Chapter 120

Luke was just settling his packs back into place with their new additions when he heard Zea moving toward the tailor’s shop. Specifically, he heard the clinking sound of coins smacking together with every step she took. It certainly sounded like there were a lot of them, and he almost thought he could hear her humming under her breath. That poor shopkeeper.

A few seconds later, Zea appeared in the shop window. Well, the top half of her head did anyway. Luke raised a hand to wave, then finished shouldering the last bag and headed out the door. “You look happy,” he said when he got outside.

“Today has been a good day,” she said with a self-satisfied smile.

“I take it negotiations went well. I can hear you clinking with every step.”

“Hey now, don’t invade a girl’s privacy like that,” Zea told him sternly. “You just keep those ears to yourself.”

Luke laughed and said, “Where to now?”

“Two options. Either we head straight to the harbor and start looking for ships going across the ocean, or we get some lunch. I vote for the second option. It’s getting hard to remember what it’s like to eat a meal I haven’t cooked.”

“Ah, yes. Those are quite good,” Luke agreed. “I try to have meals cooked by someone else as often as possible.”

“Wait a second. Have you… have you been deliberately burning everything just to get out of cooking? Is that why you won’t learn the skill?”

“What! No. Not on purpose. I’m just… I’m not a good cook, okay.”

“Hmph,” Zea said. “We’re going to get lunch. You’re paying.”

“Me! I’m not the one who clinks when she walks!”

“And I’d like to keep clinking, thank you very much. Now, come on. Off we go.”

They bypassed the local bars and taverns and found a small little restaurant in an out-of-the-way corner of the business district. Perhaps it was the fact that he only had rank 1 [Ostari], but Luke couldn’t make heads or tails of the menu. It was posted on something that looked vaguely like a chalk board, except it was blue instead of black or green, and the words written on it might as well have been scribbles for all he could tell.

Zea took care of the ordering, though he suspected she couldn’t read it either, and soon there was a plate of… something… in front of him. The meat was questionable, the vegetables oddly shaped and strangely colored, and the drink smelled vaguely alcoholic. For all that, it was pretty good. Weird, but good.

“What are you thinking about?” Zea said.

“Huh? Oh, just… being reminded how different everything is here. It’s not bad, just not what I’m used to. My family wasn’t big on traveling, you know? We moved around a lot, but never really left the area.”

“So a world-spanning trip is a bit outside your comfort zone.”

“Little bit, yeah.” Luke poked his fork at something cubed, purple, and jiggly. It wasn’t meat, but maybe not a vegetable either? Some kind of fruit, perhaps? Oh well, at least it tasted good.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think anybody would be comfortable with this situation. This whole thing is crazy, and we’re not even halfway.”

“Yeah. Do we know anything about the east continent?”

“Not so much,” Zea said. “But we know someone who does.”

Luke snorted. “Yeah, and it’s like pulling teeth to get a useful answer out of him.”

“Still better than nothing.”

“I suppose.”

Their conversation died off for a bit, until Zea said, “What are you going to do after we get there?”

Luke froze, his fork halfway to his mouth. He’d done his best to avoid thinking about it. The obvious answer was that he was going to bring his family back, but she already knew that. Zea meant what he was going to do after. Would they go back to Earth? Would they stay here? If they left, would he ask Zea to come with him? If he did, would she say yes?

“I don’t know,” he said lamely. “I’m trying to avoid thinking about it.”

Earth didn’t have dwifkin. Maybe he could turn Zea into a human if she wanted to go there, but that was a hell of a commitment. There was also the fact that they would need to purge every last point of XP out of their bodies, or souls, or wherever that was stored. Luke wasn’t sure exactly how it worked. And he needed to find some way to drag Uncle Duncan over here so they could purge however much XP he had in him too. When this was all over, he wanted no trace of the God in the Machine on the Earth side of the doorway.

“Probably something to start spending some time thinking on,” she said.

“I know, it’s just… that’s a big ask, you know? Would you want to come to Earth with me? Would you want to be turned into a human? Is it even possible to do that?”

“Would you want to stay on Aros with me?” she countered. “Would any of your family? Could that doorway stay open so you can go back and forth as you please?”

“Maybe we can ask once we’re back out of town?”

“Why wait?” Zea said. “It’s not like anyone else can see him.”

“It still looks like I’m talking to my imaginary friend,” Luke said dryly. “Don’t need people thinking I’m crazy.”

“Even if you kind of are.”

“The way I see it, on this world, people who act crazy get put down for the safety of the whole community. Therefore, it is in my best interest not to appear crazy.”

Zea started to say something, paused, then said, “Fair point. We’ll wait until later then.”

They returned to their food, both lost in their thoughts.

* * *

The harbor was even bigger than the one in Valtira, and there were some truly massive ships anchored there. Well, massive by comparison to most of the boats floating in the docks. Luke made some generous assumptions and assumed the bigger ones were the ships that would cross the ocean. It only made sense to him. More room for food, more room for people, more room for cargo.

The docks were just as busy as he remembered Valtira’s being, with a row of warehouses curving to follow the harbor that hundreds of men and women moved in and out of as they shifted crates and barrels around. Some went onto ships, some went into the warehouse, and everywhere, men and woman stood around in unobtrusive corners counting each and every last container.

“If there’s one thing nobles are good at, it’s making sure to collect their taxes,” Zea said when she noticed Luke looking.

“But how do they know what’s actually inside is what they say is inside?”

Zea shrugged. “Spot checks, I suppose. It’s not a perfect system by any means, and I’m sure more than one captain has smuggled this or that. Hell, most of the nobles have done the same thing. The customs officers probably know which boxes their bosses don’t want them checking.”

“I don’t think that’ll cause us any problems,” Luke said.

“No, as long as we’re not on a ship that gets caught smuggling anything.”

“Speaking of, which ship are we thinking is going to take us across the ocean?”

Zea surveyed the harbor slowly, occasionally pointing at a ship. “Those ones, I think, are probably our best bets. We’ll have to see if we can speak with the captains.”

They weren’t all the big ones like Luke had figured, either. Whatever criteria she was using to judge, Luke didn’t follow the logic. None of them were small, exactly, he wasn’t sure he’d be comfortable with being at sea for weeks on them.

Before he could ask, she set out onto the docks. Zea wove her way around the workers deftly, leaving Luke to struggle to keep up with all their baggage. When she got to the first ship, she exchanged a few words with a large man wearing a fur cloak and hat who was supervising the unloading of the ship’s cargo. He listened for a moment, shook his head, and pointed at another ship a few spaces down.

Zea thanked him, then turned and beckoned for Luke to follow. Once again, he got caught up trying to stay out of the dockworkers’ way and didn’t make it to her until she’d already finished her conversation and started moving to a third ship.

This was one of the smaller ships, the kind he was leery about being stuck on for an extended period of time, but which Zea seemed to think was a good choice. This time, she was talking to a tall woman with dark brown, almost green even, skin. The woman was taller than Luke by at least half a foot, and might have outweighed him too. She was wearing some kind of poofy pants that were cinched at the calves and a bright red shirt that had three buttons on the front to extend the neckline. All three of them were undone, revealing an inordinate amount of cleavage.

“Sixty is robbery!” Zea snapped.

“I’m barely breaking even,” the woman said, her words thick with a sharp accent. “Two passengers means food, water, and most importantly, space. That cabin could hold cargo. If you want it, you need to cover the money I’m losing by not taking other cargo.”

“Forty gold,” Zea said.

“Sixty.”

“Forty-five.”

“Sixty,” the woman said again, this time more slowly as she enunciated each syllable.

“You don’t even have any cargo for that space, or you wouldn’t be considering it,” Zea argued. “Forty-five is more than enough to cover the costs and still turn a profit.”

“The price is sixty. It is not negotiable. If you don’t like it, fuck off and bother someone else.”

“Fine, I will. Good luck filling that space,” Zea said, stomping off. Luke distinctly heard her mutter, “Bitch,” under her breath as she walked away.

If the woman heard her, she gave no indication of it Probably her perception just wasn’t that high. That would be for the best. Maybe Luke should check, just to make sure.

[Name: Human Ship Captain]

[Level: 17]

[Strength: 10]

[Agility: 21]

[Stamina: 9]

[Perception: 23]

That was higher than he would have expected, and he wasn’t really sure why. Maybe it was just the woman’s personal preference, or maybe there was some part of a sailor’s job he wasn’t aware of that demanded really good eye sight. Old timey ships had that guy who stood up in the crow’s nest looking for land, he supposed, but that wasn’t usually the captain’s job.

Well, what the hell did he even know about it, anyway? With a mental shrug, Luke dismissed the woman and chased after Zea, who was already halfway to the next ship. By the time Luke got there, she’d already finished talking to a group of sailors coming down the wooden ramp thing and was stomping off. He supposed they wouldn’t be talking to anyone important on this one.

Three more ships passed in the blink of an eye, each with the same results. Sometimes Zea spoke with a captain or first mate, sometimes with the regular sailors. Luke started using [Analyze] regularly, trying to get a range of what normal people’s levels were. The highest he saw was level 22, and the lowest was 9. That came from a kid, maybe fourteen, who was scurrying after a pair of sailors while they rattled off orders to him.

It seemed like sailors favored a mix of agility and perception, whereas dock workers went all in on strength and stamina. The paper pushers with their books and tally marks seemed to have universally low stats all the way around, despite their levels. Unless it was some cultural thing to sit on massive amounts of AP, he supposed there were a few expensive skills that would be difficult to pick up otherwise.

While he was pondering that, Zea shook hands with an absolute bear of a man, closer to seven feet tall than six, and his bare chest covered in coarse, black hair. She counted fifteen gold coins out of her purse and handed them over, then turned and waved at Luke.

“Two weeks until we leave,” she said. “And only thirty gold. Hah.”