Shipshape Read online

  The sun was setting by the time I made my way to the exit from the ruins, sparing my dark adjusted eyes from having to adjust, and I took advantage of the remaining light to walk away from the hidden ruin before making camp for the night. I was traveling as lightly as possible, since I wanted to be able to carry more materials and artefacts back with me and a bedroll was certainly not in my list of necessities, so I made myself a bed from fallen leaves next to a large tree, and ordered the Hounds to guard me as I slept.

  The journey back to town passed quietly. I’ve been a little overly greedy back in the ruins and filled my backpack with more whitesteel than I could easily carry, which forced me to move slower than I was used to and take more frequent breaks, so it was four days before I walked through the gates of the town of Gerald’s Rest. The walls surrounding the town were barely twice the height of my own one hundred and seventy five centimeters, and made of local hardwoods. The nearest quarry was a week away by wagon, and getting enough stone for a wall was far too expensive for the frontier town. I knew that most of the buildings inside were built from the same woods, with the one exception being the Forrester mansion, which was located right next to the wooden town’s hall.

  The town wasn’t large enough, or central enough, for there to be a line waiting to enter the gates, and the bored-looking guards waited patiently while I unloaded my arquebus before letting me pass. I knew precisely where I wanted to go when I walked onto the cobbled main street of Gerald’s Rest, and less than five minutes later I approached Darren Forrester’s preferred hangout, the Boar and Barrel. The two storied inn was made of unpainted sturdy oak planks and had a large sign depicting a boar dancing on top of a beer barrel.

  I got back to town a little after mid-day, but the tavern’s common room was almost full. The proprietress, Agnes Dale, was widely considered the best cook in town, and it was a rare day when she didn’t have a full house during meal times. I ordered my Hounds to stay out of the building, waved at Henry, Agnes’s husband and bartender, on my way in, and made my way to Darren’s usual table. The heir to the Forrester fortune was almost always in the Boar during lunch time, and claimed that he had a marked preference to Agnes’s cooking over his family’s live-in chef. There were at least some rumors, however, that Darren was unwilling to pay a cut of his profits to his family, and used the Boar to make his own deals out of sight of his father's eyes.

  Locating Darren never took much effort. His personal Shaped bodyguards, a pair of identical rank III Sentinels, were standing near the corner of the room, and I knew that Darren himself would be, as always, sitting between them.

  As I approached his table, the gaze of the humanoid Shapes almost immediately focused on me. The two bodyguards were completely identical to each other, and would have been indistinguishable from normal humans if they had even a vestige of a facial expression, but as it was, their utterly blank gaze gave them away immediately. They were a head taller than me, wearing chain armor and carrying tall spears, and would have been an imposing sight even if I didn’t know just how capable they were in battle. As it was, I knew that they would utterly annihilate my Hounds and that a shot from my arquebus would barely even faze them. As I got closer to the corner and Darren saw me, however, the Sentinels visibly relaxed at his inaudible order.

  Darren Forrester was shorter than me, maybe a meter sixty or sixty five, and had the lean physique of a highly trained swordsman. He was dressed in an immaculate suit made of spidersilk and dyed a deep forest green, and his blonde hair was perfectly cut and combed. Bright blue eyes looked up as I approached, and he swallowed a bite of roasted hen from the plate in front of him before greeting me.

  “Jack Wilson! Been a while since I last saw you, hasn’t it?”

  “Darren,” I smiled and clasped his offered hand. “Been out of town for the past two weeks. I just got back from the ruins.”

  “That does explain the cobwebs and dust,” he smiled back at me. “I take it that you being here before even taking a bath means you’ve got something for me?”

  Before I could answer, he waved at me to take a seat, and signaled Henry to send over one of the serving girls. “Eat, my man. If you’ve been living on jerky and dried bread for two weeks, you need to get some actually edible food in you.”

  I definitely couldn’t argue with that. I did have some silver left after buying supplies for my previous trip, and some of it I set aside in advance for a decent meal and bath. I sat down, and Darren and I were both quiet as we watched Mable, one of the Boar’s serving girls, approach us.

  Watching Mable was always a treat, and deserved a man’s full focus. She was somewhat older than me, maybe in her mid-twenties, about a hundred and fifty five centimeters tall, and gave the term “buxom” a run for its money. Glossy black hair caught in a simple braid fell down to her delightfully plump rear, leaving behind a single artful curl to frame her heart shaped face. Bright green eyes sparkled over a cute button nose, and her full lips were curved in a welcoming smile. She wore a simple blouse with a plunging neckline that revealed a large part of her generous chest, which caught and held my gaze when she leaned in to take my order, and a skirt that I just knew stretched tight around her aforementioned rear.

  “Hey there, Jacky. What can I get you today? We’ve got roast hen with potatoes, stewed rabbit and bread or serving wench au naturel, all accompanied by Henry’s house ale.”

  By then, my mouth was completely dry, and I had to take a drink for the mug of ale she set before me before I could talk again.

  “I’ll have some of the hen,” I managed to say eventually.

  “Coming right up,” she pouted in theatrical disappointment and swayed a little to jiggle her large breasts. “Let me know if you want something extra.”

  I couldn’t look away from her behind as she turned and walked back towards the kitchen, and it was only after she was completely out of sight that we resumed our conversation.

  “You should take her up on it sometime,” Darren smiled. “That girl is a delight any day of the week, and she seems to have something going for you.”

  “You know I can’t afford her,” I answered regretfully. “Being a Shaper is too expensive for me to indulge in anything, really.”

  “I’d tell you not to let your goal cloud your sight to life’s little joys, but I’m probably the one who’ll be getting your gold, so I’d be working against my own best interests.”

  “I get your point, Darren. I do. And maybe I will take her up on it soon, since I’ve had some luck lately. But not this time, I think. I’ll need most of what I’ve got for the Patterns.”

  “Oh?” Darren raised his brow. “Do tell.”

  I reached into the backpack and pulled out a piece of whitesteel to show him. “I found some sort of machinery room. I took as much as I could carry out, and there’s still more where this came from.”

  “Nice haul, man,” I could hear the disappointment in Darren’s voice. “But not something I’d need. You should go down to Owen Smith’s place to sell it. I know that he’s in need of some ‘steel, so he’ll probably offer a good price.”

  “Thanks. I figured you wouldn’t be interested, but I did promise to give you the first shot. I do have something that might be more up your alley though.” I handed over the few old-world coins I had on me, and his eyes lighted up at the sight.

  “Not bad. The collectors are always after those. I’ll give you a gold for the lot of them.”

  “Come on, man. I know the markets almost as well as you do, and these are worth at least five for the collectors.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have the contacts for it, and I need to make a profit too. One and a half.”

  By the time we settled on two and a half gold coins, Mable was back with my lunch, and our conversation paused as I settled down to enjoy my first real meal in two weeks.

  After I finished my lunch, I arranged with Darren to meet him in his family's mansion the next morning, left a few copper coins to pay for my meal an
d bade him goodbye. My next stop for the day was the smith’s workshop, which was located on the far side of town, where the smoke from his forge wouldn’t bother anyone.

  Gerald's Rest was a fairly young town, having not yet entered her sixth decade, and was located near the border between the kingdom of Arianor and the wild, unsettled lands. As such, it had a rough, unfinished feel to it that didn't exist in older, more central cities.

  Or so I've been told. I've been born in Gerald's Rest, and the only direction I'd ever left town was towards the border and the unexplored ruins lying at the outskirts of the kingdom.

  Regardless of the state of any other city, the streets of Gerald's Rest were mostly made of packed dirt, and most buildings showed little in the way of ornamentation.

  The smithy was, by necessity, another stone building in the wooden town, and the thick plume of smoke rising from it would have made it easy to find even if I hadn’t known where it was.

  The proprietor, Owen Smith, was a hundred and eighty centimeters tall and heavily muscled from years of working his forge. He was dressed in heavy leathers to prevent him from getting burned by the hot metal and was busy making what looked like wagon axles.

  “Good evening Mr. Smith,” I greeted the large smith.

  “Whatever it is you want made,” Owen Smith answered without raising his eyes from his work, “it’ll have to wait. I’ve got a huge backlog of orders and I’m not taking any more right now."

  “I’m not here to buy anything, sir. My name’s Jack Baker, and I’ve got some whitesteel to sell. Darren Forrester said you’ll be interested.”

  “Whitesteel you say?” he finally looked up, setting the axel he was working on aside. “I’m definitely in the market for some. Got an order for a whitesteel brewing kettle from Bernard, down at the Beerkat. He thinks it’ll help him make better beer than Henry’s at the Boar and Barrel.”

  “I seriously doubt that. Whitesteel isn’t copper, and it won’t heat as well.”

  “That’s what I said, but Bernard’s not very good at listening to advice, and if he’s willing to pay I’m willing to cast. So how much ‘steel do you have? If it’s the usual scraps you scavengers find, then it’s not really helping me.”

  “I don’t know precisely. I just took as much as I could carry.”

  “You took how much?”

  “As much as I could carry,” I said as I opened my backpack and started to take out pieces of whitesteel. “I just shoved it in until I figured it would be too heavy to take back.”

  “Hold on there, kid. Let me get my scales and we can weigh it properly.”

  The smith went to one of the cabinets and pulled out a large set of scales, along with a number of weights to balance it. I placed all of my whitesteel on one pan, and Owen carefully balanced it with the weights. “That’s eighteen kilograms and two hundred seventy five grams. Quite an impressive haul.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And you say that you left some more behind?”

  “Yeah. There was a whole room of machinery out there.”

  The smith whistled in appreciation. “I can give you forty silver per kilo for this amount, and I’ll gladly take the next load too.”

  This was about what I expected to get for the metal. It wasn’t among the best things to find in the ruins, since coins and artefacts were worth a lot more for their weight, but this was also the first time I’ve ever returned from a ruin with as much as I could carry, and the payout was more than I’d gotten for the two years I’ve spent scavenging the closer ruins. The ones that previous explorers have already cleared of all of the monsters and most of the treasure.

  I’ve never dealt directly with Owen Smith before, but everyone always said that he wasn’t the bargaining type, and that his first price was always final.

  “I’ll take it, and I’ll see about getting more of it on my next trip. Might take a while though, since it’s not a very close ruin.”

  “I thought as much,” the smith said, heading to a locked strongbox and counting out gold and silver coins. “The closer ones have been picked clean since the town was established. Here’s your money. Seven gold and thirty one silver.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Smith.”

  “Pleasure doing business with you, kid. I’m here for any more hauls like this you run across, but now I really have to get back to work. You just got Bernard’s kettle back into my queue.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said and left the smithy. It was getting towards the late afternoon, and I wouldn’t be able to get access to the Forresters’ Patterns before morning, so I decided to take some time to bathe and relax. I headed back to the Boar, where a silver coin would get me a decent room as well as a hot bath, dinner and breakfast.

  Mabel waved at me when I entered the common room, and I was again tempted to take her up on her offer and invite her up to my room. But I’ll be left with less than two gold after Shaping four new Hounds tomorrow, and I still needed to buy supplies for my next trip, so I regretfully paid Henry for the room and went up to the second floor alone.

  The hot water felt wonderful after two weeks of life in the field, and I stayed in the tub until it cooled off to room temperature. By the time I got back to the common room, the dinner crowd was starting to arrive, and I found myself sitting at a small corner table with a large helping of Agnes’s chicken pot pie. It wasn’t long before the room was crowded enough that I was joined by three more men at my table, but I didn’t recognize any of them and didn’t feel up to any serious conversation, and as soon as I finished my dinner I went upstairs to my room. Lying in the soft, clean bed felt as good as the hot bath, and I was asleep mere seconds after my head hit the pillow.

  ✽✽✽

  I woke up early the next morning, and after a large breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and fresh bread, I left the Boar and Barrel and headed towards the Forrester mansion. Up close, the already impressive mansion looked even more luxurious. A tall hedge surrounded the grounds, with only a single opening leading into the perfectly manicured lawn. The mansion itself was built from large marble blocks that must have been carried from far further away than the simple grey rock used in Owen Smith’s workshop, and it rose three stories high.

  Darren knew I was coming, and the guards at the mansion’s gate waved me in without any questions. Evelyn, Darren’s aunt and the curator of the Forrester’s Patterns was sitting in the heavily guarded Pattern room in the middle of the mansion. A heavy whitesteel door closed of the Pattern room from the rest of the mansion, but the room itself looked like nothing special. Five oak cabinets set against the wall of the room, and I knew that each held one of the Forresters’ Patterns.

  “Good morning, young Jack. Darren told me you would be coming to access the Patterns today.”

  “Good morning to you too, Miss Evelyn.”

  “What can I help you with today?”

  “I’d like to buy four accesses to the Hound Pattern, please.”

  “Four more Hounds? You know that a proper Shaper must have access to many different Shapes, right?”

  “Of course, ma’am. But I am at the very beginning of my path, and most of the Shapes I have now aren’t going to remain with me for long anyway. And the Hounds have already proved their worth in the ruins I’m exploring.”

  “Very well. Four Hounds will cost you a total of eight gold coins, which I would like to see up front.”

  “Here you go,” I said and took the coins out of my pouch. “Eight golds.”

  “Follow me please.”

  I followed Evelyn into the room and to the cabinet I already knew held the Hound Pattern. She took a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the cabinet, and stepped back so I could open the door. The Pattern inside the cabinet looked like nothing more than a large tapestry depicting strange, abstract shapes done in thing grey lines. Nobody knew what Patterns were made of, or how they did what they did. All we knew was that if you touch a Pattern in specific points and had enough vim
for the Shape it held, the vim would be syphoned out and forced into the rank I version of the Shape.

  I pressed my hand into a pair of circles on the Pattern. It was always easy to know where to touch a Pattern in order to activate it, since the proper points were the only shapes we could name. Every other part of it was twisted and seemed to be constantly shifting, but the circles meant for the Shaper’s hands always remained constant.

  As soon as I touched the Pattern, I felt it trying to pull the vim from my body, but nothing was happening since I wasn’t holding any. I reached out with my mind to my Hounds, and pulled on one of them. It was like taking a knitted cloth and pulling at the yarn until it unraveled, and a second later I felt a burning sensation. The Hounds held twice as much vim as my body could hold, and the excess was quickly becoming painful. It wouldn’t actually harm me, but if I didn’t get rid of the excess, it would start to dissipate and in a couple of hours I’d be down to the maximum I could safely hold.

  Or, if I was one of the very rare people who couldn't get rid of excess vim, it would cause me to warp. I stilled a shudder at the thought, as unlikely as it was. Warping was said to take months, and I wouldn't be holding the vim for nearly that long

  I wouldn't even be keeping it for the two hours it would take to dissipate, of course. In fact, since I was still touching the Pattern, the vim flowed straight through me and into the Pattern. The vim flowed into the design, lighting more and more of it up with a bright blue glow. I could feel the Pattern now, and instinctively knew I held enough vim to activate it four times. When the entire Pattern was glowing, a blue fog started to rise from its surface, and began to coalesce beside me. As soon as the fog left the Pattern, the light vanished, and it began to syphon vim again, preparing to Shape again.

  It took a total of ten minutes to Shape each Hound, and I thanked Evelyn when I was finished and left to find Darren. I had to pick up some more blast crystal, and then I would head out to the ruins for another trip.