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  [colpse]Chapter Fifty-Eight - Opportunity es Kig

  My sed ride on an airship was nothing like the first. The Silver Boot had been a naval-looking ship with a magical means of lift and propulsion. It wasn’t meant to fly, but it did so anyway and with a lot of panache and fir.

  The airship that hovered just reen Hold and which we boarded via some dropped rope dders was nothing like that. Its he Marshy Gas-Bag, roudly embzoned on its cloth sides and on the small nacelle at the bottom of it. The entire vessel was a huge greenish grey balloon, oblong and poi both ends with a few engines in boxy protrusions at its sides.

  It was more of a Zeppelin than a flying boat. If it wasn’t for the bluish smoke p out of its four motors I could have imagi ba Earth way back when people still flew in style instead of all cramped in the passenger seats of a jet.

  I sort of wished that the experiences I had aboard the Silver Boot would repeat, with a cool captain showing me around, but we were greeted by a harried looking grenoil First Mate who showed us to our rooms then ran off to get the ship ready to depart.

  So I found myself waiting in a tiny louoo small for the five tense octs within, and with chairs that weren’t all that fortable. The only saving grace were the windows looking out of the sides of the ship, seeing the world roll by beh was always a treat, especially from inside a warm room with no wind in my face.

  I sat with my knees crossed and e on my p and, after some poking and prodding, got the twins to spill out the details of their adventure. Not that it was all that adventurous an adventure. Unlike Amaryllis and I, their mission had gone on without a hitch. They had been surprised by the slimes at night, but Florine was a Marsh Wizard in a marsh so he took care of them.

  When I had exhausted that bit of discussion I tried prying some things out of Amaryllis, but she was busy gring at Gabriel who, in turn, was busy nursing what I suspect was a hangover.

  In the end I ended up resting my head against the cool gss of the window, fingers rubbing at e until the ck of sleep aerday’s adventure caught up with me and the world slowly, gently went dark. I was sereo sleep by the rog of the airship and the distant rumble of its engines.

  Something touched my shoulder and I snapped awake, the momentary fusion as to where I was fading away when I saw Amaryllis standing above me. She had e tucked into the crook of a wing and my backpack was slung over the opposite shoulder. “Hey, you. Good, you’re awake,” she said.

  “Eh?” I asked. I twisted around to look at the ndscape beyond the window only to find that it had been repced wholesale by the bustling docks of Port Royal. Our ship was floatio a sort of vertical pier,part of what was essentially a parking garage, but for airships. Ropes were tched to the side and grenoil in harnesses moved over to check the surface of the balloon or do other maintenanc-y things.

  “Oh,” I said. “How long did I sleep for?”

  “Three or so hours? Maybe a bit more. The height makes it hard to tell how the sun’s moving,” Amaryllis said.

  “Right.” I got up and stretched, rubbing my o work out the pang that had grown in it. We were alone in the lounge area, which might have expined why Amaryllis looked so eager to get a move on. “Lead the way?”

  “We talk while we walk,” Amaryllis said.

  I agreed with a nod, then followed her as she led me through the ship and onto a ramp that reached over to the port proper. There was a s agent of sorts waiting at the bottom of the ramp, but one look at the pin on my bandoleer and the one Amaryllis wore on her belt and we were let through.

  “I’m... sorry about st night,” Amaryllis said. “I lost my temper and that was inappropriate.”

  “Okay,” I said. I didn't like it wheed that angry, but I could uand where she came from. The apology was hough it did feel as if she was trying to put some distaween us with it.

  “That kidnapping attempt was suspicious. Obviously. It wasn’t done by my family. They wouldn’t have sent cervids after me. Which means it came from elsewhere. I don’t think a the guild and the bank would be able to tell where I was at the time, and only the guild knew where I would be ahead of time, which has some very disturbing implications.”

  “You didn’t tell your family where you would be?” I asked. I wasn’t going to fling rocks from my gss house, I hadly told my family that I was heading off on a grand adveher, but I was curious about her homelife.

  “That is unimportant,” Amaryllis said.

  She walked through the docks as if she owhe pce, her fierce scowl clearing the path before us until we were out of the docks and onto the streets proper. The Port Royal smell hit me then and I had to hold back a gag.

  “Lovely,” Amaryllis drawled like someohat had just stepped in dog poop. “It’s traditional that the director of the guild be there to greet a team returning from their first mission. I io get to the bottom of this.”

  “You mean Mister Rai?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “The man that worked at the guild,” I said. “Tall, human. Kind of nice?”

  “No, that man’s just some sort of clerk or administrator, he’s a paper pusher,” Amaryllis said.

  “He’s the ohat assigned me as your partner,” I said. I didn’t want to think ill of someone, but I couldn’t help but begin to think that Mister Rai was just a little suspicious now. Hopefully it was all just some horrible act and my imagination was running wild, but it wouldn’t hurt to verify.

  Trust a whole lot, but verify anyway, my dad used to say.

  It was usually about the price of groceries but I think it ted here too.

  I got to see a part of Port Royal that I hadn’t visited yet as Amaryllis took us up o of stairs, then another. We crossed arches made of rattling pipes and then into an area where the homes were far rger and seemed to have been carved out of the mountain itself and then had flowers and gardens pnted around them to add embellishments. There were muards here, a fewer people oreets.

  I wao gawk around a bit like the tourist I was, but Amaryllis was setting the pad she was relentless.

  We marched onto Guild Row, ing onto the street from the opposite end than I was used to and walked down to the front of the Exploration Guild.

  “Let me hahis,” Amaryllis said as we reached the doors.

  I had a bad feeling all of a sudden as she raised oaloned foot and kicked the door.

  Her foot bonked against the solid wood and barely rattled it.

  Amaryllis’ face went an iing shade of painful-white as she lowered her foot, but she didn’t say anything as she reached up and opehe door properly before limping in.

  I expected a crowd in the lobby, but it was pletely empty save for the grenoil secretary behind the ter at the far end of the room.

  “Where are Gabriel and the twins?” I asked.

  “That’s what I want to know,” Amaryllis said. She stomped her way across the lobby and to the desk. “Hello. Do you know where the team that just returned is?”

  The secretary looked up from a stack of papers and blinked a few times. “In the lounge, I believe, with the director.”

  “Good,” Amaryllis said before turning to the left and stalking off.

  “Thank you, and have a nice day!” I called out to the befuddled secretary as I followed my friend.

  Amaryllis seemed to know where she was going because she didn’t so much as pause until she arrived at another door. She poked this one a few times, gred at the door frame set into a stone wall, then o herself.

  “Oh no,” I said as she took a step back.

  This time when she kicked the door open it crashed into the wall, splinters flying where the frame busted and the pretty ivory capped handle went ballistic.

  Amaryllis stepped into a room that was arrao look a little like a cross between a lounge and an inn’s main room. There were tables and chairs all over, a huge hearth on one side with the skull of what might have been a dragohe mantle, a stuffed six-legged bear looked tall in one er and there was a bar at the far wall.

  There ersistent smell in the air, like strong alcohol, but more refined, mixed with a thick herbal st that I suspected came from the men sitting off in one er enjoying cigars while staring at the spectacle that Amaryllis was starting.

  Gabriel and the twins were closer to the middle of the room, talking to a Grenoil woman that was surprisingly short for a female grenoil, at least, as far as I could tell. She had a long scar running across her face from just above ao below her mouth, it made her lips curl up strao the side.

  She raised the ridges above one eye as she looked to Amaryllis. “You’re paying for that door,” she said without a hint of a grenoil at.

  “e on, Mathy, let the ss have some fun. It’s just a pinch of destru of private property,” A big human sitting off to the side said while waving a cigar around.

  “Shut it, Abraham,” the resumably called Mathy barked across the room. She turned back to the pair of us and I could feel her eyeing me up and down for a moment. “So, you’ve made your entrance, Miss Albatross. What I hear from Gabriel is ing enough, but I’d like your version of things.”

  Amaryllis stood a little taller and I noticed that her feathers were starting to puff. “Our mission parameters were simple. I imagine you know what those were; we were to scout around Fort Frogger to the North-East of Deepmarsh. Our initial journey went without issue. The Fort was and is occupied by a single man who has been inhabiting the region for some time, I presume. After pleting our objective we started trekking back treen Hold to report.”

  “Haha! I hear the stories she’s not telling you, Mathy,” the big Abraham guy said.

  I didn’t speak up. I appreciated that Amaryllis wasn’t saying anything about Gunther and Throat Ripper already. I didn’t o ruin it by opening my mouth.

  “What happened before doesn’t matter,” Amaryllis said. “It’s what happened when we were crossing a bridge that’s ing. We were wayid by kidnappers on the road.”

  The Mathy dy made a dismissive sound. “Bandits? I’ll report it to the guard and--”

  “No bandits,” Amaryllis said. “Kidnappers. Six of them, with military equipment. All six were cervid using false names, uhe cervid have taken to calling their children numbers while I wasn’t paying attention.”

  The room had resettled to a sort of calm after Amaryllis’ entrahe meurning to their cigars and the few women around speaking in low murmurs. Of the dozen or so people in the room, only a couple actually seemed to care at first, but Amaryllis' decration had all of them paying attention.

  Mathy croaked. “I see. In that case, let’s talk in my office. Just you, Gabriel, and I, Miss Albatross. Abe, make sure the... other oays here. She might be plicit in this whole thing too.”

  I noticed all the suspicious looks turning my way and gulped.

  ***

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