Rubies and Riders–A Short Story of Aviandria

So, a random fact about me is that I like naming my cars after ships. I recently had to get rid of the first car that I have ever owned personally. She was a Dodge Caravan, and I’d had her since my second year of college. I’d driven her for over ten years, and she was at least that old when I got her. (She was a 1997. Pretty old for a car.) Her name was The Day Dream, after Sir Percy’s yacht in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Her replacement is also a Dodge Caravan. I’m rather fond of those cars since there has been a Dodge Caravan in my family since I was three or four. And they’ve always been blue. This new (and by that I mean a 2006) is a dusty sort of blue. Kind of like the scrub jays that live in my area. The name I decided on was The Phantom Jay, which just so happen’s to be the name of Captain Downell’s ship in Keys of Aviandria. Since it doesn’t specifically mention that in the book, I decided the ship needed a story of its own. It turned out not being quite as much about the ship as I had intended, but it was fun to write. Hopefully, it is as fun to read.

Rubies and Riders

The flickering of the tallow candle made an orange band that danced across the surface of the green glass bottle. Despite one of these smokey candles on every table, the pub was dim and riddled with shadows. It was unnaturally quiet for a place so crowded. Most of the patrons sat quietly by themselves, too absorbed by drink or the problems that had driven them there to converse with their fellows. Only in the corners where the shadows were deepest were there murmurs of whispered conversation.

Captain Downell sat in one of those corners, hiding behind the bottle with the flickering band of light, the amber liquid inside still untouched. His contact should have been here by now. Captain Downell tapped a meaningless rhythm on the scarred,  wooden tabletop with the fleshy part of his finger to keep it from disturbing the others around him. A few more minutes. And if the man wasn’t there by then, somebody was going to be answering a lot of questions. Captain Downell looked up and scowled as the front door swung open, letting a burst of sunlight in through the gloom. It seemed sudden, almost surprising in the building designed to make it easy to forget the passage of time. Captain Downell leaned forward in his chair, trying to make out any features on the silhouette. The door closed just as quickly as it had been opened, returning the room to its dusky atmosphere, and Captain Downell saw the green feather in the man’s cap. This was his contact alright. The captain sat back to wait. It would never do to look too anxious.

The man’s eyes scanned the room before finally settling on Captain Downell in the corner. Captain Downell resumed his unconcerned drumming. “Took yeh long enough,” he said as the newcomer finally took his place opposite at the small table.

“Relax Captain.” The other man popped the stopper from the bottle on the table and poured a generous splash into the small glass waiting there. “It’s not like the trade will take all day. Soon enough you’ll be back aboard you precious ship… what was it again? Ah, yes. The Phantom Jay.” The man lifted his glass and drained it in one gulp. “There are some who think you’re a bit insane for that, you know. Personally, I don’t care what you make of a ship, but it can’t be good for business to have a masculine ship.”

“It’s nobody’s business whether my ship is male, female, or part dolphin,” Captain Downell growled, narrowing his eyes at the other man. It was the response he gave to anyone giving him difficulty about his ship. Many people found it strange to consider a masculine ship, but Captain Downell found it absurd that all ships had to be feminine. He’d heard captains say it was because they were so close to their ships it was like they were married. The ships were the lady in their lives. Ironically enough, Captain Downell strongly suspected many of those captains found a new woman to add to their lives in every port they visited. Captain Downell had only had one woman in his life, and that’s all he would ever have, even if it meant his ship was masculine. Unfortunately, that woman hadn’t felt the same way about him. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. It was a lot to expect a woman to faithfully wait months at a time when the man she was supposed to wait for was off sailing the seas. Still, she held his heart, even if he did not hold hers. No, his ship was not the woman in his life. A business partner, certainly, and perhaps even a very close friend, but that was all. Why pretend otherwise?

“Don’t go stickin’ your head in a hornet’s nest,” the other man said, then downed his drink. “I just said I didn’t care, didn’t I?”

Captain Downell scowled for a few seconds longer before he asked, “Have you got them?”

“Tut, tut, Captain.” The man lifted his glass again. “It’s bad manners to start the business until you’ve had at least three drinks.”

“Well, that’s two,” Captain Downell said with narrowed eyes. “Hurry and get your third, and let’s get this over with.”

“What about you?” The man tipped the bottle toward Captain Downell. “You haven’t even started. Are you still insisting on prudish sobriety?”

“What do you think?” Captain Downell didn’t falter in his icy glare until the man looked away. Captain Downell had learned from hard experience that drinking only made a fool of him. He hadn’t touched anything harder than a strong cup of tea in years.

“Your loss.” The other man poured another shot and gulped it down. “It’s really not bad, considering how much you probably paid for it. You always were a coin-clinger.”

“If you’re done with your insulting gabber, let’s get this over with.” Captain Downell leaned forward in his chair, putting his hand over the top of the bottle as the other man reached for it. “I need you to make the trade before you’re so drunk they have to drag you out by your ankles.”

The other man only laughed. “My dear captain, if you had to make the run through the hostile infested territory to get the goods rather than paying me to do it for you, you’d be drinking too. It’s not easy you know.”

“I pay you well enough. Don’t you try to get a copper fleck extra,” Captain Downell growled. This was already taking much longer than he could afford. He should have been at the broker’s storehouse ten minutes ago.

“Me? You wound me. I would never ask so little extra.” The man only grinned, irritating Downell even further. Why did he, a captain of an entire ship, put up with this insolence? Because it was profitable, he reminded himself. Otherwise, he would have severed this mooring long ago.

“The goods,” he barked at the man.

“All right, all right.” The man rolled his eyes. “I’ve got them here, and there are some very good specimens. I’ve outdone myself this time if I do say so myself.” He took a bulging pouch about the size of his hand out of his bag and tossed it onto the table.

“Careful with that. They’re not worth half as much busted up.” Captain Downell snatched up the pouch and peered inside.

“Relax,” the man picked up the bottle again. “They’re rubies, not glass. They’re supposed to be one of the hardest stones out there.”

Sure enough, the reddish chunks of stone sat in the bag. They were dull and largely unremarkable in the dim light, but he could see they had a good, deep red coloring, and many appeared largely translucent. These would likely be nearly transparent when cut and polished properly. His contact was right. He was holding a small fortune in that pouch.

“You’ve done well,” the captain admitted grudgingly, reaching into his own bag for a similar pouch. He tossed it to the man, who caught it surprisingly well, considering he was now on his fifth drink of the throat-scorching brew.

“Still determined not to give me a copper fleck extra?” The man slid the pouch of coins into his bag, not even bothering to check it.

Captain Downell scowled. Slowly he fished in his bag and brought out two extra pieces of silver. The gems really were better than usual. The man probably did deserve a bonus. People might be able to say a lot of things about Captain Downell, but nobody could rightfully accuse him of being unfair. “Just don’t spend it all on the bottle,” he grumbled as he threw it down in front of the man and stood up. “And the next batch better be just as high quality.”

He turned and stocked out of the shadowy room, blinking at the bright sun. It would take him a good fifteen to twenty minutes to make his way toward the broker, and he hated being late. It was bad form.

He was slightly out of breath as he walked into the office of the grain broker. A little bell rang above the door, announcing his arrival. A small bowl if incense burned in the corner, making the air inside feel thick. Captain downell frowned. He had never understood how some people liked to breathe in that poison. If good fresh air wasn’t enough for them, he supposed they deserved what prolonged use of such toxic fumes would do to their bodies. Best he get this business over with quickly.

A portly man entered through another door situated in the back of the office. He wiped ink-stained fingers on an apron cloth he wore around his waist. “I didn’t think you would come,” he said, his beady eyes taking in Captain Downell’s sunbleached sea jacket with obvious distaste.

“I said I’d be here, didn’t I?” Captain Downell eyed the other man’s over-colorful tunic with equal disdain.

“You said you’d be here a half hour ago.” The man sat down behind the desk under the window.

“I was unavoidably detained.” the captain strode over to stand right in front of the desk, looking down at the broker. “So, let’s get this over with so we can make up for the lost time. You take the money, I’ll take the grain, and I’ll be gone faster than you finish dotting the receipt.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” the broker said, not sounding sorry at all, “but I’m afraid we don’t have it anymore.”

“What do you mean you don’t have it anymore?” Captain Downell narrowed his eyes at the rotund grain broker. “We had a bargain.”

The other man shrugged, seeming completely unperturbed by the captain’s scowl. “Someone else offered more, and you were late. What else was I supposed to do?”

“A bargain’s a bargain,” Downell growled. “You don’t just back out the second it gets inconvenient for you.”

“I’m sorry.” The broker shrugged again. “You should have been here sooner.”

“I shoulda known better than to put my trust in a scurvy swindler such as the likes of you.” Captain Downell scooped up the bag of coins he had thrown down on the table before the idiot of a broker had broken the unwelcome news. “Don’t expect it to happen again.”

The captain turned on his hill and stormed out of the small room the broker used as his headquarters. He should have expected something like this to happen. It was his own fault for dealing through a broker instead of going straight to the source. Any merchant worth his salt knew better than to put too many others between yourself and the actual product. For every person the goods pass through, it gets that much harder to make a decent profit. Captain Downell would have avoided the brokers like a bad case of the pricking rash, only this time he wasn’t out to make a profit—at least, not a profit on the wheat.

Founder it all! He had needed that wheat as a decoy. Now what was he going to use to keep the port marshals from suspecting the real reason he was in Moraiethiea? Curse those ridiculous gem tariffs and curse the king of Moraiethiea who had decided they were a good idea. It wasn’t fair to all those merchants who had made a living of such things, and it wasn’t fair to the jewelers and gem cutters who lived in Moraietheia. Sure it was one of those things that seemed good on parchment, but it was a mess in reality. It hadn’t done anything to encourage Moraietheians to become merchants themselves or to only buy products from Moraietheia. It had only caused the economy to suffer in a country who was xenophobic enough as it was. Hopefully, the new king would see the ridiculousness of the tariff laws and revoke them. Then Captain Downell could get back to fair and square trading instead of smuggling, but until then Telinger was counting on him, and he wouldn’t let his friend down.