The crunch of splintering wood filled the air as the iron rowboat jerked, grinding against one of the docks that jutted into the Barstone harbor. Rain, standing at the bow and balancing the craft with his legs, stared at the broken remains of his oar. “Oops.”

“Brace!” Carten yelled.

Tossing aside the ruined oar, Rain did just that, gripping the gunwale as they slammed into the dock with another crunch. Their stern began to pivot away, and he hurriedly released his grip to grasp the dock instead. Wood creaked as he did his awakened best to stop them from smashing into the dilapidated fishing boat that was the only other occupant of their chosen pier.

“This is why I told you to slow down,” Jamus observed.

“We had more momentum than I thought, okay?” Rain said, twisting powerfully to bring the keel back around. Atomically pure iron was up there as one of the worst choices for an ocean-going vessel, but it was what they had. It just needed to last a few days. Aluminum or stainless steel would have been far better, but the latter was harder for the exhausted Tallheart to shape, and the former was still a secret. “Someone tie us up, please.”

Rain looked over his shoulder, seeing that Jamus was already ahead of him. The orange-robed Mage floated lightly through the air in casual disregard of gravity, landing silently as one of Carten’s shields crashed down beside him on the dock with considerably more noise. Jamus knelt, finding a rope and tossing the end to Carten, who missed it, busy lobbing his second shield. He grabbed it up quickly, though, then hauled on it with such enthusiasm that he almost tugged Jamus off his feet.

There was another crunch as the boat slammed hard into the dock.

That’s it. I want off this ride.

Eying the dock, he jumped.

“Oi!” Carten yelled, losing his grip on the rope and windmilling his arms as the boat rolled beneath him.

“Sorry,” Rain said, landing lightly—relatively—beside Jamus. The wooden pier was a floating affair, anchored in place by wooden piles sunk into the sea floor on either side. It juddered against its restraints as his armored boots made contact. Carten, meanwhile, had managed not to fall in. He was, however, now drifting away. As Rain turned to watch, the big man tore an oar from its oarlock and jabbed the blade urgently at Jamus.

“Grab on!”

“And let you pull me in after you?” Jamus said, looking at the oar dispassionately. “I think not.”

“Stop screwing around,” Rain said, grabbing the blade of the wooden paddle with one hand and gently tugging to bring Carten back toward them. “How did I get stuck with you two, anyway?”

“Don’t blame me for Carten’s antics,” Jamus said. “And stuck with us?” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m hurt. As if we’d let you go alone.”

“Yeah!” Carten agreed heartily, scratching at his beard. “An’ yer the one who voted for democracy, so no complaints!”

Rain sighed. “You know I didn’t mean it like that, and you also know democracy had very little to do with who got to come.” He closed his mouth before he could say anything he shouldn’t. About anyone he shouldn’t, even if not by name.

Ameliah could have just Airwalked us over here, but no. Stupid Velika.

With a grimace, Rain left Jamus and Carten to finish tying up the boat and turned to survey the city. The Stonewash was too broad to be practically bridged without blocking shipping, so the city had been built entirely on the north bank. Mlem had passed through here years and years ago, and true to what he’d said, Barstone was massive compared to Vestvall and Fel Sadanis. Even Three Cliffs, with its impressive vertical construction, couldn’t compare to the bustling sprawl of the DKE city. The waterfront was busy, despite them having rowed past most of the fishing fleet. Several people who’d been occupied processing fish and mending nets had stopped their work to stare. Behind the watchers was a disorderly sprawl of wooden buildings—shacks, really—mixed with storage sheds far too small to be called warehouses. The houses grew steadily nicer and taller until they reached the wall that hid the inner city from view.

Looking past Carten and Jamus, currently arguing about the proper way to tie a knot, Rain searched for Temerity, spotting it on the horizon without even needing to lean on his Perception accolade. It wasn’t exactly easy to miss. With Bakal’s powerful Water Manipulation skills and some judicious application of Refrigerate, the highly-conspicuous metal ship had become an only-slightly-less-conspicuous iceberg. With the ship’s two mysterious gemstones blocking Divination magic, the disguise even had a chance of holding up to scrutiny—at least of the casual variety.

It sucks that the ice adds so much drag. Once Bakal’s over his migraine, we should try streamlining it into a proper shell. Make it into a more long-term solution.

Rain sighed, turning again to stare at the colossal, golden vessel anchored at the mouth of the river.

If we get to ‘long-term’.

Even from this distance, he could tell the Goldship was at least as big as Temerity. It towered over the merchant vessels around it, its top deck rising above even the masts of all but the largest of them. Where Temerity was sharp and angular, the Bank vessel was all inswept curves and graceful lines, its golden hull polished to a mirror finish. It was like something modern-era elves might have built, not that anyone in this world besides Rain and his book club would have appreciated the comparison.

He shifted his attention further. Intimidating and eye-catching as it was, the Goldship wasn’t the only reason they’d chosen to dock way up here. Near the massive lighthouse that marked the northern tip of the mountains, several DKE vessels floated. The largest was a frigate, almost as large as the Goldship, its three main sails each emblazoned with the crescent-moon emblem of Citizen Barstone. The other ships were smaller, brigs and cutters—‘frigate,’ ‘brig,’ and ‘cutter’ simply being words Rain had chosen. Translated directly from common, it would have been ‘three-mast-ship,’ ‘two-mast-ship,’ and ‘one-mast-ship,’ respectively.

Rain shook his head slowly at the blandness of the language, then looked back toward their own vessel. He’d left a Detection anchor on board, and their hardness seemed to help them survive being around metal, provided that they weren’t in direct contact with it. Through the anchor, he was keeping constant track of the happenings aboard, and thus knew Velika hadn’t yet snapped and started killing people. Likewise, he knew that no one had yet sailed out to ask the iceberg calf what it was doing so far from home without its mommy.

Is nobody curious? Like, at all? Did they really not see us coming around the mountains from that lighthouse of theirs?

“There,” Carten said, clapping his hands. “How’s that fer a knot?”

Rain shook himself, then returned his attention to his companions, seeing Carten standing in the boat proudly over what was less a knot and more a...snarl with attitude.

“Nice work, Carten,” Jamus said, rubbing at his chin as he bent down to inspect it closer. “The sea birds will be right at home.”

“Like ta see you do better,” Carten muttered, extending a hand to Rain and beckoning with his fingers. “Help me up.”

“None of us have any business being on the water,” Rain said, grabbing Carten’s forearm and hauling him up. “We should all have our boating licenses revoked.”

“I think I did just fine, thank you,” Jamus said, straightening his hat.

“Fine job sittin’,” Carten countered as he bent to retrieve his shields. “Try rowin’ next time, noodle-arms.”

Tuning out the friendly bickering, Rain glanced at the holotank at the top right of his interface. There were two spheres there instead of one, split to avoid the nausea that came with Detection now having multiple points of origin. From the number of dots on the local sphere, easily countable with a thought, the crowd around the end of the dock was growing. The signals were moving a bit jerkily thanks to his limited refresh rate at the moment, but that was fine for his purposes. He had a complicated series of macros running, filling a single slot with variously-configured pulses of Detection, along with all of his Wards, leaving the other slot free for emergencies. Fortunately, the DKE was lax compared to the Watch when it came to skill use in their cities, affording him the freedom to humor his paranoia. If they were attacked, he’d be ready.

“Come on,” he said, sparing one last glance at the Goldship before settling his cloak around his shoulders and starting toward the shore. The fact that people didn’t immediately run at his motion was a good sign, but he couldn’t help but feel his heart twist seeing the fear and wariness in their eyes. The flipside of his freedom to use spells in the city was the unhappy thought of just how few protections the unawakened here had.

Clenching his jaw, Rain stopped that line of thought before he got himself in even more of a mood, pushing his will instead toward a new function he’d written.

tx.shtarget: anchor_rad_t01_0000message: “Made landfall. Going to speak with locals.”baud: 0.5 ch/sTransmitting...0%