When Lirran awoke, he noticed much to his surprise that the boat was moving. While he had been asleep, getting rest, Kaza had pushed the boat loose and set them back on the path.
He sat down next to her. She had drenched her cloak again. “Is True, air is dry?”
Kaza nodded. “That is and is very hot.”
“It will become worse still.”
Kaza gave off a sighing sound but resigned to it. The she perked up. “I did decide: You will get reward.”
Lirran raised an eyebrow. “What does contain reward?”
Kaza raised an arm and pointed to a collection of shapes in the distance. As Lirran looked closer, he saw it was a larger town of sorts. “City is Orscor.”
Lirran had heard words about it. Among the distant cities of the hot north, it was one with a great reputation. He still did not know what exactly it was she would get there for him as a reward.
They moored their sad excuse for a ship at a pier and when the clerk in charge of the mooring fees looked at them he just waved them past, likely assuming Lirran just came back from a shipwreck.
The streets were paved with neat fitting stones of a solidly grey rock, smooth and well-worn but not dilapidated. The streets were busy, so busy in fact, that few gave Kaza a second look. They noticed the wet dripping cloak and went on their business.
Kaza directed him around, interpreting signs on streets and stores quickly as if she was looking for a specific one. At one point, they passed by a narrow street permanently shaded by overhead roofs and buildings seemingly pushing each other over. Lirran’s body tingled when he walked past it. Of course he shouldn’t expect Kaza to get him such a “reward”, he was to leash and rear his impulses, not indulge them. He himself noticed how desperate he was to think about things like this, almost disgusted with himself. He breathed slowly, then was interrupted by Kaza’s excited clicking.
She pointed to a store, then vanished inside, cloak still dripping. It was a store for tools, weapons and other smith’s products.
The clerk inside greeted the two of them first enthusiastically, then cautiously. Kaza spoke with him in the tzappatt’s trade tongue, which left him puzzled. Lirran decided to translate.
“I need for you: knife and tool for shells.”
Lirran understood, he finally would get his own tool for working the shells, he turned to the store clerk. “We are looking for a knife for general use, as well as a long thin tool to bore and scratch shells in the Hatsui script.”
The clerk understood and quickly brought them a selection of wares, Lirran saw the regular and even shapes of worked iron and sighed in relief. No longer would the irregular nature of the constantly chipping stone be a concern when writing. He took on most of the haggling, Kaza knew too little of the actual value of shiny things.
The two left the store with a new horn-gripped knife on Lirran’s belt as well as a tool to carve shells, a bladed point on one end, a chisel-like blade on the other. Kaza pointed ahead in the street and said. “Now we get reward!” Lirran knew immediately what she meant when she pointed to the sign of an inn.
They ordered themselves a hearty meal and Kaza made sure to order her stew with extra spice, receiving a thick sauce of an orange and yellow Lirran had not seen before. He should have thought that Idea of a ‘reward’ referred to her as much as him, she had done a great deal of work to bring about his progress too, after all.
After a meal that had filled both of them more than anything they have had in the past month, they stocked up on supplies they couldn’t gather and went back to their boat. It was well past noon but they still could make a few more miles.
Kaza laid lazy and fat on the floor of the boat, with a happy but exhausted look on her face. During the next landing, he could maybe look for a few herbs to make the food they ate a little more interesting for her. He eventually woke her up to take the rudder and sat down himself to test his new tool on one of the many shells that had accrued from Kaza’s catches.
It felt much more stable and easier to handle than the irregular stone tool. The chisel-Like blade made carving the lines between holes easy and fast, he just set it along the line he wanted and moved it back and forth a few times, he needed to have no worries to slip off course. It also made it easier for him to space the holes he drilled evenly, as the chisel’s width gave him a set minimal unit, like a measuring stick. By now he understood some of the symbols denoting names, being able to differentiate between city names and people names.
He was trying to copy the name of a city from one of Kaza’s script when an especially hard wave shook the boat and he slipped off, almost stabbing his hand in the process. “Navigator, do this: try avoid waves.” He told her but when he looked to Kaza, she sat slumped over the rudder. “I will steer, you will sleep.” He tried lifting her from her nap, but noticed something off.
Out from Kaza’s mantle seeped more slime than usual and in a thick yet flowing manner, rather than a thin coating across her skin. Kaza’s entire body was limp and seemed swollen with her blueish blood.
When Lirran tried again to wake her, she fell onto the floor of the boat, the air sacs beneath her eyes seemed barely to move. Kaza wasn’t breathing anymore.
