” Widow Montrar said.

“Then don’t.” Marco jingled the gold. “Do whatever you want with it. To us, it isn’t that important anymore.”

The woman looked down at the gold and up at the crew with a look of obvious doubt, one that resolved into a light, resolved despair.

“I wish I didn’t believe you. Just where have you been, Marco?”

“Here and there. Farther out than you’d think.” He smiled, tight-lipped. “It gets more dangerous the further you go out, but the value of things changes too.”

“I guess.” The widow plopped onto her stool behind the counter. “I guess I’ve made you wait long enough, though. You want to know about Tatric.”

“I would, yes.” Marco said. “Not that it’s not nice to see you. It is. But I’ve been worried a long time.”

The widow shook her head. “I wish I could help more than that. Tatric came to see me just before they took him away. He wasn’t putting up a fight, so they gave him a little bit of freedom that last day. They were only in town just for him, you see. They took a day to restock.”

“I’d ask what they wanted him for, but I think I already know. It couldn’t have been anything but me.”

“That was what he said, too. He asked me to find a way to tell you that without making you feel bad, as if that was possible.” The widow scoffed and lit a cigarette, taking a deep puff. She was the only person Marco had ever known who smoked them. “That wasn’t the point of what he wanted me to say, anyway.”

The rest of his crew was conspicuously quiet. Marco knew they were staying out of it for good reasons, not bad, though he did wish they had any good reason to chime in. Since they didn’t, they were instead choosing just to keep out of his way as much as possible. Knowing they had his back was a comfort, if not a practical help in this exact moment.

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“He said to only come if you were ready.” The widow took a long drag on her cigarette. “He said… hold on. Let me get the voice right.”

There was a small quirk at the side of her mouth as her face contorted into a shape almost but not quite like the sardonic, faux exhausted way Tatric kept his. When she started speaking again, her rhythm and cadence were his, even if she couldn’t quite get the tone of voice right.

“It’s not as if I even know what it means to be ready to walk into the capital with a drawn sword,” she laughed. “That’s what he said. But he also said he figured you’d know by now. Do you?”

“Yeah.” Marco nodded. “I think I do. I think I knew even before I got here that I’d have to go there and fish him out. They couldn’t have been interested in him unless it was for the sake of getting to me. And getting to me has something to do with my class. Or the temples. Or both. It’s too complex to figure out.”

“That’s only if you feel like you need to figure it out.” Riv laughed and pushed back his stool from the stall. “Thanks, ma’am. For the food. We probably need to go and hide now so we can come back here tomorrow and fight. Out of curiosity, did you see the ship the folks from the capital came in on last time? The folks who took away Tatric, I mean.”

“Oh, yes, you couldn’t miss it. It was so big they couldn’t bring it to port. Big gaudy white thing that shines in the sun like a mirror. Can’t miss it, if they choose to bring it back here again.”

“You think they will?” Elisa asked. “It would be helpful to know what ship to look out for.”

“It’s impractical.” The widow began to clear plates from the tabletop at the front of her stall, saving the few that the team hadn’t touched for some later charitable purpose. “Too big with no benefit, too noticeable to be stealthy or sneak up on you with. Only a fool would put that thing in the water in the first place, let alone bring it for a purpose like this.”

“So they’ll bring it.”

“I’m sure of it.” The woman dropped a stack of plates into a bucket of clean water to soak. “So be ready.”

—

Elisa’s father did end up finding her just after they ate. He approached in a knot of confused emotions, ranging from anger to disapproval to glee that Elisa had come back all the way to what looked like an unaccepted certainty that she wouldn’t stay. Marco felt bad for him. He never seemed like he was equipped for his daughter to leave the island to even a nearby place, let alone on the kind of journey Marco had taken her. He stood there for a full minute, and Elisa let him gibber away at her in a kind of meaningless, endless scold for a few minutes.

Eventually he did run out of breath, leaving Elisa the barest crack in which to get her own dialogue started.

“Dad, I’m fine. Look.” She held up her arms and spun. “I’m the highest-level scholar you’ve ever met. I’m decoding an unknown language and I’m almost done. I’m willing to show you the language and what I know about it, but first you have to agree that you don’t own me. You never really did.”

“But…”

Her dad deflated. Marco saw a consideration in his eyes he had never observed there before. For years, her dad had just brushed aside this kind of objection. Marco had seen him do it, every time Elisa's and his goals didn’t quite match up. Even when he had chased Marco down in a ship, even when Elisa had jumped overboard to join Marco, he hadn’t really considered what Elisa wanted. He had been reduced to a sputtering mess, sure. But he had not really thought about anything outside of his goals for his daughter.

Now that was falling apart, and anybody present could easily see it.

“Damn,” her father said. “I think I always knew you weren’t like me. You really won’t settle down, will you? There are safer places to work from than a ship.”

“Safer. Not better,” Elisa said softly. “I think you knew I was never looking for safe. I made my only good friend by offering to try and catch him if he fell off a cliff.”

“Ah, yes.” Her father turned to Marco. “I don’t care if it’s fair, but I blame you.”

“I probably had something to do with it,” Marco said. “But I don’t have any more control over her than you do. I don’t even want it.”

“Then I guess I can’t, either.” Her father held out his hand. “Come. I’ll take you to my workshop. We can go over it there.”

“You aren’t going to try to kidnap me?” Elisa’s face had just a hint of doubt. “It does sound like something you’d do.”

Her father pursed his lips, then laughed. “Elisa, I’m guessing nobody on this island could hold you still for five minutes if they tried. I’m not sure what level you attained, but it’s certainly past mine. You might as well worry about being kidnapped by a kitten.”

That was true enough that delaying any longer didn’t make much sense. Elisa put her arm through her father's and they walked off, almost looking like a normal father and daughter might. Marco smiled to himself.

“Never thought I’d see it,” he said.

“He was that bad?” Riv asked.

“Not bad. Just the kind of guy who would read for two days and forget to eat, or bathe, or sleep. He didn’t think about things more than he had to. At some point he made a plan for Elisa, then never really noticed he’d have to change it when she wanted different things.”

“But now he had to.”

“Now he had to. And it went pretty good.” Marco decided something, then headed down towards the docks again, taking a step in that direction immediately. “It looks like we are probably staying in town until later tonight. We’d better keep an eye on the water. It might be important.”

The townsfolk for the most part knew enough to leave them alone. A few people who had known Tatric well did stop by as the team set up on benches and chairs near the shore, letting Marco know his adoptive father was missed. Marco had not had many close friends outside of Elisa, but a few of the once-children but now adults who knew him stopped by, cautiously approaching to verify he wasn’t hostile before spending a few minutes in polite small talk.

The bulk of the visitors, though, were people Marco had worked for. At some point or another he had done at least a little labor for almost every builder, manufacturer, hauler, and demolitionist on the island. Now, those bosses were stopping by to greet him.