TW: Racism

Interlude: Salavar

The sky was slate grey overhead, with great, bulbous clouds that rolled in from the unquiet sea. It had rained earlier that morning, and the world was alive with the drip-drip-drip of water and rustle of green and blue leaves. The path was wet and muddy, although in places here and there the worst of the puddles had been filled in with gravel, making his horses' hooves squelch and then crunch as they trotted over the firmer section.

Salavar and his squadron had been assigned to patrol the inner plantations and roads—a day strolling through drizzle with just about zero chance of anything happening. His mother denied it, but he knew that he got the cushiest assignments. The whole garrison knew it, even. They spoke about it when they thought he couldn't hear: 'Mummy's Little Captain.'

Which he supposed he was, so much so that Seveena was the only reason he was in the military—if he'd had his way, he'd be studying fine art at the Solar Collegium. His teachers and tutors growing up had always said he had a real talent, but when he'd broached the subject with his mother on his seventeenth birthday, she'd scoffed and said 'artists do not make it to court.' The next thing he knew, she'd purchased him a commission, and he'd been shipped off first to northern Rorrovia, and then reassigned to Port Imperial after she'd managed to secure the Viceroyship.

They reached the top of a small rise which had a marvellous view out over the coastal plantations and then the bay, south towards the smaller settlement of Guildport. There were a few beams of sunlight cutting down through the roiling clouds, painting the scene with such a marvellous contrast of colours: foreboding grey clouds, tempestuous turquoise sea, verdant green ferns and growth that surged up around the line of muddy brown road…

He checked his pocket-watch: eleven thirty. Early for lunch, but he doubted his men and women would mind.

"Shall we have an early break?" he asked, nodding to his lieutenant, Nirvir, an older woman with infinitely more experience and competence than he had.

"I thought you'd say that, sir," she said with a hint of a smile, the redhead's slate-grey eyes flicking out over the scene she knew he'd want to capture. He sheepishly returned her grin, giving his reigns to a young private and then dismounting.

He rummaged in his saddlebags for a moment, before pulling out a portable easel, several pots of paints, a wrap of brushes, and a pallet. He pretended not to hear a small cheer from his troops as he began setting up his things, and started sketching as the rest of his squadron settled in for what they knew would be a rather generous lunch break. And why not? They could accomplish precisely nothing just as easily sitting atop a nice hillside as they could plodding around in circles.

He focused on the clouds and the sunbeams first, then began painting in the broad colours of the scene: the white of Port Imperial's bluff on the left,  he angularity of his mother's fortress rising like a monolith above the sheltered harbour; the green of the rolling plantations that were the source of this place's immense wealth; the turquoise sweep of the bay and its white sandy beach that went on forever and which during the hotter, sunnier days, would have had bathers closer into town. On a rainy day like this, however, it was totally empty. Or rather, almost totally empty other than two figures quite a way around the coast that he could only make out as small black smudges: merfolk, perhaps?

"Odd," he muttered, carefully setting aside his pallet and brush and rummaging in his jacket for his brass telescope—one of many pointed gifts he'd received as a teenager, back when his mother had been trying to get him to enlist in the navy, before she'd discovered how deathly seasick ships made him.

Still, it was useful, and enchanted, and the pair on the beach immediately snapped into focus as he raised it and twisted the dial on one end: a merfolk, and a female animal with orange fox-like ears and a tail. His brow furrowed. A slave from a nearby plantation, judging by their heavy iron collar and ragged clothing. That was odd, why weren't they working? Where was their overseer?

The animal glanced around nervously, her ears flicking this way and that as the Merfolk spoke to her, proffering some kind of object that Savalar couldn't quite make out from the distance. She shifted from one foot to another, before nodding and reaching out to take the object, and then slipping it over her head.

The merfolk beckoned her into the water, and she pushed through the small waves before vanishing beneath them.

All in all, it had taken only a matter of moments, so fast that he hadn't even been able to really process what he had seen: a slave escape, using a water-breathing amulet.

That was clever. Very clever. His mother had been ranting for the past few weeks about 'where all the damn animals were vanishing to' during their tri-weekly dinners. If there were Merfolk coming ashore to smuggle slaves underwater, presumably back to Guildport where there was no such practice, then that might explain the disappearances.

He lowered the telescope and opened his mouth to tell Nirvir to get the troops to break camp. Then he paused, his eyes flicking over his half-finished painting, and then the spectacular lighting of the scene.

If he returned to Port Imperial and told his mother, as was his duty, she'd go ballistic. He and the rest of the soldiers would be given double or triple patrols, probably walking up and down the beaches—in the sand, which was awful in boots. They'd probably also have to conduct interviews and interrogations of slaves, one of his most hated parts of his job. The last round of that, after the abortive revolt that had followed on the heels of the Guild's audacious slave-break and the Caith attack had given him nightmares for weeks. Maybe it was necessary to uphold the natural order of things, to keep the savage animals in line, but it was horrible, and he'd never wished more that he'd defied his mother and gone to the Solar Collegium than when he'd had to question over three hundred slaves and identify the ringleaders.

It was his duty to tell his mother, his Viceroy, about this.

But on the other hand, he could just pretend he hadn't seen anything and keep on painting—no extra patrols, no interrogations, no nightmares, and… well, what did he care if a few slaves got away?

Salavar closed his mouth, carefully replaced his telescope in its leather satchel, and then took up his brush again.

***

Spear of Clouds Unfurled 5.10

Thunder rumbled in the distance, sometimes visible as a flash of white light through rain so thick it was almost a sheet that poured from the steel-grey heavens, sometimes so far away that it was swallowed whole by the gloom.

The weather in Guildport had finally finished turning, shifting from mostly sunny but with the occasional squall, to raining more often than it wasn't, with grey clouds and sometimes days of punishingly powerful winds—the monsoon season had finally arrived. 

It was something I hadn't been particularly looking forward to; I'd enjoyed the almost endless sunshine with the occasional afternoon shower that kept everything green and vibrant, the calm waters and the soft breeze. Now the ocean was choppy and capped with white, and so churned up that it was more than a little spooky to cross to Laemist, which was battered down for the season.

Still, it wasn't all bad, because for the first time since the Caith attack, Guildport was having a festival.

The 'Festival of the Rains' was how it was usually translated from the dozens of different Carritasian languages spoken by the beastkin of Guildport, and although they came from cultures as different as Spanish and Scandinavian were to one another, they all seemed to share a festival to 'welcome the rains.' Tents had been set up on the bluff, and there was specially festival foods I'd never seen before: coconut crab grilled over coals; fermented fruit drinks that were very potent; a creamy, sweet dessert that Nathan described as 'like Pavlova;' and fried insects that I'd been too chicken to try, but which Mousington was eating by the pawful.

There was also singing and dancing, bonfires that hissed and spluttered but still burned brightly, brilliant costumes that featured lots of feathers, games and storytelling, and several rituals—some serious, some joyful. Despite the shared nature of the festival, I could tell that what I was observing was actually a mix of dozens of different takes on a continent-wide celebration. 

But, in some ways, that just made it even more fun. I had never doubted that I had done the right thing when I had freed the slaves from Port Imperial, even when I had faced consequences, but I had never felt quite so vindicated as I did seeing Ritah's little girl, Nessah, laughing and sharing a dessert with a shy young dhampir who was the son of the town's cobblers.

A few more ex-slaves had arrived surreptitiously via the 'Laemist Railroad' as Zoe, the Swedish woman, had taken to calling our efforts to help individuals on the plantations escape via water-breathing amulets given to them by Merfolk. I wasn't sure if Laera knew about what we were doing, but if she did, she was pretending she didn't.

Many of the new arrivals were finding their feet, as were a few new Outlanders: a girl from Nigeria in the modern day, a man who as far as we could tell was an ancient Celt of some description and who had initially lashed out and injured an adventurer when he'd been found, a woman from what we thought was Mongolia at some point but no one could be certain, and another Australian from the 1920s who seemed to have a bigger chip on his shoulder than Nathan had had about women and non-white people (not that that made a whole lot of sense on Alaria, where yes, dhampir tended to be pale, but beastkin and dwarves ran the full gamut and no one really cared about skin tone, and especially considering he was now a kobold. Nathan had decided to take the other Australian under his wing and 'try to get him to stop being a dickhead.' I was both glad that I didn't have to deal with trying to deprogram him, and that Nathan had gone from being insufferable and bigoted into basically a role-model for ex-incels everywhere.

Most of them had signed up with both the union and the Guild, with only the Celt too wary and/or not yet good enough at Valorian to understand. That had meant some more work for me, but as my mana core slowly grew in my body, adding layer after layer the more I delved and the more I used my magic in my surgery, I'd found that I'd started being able to get by on less and less sleep. Getting up in the morning was still hard, and more often than not Meria or Mousington had to shake me awake, but I no longer felt like a zombie half the time.

Despite the tents covering the areas with food, pretty much everyone was soaked by the pelting rain almost immediately, but that seemed to be the point, and it was warm enough that even the non-adventurers who weren't as resistant to the elements as those with mana-cores weren't shivering.

I felt a little out of place still my in armour, but Velevir had glared at me with such intensity when I'd hesitantly suggested that I probably didn't need it with so many people around, that I'd thought I might start melting. Velevir, Nathan, and Mousington were still in theirs, and, to be fair, lots of guild members walked around in their armour on all the time too—I could see Jalver still in his heavy plate sharing a drink with Ritah…

I did a double take and looked back, blinking rapidly as I observed affectionate pink in both their auras. 

When had that happened?

I forced myself to look away and stop peering at them so intently with my empathomancy, instead focusing on the small stall up ahead where Meria had tried her best to recreate a few of the seafood dishes for the festival, but wasn't getting much custom compared to the other, much more popular tents.

"Hey, no luck?" I said.

"'Not authentic tasting,'" said Meria sulkily, turning one of her calamari skewers with a grumble. "'The sauce isn't supposed to be that spicy'—it was boring without the extra spice!"

I reached over and snared one of the done skewers and dipped it in the bright red sauce.

"Oi," she said, slapping half-heartedly at my hand. "Don't lean over the grill; you'll burn yourself, you silly lion."

"I can heal burns," I said, pulling off one of the cooked slices of squid with my teeth and chewing. "Hmm, yeah, that is really spicy." I held up my hands at Meria's unamused look. "Which I, uh, personally like! But I'm not actually Carritasian."

Meria sighed and looked out over the festival. "It is nice to see the town recovering, at least," she said, looking to where there was a large bonfire and a grey-haired beastkin was telling the small settlement's group of children some kind of story. More distant thunder rumbled, and the children squealed in delight. Meria pulled off the last of the skewers from the grill and moved out to stand in the rain. "And at least it's not so dry. I don't know how you stand it."

"You'd hate the third dungeon floor," I said. "Desert as far as the eye can see. That's dry."

Meria shuddered. "Wouldn't get me in there, even if I had a mana core," she said.

"I heard a couple of Merfolk were signing up with the guild?" I said. "They'll have to deal with it, if they get that far in."

"Yeah, I heard that too," she said. "I didn't realise that we could—not that I have a core."

"As far as I understand, anyone with one can," I said. "Caith could, if they wanted. I was sort of hoping that could be a way to change the town, make it less colonial, more… more diverse." I shook my damp head and flicked my ears. "That crashed and burned though."

"Hey, you're doing it again," said Meria, elbowing me in the ribs. "Stop trying to take the whole world on your shoulders, Charlie."

"Right, sorry," I said, putting my arm around her as we turned to look out over the tempestuous ocean with its surging swell, rolling banks of misty fog, and… black shapes?

I frowned and adjusted my glasses.

"Hey, Mousington?" I said. "Sorry, Lord Mousington."

"Yes, Friend Charlie?" said the ginger-furred grimalkin, who had been halfway through raiding Meria's unminded calamari.

"Oi! Paws off!" said Meria, shooing him out.

Mousington quickly gobbled down the three skewers he had pilfered, sticks and all—which I didn't want to think about—hissed at her, and then scurried over to me. "What is it?" he asked, ignoring Meria cursing and demands for payment.

"Your vision is better than mine," I said, gesturing. "What are those shapes?"

Mousington hummed as he reached into his mouth and pulled out the whole, now calimari-less skewers—the impossible biomechanics of which I was not thinking about—and cocked his head.

"Swimmers," he said after a moment.

I blinked. "What?"

"Swimmers," he said again. "Dhampir and beastkin, and there is a dwarf. They look rather tired."

I took a few moments to process this, then I started.

"Shipwreck!" I shouted, waving my arms. "There are people in the water! Shipwreck!"

The festival goers who heard me stared in confusion for several beats, before they too started to shout and rush too and fro. Laera, who had been having a drink with a pair of beastkin who looked twins immediately stood up and stared out into the roiling swell, before she too started shouting orders.

"Get lifeboats ready! Someone contact Laemist! Charlie, get your arse to the docks!"

***

I was tired and thoroughly soaked by the time I made it back to my infirmary, some four hours later. Around two dozen men and women had managed to make it ashore, and with the aid of the merfolk of Laemist and the four lifeboats Guildport had managed to get into the water, we'd pulled eight people more from the ocean.

That, however, was small comfort when the ship they had been on had been carrying a hundred and thirty. There were still teams searching the beach, two of the rowboats were powering around the bluff, propelled by supernaturally strong guild members, and merfolk searching further out, but it had been wild out there, and not that many of us had hope. With the exception of a man who we'd found clinging to a piece of flotsam, every single one of the survivors had been an guild-member passenger strong enough to keep their head above water or able to cast some kind of floatation or water-breathing spell on themselves.

And I'd been wrong, it hadn't been a shipwreck.

"And you're sure they were flying Mercian colours," said Laera, who was standing next to the bed of an exhausted dhampir woman with clearly dyed green hair and several piercings.

"Positive, Lae," said the woman from where she was propped up with pillows. "And it wasn't a mistake, we were flying Iltavar and Guild colours. Front and back. They knew we weren't pirates."

Laera swore, glancing at me as I came and checked on the woman. I'd given her a once-over on the docks, but she still had many bruises on her arms.

"I can heal these for you, if you like," I said, indicating to the nasty black splotches that was dominating most of her upper arm.

"Seems a waste of magic," said the dhampir woman, glancing at me. Her aura was filled with orange-yellow worry and fatigue, but she didn't seem to have any dislike towards me. That was nice, several of the dhampir, like many freshly arrived, had been quite terse. "Save it for the needy."

"No one else is in danger," I said. "I've got plenty of magic, there wasn't much healing that needed doing."

Because those who had made it were just usually cold and bruised and exhausted, and those who hadn't were probably at the bottom of the ocean.

"Doctor Charlie's efficient," said Laera tiredly, before gesturing to me. "Charlie, this is Noravir, a friend I used to delve with. Noravir, this Charlie—a healer, leader of the 'Union of Outlanders,' and the biggest pain in my arse this side of the great sea. They use they/them, not she/her."

I gave Laera a simultaneously irritated and thankful look. Or, at least, I tried. I did appreciate that she was going to lengths to make me feel accepted, although describing me as 'a pain in the arse' felt a bit uncalled for. My expression came out as a sort of smiling grimace.

"Nice to meet you, Charlie," Noravir said. "Oh, and don't mind Laera: she puts on a prickly facade, but that just means she likes you," said Noravir with a wink, grinning and gesturing for me to continue. I touched her lightly, and after a brief aching sensation, the bruise vanished as I repaired her flesh. "Oh, wow, not even a tickle. You are good."

I gave her a smile, although it quickly faded away. "So the attackers were Mercian?" I said. "That's an big escalation, isn't it? Or is states attacking ships they don't like common here?"

"They all say they don't do it," said Noravir. "But if they think they can get away with it…"

"They must have thought you were far enough out that none of you would survive," said Laera.

"Or their new Empress is just as much of a psychopath as people say," countered Noravir. "And just doesn't care."

Laera exhaled. "Is Noravir up to walking? I need to contact headquarters, immediately. It'd help to have her there, eyewitness testimony."

"Yes, I don't see any reason you need to stay, if you feel up to it," I said.

"Laera will never let me hear the end of it if I don't," said Noravir, wearily pushing herself up. "Thanks, Doctor."

---

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