Happiness paired with energy and the will to take things in hand passed through Faradae from head to toe. This was her first mission, and she wanted to complete it with perfection. On top of that, she would get out of this city sooner than anticipated.
The young Kelvic had no objections to walking. In fact, she was happy to get moving. The cold of winter had found its way into her coat, slowly and stealthily. She shrugged it off and matched her step to that of her companion, all the while listening to his tale. Not only was she eager to learn the details of her first job, but she was also interested in the story itself. Imass had seen many things in his life, some of which impressed her, some of which she hoped to never entangle herself in. She did not comment on what he said about his recent past. She had no comparable experiences and anything she could have said would have sounded misplaced, like a little girl talking about politics. Instead, she simply nodded and said:
“I will make sure these letters will safely reach your relatives and friends.”
Upon reaching the docks, Imass led her towards a freighter, one of only few that lay at anchor in the Nyka during winter. It was huge, compared to the small fisher boats surrounding it, all but wooden nutshells. The ship was two-masted and she marvelled at the sails, rolled up neatly while they weren’t in use. She had never been on a ship before, but as much as she wanted to explore its every niche, finding a map was more important at the moment, so she stood next to Imass and the captain and let her eyes wander over the waxed planks, nets and ropes.
Imass snapped her back to reality after acquiring permission to enter the sailor’s private cabin. It wasn’t a very tidy place. Some of the inornate chests clustering the room had been left open, hastily filled with wrinkled crinkled clothes and various belongings. A few planks creaked underneath their feet as they approached the massive table on the far wall. She recognized the parchment spread out before them as a map of Sylira and tried to recollect her memory on how to properly read a map.
Imass pointed at one point on the map, then at another. “We are here…. And you need to go here... What do you make of this map?”
“Syliras lies southwest of Nyka,” she said, beginning with the obvious, “so I’ll have to travel inland, away from the sea. I don’t see any roads here, but since it’s a sailor’s map, they probably only delineated those which are trade relevant. In any case, I’ll stay clear of roads if I see any. They’re not usually the most direct route, and following them will cost me time. I’ll use the sun and vegetation for orientation instead.” Hopefully that would work, but since there were no roads on the map, even finding one in the wild would hardly help her – she would hardly know where it was leading.
She searched the bottom of the map for a key to measure distances, and found it. Using her hand, she measured a bit less than her index finger air line between the two cities and compared it to the key. One key segment equalled 200 miles, while her finger was about four segments long. “Less than 800 miles,” she told Imass, calculating quickly. “Considering the icy weather, I should be able to cover that in ten days. But – hold on.” She had spotted something else on the map, a possible problem. “There are mountains here, right around Syliras.” She leaned a little closer, trying to decipher what was written there. “It reads ‘Kobalt Mountains’. If I stray the slightest bit too far west, I might have to use a pass to cross them, prolonging my journey. Do you know anything about those mountains?” |
