Waterborne (Wanderlust 3)

Chapter One

Tanden knew that everywhere they went, people would be different. They would look different, speak a different language, wear different clothes and eat different food. They would have a unique religion and traditions. He knew all that—loved that—but somehow he often managed to forget just how different the land could be.

For the first handful of days, they sailed along beside Navire's thick jungle. They passed the occasional small fishing village, usually clustered around a river, but no more big cities. If it wasn't for the large Eylos River, which marked Navire's southernmost border, they might not have realized they had crossed into Moattish waters.

But the coast of Moatt was quite different from Navire. Navire's jungle trees had come right to the water's edge, solid and looming. Moatt's coastline looked almost soft in comparison, made up of marshes and twisting rivers, waters too shallow for the Wanderlust to hug the coast. And beyond the marshes, jungle. Tall trees with twisting roots that seemed to plunge into the ocean.

People lived in the marshes. They passed by plenty of Moattish people, sometimes moving about the marshes on foot but more often on narrow rowboats. They saw buildings too, held up above the marsh reeds on stilts. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes in large, bustling clusters. They didn't see anything that Tanden would call a city, but some of the clusters were too large to be called villages, and so he settled for thinking of them as towns.

On the third day of sailing past Moatt, they came across a town that was easily twice as large as the others. Even more intriguing, a wide channel had been cut in the surrounding marsh, and bigger boats were moored beside a long dock. Nothing nearly as big as the Wanderlust, but the Waterborne would fit nicely.

Tanden immediately decided he was going to visit the town. He called for the anchor to be dropped, and leaving the Wanderlust in Ivern's capable command, set out in the Waterborne with Soren.

As Soren expertly guided the little sailboat along the channel, Tanden's excitement grew. This was his favourite part of exploring. Meeting new people, the challenge of an unknown language, observing and learning.

When they reached the dock, he helped Soren wrap the sail before hopping out of the Waterborne and looping a rope around one of the posts. He waved for Soren to stop just as Soren was about to step out of the boat.

"Wait. I'll try to find someone who knows if we can moor here." Tanden was well aware of the stares he and Soren were attracting. "Just wait here."

Soren hesitated, one foot already on the dock. "I don't like it when you go off alone, Captain."

"I won't go far, mate," Tanden promised, giving Soren what he hoped was a reassuring grin. "I'll stay where you can see me."

With an annoyed huff, Soren crossed his arms. "All right."

"All right," Tanden repeated, chuckling, as he turned to walk down the dock. It was quite a busy place, and very multicultural, as port cities tended to be. Although he wasn't very familiar with the southern countries, he could guess at where a few of the other visitors were from, and heard snippets of languages he thought he could identify.

As he walked, his gaze caught on a sailboat unloading crates of some sort of shellfish. He was trying to identify it when he suddenly found himself nearly tripping over a short man, who stared up at him, hands propped on his fists.

The man said something.

Tanden replied in Navirian, hoping that Moatt's proximity to the other country would make their language a bit more common. "My apologies. Do you speak Navirian?"

The Moattish man blinked at him. He almost looked Navirian, with a similar brown skin tone and dark hair. But there were differences in his facial features—a wider nose than was common with Navirians, and sandy brown eyes. He had interesting tattoos, dark blueish dots and angular lines around his left eye and down his cheek. Tanden suspected that the design probably continued under the man's beard.