While the sun hadn't yet lifted beyond the horizon, the village was awake. Often, the villagers were up even earlier than Tracou.
Whenever someone spotted Tracou and Mirthal, they would call out a hearty, "Good morning, Lord Vartanian!" as was proper. Tracou would return the greeting. Mirthal did his best, often opting for volume over pronunciation.
What he did must have seemed quaint compared to Mirthal's daily life. Tracou's experiences inside castles was limited to getting Mirthal out of a dungeon which could not have been a good representation of castle living. Mirthal's responsibilities had to be beyond the scope of his imagination. What did he think of Ergakan with its petty problems?
Tracou had gotten rather good at spending time away from Mirthal, but couldn't help brooding about something in his presence. He had to pull himself together!
Stepan lived near the eastern edge of the village, as close as he could get to the ocean while still being part of Ergakan. His shack, slapped together many years ago with bits of a wrecked ship, did indeed move around. It didn't move far, but enough to simulate being on the water. The house even smelled salty and appeared to be damp. Years ago, Tracou had Serpouhi ask him why he insisted on having his house this way and Stepan had replied that it was bad luck for a fisherman to lose his sea legs.
Mirthal wrinkled his nose at the sight. "This is a house?"
"Yep. A fisherman lives here."
"I see. It does smell like fish."
"I won't tell him you said that," Tracou said as he knocked on what passed for a door.
Almost instantly, Stepan vanished the door and stood in its absence. Approaching sixty, Stepan lived with an intensity better suited to younger men. He stood about two and a half inches shorter than Tracou when fully upright, but he tended to slouch and thus seemed shorter. He had white hair that was receding with a vengeance, leaving the majority of his head shiny and red. A puncture scar lay on his cheek from the time he had used a Zeibr fishing hook and accidentally speared it into his face. This, of course, was not a story Stepan would tell anyone, but others had been around for the incident and talked about it at every opportunity. Sometimes, Stepan's contemporaries referred to him as Ol' Two-Mouths when he wasn't present.
Clearing his throat repeatedly, Stepan took his time eyeing both Tracou and Mirthal. Tracou stood, waiting, but Mirthal had other ideas.
"Goot moning."
At first, Stepan didn't react. Then Stepan let out a lone 'heh,' his eyes glittering in amusement.
"Good morning, Lord Vartanian, elf," he said, focusing on them in turn. "Come in."
The shack was much bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside, but contained only one room. Stepan kept a bed in the center, likely so he could go to sleep and release the magic he used to make his home larger without an issue. At night, the home could contract to its normal size without disturbing the bed. His other, less important furniture would spend the night out in the open.
Far too many colors, slapped around haphazardly and changed daily, covered the walls. One part of the room was dedicated to fish—there was a table to hack fish apart and a box Stepan could keep cold to preserve his catch. With the right wind, Tracou could smell it from his manor. Stepan had a small supply of other food, as well, which didn't help the stench.
A seagull stamped about with all the security and fearlessness of a favored pet—Stepan's familiar.
Grunting, Stepan arranged three stools for them and waited for the other two to sit down. Mirthal jumped at the chance and dropped himself on the stool before holding his head in his hands.
"Your elf's looking a bit green at the gills," Stepan said, inexplicably smug.
"Are you okay, Mirthal?" Tracou asked him in Aodehsh.
Shaking his head, Mirthal started breathing through his mouth. "The smell and the way the ground is moving... ugh."
"Do you want to go outside?"
"Maybe. Not yet."
"He says he's feeling seasick," Tracou explained to Stepan, eyes stuck to Mirthal.
Stepan let out another singular 'heh' and got off of his stool to retrieve something. He came back with some ginger and his wand, which he claimed to have made from the backbone of a sea monster. With a practiced hand, he carved out a small slice of ginger with magic and offered it to Mirthal.
"Tell him to suck on this—it'll make him feel better."
Skeptical, Tracou relayed the information to Mirthal, who took the bit of ginger and shoved it into his mouth. His face screwed up in displeasure, but he didn't spit it out.
If simply sitting here bothered Mirthal to this extent, then Tracou had to finish this quickly.
"So, Stepan, what did you want to talk to me about?"
Sitting down on the stool, Stepan grunted, expression grave.
"Have you heard about the sailors?"
"None of them have passed through Ergakan recently."
"Right. The ships haven't returned to port, either."
The port nearest to Ergakan was small, but useful enough that the Royal Navy used it. Not many people lived there due to the traffic in the port only picking up twice a year—once when the ships set off in the spring and again when they returned in the fall. Other ports sprinkled the Dezmerian coast, but the one near Ergakan offered easy access for sailors from their region. The bigger ports sat closer to Zeibr territory and Winlea.
"Are you sure they haven't just gone to other ports?"
"I had Serpouhi write letters for me to ask."
"And?"
"Several ships are missing. All the ones that have returned to port arrived early, earlier than normal."
Tracou tried to keep his face neutral, but none of this mattered to him. "What do you think is the problem, then?"
Pleased to have been asked, Stepan leaned forward. "Something's happening out in the ocean, Lord Vartanian. Something that's making entire ships vanish. No wreckage has washed up and, if there was trouble, familiars would have been sent out to ask for help or explain what happened. Something's happening and it's bad. Maybe it's even instant."
"Maybe..." He shouldn't trust anything that came out of Stepan's mouth, but what he said made him taste dust on his tongue. Winlea wanted better access to the ocean. With that powder, they could do as they pleased to dezmek ships.
But he couldn't tell Stepan that. He would spread the word to all the other villagers within hours and cause a panic. At some point he had to tell someone, but not yet. Not yet. He couldn't bare it.
Dread ate at his gut.
Stepan frowned and went for a different angle.
"So! Lord Vartanian. I'm asking that you fund my expedition. I want to find out what's happening."
Tracou's mouth fell open. Fund an expedition, indeed! Stepan was quite keen on the ocean and the navy and all that, but he apparently had no idea how much it would cost to fund his flight of fancy. Tracou lived comfortably, but he wasn't royalty.
"Stepan. I don't have that kind of money."
"I don't need much. My magic is decent so I can use my normal fishing boat as a base and expand it. Give me a few crew members, you know, maybe the other fishermen here. I know Bekim has a good level of magic, so we can take turns keeping the ship up."
"If that's the case, why ask me for money at all?"
"Well..." Stepan scratched the back of his neck, clearing his throat again. "We do need supplies and the others will probably want a salary."
If Stepan was right and something terrible was happening to ships out in the open water, then he wanted to take other people with him headlong into danger.
Then again, it would give him a reason to give the fishermen money to compensate for the lack of lodging sailors.
Placing his elbow on his knee, Tracou rested his chin in his hand. On the one hand, letting Stepan do this would solve the give-fishermen-money problem. On the other, Stepan and the others might find nothing but a watery grave. That would solve nothing. This could have been an acceptable loss had the population in Ergakan been high enough, but it wasn't. Stepan didn't have a family, not after his wife had perished from the sickness a few years ago, but the other fishermen did. Some of them had children.
It was just too dangerous.
Tracou abruptly stood up, startling Stepan and Mirthal both.
"No, I won't help you with this, Stepan. It's a terrible idea and you could end up getting people killed whether or not you find anything."
"But Lord Vartanian—!"
"No." Tracou turned to Mirthal, who had also stood up. "Let's go," he said to him in Aodehsh.
Naturally, Mirthal hopped up, eager to leave. He trotted after Tracou, not giving Stepan a second look.
"What did he want to talk to you about?"
Tracou clicked his tongue. "He wants to investigate something out in the ocean, but he'll just end up getting people killed. Plus he wanted me to pay for it."
"Something out in the ocean?"
"Ships are, supposedly, disappearing. Sailors usually make their way through Ergakan this time of year, but none of them have arrived in any port."
Disappearing ships. If Winlea had enough of that powder and the wind wasn't terribly strong, they could debilitate an entire crew. Then they wouldn't even need to destroy the ship. They could simply round up the dezmek on board and toss them off the side or take care of them on land and keep the ship for themselves. Fishing boats offered them nothing, but the Royal Navy sometimes built real ships humans could use.
Wouldn't this mean that Winlea had already won? Dezmer would be cut off from the ocean at least near Winlea, but perhaps everywhere. Then what would they do? It was much easier to travel by ship and engage in trade. Dezmer didn't trade much with Winlea, but they were heavily involved with the Zeibr and of course Aodehn.
"Winlea wants the ocean, too," Mirthal said slowly.
"Yes..."
"What if they're why the ships are disappearing?"
Tracou felt his stomach do a flip. Mirthal voicing his thoughts only made the danger more solid and far more likely to approach.
"I... don't know."
"Well, maybe it's not Winlea," Mirthal offered, trying to sound reassuring.
"Maybe..."
Silence took over. Tracou bit his cheek, putting all of his focus in the sound of their feet hitting the hard dirt below. Often, Mirthal tried to match his stride to Tracou's, but his long legs prevented that from lasting.
"Tracou, have you told anyone about the dust yet?"
"...No," he said with a wince.
"Oh. When will you?"
"Soon..."
"Okay." A pause. "This was the last stop, right? What else are you going to do today?"
"I have to meet with Serpouhi."
After waiting months for Tracou's return, Serpouhi wanted to get married. She wanted Tracou to be there for the actual celebration which meant that it had to happen before spring. No bride wanted a winter wedding, but she had waited for his return to share her day with him. And, from what Tracou understood, Garin, her husband to be, had been complaining about the wait.
Mentioning Serpouhi had a strange effect on Mirthal and it got worse each time. He would slide away from Tracou—his eyes would slide off of him, he would drift farther away, and even his words would slip limply past his lips.
"I see."
"You should get Pendaer to teach you how to ride a horse."
"Right."
Something was wrong. He tried saying a few more things to get Mirthal to say more than one word, but Mirthal devolved into grunts of acknowledgment. It was bizarre and frustrating, so Tracou dropped any attempt at conversation the rest of the way back to the manor. Why did Mirthal close off when he brought up Serpouhi? He let himself get dragged around Ergakan, listening to speech he couldn't understand, but this was what bothered him.
They went their separate ways when they got to the manor. Mirthal glided over Pendaer, who had been making arrows again. Tracou watched his back for a few seconds before going inside.