Bone Jack

It took a while, but Itzal did find the gondola landing. By then he was hungry and quite tired of adventuring.

The air at the landing smelled of tar and thickly with the dry pollen of sun-stricken grass. The gondola landed at the eastern edge of Garrison, near the docks where the prairie ships moored. Only infrequent gaps ever appeared in the crowd, and Itzal felt certain that he would never find Lilywhite on the ground.

Instead of attempting to delve into the milling mob of dock workers and sailors and travelers, Itzal climbed a tower that he found at the edge of the docks. The tower was made of crisscrossed supports. From the highest place he could reach climb to—under the room built on top of the tower—Itzal gazed out at the docks over the roofs of the squat warehouses. He watched the movement of the people for a while. Without focusing on anyone, he grew accustomed to gaits of individuals and patterns of groups. He never forgot a face, and he had sharp eyes, but he had more luck recognizing people by their movements rather than any other thing about them. From any great distance, anyway.

At this distance, in the mobs that they moved, they looked a little like ants. He imagined divisions in the writhing into a few patterns of flow. To the ships. Away from the ships. In the wide walkway between the warehouses and the quays. Some stuttered along in the sturdy way of landsmen. Some wavered like sailors, used to the rocking of the sailing on the prairies. A few mixed the two—old sailors turned merchant. There were the few flicking movements of pickpockets, both difficult to track and obvious by being different.

Inside of these broad categories, Itzal gained a subconscious notion of the various ways that individuals moved, each of them signaling their individuality as if they were Itzal’s old friends.

Itzal didn’t try to see individuals. He knew he couldn’t. The docks were too populated. It would be like looking for stalks of grass in a meadow: possible, but pointless. It helped to be familiar with the whole panorama because it would help with filtering. Like standing in a crowded room and filtering through the susurrus of conversation till you hear the voice of the only person you know, Itzal let the untrackable flickering of movement below him fill his whole vision till he picked up on the few familiar movements.

Dolf ambled along like a seaworthy bear, and with him several of his pirate companions. Behind them, his hands tied, Lilywhite flounced swift and bored.

At the sight of them, Itzal darted down from his tower. He flickered through the crowd, finding the gaps he could and climbing onto and off of stacks of crates and barrels when he could find no gaps. He usually found no gaps, to his frustration.

After some negotiation of the crowd, Itzal came to stand among a group of loitering sailors. They all smelled of sweat and bad rum. Itzal felt the scratchiness of hay dust on sweaty skin. He matched their postures and put his hood up, trying to be inconspicuous.

Through gaps between their shoulders, Itzal watched Dolf leading Alkama and Lilywhite up the gangplank of a tall ship.

Sailors scurried all over the ship. They went up and down the masts and out onto the jibs, replacing ropes and staples and checking sails. A handful of them even now did the routine maintenance required for the keel wheel which bore the bulk of the ship’s weight and rose like a mill wheel from the deck of the ship. It needed the mud cleaned from it and all its myriad spokes needed checking. None of the sailors were obviously armed, but all of them had the scars and bearing of fighting men. And they outnumbered Itzal by several hundred.

Now the situation reared up in force before Itzal, he didn’t know what his plan had been. He only knew that, if his position and Lilywhite’s were to be reversed, then he wouldn’t feel up to being abducted and would be waiting for rescue.

He played out scenarios in his imagination—various sudden explosions of attack, different angles and different speeds. Every simulation in his imagination ended in Itzal stuck with arrows, or stuck with swords, or taken alive but tied up tighter than ever. Lilywhite and Alkama both jangled with chains.

Itzal stood behind the line of on looking sailors. He wished with all of himself for some sign or intervening power to fix this moment for him. No part of it beckoned him one way or another, except the fear of messing up that seemed to hold him in place. Vibrating but incapable of forcing his will to do anything else, he watched Lilywhite walk up the gangplank. His flouncing walk jangled slightly from the chains around his wrists and ankles.

Unable to trust himself to do the right thing, Itzal did nothing. He didn’t feel good about it.

The ship had a wolf-head prow. Behind the prow, the name Heritage shone in red paint on the wooden hull. It had two masts and two long outriggers with their own wheels, keeping the ship balanced. Itzal watched it till it cast off its moorings and started its slow and careful way away from the quays.

Itzal stayed where he could see it for as long as it might still conceivably be accessible to him, and for a while after that. He waited as if he expected some sign to decide his next choice for him.

Nothing he knew he shouldn’t have felt surprised when the Heritage got on its way well away from port without anything significant happening. And he didn’t feel surprised. He could not avoid feeling disappointed.

Or hungry. Now that he was as alone as he had been since the beginning of this irritating adventure, he mused that his most pressing concern ought to be the errand Lilywhite wanted him to run. Itzal ought to go find the slander smith, somewhere in the smithing district. He would do that; Itzal had every intention to do that. Right at that moment he could smell bacon and toasted bread, his stomach suggested a more pressing concern than any other.

Which didn’t much matter, since he had no money.

For which problem he, fortunately, had one recourse.

Melding into the crowd, he made for the one other place in Garrison he knew: the Bone Jack Embassy.

In most towns and outposts of any significant size, the Bone Jacks established embassies. They served a variety of purposes, some of them for the community. Itzal had heard that some outposts would ask the two or three Bone Jacks stationed at the embassy to act as constables or as mediators in legal disputes. They would also pass messages between Bone Jacks stationed in remote places and the Council back at the Academy. Because of the importance of knowing where to pick up messages from and send them to the Council, they had made sure to let graduating Bone Jacks know the locations of the Embassies in important towns, Garrison being one.

Everything Itzal ever heard of Bone Jack involvement in local doings sounded like the locals appreciated them. Itzal heard frequent reports of Bone Jacks invited to celebrations in gratitude for helping with important tasks. He knew of Bone Jacks who’d help design and build irrigation systems and others who supervised building fortifications. A wide-reaching group of them initially had a hand in designing and currently supervising the mail system in and around the Razorgrass Sea. That had been no small feat, since many settlements had been established by nations that didn’t get along too well elsewhere. In Vendi Larte, by and large anyone of social importance—lawmen, reputable shop keepers, relevant land owners—showed Bone Jacks a certain degree of respect. Itzal had never grown comfortable with it, but he’d grown accustomed to it.

Taken all in all, Itzal’s general impression of Bone Jack and local relations was favorable, perhaps more favorable than back home.

He stood in the bright midmorning light staring at messy letters scrawled across the front of the embassy. Back to your mountaintop, the words said, Poncy Squirrels.

“Hmm,” Itzal said.

Someone opened the door in the middle of the large scrawled words. It was a Bone Jack carrying a bucket. Itzal thought he knew the Bone Jack’s name. Itzal had never been good with names. He started dredging his memory.

The Bone Jack looked surprised for a half second. His watery gaze zipped up and down Itzal, and his expression calmed.

“Hello,” he said. “We weren’t expecting guests today. Usually they send news from up there when we’re to expect guests.” At up there he gestured with a flick of the eyes towards the mountains.

“I’m not here by any plan of the Council,” Itzal said. Then, for the sake of accuracy, and not without some small irritation, he added, “not directly.”

The Bone Jack allowed himself a thin smile. “A complaint of the masses,” he said. Coming all the way out of the embassy, he closed the door. “If you don’t mind…the graffiti’s usually not hard to remove if I get to it early in the day.” The Bone Jack started scrubbing at the graffiti.

For a few seconds, Itzal did nothing and languor in surprise. Then he reached into the bucket and took out a second rag. He started scrubbing the paint off too.

The other Bone Jack kept glancing at Itzal with an uncomfortable purse to his lips. “It’s true,” he eventually said, half swallowing his words as if he preferred to keep them to himself.

“What is?” Itzal asked.

“What you’re thinking,” the Bone Jack said.

“I’m thinking it’s shocking to see graffiti on the embassy.”

The Bone Jack nodded. “It’s here most days. I clean it off early in the morning. Got delayed today. I was expecting someone…hmm…”

“Is this attitude common?” Itzal asked.

“We have it easy here. People still have fear of the mountaintops, this close to the Academy. I am sorry to share such an uncomfortable truth, but you ought to know it now before you reach your assignment… Beg pardon, lad, but you’ve a different air about you than most of the doe-eyed graduates that come to me, all lost and confused.”

“I can’t account for that,” Itzal said, sighing. “Although, it might be from the fact that I don’t need you to tell me how to reach my assignment. I have a disheartening fear that I’m already on it.”

“Is it one of those, then?” the Bone Jack said. “Well, out with it. Where are you headed? The Ephraim Black Dust Mines? They’re infamous.”

“Nothing so mundane,” Itzal said. He considered for a moment, glancing over his shoulder. He didn’t know how far the fingers of Modris Khan reached, but there were plenty of quiet shadows on the grey-cobbled street where a Burner could hide if he had to. “Could we talk it out over tea? After we’re done here, of course. I haven’t had breakfast.”

“That we can,” the Bone Jack said. “Goodness me, I don’t think I’ve eaten breakfast either. Been so nervous this morning.”

The Bone Jack eventually said his name was Helving. He mentioned it while murmuring this and that in the back room of the embassy, when they’d finished scraping the graffiti away. The front room of the embassy looked like Bone Jack establishments often did: like a museum mixed with something else. In this case, a museum mixed with a reading room that doubled as a tea room. It had velvet-upholstered sofas and chairs around sturdy-while-finely-crafted low wooden tables. Book shelves stood around the light blue walls. Everything gleamed, and Itzal got the impression that the rooms didn’t get used much.

The back rooms gleamed too, but they felt worn and alive. The quarters were simple. An alcove on the left had an old bed and a door that probably led to a washroom. An alcove on the right, well lit by large windows, had a comfy-looking chair and small reading table, and it had a carpeted platform for sitting while meditating. Shelves there held, alternately, books and a few little bonsai trees, waiting to be trimmed.

The rest of the living quarters were taken up by a large kitchen space. An age-and-use-worn table took up the middle of the room. The far wall, under wide windows, had a long counter and a deep sink. The large stove off to the side smell of apple pie.

Helving laid out tea things. It took him an effort, it seemed, to remember Itzal was there. Helving acknowledged Itzal’s presence with light and meaningless conversation. But most of the time while he set up tea, Helving spent humming to himself.

“Is that from Donnerschlag?” Itzal asked, taking a stab at guessing the composer of the tune.

“Hmm?” Helving asked, seeming surprised to see Itzal. “Oh, no. An original Helving. Not very good, perhaps. Now, Mister Dantzari, do tell me about your adventures.”

Itzal nodded, filling a plate with buttered turnovers and oat scones. While eating in small bites, Itzal started his story of his night and the evening leading up to it. He began his story in a subdued attitude, attempting to treat the whole affair as a bother no worse than encountering a few minutes’ delay on the way to tea with Helving. As he spoke, Itzal found his attitude changing. Helving, nibbling quietly at his cheese and toast and nodding occasionally, expressed so little judgment, that Itzal soon found himself giving broader vent to his own feelings. He didn’t merely keep to the facts. He riled himself, in fact, till he was nearly shouting.

“So now I’m trapped into delivering this message for him,” Itzal said. “Then overseeing his rescue. And I don’t know exactly where he is, but I imagine I’ll need an army to storm the place. Nothing about it is remotely comfortable.”

Having talked himself out, Itzal fell silent with a sigh.

Helving nodded. The way he nibbled his cracker and his large eyes, staring bright and blue at Itzal, and his fuzzy sideburns gave him the look of a mouse.

Swallowing his bit of cracker, Helving asked, “So you’re following through with that course of action, then?”

“Well…yes,” Itzal said. “Of course. Why? Should I not?”

“Oh, no, no, no. I quite encourage you to it. Noble of you. Remarkable. Yes…just…” Helving’s words skittered off, and Itzal wondered if he had anything to add.

“Just?” Itzal said.

“Well…have you considered other courses of action?”

Itzal had not. He paused to consider, and he realized that it had not occurred to him that there might be other courses of action. Not, at least, since he had reached Garrison. Not, at least, aside from simply abandoning the adventure. At some point that had stopped feeling like an option.

“You see, were our positions reversed,” Helving went on to say. “I would consider my part in the adventure resolved. You see, if I were in your position—new graduated from Academy, and drawn away from what I thought my nobler calling—I would do as you have done. I would then ask the Ambassador—yours truly—to deliver my message. I would consider my part done, then, and I would go back to the task that suited me best. Were I in your position, Mister Dantzari, I would permit myself the concession that the world is…big. And that I am not as prepared for it as some other people.”

“People like you?” Itzal said.

“Oh, no, no, no. I must stay here. It is my job to tend to the Embassy. Master Lilywhite, however…we must concede that he is prepared for the world. It is his calling to be. He is known for it. That is his road to walk. And he told you who he thought you ought to ask for help here—the slandersmith. I know of him. He would be a perfectly noble person to trust your message to. No, in your place, I would deliver my message, and I would have done.”

Itzal nodded. “You think I should go home?”

“I think you should find your way,” Helving said. “It’s not my job to tell you what to do. I’m merely commenting upon it. It is most curious, you see.” Helving pondered on those words for a moment, then seemed to decide they needed a little clarification. “It’s been the practice of Bone Jacks for a long time to draw away from the doings of the wider world. I haven’t heard of any of us volunteering to strike out into the troubles since, oh, at least a generation or two.

“Lilywhite’s in the midst of it all,” Itzal said.

Helving nodded, a ghostly smile around his lips. “We’d always assumed him to be…well, the polite word would be anomalous.”

“Ah,” Itzal said.