Ascended

Ziggy was with us as we walked up to the captain’s ‘home’.

While there was danger taking him with us, leaving him with someone in the city felt like asking for trouble, especially since we’d broken into the guard captain’s house and knocked out the mayor’s son in the middle of the street.

Splitting our party also felt like a bad idea since that would either mean leaving one person to watch Ziggy or one person to go with Fyga. Neither of which felt right.

The energetic boy was bouncing as I knocked on the captain’s door, with the others waiting further away from the stench that seemed to have gotten worse since that morning.

“It smells like he died in there.” Fyga wrinkled her nose.

“You’re free to check.” I gestured at the door.

“Nope. That’s a you thing.” She looked at Eveth. “Are you sure this is who you want to use?”

“You heard what the other fishermen said.” Val cut in. “They’re more afraid of that island than they are of refusing a Bokor.”

The shorter woman sighed. “I bet I could convince one of them to take us. Just cover the kid’s eyes for a bit…”

“No!” I walked back up the steps to the walkway. “Maybe he already went out.”

“Well, what do you want to do now?” Fyga put her hands on her hips. “I say we go north while the Hunters are west of us. We could make it to Carthage in a week.”

“Wouldn’t that take you back towards the Touched you’re trying to get away from?” I eyed her as I looked around. There were lots of fishermen, but most of the boats I saw could barely hold four people.

The boats were all too small to load the nets into. Instead, the people were trying to tow the nets back to the docks, then pull them up onto the dock while the boat went out with a new net. The nets looked way too big for the boats that they were being used in and they had only a bucket of fish in them. They would need to go out further than the tiny boats could go, but it didn’t look like anyone was brave enough to get that far away from land.

“They wouldn’t attack us without going and getting back-up, and we can get a ship from Carthage to anywhere. Maybe head to one of the other kingdoms? Lots of places we could disappear.” The blue-eyed Touched looked at each of us, before ending at Ziggy. “Doesn’t that sound like fun to you?”

“Don’t talk to her.” Eveth cut the boy off.

“We’re meeting Master James in Port Town in a month.” I glared at Fyga. “End of discussion.”

“Eww. Why would you want to go there…” She held up her hands. “Fine. You’re the boss.” Fyga looked at Val. “Or are you the boss?”

“Byler is right, so stop trying to cause problems.” Val shook her head as she looked at me. “What do you think we should do now?” She motioned at the harbor. “There isn’t a Zombie problem here, but if they don’t get one of their fishing ships back, people are going to start starving soon.” Anger crept into the redheaded woman’s voice. “And when there is a food shortage, they’ll start using a lottery.”

“There’s no way for us to know that there will be a ship on the other side of the island.” I held up my hand as Fyga started to speak. “Even if what you say is true, that only means that there is a bunker over there that might have supplies waiting to be sent somewhere else. If this rebel movement is using it as a base, that only means that a ship will eventually stop there and I don’t know if we have time to wait.”

I put my hand on Ziggy’s left shoulder as I guided him out of my way so I could look around the harbor. There was one boat that was larger. It looked like it might have been a longboat for a ship that had been left here.

I turned back to Val. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to check out the island. If we can find the hideout, then maybe we can find enough supplies to supplement the food here until we can get help sent from Port Town.”

Fyga nodded at the boat I was looking at. “Can’t the Bokor just commandeer stuff?” She looked at Val. “Wave that sword of yours around.”

“You’re not the one in charge.” Val glared at the younger woman. “Stop trying to give people orders.”

“Yes boss.” Fyga held up her hands.

“Sir.” Eveth moved in front of one of the fishermen as they rolled a barrel past us. “Do you know why that boat isn’t being taken out?”She motioned at the longboat.

“That’s the mayor’s boat, Master Bokor.” The muscular man lowered his head and circled around her before hurrying off with the barrel of fish he was rolling.

“Well.” I looked back towards the center of town. “I guess we’re going to see a man about a boat.”