Chapter Four Hundred and Thirty-One - Bookseeking

The first order of business, now that the Beaver was sorted, was checking up on Booksie! Since it was such an important mission, I decided that we should go out to scout as a big team, but Amaryllis said that I couldn’t bring all of my friends at once.

Caprica wanted to poke her head into the Sylphfree embassy anyway, and Calamity said he’d go with her, to make sure she was safe, which was really nice of him.

“Is everyone ready?” I asked. I was standing on the edge of the gangplank, one step away from leaving the Beaver. I had my usual outfit on, with my turtle helm plomped onto my head, mostly because it provided great shade from the sun poking through the clouds.

Otherwise, I was dressed in the more casual clothes we’d picked up in the Snowlands. A big teal sweater that was very comfy over a pair of loose pants. I had a nice blouse under it, but it was mostly hidden by the cozy sweater. I liked the look. I think sweaters just made people so much more huggable.

Amaryllis and Awen were standing behind me, also in more casual wear. Amaryllis in that all-white tracksuit-looking-outfit we’d picked up, and Awen in a long blue dress with a thin jacket atop it. She’d let her hair go loose, and it was catching in the wind.

“Ah, I’m ready,” Awen said. She clutched onto the satchel hanging by her side and it clinked metallically.

“Are those tools?” I asked.

“You never know,” she said.

Well, I supposed I didn’t always know. Maybe we’d run into some bolts that needed tightening? “Alrighty then! Let’s go!”

It was interesting to step off the Beaver. My ears tingled for a moment, and then it felt like I was pushing through something like a warm waterfall. I noticed it almost right away as my sense of the Beaver grew distant. I was still vaguely aware of the ship and the crew on it, but it was like hearing a song you knew that was being played from a few rooms over. The notes and noise was all mushy and distant and indistinct, but still recognizable.

“You look weird,” Amaryllis said. “If you need to use the head, you might as well go now before we’re halfway across the city.”

“No, it’s not that,” I said with a grin. “Just my Captaining skill being weird. I can’t feel the ship as well.” I glanced down, just to confirm that I really was only one step away from the Beaver.

“Hmm, well, I suppose it is a skill meant to be used on a ship, and you’re no longer on it.” Amaryllis slipped past me on the gangplank on her way down. “Highly specialised skills are just like that. Now, speaking of highly specialized skills, can you blast me with cleaning magic?”

“Huh?” I asked as I walked after her.

“Broccoli, this entire outfit is white, and while Port Royal is definitely one of the cleaner cities I’ve ever been in, it’s still dusty. I’m going to be a mess of stains long before we arrive at Booksie’s shop, so I might as well leave the Beaver looking proper.”

I laughed, then pushed a nice amount of mana into my cleaning aura. It wallopped away any dust and grime, leaving the three of us as neat as clean as though we'd spent three hours at the baths and laundry.

“Thank you,” Amaryllis said. “Now, to the book shop, right?”

“I think that’s where we’ll find her,” I said. “Unless she moved in with Rhawrexdee already?”

“A-already?” Awen asked. “They can’t have been dating for more than two months! That’s... almost scandalous.”

“It would be outright scandalous, but he’s a dragon,” Amaryllis said.

“Does that make it less scandalous?” I asked as we started towards the city. There was a wall separating the docks from the city proper, though it looked a bit old, as if Port Royal had outgrown it a long time ago.

There were a few areas we had to pass through in order to get into the city, and I recognized them as checkpoints. It was a little strange, I hadn’t noticed that at all the last time I was here.

“It’s less that it’s less scandalous and more that he can get away with it without being bothered,” Amaryllis said. “That is the purpose of a scandal, after all.”

“Huh?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Why are scandal bad?” Amaryllis asked.

I blinked. “I guess because it might make it hard for the scandalees to do stuff? Or it might ruin their reputation, I guess.”

“It’s usually something that’s good gossip,” Awen added. “Um, in the sense that it’s gossip that spreads well, not that it’s good that people know about it and stuff.”

“Scandals are a way for someone to discredit someone else by painting them as immoral, undignified, or untrustworthy,” Amaryllis said. “Which doesn’t mean that the person isn’t one or all of those things. But it is essentially a sociopolitical tool. It can be a distraction, or a smokescreen, or just a way to make a rival look like a fool.”

“Oh, that’s not very nice at all,” I said.

Amaryllis shrugged. “A scandal, real or manufactured, captures attention. It stokes the fires of outrage, indignation, or moral superiority. Once those emotional levers are pulled, rational discourse often takes a backseat. And whoever instigated the scandal can then direct that emotional energy wherever they please. Like a puppeteer pulling on the heartstrings of the public."

“My mom was really good at that kind of thing,” Awen said. “But it never worked on uncle.”

“Because your uncle, like Rhawrexdee, doesn’t care. That’s the downside of scandal as a weapon. Used against someone with actual, non-political power, it doesn’t work unless that person cares.”

I supposed that made sense. In any case, it didn’t matter that much. I don’t think I’d ever done anything scandalous.

The checkpoint in the wall was guarded by a sleepy grenoil guard who eyed us for a moment before sighing. “Hello and welcome to Port Royal. Is this your first time here?”

I shook my head. “We’ve been here before,” I said.

“Ah, so you know ze procedure. I’m going to use an inspection skill on you. Please stand still.” The guard’s eyes lit up and he scanned me up and down with his gaze. Then he did the same to Amaryllis and Awen. “Hmm, welcome to Port Royal, ze jewel of Deepmarsh.” He stepped aside, letting us through.

Port Royal was even busier once we were past the outer wall. There were all sorts of people moving about on the main road that cut through the heart of the city. I remembered the first time I’d been here, what felt like years ago. The people had all seemed so strange and almost alien, but now I actually recognized so many.

There was a pack of drolls that looked a bit lost to one side, a few Ostri from the desert just to the west, even a few humans that had probably come over from Mattergrove. I followed a sylph that was darting by with my eyes and grinned. This place was the fun sort of busy.

Still, the most common sorts of people here were the locals, grenoil, harpies and humans, the people from the areas nearest to Port Royal. This city was meant to be ruled by the grenoil, though I suspected that Rhawrexdee’s mom might have something to say about that.

We had to cross another wall to get to the part of the city where Booksie had her shop. The guards there weren’t nearly as sleepy, but we got through mostly thanks to two of us being from the Exploration Guild.

With the guild having such a big presence in the city, membership afforded easy access to the better parts of the city.

I wasn’t sure what to think about the way Port Royal was divided. Each area closer to the noble quarter required more permissions to get into. It seemed like a security thing at first, but I had an inkling that it was also a way to keep poor people and undesirables out of the nicest parts of the city, which just seemed... kind of icky.

Amaryllis and I chatted about it as we got a teensy bit lost among the maze of streets in this part of the city. It took asking a nice grenoil gentleman for directions before we found our way back towards the bookshop.

Booksie’s bookshop was a tall but narrow building, squeezed in next to a butcher’s shop and an apartment building along a side street. There was a sign out front, a book with a pair of bunny ears sticking out of it.

“Is it open?” I asked as I walked up to the windows and pressed my nose against them. There wasn’t much light inside, but I couldn’t see far either, not past the stacks of books by the windows. I pulled my head back, then cleaned off the smudge my nose had left on the glass.

“Ah, it’s not locked,” Awen said as she tugged the door open.

I smiled, but in reality I was feeling... I didn’t know how to describe it, actually. Something like worry? Trepidation, maybe? It was a tingly swirly feeling in my tummy, excited but also a little scared.

I pushed past it. Broccoli Bunch wasn’t going to pass up a chance to meet an old (relatively) friend just because of a little bit of worry!

Slipping into the shop, I was struck by the smell. I took a big deep breath while the bell over the door continued to jingle.

“One moment!” came a call from the back of the shop.

I grinned wider. “Booksie!”

There was a clatter, then the thump of a heavy book hitting the ground, then a pair of black ears poked out from above a bookstack. “Broccoli?”

Booksie came around a pile. She was in a summer dress covered by an ink-stained apron. She had more ink on her hands, I noticed, and a long smudge across one cheek. The smudge shifted as she smiled wide.

“Hi!” I said.

Then we bounced towards each other for a hello hug. I’d forgotten how nice it was to hug a bun. The ear hugs were very comfy and nice. I sagged into it and felt Booksie do the same.

“Broccoli! I haven’t seen you in forever,” Booksie said. She looked past me and to my friends. “Amaryllis, Awen, hello!”

They got hugs too, of course. Then lots of apologies as Booksie spread some of the ink from her apron onto Amaryllis’ outfit. She squeaked and smudged it around with a handkerchief until I wiped the stain away.

“Ah! How have you three been doing,” Booksie said as she settled back onto her heels. “Are you still exploring? Scolding handsome dragons?”

“We are,” I said. “Well, maybe not the dragon thing. But we have been travelling a heap, making new friends, seeing stuff, I’ll have to tell you all about it. But what about you?” I glanced at her hands. There was a ring there that I couldn’t recall seeing. “Is it true that you’re getting married?”

Booksie flushed red, from her cheeks up to the base of her ears. “You heard about that?” she squeaked.

“All the way off in the Snowlands,” Amaryllis said.

Booksie hid her face with both hands. “Oh no!”

“Oh no?” I asked. “It’s not true?”

Booksie smiled, sighed, then waggled her hands uselessly. “It’s a long story,” she said. “And one that needs to be told with tea while we’re not standing by the entrance. Come on, I have a reading room in the back. I’ll explain the whole thing.”

***