14 Fall, 511
Cool salt wafted on the morning breezes that drew at the edges of furled sails and danced with their hanging ropes. Isles of palivars and casinors made the wind whistle, shaking the water noisily beneath their hulls, and the crisp air transported the distant chatter of returning fisherman, murmuring stories of sunrise catches. The breeze felt pleasant enough when it poured between the overgrown blackness on Victor’s scalp, but still his face was twisted with impatience.
In the dank shadows of a little room within the bowels of the city, his fool might still be sleeping. He might have been spent by the exertion of his lover’s secret farewell in the night previous; he might not wake early, like he usually did, and he might not notice the pile of preparations that had been carefully arranged on the floor beside his bed. A small but fashionable pack, filled with the contents of his newly empty chest, was topped with a short letter. The hand was explicitly elegant, contrived from the teachings of a Ravokian governess and virtually unchanged with lack of practice.
Seven, it said,
The apartment is sold and the gold
is in the bag in the front pocket. Meet
me at the docks, the last boat on the
third row. We leave for Alvadas at the
9th bell. I bought apples.
Happy birthday,
Victor
Bring your own food, the woman had said when he had accepted her meager price for the voyage; there was a bag of jerky in his trunk and a sack of fruit in his other hand. Apples, as well as a few apricots, pears, oranges, and even some potatoes and cabbage had been thrown haphazardly into it, fresh from the morning’s market. The heavy burlap reached the wooden docks beneath his feet even as the twine at its other end wrapped eagerly around his palm. He gripped it in a fist as he glanced anon at Syna’s upward progress, his lips a tense line.
This was it. He did not know why he had stayed so long. Seven seemed so happy, so established—or maybe it was only an excuse in the face of other anxieties. Alvadas lurked on the other side of the horizon, so close. He had tried to do research, to know what to expect, but the stories were different and the few pages he bothered to read were irritatingly vague. The future was more a mystery than anything else, and he might have appreciated the romance in it, if he were not expecting someone to emerge from behind the large boat at the turn of the dock. It could happen at any moment, and he would not miss it.