The First Step 1300

The First Step 1300

The agente was a man of silken shadows, an effeminate second son of a second son. He arrived late in the year, for the winds of the Herakleian Sea were already turning. He was a little fool, an incompetent and worse yet, a thief.

Jhonen had been told to kill him by Alphonse. "If he is innocent of worldy corruption," and there the rey smiled, "God may judge him so." And surely enough, when Jhonen killed him, there were all the signs of thievery. The man had far too much money on him, and had a fake signet with which he could affix the rey's seal. But he held a cross and the beads of a rosary as well.

In any case, it was fun to see the squealing man's head pop open like a ripe melon full of sap and pulp.

Jhonen didn't like the thought of leaving Valencia in the cooler winter months. The Stream of the Seventh Labor would push his ships far and away, northward to home. But hopefully, just hopefully, they could find port in the Isle of the Hellhounds or elsewhere and ride out the shift in current there- and so be a step ahead of any other outbound ships.

Going out of the Canal of would be the difficult part. The narrow canal, cut from the lands of Orim and Mekret in times immemorial by gods or men long forgotten, funnelled all the northeasterlies of the Stream and pushed them into the Marezuelan Sea. Going through a canal the length of Orim.... was no mean feat. The sails would be useless.... and all men would have to be on oars.

Jhonen wondered if he could buy a few hundred Badoo to do the work more efficiently than the spoiled sailors and mercenaries who made up his crew. And with less complaint.

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The smooth stone walls of the Augean Canal were covered on one side by flesh-eating lilies. The deadly flowers had been fed by the tree-lords of Mekret to keep pesky Orimmo- or rebellious Badoo- from invading or escaping their lands. And the lilies had worked, for a long time, keeping the Orimmo out until the Infernal Crusade burned away huge swathes of the flowers.

Now, the lilies hung dead, their thick vines brown and salted, the flowers wilted or dry and crumbling. Jhonen watched the cliff face closely, finally seeing the scorched trail in the vines where men had burned a path down to the sea.

Jhonen brought his ship in close, and saw all the evidence of man. Scaffolding, of lily vines and desert woods, came down nearly to the water line. Jhonen brought his personal ship, the Lionhound, as close to the scaffolding as he could.

He tied up the ship, wondering if the flimsy dried materials could hold it against the strong currents heading east. Then, with the physico and the large loyal man (now named Blood by the crew, for he had been the sleeping mate drenched with Raton’s…. overflow) he headed up the scaffold, leaving his flagship nearly loose in the frothing sea.

The village was small but, after finding a Badoo who spoke Orimmo, it turned out to have a burgeoning slave market. The moon rose and fell, and the slaves were shipped in from the merchant-king’s estates. For only a relatively small fee in gold, Jhonen found more slaves than he could even use. They were scarred desert men and petty thieves or peaceful nomads caught in a tribal struggle. Their bodies almost had the appearance of wood, from the muscles tight on their thin frames or the faces slowly weathered by wind-blown sand.

And they would half-kill themselves rowing before Jhonen dumped the survivors on some island or into the jungles far below Mekret and the Sand Sea. Many of them knew it by the looks upon their faces. Looks that reminded one of the Voidtouched. Senseless.

The first step on a journey is always the hardest part. Especially for men whose purpose is to die. Jhonen smiled, for he had no intention of dying.
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