Category: Renado

“By the time I got there,” Woodro told his crowd of onlookers, “I was sweating.  The boat was absolutely sweltering!”

Renado rolled his eyes and leaned back against the bar.  Tass stood on the other side, helping herself to an afternoon drink, while Woodro entertained a group of barmaids and drunks with stories of his heroics.  Ren supposed that it shouldn’t bother him.  Woodro was the hero of that story, riding a flaming galley into a harbor of enemy soldiers and living to tell the tale. Continue reading Renado 11

“Listen,” Ren said, quietly.  He had taken Woodro aside, while Tass stood with Bran near the big tropical tree.  Its vines draped down, almost obscuring the Dispatch from view.  Zashee stood on board, making preparations.  All three had been waiting with the ship, ready for Vanci’s return.  They had not believed Renado’s story—that a year had passed!  And that Vanci had been captured, or that the Family had fallen.  When Tass had told them the same thing, then they began to believe. Continue reading Renado 10

The bar at the Seastar had grown harder, somehow.  Renado was certain it was bruising his chin now, as he slumped against it and cradled the warm mug of cider against his cheek.  He wasn’t sure where Tass was… perhaps she had moved in with the resident gamblers at their corner table.  Or maybe she had died with the others and the grief had so blinded Ren that he had imagined her continued existence at his side. Continue reading Renado 9

It had been a month or two since Ren had seen the fog roll up through Comet Cove into the harbour of Sheld, but Tass told him, looking out the open window at the busy port, that there had been months without fog or rain.  Ren tapped his head against the wall, sitting in the inn room’s only chair.

“What are we going to do?” his sister-in-law asked. Continue reading Renado 8

Ren woke up in between sticky sheets and sat up halfway.  He looked around the small inn room, at his discarded shirt, at the drawers with the broken handle, at the wooden slats across the window.  It had been a warm night, but Ren was used to sleeping in jungle harbours and the heat had not been the cause of his sudden arrival at lucid observation of the second-rate inn room.  A distant thud.  He had not imagined it. Continue reading Renado 7

There was smoke rising over Sheld, more than normal, but not much more.  Signs of debris scattered the harbour, an overturned wagon on one of the docks.  The sun hadn’t reached the horizon yet so they not see much.  The Vanci Dispatch docked on their own, without aid from the normal harbour workers.  “Damage from the storm?” Vanci asked.

“Asar, Omma, Karsef,” Renado called from the helm down across the deck.  “Dockside, now!” Continue reading Renado 6

The water in the bay of Sheld was grey, cold water. It reflected the ashen clouds overhead.  As the sun set to their starboard, the crew of the Vanci Dispatch appeared from thin air.  Where there had been calm waves of salty water there was abruptly the hull of a small galley, splashing into the surface and bouncing gently as it came to rest at its usual depth.  Rainwater ran from the top deck into the bottom deck, or dripped down into the ocean through the grooves in the old wood.

The strange thing was, there was no rain in the clouds above this day. Continue reading Renado 5

The storm never let up.  It was a proper hurricane, and the crew of the Dispatch spent their days rolling in bunks or emptying their stomachs into the sea.  More than a few were already showing the early signs of scurvy.  Vanci had told them they had to assume this was the Isle of Dusk, and for their safety, he forbade anyone from going ashore, despite the agony of their current situation.

They had enough food to last them the rest of the month, and the voyage from the Isle to Sheld would take nowhere near that length. Continue reading Renado 4

The smuggling ship was not a large vessel, but it was a fast one.  During the five years that Renado had worked on board with his Uncle Vanci, they had outrun at least a dozen ships in pursuit.  But, with strong winds and dark horizons to the south, the Dispatch sped across the Grey Sea.

“That’s no simple rainstorm,” Vanci said, for the third time.  They were about halfway through the voyage, with another week to the coast.  It was always difficult to match their trajectory to the stars perfectly.  Sailors regularly emerged in other cities or regions than their targeted destination, so it could take two weeks to reach Sheld if they were unlucky. Continue reading Renado 3

The smugglers spent the time at the Public House of Kedar, for two days.  The Public House was the only inn, more or less, in the city, a bustling business with a hundred guards, a hundred rooms, and one of the largest common rooms that Renado had ever seen.  No smaller taverns could keep their doors open in a town with no law, none could afford to keep any sort of decent calm within their doors.  Each faction in the city had its own establishments of course, but the Continue reading Renado 2