BT II - Chapter 18 (Patreon)

The sun was just beginning to set as the barge pulled into Jakint’s empty and mostly silent docks.  Outside of the Amelia which stood empty and anchored closer to where the river met the ocean, barely anything moved in the wooden network of piers and gangways.  Even the otters, both of whom had been playful to the point of distraction on the journey upriver, were strangely subdued.

Their ship slid into the docks, thumping against the straw filled burlap sacks that served as padding on the pier.  Two of Thomas’ sailors jumped off the vessel and began tying it down as a slightly overweight dockmaster hurried down the wooden walkway, struggling to cinch his belt into place as he awkwardly jogged toward the ship.

“Gods above you are a sight for sore eyes,” the bureaucrat blurted out in between gasping breaths as he tried to catch his wind.  “First the Serpent’s Teeth erupted, cutting off trade across the ocean.  Then trade began to dry up as people heard rumors about the-”

He paused, wetting his lips with his tongue as his eyes darted back toward the warehouses.  A handful of men, stripped to their waists, began indolently walking down the pier toward their barge.

“Well, the City Guard says that the Dread Chorus is an urban legend,” he said with a nervous laugh.  “But that doesn’t mean that the rumors haven’t driven the superstitious away. Unfortunately, that means that the City is a little low on food at the moment, and uh.”

The man chuckled uncomfortably again as he licked his lips, before continuing.  “I’m afraid that the ruling council has passed a decree that all grain, vegetables, and meat must be sold to city representatives rather than to local merchant factors.  Of course, import taxes will be waived on any goods sold and a ten percent markup will be paid for your trouble, but-”

“That’s bullshit and you know it Harrison,” one of the shirtless men shouted.  The tubby dockmaster winced.  “The blessed in the city are trying to hoard all of the food for themselves.  They think that we’re good ‘nough to sweat for them loading the grain off of boats, but they don’t think we’re good ‘nough to eat the bread made from that grain.”

“Come on now James,” Harrison, turned away from Thomas and Micah, pleading with the shirtless dockworker and his three companions.  “You know that I don’t make the rules.  I only have this job because I have a common blessing for finding hidden compartments.  If the ruling council hands me an edict, I have to follow it or I’m out on the street the next day if I’m lucky.  If I’m not lucky, they'll slap shackles on me and starve me in the town square. You know how the Guard has been the last couple of weeks.”

James crossed his arms, bulging masses of muscles and scars the size of Micah’s leg, and leaned over to spit into the water.  He looked back up, fixing the sweating official with a glassy but unyielding gaze.

“That ain’t my problem blessed,” he grunted.  “If you wanted to be on the right side of things, you could just take a minute and listen to the Chorus like the rest of us.  Let it unlock the truth of our shitty existence on this ball of dirt and free your mind from all the lies-”

“AHAHAHAHA” Harrison burst into forced laughter, drowning the disgruntled worker out as he waved his arms frantically.  “That was a great joke Harrison.  We BOTH know that the City Guard says that the Dread Chorus isn’t real and that spreading rumors regarding it is punishable by a term in the stockade.  Obviously you weren’t going to talk about such a dreadful lie in front of newcomers.”

“Bollocks on you,” one of the workers behind James shouted out.  “I’ve heard the Chorus myself and it ain’t no lie.  The only lie is the shit the priests tell us about minding our betters.  Just listen to the Chorus yourself.  By the time you get to the first Coda you’ll understand.  I sure did.”

“Guys look,”  Harrison interjected, desperation in his voice as he stepped in between the dockworkers and the barge.  “I’m just trying to do my job and not end up in chains.  If you unload the barge, I’ll do my accounting  after you stack the goods.  If some of the grain is missing when I get around to it?  Well, so be it.”

The workers huddled together, grumbling while they discussed the prospect.  Harrison let out a deep shuddering breath, grabbing a handkerchief and dabbing furiously at his sweat soaked forehead as he stared worriedly at the gaggle of unruly laborers.

“Where does that leave me then?”  Thomas leaned forward resting both of his elbows on the edge of the barge.  “I’m not sure I’m all that keen on you ‘losing’ some of my goods before I get paid.”

“Gods above,” Harrison mumbled to himself, burying his head in his hands.  “Look, you’ll get your money.  I guess I’ll just set aside a little more of the shipment and sell it on the black market.  I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but everyone is buying and no one is settling.  Every bag of flour is selling at a five to six hundred percent markup.”

“Sounds like you can make quite the living as a dockmaster,” Thomas replied slowly, reaching up to scratch at some of the acne that covered his face.  “Fairly lucrative business if you have the right connections.”

“Do you think I’d dress like this if I was rich?”  Harrison asked, motioning generally at his plain outfit and cheap belt.  “True, if I skimmed attunement off the top I could make some real money, but that’s the sort of game that ends with your head on a spike outside the city gates.  I just don’t have an option.  If you don’t sell us food, my bosses punish me.  If I don’t ‘lose’ some of the food, the forgotten will rob me, and then my bosses will punish me for being robbed.  All I can do is hope that no one notices a little bit of under the table activity on my part in an attempt to fix this mess.  I’m not exactly proud of it, but sometimes a little corruption is the only way to survive.”

Thomas mulled over Harrison’s words for a moment before grunting.  Then he shrugged and motioned with two fingers toward the barge workers that had just finished tying his ship down.  They sprang to work, wheeling crate after crate of potatoes, corn, and flour out onto the deck, piling the food together so that the dockworkers could access it easily.

“You got a deal chief,” James spoke up.  “We’ll get you to listen to the Chorus one of these days.  You’ll come around then.  Until then, so long as our families don’t go hungry, you ain’t the worst of the blessed.”

Harrison slumped in relief, redoubling his work with the handkerchief as he dabbed furiously at his sweat covered forehead.  Micah hopped over the edge of the barge, easily clearing the five or so paces between the ship and the pier.  Leeka scowled at his back before following Micah down one of the planks.

Micah tapped Harrison on the shoulder, eliciting a high pitched screech as he jumped and turned to stare at Micah.  The poor bureaucrat's eyes were as big as dinner plates.  His chest pumped up and down as he heaved for breath.

“By the Sixteen who in the hells are you?”  Harrison stammered, glancing from Micah’s heavily enchanted Maarikava armor to his spear.

“Just a traveler seeking entrance into Jakint,” Micah said with an easy smile.  “Nothing threatening or stressful, just a stranger looking for some directions.”

“You want to get into Jakint?”  Harrison asked incredulously.  “Sorry, but you can say that you aren’t threatening, but anyone crazy enough to want into the city right now is a danger to public order, and we already have enough of those.”

“To be fair,” Micah replied, motioning at the Amelia, “I’m only here to find some of my friends that were on that ship.  My goal is to pick them up and leave the city rather than linger around and deal with… whatever is going on here.”

Harrison squinted at Micah before glancing at the gently bobbing ship.  The dockmaster pulled a small book out of his robe, flipping through its pages before jabbing his index finger at a line of text.

“If you can find them,” Harrison grumbled, “let me know.  They only paid for five days worth of mooring fees, and then the crew disappeared.  Right now, they’re behind on their payments and I haven’t seen anyone in days.  Normally I would impound their goods or kick them out, but-”

He shrugged unhappily before continuing.  “My workers have been a bit unruly, and I haven’t been given any authority or attunement to hire sailors.  So instead I’m forced to stand here helplessly and watch it bob on the waves.”

Micah frowned as Leeka walked up behind him.  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Jakaw scurrying off of her shoulder and onto the top of her head.

“Do you have any idea where I would look to find my friends?”  Micah asked hopefully.  “I’ll try to send the Amelia’s captain your way if I find her, but for now I really just need to track them down and find a guide across the Grass Sea.  We’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

Harrison slapped the book closed, depositing it somewhere in his robes as he chewed his lip thoughtfully.  He glanced over his shoulder at the forgotten unloading the barge.  Once he was satisfied that all of them were otherwise occupied, he finally opened his mouth to speak.

“Look,” he began, not meeting Micah’s eyes.  “The City Guard is denying that anything is happening beyond ‘rebellious elements acting up,’ but I’ve seen what I’ve seen.  That ship came in before the trouble started, so I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it.  Gods, it was only a couple weeks ago, but even with the eruption of the Serpent’s Teeth, these docks were teeming with ships from coastal and overland trade.”

“What I’m saying,” Harrison continued, locking his gaze on Micah’s, “is that things are bad right now.  It’s obvious that the ruling council is scared of something, so scared that they aren’t even letting low level civil servants like me know what there is to properly be afraid of, but I hear bits and pieces of things.  Scraps of rumors that I can puzzle together enough to know that I would have left days ago if I had someplace to go.”

“My friends?” Micah pressed, eyes narrowing as he took in the disheveled dockmaster’s fidgeting hands and quick, worried speech.

“Sorry, yes,” Harrison blew out a sigh.  “What I’m saying is that I’ve heard enough about the Dread Chorus to know that it's some sort of underground organization.  Popular with the forgotten, and powerful in a way that I haven’t seen before.  People have been disappearing.  Sometimes they reappear with a strange look in their eyes and singing the praises of the Chorus.  Sometimes they never reappear.”

“Now maybe your friends just got lost.”  The dockmaster reached up with the kerchief, dabbing at his face once more.  “Jakint is a big city and there are any number of taverns, boarding houses, and extended stay brothels that might take them in for enough attunement, and how things are?  I wouldn’t blame them for not wanting to stick their noses out.  Still”

He trailed off, unwilling to speak further.  A half second later one of the dockworkers sauntered by, an immensely heavy bag of wheat slung over his right shoulder with another held tight in the crook of his right arm.  He shot Micah and Harrison a saucy grin as he passed, barely even sweating under a load that would strain a blessed with a focus in their body attribute.

As soon as the worker passed, Harrison leaned in close, hissing into Micah’s ear.

“Look stranger.  I didn’t see anything, and I don’t know anything for sure.  Hells, it could have been the City Guard that nabbed your friends.  They’ve been cracking down on everyone that blows their nose in a ‘rebellious fashion.’  I’m just saying that since I’ve started hearing things about the Chorus, things have been changing.  I never had a problem with the forgotten, but they’ve been acting aggressively lately.  They’re stronger and faster than they should be, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a couple of them start things on fire at a distance without even reciting a spell.”

“What does all of this mean?  Micah asked, grasping the portly man by the bicep.  “It sounds like you’re saying that my friends are in danger.”

“Of course they’re in danger,” Harrison snorted.  “Everyone in this blasted city is in danger.  I just don’t know whether to direct you to the Architect’s Quarter to pester the city leadership, the Artisan’s Quarter to see if they’ve taken up lodgings amongst the merchant class, or the slums.”

“Not that I know that the Dread Chorus is based out of the Slums,” he stuttered hurriedly.  “Shit.  I mean, even if it were real, I have no way of knowing where they would be based.  I guess I’m just musing out loud and making assumptions based off of rumors.”

“Please,” Harrison hissed, grabbing the sleeve of Micah’s armor.  “Just don’t tell anyone what we talked about.  I feel like I’m dancing on the head of a pin here.  One misstep and a bunch of masked goons are going to break into my house and pull me out into the night.  The only question is which side they’ll be working for.”

Micah nodded slowly at the other man, and Harrison let out a sigh of relief before releasing his arm and shuffling off of the dock toward where the workers were unloading the barge. He turned to look at Leeka, taking in the troubled expression on her face and the way one of her big orange hands fiddled incessantly with the top of the bow strapped to her back.  Only Jakaw seemed to be in any sort of positive move, chittering to himself as he fiddled with the base of the tall archer’s braid.

“What do you think?”  He asked.  “Personally, I think our first step is checking out the merchant’s quarter just to be sure Trevor and Drekt aren’t hiding out at a boarding house.  I did tell them to wait for me after all, and I’d feel mighty foolish starting some sort of climactic battle to fix whatever ails Jakint while they were just sitting around and playing dominos.”

“That makes sense,” Leeka responded slowly, “but I think we should act with a light hand.  It sounds like Jakint is ready to spill over into violence at a moment’s notice, and I don’t think either of us want to deal with that.”

“Fair enough,” Micah replied, starting down the pier toward where a crowd of forgotten was gathering around the offloaded goods, picking through the food like they were customers at a market.  “Now let’s find a gambling den.  If Trevor is still in the city, he’ll probably have visited each of them at least once.”