Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

A Particularly Blue Morning

The rolling caravan came to an abrupt stop. Mana braced herself by grabbing her table, though she had to secure the chunk of furniture with her own strength since its feet weren't nailed to the caravan floor. In the end, she ended up having to do more work than she saved herself from. The good news was that she salvaged the table of cards she's set up while practicing a concept for a future card trick.

The old man tapped on the caravan door. Mana dragged the curtains open and peeked through the door with a curious look. "Why didn't you enter?" she asked. "This was your caravan and it may soon be your caravan again unless I find a crew to sail me to the continent alongside it."

"You should hold your horses, girl," the old man shook his head and pointed at the port that had been teetering with life. Lights beaming through the windows of most buildings and cheerful songs clamoring all around the place. Still, the actual pier had been dead-quiet and looked no different from the tranquil and still ocean gently wavering as the evening caressed it.

"Huh... What's going on here?" Mana scratched her head.

"You don't sail often, do you? No sailor is going to take off in the middle of the night. They may rise early in the morning, though. Hearing some of them from all the way here, a whole lot of them won't be doing much sleeping anyway. Unless you're in for sailing alongside hammered imbeciles, you'll have to wait until morning," the old-timer explained with a shrug.

"Then why did you take me here right now? You could've said so back then..." Mana squinted at the man, leaning out through the window to get a wider angle of the bashful district and the completely dead silent pier. It looked serene enough to hear the gentle splashing of the waves touching the wooden platforms, which made a jarring contrast to the rowdy and obnoxious singing and fruitless yelling in the air.

"Having seen you throwing your money around, I was worried that if I refused you or tried to talk you down of it, you'd find someone less caring about your safe voyage and more about your coins. I've lived my share of life already, I don't much fancy making the last few kicks into those of sweet luxury but there are plenty that would rip you off with fairytales of a quick and efficient voyage for a deluxe price and put you on a poacher's or trafficker's vessel, hoping not to hear from you ever again," the old man looked at the cacophony of masculine grunting of rambunctious bar-brawling and the feminine cries of sweet lovemaking drowning each other out and making the general mood of the district difficult to determine.

"Traffickers' vessel? Getsugakure has a slaving problem?" Mana scratched her head. She had read plenty about the practice of the slave trade in history books though, from what she's come to know of the current world affairs, the practice had long been extinguished most everywhere around the communicative parts of the world. She'd have never imagined slavery, a taboo in most countries, to be a part of Getsugakure's black market economy. It'd have been impossible to take Getsugakure seriously as a pearl of the northern ocean and a glorious and prosperous resort with that thought in mind.

"Not slavery, trafficking. The thugs capture settlers and tribesmen off of uncharted islands all over the ocean and ship them to work all over the world, wherever people are looking for cheap hands," the old man yawned. Seeing him act tired, Mana recalled she had disturbed the old man from his evening routine with this matter.

"I fail to see the difference still..." Mana opened the door and held it open, letting the old geezer know she was beaming light from inside her entertainment caravan for him to enter and make himself comfortable.

"The difference is that those dolts get paid. Heck, most of them make more in a month than they'd make living off of crabs and coconuts on their islands their entire life. It's not a scam of some sort, just a legal grey area. No business owner employing trafficked islanders and settlers would dare pay them a meek pay. As you've said, slavery is taboo and an unhappy employee is more likely to make ninja knock on your door the next day, carrying the King's wrath about bringing up talks of slavery to his shores and embarrassing him in front of the other Kage and Feudal Lords," the old man slowly crept up the steps and walked in. Mana closed the door and closed her eyes, trying to purge her mind of the sounds of the port town and feeling grateful that she couldn't sense the smells.