The Elusive Taste of Kolchoan Blue
by Patrick Honovich
Satet Nosso is trying to finish his apprenticeship at the Verrin School. He’s equipped with quick wits and potent magic in the form of a set of intricate, enchanted tattoos that embed his spells literally under his skin.
Satet serves a strict and calculating master. As his last task, to get his master’s approval to continue to the next part of his magical education, Satet is sent to acquire a few key items at Auntighur, the Imperial Auction House. When he arrives on the coldest day of winter, he encounters Sarah Bailick, another apprentice who might just be his equal or better.
Can he win the items he needs and keep from being hamstrung by the maneuvering of the other bidders? Or will the schemes of Sarah’s own Mistress be his downfall? Will his own arrogance doom him? If he wins his items, will he survive long enough to get them back to the school? The doors are open at Auntighur, and Satet feels ready for anything, but is he?
Chapter 5: Receipt Is Only the Smallest Part
Midway down the second flight of stairs, another puff of steam wrapped us in a brief caress and, instead of a set of tables and bowls at the landing, we were met with a small trough in the floor running molten silver with what looked like floating chunks of coal. Divezha stepped over and tapped the far edge with the butt of his cane. The silver bubbled as I crossed, and it seemed to rise. I felt a puff of hot air along my calf, and the ink tingled. It wasn’t very intrusive, whatever it was. Some kind of check, I thought.
We walked. Judging by the distance traveled, we must have surely been deep underneath some other building by then, and I imagined some merchant or butcher many floors above, closing up shop, either bought or oblivious. As we entered the warehouse, I saw some sort of multi-limbed device, a man attached to a giant iron spider, shifting crates, the limbs crackling with blue fire. Auntighur’s guards hurried around the room on catwalks, and walked along the floor, leading guides and clients down the aisles between the crates.
No piece of the vast hall was left unlit, whether from brazier, blue flame, or the sparkle of light reflected from jewelry, gems, precious relics. Nothing in the room stayed lit from the same angle for very long. Four guards took up positions around us like points on a compass, and my guide gained a guide of his own as we were led through the maze of shifting light. The high ceiling bounced sound around so that we seemed to be passing through dozens of other conversations without ever being able to see who was speaking.
The light wheeled around us like birds landing, a rustle of shadows, a low flapping of dark wings, and it gave me ideas. I kept my head as my ears struggled with the echoes and whispers. The ink in my forearm had been one of the earliest pieces — I scratched it through a small hole in the sleeve of my shirt, and the world seemed to quiver anew, then to change colors as my eyes, hawklike now, swept the stacked crates and moving men.
With my temporary hawk’s eyes the faces of the men on the catwalks halfway across the room could be read without difficulty. The typical Menosian field hawk, with the sharpest eyes of the breed, tended to hunt in the day. The spell deepened the colors I saw: the guards’ brown breastplates became black, the red glyphs on the crates turned brown.
Div, with his pale skin now looking jaundiced, slowed his pace in the gloom. I used the tag to check on Sarah but, wherever she was, it was far enough away I couldn’t see a color; I could feel her only as a dim tickle out at the edge of my range.
Div turned to me, and I held up my papers. Papers passed to guards, Div consulted, and the papers were returned. “Your first lot, Mr. Nosso. A crate recovered from the ruins in Jakka. If you’ll inspect your goods...” He held out a pry-bar and a hammer in one gnarled hand and, in the other, his staff.
I worked the pry-bar into the lid of the crate with a few good whacks of the hammer on each side, lifted it, slid it aside to expose the interior, and looked down at my prize. Five green glass bottles covered in dust, corks sealed with wax that might’ve been a deep crimson originally, now faded and brittle with age.
Five bottles, two books. I wanted to examine the lot more closely, and I wanted, too, to celebrate, but I didn’t have the luxury of time, and couldn’t afford to rouse any suspicions. It was a sure thing I was being watched, now, so with care I put the lid back on, turned to Div and the guards, and nodded.
“Satisfied?”
“A moment more.” I held up a hand. The spells would’ve taken considerably longer without Tellrus’ instruction. In the space of a few minutes, I’d checked for eight different types of meddling, and in the time it took to scratch a few itches I could approximate the contents’ age, and I knew no one nearby, including Div or the captain leading our set of guards, had handled the crate. I wouldn’t be able to tell for sure until I was back safe upstairs at my garret, but if... if... if I’d been in the Silent House, I’d have been unconscious or paralyzed. The safety of my garret was waiting on the other side of a great deal of remaining work, and I couldn’t afford to hope quite yet.
I turned back to face Div and the Auntighur guards. “You have my school address in your records. This and the other crate should be delivered there. I’ll ride with them to make sure.”
Div didn’t say a word. The man beside him nodded. The guards who’d escorted us reached for something strapped to their belts. Four men slid one metal rod each into the pallet beneath the crate. Clever — the pallets bore the enchantments to raise the crates without spilling or crashing through the ceiling, which left the crates themselves clean. A few extra rods in the belt of a guardsman could get the lots moved in half the time, without having to keep spells cast and recast all night.
I stood close, and knew what to look for, so I saw the flicker as a thin film of light covered the crate, and watched the rods rotate themselves in two complete orbits before clicking still. The crate rose to the ceiling, joining the other items on the currents of air like flotsam in a river flood. As the crate rose towards the ceiling, I followed its progress until it hung suspended near the ceiling. I thought, This must be what a graveyard looks like from the underworld, a flotilla of caskets seen from below.
“The other lot? Take me to it.” Div spoke with an old man’s voice, as if the years had bleached out the feeling. He sounded worn, weary, defeated, etched with age.
“What do you really know of the fall of Jakka? Probably half as much as you think you do. What could you know of exile? Next to nothing. You see, Mr. Nosso — ”
I have manners when they’re called for, but regardless of whether it was polite or not, I would not suffer a lecture in my own area of expertise. “I don’t want to hear it, Div.”
The trick would be leading Div away from certain facts, trying to keep from pointing him directly at my research, if I could. Hard to say what he already knew or thought he knew.
“Mr. Nosso — ” he drew himself up to issue some lofty digression, but I was tired and wouldn’t have it.
“‘Mr. Nosso’ nothing. Common Imperial history tells us the Blight, the extermination of the Jakkans, happened in 2450 of the common era, after a series of costly naval battles and a few major misunderstandings. It wasn’t until 2456 that the last Jakkan prisoner died. I could go on for hours, but I don’t have the time. Keep your histories to yourself; I have no desire to have my ears stuffed with bought words.”
With that, and a crackle overhead as the limbs of the enormous constructed spider prodded a crate back into position, we were at the second lot. Div wasn’t going to let it drop.
“Bought words? Your Verrin school paid its way into acceptance. The first master of the Verrin school bought his life back, and every master since has paid the Crown and the Sage’s College to keep from being crushed. Ask your master how much you cost to keep, boy, because you’re a glorified house-pet, and my leash is longer than yours.” He whipped the staff out, unfurling his arm as he cranked his old wrist around, and I saw it coming. With a slight lean, the business end, shod in iron, whistled a few inches above my head, no more.
There was nothing I wanted more at that moment than a steaming chunk of Div’s bitter heart, but it would’ve been the wrong decision, and making the wrong decision would have proven his point.
“I need those notebooks for my research.” I put the capstone on the misdirection, hoping he’d head where I wanted him to. “The wine will taste better when I’ve slugged it down a free man because, in case you hadn’t noticed, I got both my lots, and I’ll soon be leaving this place.”
Div scowled, keeping his staff at the ready, like he still wanted to take a poke at me. “You won’t keep either lot for long.”
“Second lot,” said the captain, who’d been quiet until now. He held the pry bar, the hammer. I’d been busy with my would-be advisor, wasting precious time, and the reminder was thankfully received. I tapped and pushed, freeing the top of the crate, and looked down at the three Khesataan masks that nearly cost me everything. My magics told me there was something to the subtle carvings I wasn’t seeing, but it was nothing I could recognize. There might have been magic there, after all, but it was unfamiliar.
I ran my fingers over the wood as I checked again for mis-charms, unattended magics of defense, anything to make the journey to the garret difficult, and found them clean, imbued with social powers, doubtless, but not cursed in any way I could detect. I put the mask in hand back into the box and replaced the lid, turning to find Div gone, the four guards gone, and the captain waiting patiently with four rods in his hand. He gave me two.
“There are other members to handle, sir, no offense intended, but your business is finished, so I sent the men to other errands. Put those rods into the socket in the pallet.”
I did. The captain pressed a small brass token into my hand. “Take this to the end of the hall. You’ll ride in the wagon.”
I nodded and watched with hawk’s eyes as he turned, walked away. I met my wagon driver, a thin man with pock-marked cheeks and sunken eyes who introduced himself as Nicholas Raleigh, and clicked at the horses to get them moving.
Two guards rode out with us, up a long wide hallway towards the night’s lights of Correm and the surface so far above. The hallway coiled back on itself roughly where I guessed the river ran, and we emerged into open air in another warehouse nearly twenty blocks away from the auction house.
We waited, for the all-clear, and turned south towards my garret. Six blocks into the trip, we picked up trouble, closing in hard behind us without a single shout to spoil the surprise.
“Double back. Lead them away from my part of town.”
The coachman, Raleigh, had other ideas.“You keep them off us for two blocks and I can prolly give ’em the slip.”
“Do it. And quickly.”
With a rattle of tack, a clatter of the sideboards and slats, and the creak of axle and wagon wheel, the driver jerked his team down a narrow alley, as the two Auntighur guards took up positions, putting their bodies between the pursuers and the two crates in the back of the rig.
We hit every missing cobblestone, tearing through the night, and I still had no idea who was back there after us, but I began to hope they’d draw near enough to give me a chance to take out my frustration. Nearly got my wish. Raleigh took another turn, crossing back over a wider street, and we whipped through the night. A quick glance at the sky and the buildings as they sped by told me, roughly, where in Correm we were speeding through.
Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Honovich
