Chapter 119

Sicanti was smaller than Luke expected it to be. He supposed it counted as a city by Aros standards, but it didn’t seem like it could hold that many people to him. Then again, they were approaching it from downhill and couldn’t even see the harbor, or any of the ocean itself for that matter. Maybe it would look bigger once he got a better view.

They’d used the roads pretty much the whole way, but Luke thought they’d done a fine job of remaining inconspicuous. At the speed they’d moved, nobody had caught up from behind, and with his high perception, any time they’d seen someone they were going to overtake, they’d gone offroad to circle around. In the end, it had probably cost them an extra hour or two of travel time, but both felt it was worth the effort.

The real question in Luke’s mind was whether the Blacktongue mercenaries had any presence in Sicanti and, if so, how safe he’d be walking in wearing a bunch of their gear. System had, as usual, been less than stellar with the information he was willing to share.

“We could stash the armor out of town and come back for it later,” Zea said.

“But I just got it. I’ve been trying to get good armor since I got here.”

“I know, but it’s also really conspicuous.”

“Maybe if I hold the cloak closed?”

“There are so many things wrong with that, I’m not even going to list them,” Zea told him. “Actually, it’s going to bug me if I don’t.”

“What?”

“Okay, so first, ‘holding your cloak closed’ makes you look like a flasher. Or it would if you couldn’t see the outline of the armor through the cloak anyway. Second, are you going to leave your mace behind? I guess maybe the harness has an option for having it ride at your hip instead of on your back? Third, the cloak is part of the uniform. Anyone who recognizes the armor is going to recognize the cloak too.”

“Okay, okay! I get it. It’s a dumb idea.”

“Oh,” Zea said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re right,” Luke said. “We don’t need to attract trouble.”

“But I was being mean about it. I didn’t need to do that. How about if we stop for lunch, empty out one of the food bags, and put the armor inside that? You can carry it with you. Or we can fold it up in the cloak and you can carry it that way?”

“I suppose that’s a decent compromise,” he said.

“Good, now get out of that armor. It’s cold as fuck and I’m not getting the kind of snuggles I was promised when I signed on for this trip.”

They found a small campsite off the road a few miles from the city and set up their cooking fire. Luke attempted, without success, to cook while Zea watched with mounting horror. After they’d scraped away the abomination he’d created, she took over and walked him through the steps of what he should have done.

“It all looks the exact same to me,” he said at the end.

“What? No, it was completely different. How could you…” Zea trailed off with a sigh. “Maybe you should just spend the AP on [Cooking]and be done with it.”

“Never!”

“It’s just 1 point.”

“It’s the principle of the matter,” Luke told her. “I’ll get it, just you wait and see.”

Zea gave the bush they’d dumped his attempt at cooking into an uneasy glance and sighed. “Okay, if you say so.”

After a bit of rearranging, they managed to clean one of their backpacks out enough to hold Luke’s stolen armor. It was a bit tight, but in the end, everything metal and armory was in a single bag with the cloak wrapped around to prevent clanging sounds. He kept the outfit and the boots, having discarded his old farmer’s homespun back at the mercenary compound. Hopefully, they were generic enough not to be recognized as mercenary standard issue.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

It was a simple plan. They’d head into the city, thankfully just as unwalled as everything else in the northland seemed to be, and Zea would sniff out a few enchanters’ shops. They’d pick whichever one looked the most loaded and try to offload their primo enchanting hide directly for an infusion of literal cold hard cash.

Money in hand, it would be time to find the harbor and learn which ships were going across the ocean soon, then barter passage. With whatever time they had left before it was time to set sail, they’d try Luke’s idea of bombing ant hills for XP. If everything went according to plan, they’d level up enough for Zea to rank up [Bloodline Purification Ritual] so she could determine what weird shit they’d need to repeat the ritual start shopping for it.

It would definitely go smoothly, just like they wanted it to. Definitely.

They shouldered their packs and walked into Sicanti.

* * *

“Okay, it’s bigger than I thought,” Luke admitted. “I didn’t realize we were still so many miles from the ocean when we first spotted it.”

“I bet there’s not a lot of people actually living on the east edge of the city. Probably all dry docks, warehouses, and taverns. Sailors, dockworkers, and guards all the way. Maybe try not to get into a fight with them this time.”

“That was one time! And I didn’t even really fight him,” Luke protested.

Zea shrugged. “Come on, I think the business district is over this way.”

Luke looked over to where Zea was gesturing. It looked just like the rest of the city to him, single story buildings made out of timber lining either side of cobblestone streets. Occasionally, there was a second story that loomed over its neighbors, but those were a clear minority.

“Why this way?” he asked.

“Better dressed people, more carriages, more servants. All signs that the money is over that way, which means the people who sell things are there too.”

“Oh, well when you put it like that.”

They got a lot of looks as they made their way through the crowd, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. There wasn’t a single other dwifkin anywhere in sight, and while everyone else was dressed in heavy clothes and a coat, maybe with a cloak thrown over top, she was practically waddling the double-layered everything and a hat she’d pulled out of her bag. Luke wasn’t even sure where she’d picked that up at.

He got a few curious stares as well, but no one paid him much attention. In fact, he couldn’t recall a time ever when he’d received less looks than now. And then it hit him. His XP was hidden. The people checking him out were probably the few who had high enough perception to tell that he was showing 0 XP, not just low XP. Between that and the novel nature of a dwifkin walking down the street, it was easy enough for him to fade into the background.

He followed along mutely. His job right now was to be the baggage boy and protect their money and equipment from theft. Considering they’d ended up with five packs of various sizes somehow, it was a cumbersome task to be holding all of them at once, especially since there was every possibility of a cut purse slicing the stitching on any he slung over his back without him realizing it.

He opted for one of the remaining food bags in that position. If they lost an apple or a wedge of cheese, he could live with that. The amaril hide bag and the money bag stayed in front of him, with his armor bag tucked under one arm and the miscellaneous supplies held in the other. So far, no one had tried to mess with it. That may have been more due to Zea’s expert navigation away from the poorer districts than it was due to Luke’s high perception catching anyone who even thought about it.

The deeper they got into Sicanti, the nicer the streets got. He stopped having to watch his step to keep from catching his toes on uneven cobblestones after the first ten or so blocks, and he noticed the houses getting bigger and two-story buildings becoming more common soon after. Glass windows started showing up, and the general quality of both the wood and the carpentry rose.

By the time they made it to what Zea dubbed the ‘business district,’ there were open squares with stalls set up in them, alleyways with back doors to let employees and deliveries in and out, and spaces reserved for carriages, carts, and wagons, which meant wider streets to accommodate vehicles and foot traffic. She wove through them, ignoring the calls of vendors and the muttered grumblings of shoppers unhappy with her invading their personal space.

Eventually, after far too much browsing around for Luke’s taste, Zea settled on a building with an unusual number of windows and a sign hanging from a post near the door with a picture of what looked to him like some sort of symbol he would have expected to show up in math class. Presumably, it was some kind of rune. Whatever it meant, it made Zea happy to see it.

She snatched the bag with the amaril hide from Luke, gave him an appraising glance, and said, “It’s going to be boring enchanting stuff. You want to come with?”

“Uh. Did you need me to do something else?”

“I don’t, but I figured you might like a spare set of clothes for when you inevitably end up destroying the ones you’re wearing.”

“Hey, I’ve got armor now.”

“Mmhmm. And, just out of curiosity, how many of those mercs you killed also had armor?”

Luke thought about that for a second. He was pretty sure most of them had been wearing bits and pieces, if not a full suit. “All of them? Ish.”

“Yeah… how many pieces of armor did you destroy?” Zea asked.

“A lot of them. Fuck. Good point. Okay, I think I saw a clothing store a block back. I’ll go see if I can find something and meet you back here when I’m done?”

“The one that had that black shirt on display in the window? I’ll just head over there if I finish up first.”

They split up, with Zea gleefully dashing into the enchanting shop and Luke shaking his head. That poor shopkeeper wasn’t going to know what hit him. No doubt she’d get every single copper she thought the hide was worth, probably more besides. If she didn’t take it in hard cash, she’d get a chunk of it in trade for other supplies. Luke was kind of hoping she did, if only because she’d started grumbling about feeling the lack when they stopped for breaks and she wanted to work on something.

He rearranged the remaining load and backtracked to the shop in question. Maybe he’d get two extra outfits, just to be safe.

* * *

Adrevald Lath was staring at out the harbor from the window of the suite he’d been given for his use in the church in Sicanti. His work had taken him to many, many exotic locales, but never across the ocean. If things didn’t go well here though, that could very well be his next step. The church didn’t have its own ship, so he’d have to charter passage. Well, it was best not to get ahead of himself. He’d know if the mercenaries had succeeded in locating and capturing the two apostates he wanted soon enough.

Almost as if thinking of them had summoned them, someone knocked on his door. “Come in,” he said, not moving from his position.

“Ah, pardon me, Inquisitor Lath,” one of the local priests said as he entered the room. “You have a visitor.”

Lath watched the man’s reflection in the window. Scrawny, low level. Weak. No hidden weapons. Unimportant. “Very well. Send them in.”

A mercenary followed the priest in, not the same one he’d spoken to originally when he’d formed the contract. This one wasn’t as strong, or was just better at hiding it. He doubted that. It had been a lot of years since anyone had been able to fool him.

He didn’t like the mercenary’s posture. The man seemed afraid to talk to Lath. That meant it was bad news. Something had gone wrong. Fucking mercenaries. All they had to do was find the pair.

“You have news for me?” he asked, still watching the reflection in the window.

“Yes, erm, about that…”