Book 3: Chapter 6: Camping in Style
Victor sat in Lam’s kitchens, Edeya, Thayla, and Captain Lam on the bench across from him, and, between huge bites of food, explained what he’d done while Spirit Walking. He mentioned meeting Oynalla, his hunt, and finished with a brief description of how he surprised Belikot and killed him before he could hardly retaliate.
“So, I don’t need to gather my old friends? We don’t need to go and confront this Belikot fellow?” Lam asked after chewing on a bite of bacon thoughtfully for a few moments.
“No, Oynalla was pretty damn sure I killed him.” Victor shrugged and drank down a full glass of milk.
“What about the phylactery? His soul shards? He’s not so easy to kill, Victor,” Thayla said. She’d been frowning for most of his retelling, and now he realized why.
“Look, the only other shard we know of is in my dimensional bag. As far as the phylactery goes, we know it increased his strength, and maybe it was a way to help him jump his soul around, but, Thayla, I had his fucking soul on the Spirit Plane. I watch Lifedrinker drain it away!” He lifted the axe and showed them the Heart Silver veins that had started to spread through the dark, cobalt axe head. “I don’t know how he could recover from that, and if he did, if some piece of him is still out there, then it’s a shadow of what he was.”
“A shadow with a grudge,” Edeya said, nodding to Thayla.
“Oh, God.” Victor sighed and rubbed his temples. He knew they were right, in a way, to still be wary of Belikot, but couldn’t they take a fucking win when he handed it to them? “The point is, if he’s pissed at anyone, it’s me. If he tries to mess with me on the Spirit Plane, I’ll whip his ass again, and if he comes at me in the real world, then I’ll deal with it. This isn’t a problem for ‘us’ anymore, all right? You all can let it go.” He couldn’t help the growl that had entered his voice or the scowl on his face as he roughly wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“I’m not trying to downplay what you did, Victor,” Thayla said and opened her mouth to continue, but Victor shook his head and held up a hand.
“It’s not that! It’s just . . . well, it’s just that I’m sick of having to run my plans and actions through some kind of fucking committee. I just want to, you know, live for a while.”
“Victor, people are depending on you . . .” Lam started, but, again, Victor spoke over her.
“Yeah, I know, Lam. I know you have a lot riding on the campaign in the Marches, and I know Rellia’s life depends on it. I’m not backing out of that. I’ll meet you guys in Persi Gables in the spring, and we’ll get shit going, all right? For now, though, I want to escort Thayla and Deyni to Tellen’s camp, spend some time visiting with Oynalla, and from there, I’ll see what grabs my interest. Is that all right with everyone?” He glared around the table, scowling down at everyone but Captain Lam, who met his eyes with a strangely open expression.
“That’s good, Victor. I can respect those sentiments.” She glanced around the table, her face pensive like she was trying to decide if she would continue, but she pressed her lips into a firm line and gave a short nod as though giving herself permission. “My family made a lot of demands of me. They paid for schooling and expected me to stay in Twilight Home and continue forging my father’s business empire. I ran away.” She said the last part quietly, and her eyes fell.
“You just ran?” Edeya asked, her voice soft and her eyes wide with awe.
“Yes. I didn’t want to face my parents. I didn’t want to make my wishes clear like Victor just did. To me, it was easier just to erase my past from my mind and move toward my goal, so I went to Tharcray and joined the Legions.”The initial instance of this chapter being available happened at N0v3l.Bin.
“Damn,” Victor said. “And your family? Did you ever let them know what you got up to? I bet they're proud of what you’ve done now, huh?”
“I wrote to them a few times. My mother wrote back and told me to stop. She said my father had disowned me and that it was too painful to hear from the ‘ghost’ of their daughter.” Lam dug at the wooden table with her thumbnail while she spoke, perhaps unaware of the action, and Victor had the urge to reach out and take her hand. He didn’t, though, and he inwardly railed at his cowardice.
“Lam, that sucks. Thanks for sharing that with me, though.” Victor looked around the table and said, “I mean us. It means a lot.”
“Well!” Lam said, shaking her head and thumping her palms flat on the table. “When will you two be leaving?”
Victor glanced at Thayla, saw her slight shrug, and said, “Soon, I guess. Maybe today.”
Lam nodded, quick and informal, and said, “I have a map for you. I had one of my secretaries do a little research into Tellen’s clan. He mapped out the shortest routes to their fall and winter camps. You’ve got money now, Victor.” She turned to include Thayla in the discussion. “Buy yourselves some mounts or a coach or something. You don’t want Deyni walking all that way, do you?”
“No, that’s a good point, Captain,” Victor said, nodding.
“Also, let’s invest in a proper pair of Far Scribe books.” Lam nodded to Edeya, adding, “Will you give Victor two thousand beads from the campaign account? That should cover much of the expense, but you can cover the rest, Victor. It’s good for you to have some stake in the operation, too.”
“Yeah, no problem. Those are books that let us see what the other writes?” He was sort of guessing, but he vaguely remembered someone describing the process to him. He couldn’t remember who. Unsure if it had been someone in the mine or the pits or if it was one of the three women sitting with him now, he decided not to act completely clueless.
“That’s right. Edeya will shop with you and bring me back my copy. I suppose this is farewell, then. I pray the Trees and Roots watch you, Victor. I pray they guide you to Persi Gables in the spring, for all our sakes.” She stood and reached out a long, slender hand, and Victor stood up to shake it. As always, he liked the feel of her grip, the way her fingers closed on his meaty hands like bands of warm iron. He gripped her back and smiled, pulling her, so she leaned over the table and clasped her into a partial hug with his other arm. He was surprised when she pulled him in tight with her free arm, returning the gesture.
“I’ll be there, Lam,” he said as they hugged, then he let her go. “Well, Thayla, how about getting that runt of yours out of bed, and we can do some shopping!”
Thayla smiled and said, “Watch this.” Then she pulled on the silver chain at her neck, lifting out the crystal pendant Victor had bought her. Holding it tightly in her hand, she said, “Deyni! Get dressed; Victor is taking us shopping for animals!” Her eyes squinting from her broad smile, Thayla let go and held the amulet up in the palm of her hand, watching it expectantly.
“Okay, mom!” a high, tinny version of Deyni’s voice piped up out of the amulet as it flashed pink very briefly.
“Neat!” Edeya laughed. “Well, go get her, Thayla. Victor and I will meet you at the gate.”
Not long after that, Victor, Thayla, Edeya, and Deyni walked into town. Three guards in Lam’s livery kept pace a short way behind them. Victor turned, frowned at their escort, and said, “What’s with the guards, Edeya?”
“Captain Lam’s just being overcautious. You ruffled a lot of feathers with your duel, and word is spreading about your agreement with Rellia. She has her own set of enemies that might want to mess with you. Things will be better when you’re out of the city and moving swiftly.”
“This place is like a rattlesnake nest,” Victor said, shaking his head.
“Gelica is worse than a lot of cities. It’s on the edge of the empire, and many families conduct things past the line of what you’d call ‘legal’ out here. Persi Gables is nicer, in some regards, because it’s an independent city, but they have some rules and laws that don’t sit well with me,” Edeya said.
“Oh, you mean like allowing creepy wizards to kidnap people from other worlds and force them to fight in a pit?” Victor scoffed.
“Well, technically, I don’t think that’s legal,” Edeya laughed. “Let’s say the laws are loosely enforced in that city, but at least it’s not directly under the influence of the empire.”
“Right,” Victor said, kicking a loose stone over the cobbles. Once again, his thoughts drifted back to his time at the Wagon Wheel and his dissatisfied feelings of betrayal, anger, horror, and injustice. He thought of Vullu and wondered if he’d ever see him again. His steps grew slow, and his sensations of the world around him dimmed as he thought about Yrella. So many times, the memory of her death had come to haunt him, but now he thought about her life—her beauty, laughter, and kindness.
“Victor?” Thayla said, and her tone indicated it wasn’t the first time.
“Yeah,” he asked, rubbing his head as if to rub away his thoughts.
“Edeya wants to know if you have an Artificer you prefer. I told her you seemed to like Ganjoon.”
“Yeah, Ganjoon’s cool. Let’s go there.” Victor reached down, hoisted Deyni to his shoulders, and picked up the pace. “C’mon, slowpokes!” he said, causing Deyni to giggle and look back at Thayla and Edeya.
“Yeah! Slow pokers!” the little girl said, and Victor laughed.
Ganjoon was happy to see them, and when Edeya told him they needed a Far Scribe book with a lot of pages, he was delighted to provide some options. Each of his books was handsomely bound in leather, though they varied in size considerably. The least expensive was only fifty beads, but it had a mere ten small pages. His most costly book was large, something like an old-school encyclopedia or dictionary, and had five hundred pages. “This one will cost you thirty-five hundred beads,” he said with a self-satisfied pat on the heavy tome.
“Really, Ganjoon?” Victor asked, “No discount for friends?”
“Friends, hmm?” he let his eyes shift down toward Lifedrinker, and they widened in surprise, “Your lady axe looks better already! What did you do, Victor?”
“He’ll tell you about it for a discount,” Thayla said, grinning as she put her hand on Victor’s shoulder.
“Well, are you going to buy anything else?” Ganjoon asked, a calculating look on his face.
“Yeah, we’re leaving town and need to pick up a few things. Hey! Do you happen to have any kind of magical chariots? You know, like Captain Lam has?” He gestured vaguely in the direction of Lam’s estate. “Something that folds up or drives itself or some other cool shit?”
Thayla slapped him on the back of the head and said, “He means he’s open to hearing about any sort of magical transport you have.”
“Now you’re talking about truly expensive items. Expensive to buy and to maintain, at least as far as the object I have for sale goes.” He gave Victor another appraising look, and then his eyes moved to Thayla, Edeya, and even little Deyni, who sat on a stool playing with a set of enchanted dice at the front counter. “I’ll show you something, but I fear it’s beyond your means. I’ve been unable to sell it since I won it from an imperial contract nearly eight years ago.” He stepped behind his counter and into his back room.
“What’s this, you reckon?” Thayla asked.
“Well, what can I do for you today, fine folks? If Ganjoon sent you, I can only assume you’re looking for something special!”
“We’ll be traveling over the plains for a week or so, and, at some point, he’ll be going further still.” Thayla gestured to Victor, then continued, “We’d like sturdy conveyance that’s comfortable for a child.” Thayla nodded toward Deyni, then added, “But we’d like it to be swift. Ganjoon said your prices were reasonable and that you wouldn’t try to cheat friends of his.” Victor was glad Thayla had spoken up and just nodded his agreement.
Bernale leaned forward, gripping his two hairy hands together before him, and said, “Dear me! That implies that I might cheat someone who wasn’t a friend! I would never! I’m as honest as they come. Why, just ask any of my former clients, of which there are many. Many!”
“I didn’t mean to imply . . .” Thayla started.
“No, no. Nothing to worry about. No offense taken. Let’s see here. I have quite a few vehicles that might suit you, and as you saw when you approached my office, I have the beasts to pull them! Would you mind answering a few questions so that I might narrow down my recommendations?”
“Sure,” Victor said.
“Excellent! Firstly, will the three of you want to sleep within? Would you like the interior to be equipped with some necessities of comfort? I mean things such as a stovetop, cupboards, or a cold-cabinet? Why, I even have wagons with bathing facilities!”
Thayla looked at Victor and raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t even think of all that,” she said. “I think you need to make these decisions because, when you leave, you’ll be taking it with you.”
“Why are you so sure of that? You’ll need a way to move with the clan when they go from camp to camp.” Victor leaned back and studied Thayla’s face. Was she acting strange about him leaving, or was it in his head?
“Well, that’s true, but I’m sure we’ll have a tent, and they rely on roladii, and I don’t want Deyni and me to stand out.” Thayla frowned, and Victor noticed she’d painted her lips black. He knew she’d done that back in the mines, but it seemed like a while since he’d noticed it.
Looking at her face, a strange memory came to him from when he’d first met her, and he’d thought the angle of her eyes made her look angry all the time. Looking at her now, he felt her eyes made her look clever and inquisitive. Her irises, deep red, almost purple, were full of mystery and depth, and he found himself looking away quickly, like he’d been caught staring at something he shouldn’t.
Victor cleared his throat and said, “Well, uh, Mr. Berlane . . .”
“Bernale, if you please,” the little Cadwalli corrected.
“Oh, right, sorry about that. Well, I think we’d like something with those sorts of comforts, and of course, if it needs animals to pull it, we’ll need those too. Can you give us an idea of the cost? Could you show us something without those, um, features and then something with all the cool shit?” Victor grimaced and said, “I mean all the extra stuff like stovetops and bathrooms.”
“Naturally, naturally,” Bernale said, then turned and lifted an empty picture from the shelf behind his chair. He placed it on his desk, facing Victor and Thayla, and said, “Look here at this frame, and I’ll show you some of the conveyances I have in my warehouse.” Victor felt a soft pulse of Energy, and then an image began to take shape in the picture frame. It was like looking through a window with a very faint tint of sepia. Nonetheless, a clear image of a classic black coach with big wheels and a bench for a driver appeared in the frame.
“This is a basic but very high-end coach. It’s sturdy, self-repairing, and has Energy–driven compression pads between the axle and the passenger compartment, ensuring a smooth, comfortable ride. This coach will cost you an even two thousand beads. For a pair of roladii to pull it, add another two hundred beads.” Victor watched as the image in the frame panned around the coach, showing all the angles, and then an image of the coach’s interior appeared, showing off the two comfortable bench seats covered in plush, red upholstery.
“All right. What else do you have?” Victor prompted, and then he and Thayla, and Deyni, who came to sit on Thayla’s lap, watched as the little salesman went through a series of ever-increasingly expensive coaches and wagons that appeared in the frame. Victor started to get bored after the third or fourth coach that was only slightly more ornate or had a few more minor enchantments, but when they got to larger wagons, he started to perk up. As Bernale began to show them wagons enchanted with dimensional magic to be bigger on the inside than the outside, his eyes began to bug out as he saw house-sized interiors for wagons that were just a bit larger than the first coach.
“What about dimensional containers? Can I go inside those wagons with my ring?” He gestured to one of his storage rings.
“Naturally! That’s part of the expense. If we weren’t trying to avoid such conflicts, we could make wagons with interiors the size of a royal palace!” Bernale said with an excited grin.
“All right,” Victor said, glancing at Thayla and seeing some eagerness in her eyes. “You’ve got our interest. Show us a wagon like that, with most of the things you’d need to live comfortably on the road, but leave out all the extra ornate materials, filigrees, and shit.”
“Things,” Thayla said. “He means and ‘things.’”
“I think I know just what you’re looking for, Victor,” Bernale said and channeled a bit of Energy into the frame. The view resolved into the shape of a wagon just a bit larger than a regular coach but more rectangular and painted in two-tone lacquer—the top half was royal blue which gradually darkened to black on the bottom half. “Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s very sturdy, too. Just like the coaches we sell, it’s enchanted to self-repair and has Energy driven compression pads. You’ll hardly notice the bumps in the road! The interior has just what you’re looking for, I think.”
The image changed to the wagon's interior, and Victor smiled when he saw an ample space with two big beds on one end, separated by a curtain from a bathing area, complete with a brass bathtub and a nearby toilet. The center of the space held a long wooden table with two matching benches, and on the other side of that was a kitchen, complete with a long wooden counter lined with cupboards, an oven and stove, and a large cold-cabinet.
“Where does the toilet flush? What about the bath? Where’s the water?”
“You’ll love this, Victor,” Bernale said. “The water is stored in a dimensional container attached outside the living space. It’s very densely enchanted and can hold many thousands of gallons. The toilet flushes into a similar, smaller space with an outlet into an incineration chamber. All waste is dispersed as smoke, but only when the wagon travels at speed.”
“That is fucking cool,” Victor said softly, leaning forward to admire the image in the frame again. “All right, Bernale. What’s this going to cost?”
“This wagon, with the barebones interior and the simple two-tone lacquer exterior, costs thirteen thousand beads,” Bernale said, his voice quiet and his eyes slightly downcast as though he didn’t expect his customers to be excited about the price.
“Hmm,” Victor said, rubbing at his chin. “All right, and what about some animals to pull it? I know roladii are two hundred, right? Isn’t that what he said, Thayla?” She nodded, and Bernale did as well. “How about something faster than roladii? Lam has some kind of antelope pulling her coach.”
“Those are vidanii, Victor,” Thayla said, shaking her head.
“Right! Anything like that, Bernale?”
“Well, yes, and they are fabulous animals, quite pleasant in demeanor and fast. I’d happily sell you a pair of them for only two thousand beads!” Bernale leaned forward, clearly starting to feel like he was about to make a big sale.
“Ten times as much as a roladii?” Thayla asked, shaking her head.
“It does seem like a big jump,” Victor added.
“The vidanii cannot be bred in captivity! Each one has to be taken in the wild, and they don’t run anywhere near here. I’m sorry, but the price is fair.”
“You have this ready to go now?” Victor asked.
“Victor! That’s a lot of money,” Thayla said.
“I certainly do,” Bernale said at the same time.
“Give us a minute alone, please, Bernale,” Thayla said, shifting Deyni in her lap. The little girl was sitting there, staring into the crystal of her necklace, either bored or tired. Victor couldn’t tell.
“Oh, yes. Of course, of course.” Bernale stood up and started to move around his desk toward the door, but he glanced nervously at Thayla and said, “If I might ask, did you mention that you know Captain Lam?”
“That’s right,” Victor said.
“Well, I sold her those vidanii, and, well, if you’re friends with the captain, I’d love to offer you a ten percent discount. Please keep that in mind while you deliberate,” he sketched a bow, and Victor almost lost his cool again, seeing the pudgy little goat-like man bend and imagining the strain on his tight, striped slacks. When he’d stepped out of the office, Thayla started to speak at the same time as Victor.
“I think that wagon is cool as hell . . .” he said.
“I hope you’re not buying this to prove something . . .” Thayla said.
“Prove what?” he asked with a frown.
“I don’t know,” Thayla said. “I guess that was stupid.”
“I really do just think it’s cool. That room in the wagon is as big as my abuela’s house! How cool would it be to just cruise along in our wagon, and when we decide to call it a day, we just go inside, and we’re in there?” He pointed at the image still in the picture frame.
“I think it’s very nice, Victor, but do you really need something like that? Or are you, I don’t know, doing it for Deyni and me?”
“Nah, relax, Thayla. I don’t have some kind of hidden motive here. I just think it’ll be nice to go camping in style for a change.”
Thayla looked into Victor’s eyes for a long moment, and he enjoyed the opportunity to look in the depths of hers, noting all the interesting patterns and colors within. Then she sighed and said, “Well, I guess we’re going to have a fun trip out to the Shadeni camp, Deyni.” Thayla grinned and kissed the top of her daughter’s head.
“That’s the spirit,” Victor said, smiling. “Hey, Bernale!” he called. “Come in here! Let’s talk about that discount . . .”
