“I will pay you,” she said.
Her face felt hot. The horrible men leered at her like hungry dogs.
“You’ll pay all right,” the man she’d cut growled at herperhaps he was a dog. “But not with coin.”
Ran Ai Yu shifted her weight back onto her rear foot and set her sword blade parallel with the pier. She looked the lead thug in the eyes, sensed he was going to shift right, and that’s what he did. She let him step into the sword tip, but didn’t stab him. The blade only went in the barest fraction of an inch. She didn’t want to kill him. If she killed him, she’d have to kill the rest of them.
His two friends lunged at her, and Ran Ai Yu stepped back a few fast steps. Then one of the men fell flat on his face. She watched a stone roll along the wood planks, and blinked at it.
When the second man fell she relaxed her stance, and let her sword arm fall to her side, the blade crossed in front of her legs. She stood like that and watched Ivar Devorast knock the other man to the ground with his fist. He smiled at her over the man’s limp form, and she smiled back. A thud from behind her turned her attention back to her passenger. Lau Cheung Fen, like Devorast, stood over the unconscious bodies of drunken dockhands. “Miss Ran,” Devorast said.
She turned back to face him, sheathed her sword, and said, “Master Devorast, is good to see you once again.” Lau Cheung Fen stepped up behind her, and she added, “May I present my passenger, the honorable Lau Cheung Fen of Liaopei.”
“Mister Lau,” he said. “Are you injured? Do you need any further assistance?”
“Your manner…” Lau said. “So like Shou.” Devorast just looked at him.
“We will require a crew to unload our cargo,” Ran Ai Yu answered. “These men tried to…” She paused, searching for the word.
“Who is this manfLau asked her in Kao te Shou, their native tongue.
She looked at Devorast, but detected no outward trace that he was offended by Lau’s speaking in front of him in a language he did not understand.
“Master Ivar Devorast is the man who created the great Jie ZuoV’she answered in the Common Tongue of Faerun.
“Ah,” Lau responded, and his head bent low on that strange long neck of his. His eyes glittered black in the sunshine. “You are the great genius. It is truly an honor to meet you, Master Devorast.”
“Master Lau is a most important dignitary from my province,” Ran said in hopes that she could help Devorast frame his response properly.
“Thank you, Master Lau,” Devorast said, but his eyes stayed on Ran Ai Yu.
“You have built many such ships, then,” Lau said. “I should purchase a number of them. Though my home is far from the sea, many in Shou Lung have commented on the strange and wonderful ship of Ran Ai Yu, and would pay much for one of her kind.”
“There are no more of her kind,” Devorast said before Ran could say the same thing.
“You have sport of me,” said her passenger.
“No,” Ran Ai Yu cut in. “He has built only this one, and will build no more like her.”
“This is true?” he asked Devorast.
“It is,” was the Faerunian’s only reply.
“7s this some secret the white men seek to keep from us?” Lau asked in Kao te Shou.
“With apologies, Master Devorast,” she said, then turned to Lau. “It is no secret. He is a very unusual man, and that is all. He will likely find it rude, however, if we continue to speak in a language he does not understand. With respect, Master Lau, he is a friend and important trade contact.”
“Indeed,” Lau replied, then bowed to Devorast. “Please accept my most humble apologies for my rudeness, Master Devorast. Perhaps you would be so kind…if you no longer build your tile ships, what is it that occupies you? Perhaps if it is one of a kind as well, I might have it instead.”
“It’s a canal,” Devorast replied.
The two Shou merchants exchanged a glance.
“Pardon me,” Lau said. He asked Ran Ai Yu, “Kuh-nahl?” She gave him the word in their language, and he nodded. “Well, then I will not be able to take it with me. Pray, where is this canal?”
“Northwest of here,” he replied.
“To connect the Lake of Steam with your great Inner Sea,” Ran Ai Yu said. Devorast nodded.
“This will be a mighty boon to trade,” said Lau.
“For me,” said Devorast, “it’s a canal.”
“I should like to see it,” Ran Ai Yu said. A memory tickled the edge of her consciousnessa similar conversation that she had had with Devorast when she’d last seen him.
“I should like to show it to you,” he said. “But in the meantime, we should see to a dock crew for you.”
“Is this the way trade is always conducted here? With such violence?” asked the tall merchanta man Ran Ai Yu had her suspicions was no human at all. He gestured to the fallen dockhands, some of them beginning to rise.
“It was not so when I was last here, two years and three months ago,” said Ran.
“They made a mistake,” Devorast said.
Ran Ai Yu smiled.
7
20 Alturiak, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR) The Canal Site
When she first saw the work site Ran Ai Yu thought it was some kind of military drill. The sight of it gave the immediate impression of rigid organization that she had only experienced at the edge of a parade ground. But then details presented themselves, pieces took shape out of the whole, and that impression disappeared. She was left with chaosmadness, evena barrage of colors and dizzying movement that erased any sense of organization at all, until she once again let those details melt into the beautiful whole.
“These men are all at your command?” she asked Devorast, who stood beside her on a low hill.
The sound of the men working deafened her, but then Devorast didn’t answer anyway. Picks chipped stone, shovels moved dirt and clay, and carts trundled past full of rocks, earth, wood, and more men. Oxen grunted, foremen shouted orders, and it was like music for a great dance.
“This is as it should be,” she said, unconcerned with whether or not Devorast could hear her. “You will find your destiny here. Your spirit will fill itself with this work.”
The heavy, damp air carried the smell of the Lake of Steam, but only faintly under the stench of turned earth and sweating bodies. It smelled like hard work.
“I hope you live to see its completion,” she said.
Devorast shruggeda response that would have been considered rude in Shou Lungbut she took no offense.
Ran Ai Yu crouched and touched the dirt at her feet. It was damp but not muddy, and she was able to scoop up a handful, testing the weight of it in her hand. She tried to imagine the weight of the dirt and rock, the trees and weeds, that Devorast meant to move to make the trench for his canal. Then she tried to imagine the weight of the water that would fill it, and though she’d plied the waters of a far greater canal in her far-off homeland, still the weight felt unbearable.
“You will not require that I tell you how many people there must be… powerful people even… who will wish for you to fail,” she told him.
He waited for her to look up at him before he shrugged again.
She let the dirt pour out through her fingers, and something made her touch the tip of her tongue. She didn’t try to understand the impulse to taste it any more than she wanted to stop it. She just wanted to taste itwanted to experience it with every one of her senses. It tasted like life, but not the same way food or water tasted; not physical life, but a deeper need within each human, the drive to build, the imperative to leave something behind, to make some mark. It tasted like the vital necessity to say, “I was here.”