Shadow War: Book 3 of the Shadows Rising Trilogy (WIP Rough Draft)

18. Questions and Beer

17th of Eystre

In spite of all the uncertainty looming over us, I slept like the dead that night. That next morning, I kept sleeping right through Arramy getting up. More surprising, I also slept through Denzig making breakfast, waking only when he started up the engine and Number 47 began moving out of the docks.

Denzig was still in the kitchen when I came out of the cabin, and gave me a bright grin as he scooped eggs out of the pan and onto a plate for me. Arramy was piloting the boat. Denzig had let him.

I ate the eggs and smiled and stifled an odd twist of disappointment, choosing instead to be relieved that I wouldn't have to follow the awkwardness of the night before with what I was sure would be an equally awkward day.

I needn't have worried. Not that I was. Worried, I mean. At all. But Arramy stayed up there for most of the day, until Denzig took over after lunch, and then he worked on the boat some more, tinkering with this and that, taking this other thing apart and putting it back together in better working order. It was like watching some an oversized, overzealous repair pyxxe with a grease pot for wings and a turnscrew for a wand.

I cleaned the kitchen. Made sandwiches for lunch. Helped Denzig make dinner. I quickly ran out of chores to do in Denzig's very neat and tidy little living quarters, but Denzig didn't seem to mind. He didn't want me fussing around anyway, and said he was just glad of my company. So that was what I did. I sat and listened to his stories while Arramy actually earned our keep.

Arramy didn't mind that I was sitting around, either, but that might have been because he was too busy being useful to notice.

The next two days passed in much the same way. After spending the night in Vorrim, we steamed upriver, through the Second Pearl and into the Third before stopping for the night again in Andersk. We passed the Andersk checkpoint for the Third Pearl even easier than the one at Vorrim, and then ate a lovely dinner of gambillo stew.

Through all of it, Arramy kept up a polite distance.

He wasn't rude, or angry. He was quiet, but not unusually so. He didn't stomp around or glare. It was more a lack of something that had been there before. When I spoke to him, he listened and responded readily enough, but he didn't initiate conversation and his smile died just a little too quickly.

That second night was almost the exact opposite of the first. Denzig went up to his hammock in the nest, then we ducked into the cabin, I handed Arramy his pillow and the blanket, he lay down on the floor, and I lay on the berth box. And that was that. No talking, no contact, just lights out and sleep.

Then I lay there for an hour, staring at the wall, wondering why the silence made me sad. Or... disappointed. Or whatever this weird feeling was in the pit of my stomach.

The third day was more of the same, although I managed to get up in time to make breakfast with Denzig. We passed the Fourth Pearl checkpoint at Ix without a single wrinkle, as if the farther we got from Lodes and the Capitol, the less anyone cared about what the Dailies had to say.

That last night was bittersweet. In the morning, Denzig was going to continue northeast on up Odynne's Necklace, while Arramy wanted to cross into the Altyran side of the Fourth Pearl and take the canals south to Kanos. From there we could go in any one of fifty directions, heading for the Altyran coast through the network of manmade waterways that connected all of Altyr like arteries, carrying metal and manufactured goods to the rest of the Coalition.

Denzig treated us to another Tetton desert, this one a creamy cake made of soft Tettian cheese and citrus preserves. The night was warmer, so we lit the lanterns and sat on the stern deck, the two men smoking cheroots and drinking Denzig's homemade beer, trading stories.