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68. [Carina] Old Angles
🕑 Added 2024-10-04 14:02:17 +0000 UTCCarina Goldstone, Logician of the 3rd Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, in a crowd she can’t control
Vitt Secondson-Salvado, Hunter of the 9th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, back to his old self
***
28 Trollove, 61 AW
The village of Tiptop, North Continent
122 days until the next Granting
For a factionless village at the top of the world, Tiptop felt crowded. At the docks, wedged into berths chiseled out from ice, fishing boats scraped sides with barges from further south. The local boats were in better condition than Carina would have expected, many outfitted with steel icebreakers and water-wheels. Their fishermen—heavily bearded and shrouded in seal skins—stopped to helped merchants unload their wares. The locals seemed excessively tolerant of the visitors who crowded their docks.
One look around and Carina soon understood why. The locals took a cut of everything and, with a few weeks per year during which the power and wealth of champions gathered in Tiptop, along with the merchants and tradesmen who followed them, Tiptop’s small population profited handsomely. Carina's eyes tracked a fisherman who'd returned home with light nets—home being a stately two-story log cabin.
“Is this why you thought you could make it as a fisherman?” she asked Vitt.
The hunter followed her look but didn't seem to understand the question. “Why?”
“I envisioned you teetering between frostbite and destitution in a shanty at the edge of the ice.” Carina gestured at the cabins spaced generously across the embankment above. “Those look more like the homes the Penchennese lords and ladies keep in the hills for foliage season.”
“Ah, so you think fishermen should resign themselves to lives of cold salmon guts and drafty hovels?” Vitt clucked his tongue. “What would Bel Guydemion think of such a notion, logician?”
Carina shook her head and continued the trek up the embankment until they reached Tiptop's single thoroughfare. The street curled south into the frozen tundra and north toward the towering Nortmost—and in between all that forbidding wilderness were delicate cobblestones and wrought iron oil lamps to light the way. Merchants had set up stalls along the way north, the spaces warmed by coal furnaces built into the roadside.
“Let's hope they haven’t given away all the good beds,” Vitt muttered.
As Vitt led the way into town, Carina took one last look down at the docks. They had exchanged perfunctory goodbyes with the captain of their barge whose reaction to their departure had been barely restrained jubilation. Carina caught sight of Dell Whittle then, pulling a large trunk down a ramp from his barge to the dock. A local offered to help, but Dell shooed him away. She wondered what wares he’d brought to sell. The awkward little man would have stiff competition.
Following after Vitt, Carina spotted stalls hawking weapons, camping gear, dried meats, and even Gadgeteer-made portable stoves. A handful of men and women browsed the selection—champions, Carina suspected, although everyone's bundling made it difficult to identify Ink. Based on the way they shrank back when they caught sight of Vitt, she suspected these were the champions of small factions of the North, farmers and herders and, yes, probably more fishermen. No one important. In all likelihood, most of these champions would be fighting for bountiful harvests.
“I did not expect it to be so… social,” Carina said, drawing close to Vitt.
“Dreadful, isn't it?” he responded. “So many more than the last time I was here.”
Carina considered that. Perhaps these farmer champions were more interested in Ink this year, given what had happened to Ambergran.
“When were you last here?”
“Three years back, my own first year,” Vitt said. “Fucking waste of time, honestly. Twenty days up the mountain, twenty days back down. And not enough Ink to go around.”
“You didn't get any?”
Vitt scoffed. “Of course I did. I meant a waste of time for these others.”
“Why do they all linger in town?” Carina asked. “Why not begin the ascent?”
“If anyone starts out before the gods plant the Ink, then the Ink won't appear at all,” Vitt said. “Anyway, that’s what the old timers claim. Maybe that's superstition. No one's allowed to test it. In fact, we'll have to pick up shifts guarding the ascent. Nobody was dumb enough to try anything last time I was here. Cortland said the trolkin like rushing the mountain, but I never saw any.”
At the mention of the hammer master, Carina’s eyes flicked to the Nortmost looming ahead of them. Although she’d spent hours hiking through her futures, none of the terrain looked familiar at this distance. Night had draped itself across the icy peaks and with it came strange whorls of green and purple, twisting like paint streaks in the starry sky. Carina hadn't seen the like before and her breath caught a bit in her chest.
“Those are the gods themselves frolicking, champion!” said a man's voice from her right. “They're preparing your trial as we speak!”
Carina glanced away from the dancing lights to find a young man in her path—leanly muscled, with the pine tree tattoo of Fornon on his throat, and stripped down to his underclothes. He was one of a half dozen athletic young people milling about under a snow-laden canvas awning, all of them nearly naked and seemingly unbothered by the cold.
“Three hundred angles and I'll have you up that mountain faster than any of these others,” the man said. “Actually, you look pretty light. Two-fifty.”
“Fuck off,” snarled Vitt, cocking his fist back so that the young man flinched away. As he did, Carina noticed the mossy lines of blue that curled up his jawline, into his ears and hair, like mold growing across meat.
“Frosswiss,” Carina said as they continued up the thoroughfare. “That's what that was, right?”
Vitt put a hand on the hilt of his short sword. He hadn't worn the weapon during their weeks on the river, and Carina had almost forgotten how dangerous he could be. “Fucking slusher would turn blue halfway up the mountain. You’d spend the rest of the ascent trying to stop him from biting you.”
Carina glanced over her shoulder at the nearly naked men and women—the slushers. She wondered how many patches of blue growth she could find on their chiseled bodies if she studied them long enough. “Why do they do it?”
“It's cold and boring up here? How should I know?” Vitt glanced at her. “What's this? Something you don't know all about?”
Of course, Carina had come across frosswiss in her travels. There were mages who burned the plant for their spellwork. And there had been noble salons in Penchenne dedicated entirely to experiencing the hallucinations frosswiss could grant—Carina had stood at the backs of those rooms and watched the moneyed sons and daughters of Penchenne howl with laughter while one of their number shit themselves on account of how the floor had sprouted mouths and decided to devour them.
“Just never seen one go blue,” Carina said. “To go all the way with it, knowing what comes…”
“Happens more up here,” Vitt replied with a shrug. “Surprised you haven't dabbled yourself. You experiment with enough other polluting substances.”
Carina frowned at this observation, though she couldn’t dispute it. “I prefer to keep my wits about me.”
“Of course,” Vitt replied. “Silly of me to suggest otherwise.”
They arrived at the Clear Sky Inn—the last building on the road, the largest in Tiptop, and the closest to Nortmost. The road continued onward to the mountain, but it narrowed and twisted as the first of Nortmost's crags broke apart the land, like knuckles of a giant hand rising up from the snow. Figures paced across these rises or huddled in small groups between them, keeping watch on the area leading to the mountain. Those must have been the patrols Vitt mentioned.
Outside the Clear Sky, a corral housed dozens of horses and a team of oxen, the animals sticking close to the windbreaks and stalls along the side of the building. Mixing in were packs of sturdy, long-haired goats, a local and brazen bunch, swaggering amongst the visitors. Some of the champions had come by land, their wagons and carts parked nearby. The vehicles were dwarfed by a Fornon trunk-hauler—a brutish conveyance with a flatbed like a wagon, high wooden walls on the sides, and a covered cockpit. The contraption moved on wheels linked by gears and encased in treads—a design pioneered by the Gadgeteers. Carina had looked into buying some of the vehicles for Infinzel, to see if their disbursements of stone to the rest of the continent might be made more profitable, but they'd have lost money on the arrangement. She'd learned then that the northerners of Fornon liked things big and mean, but not necessarily efficient.
“Ho! Is that the princeling of Infinzel, come to join us at last?”
And, of course, Fornon's champion was the first to greet Vitt when he and Carina stepped through the inn door.
Carina was immediately grateful for the wave of heat that washed over her from the dining room's central hearth, but she kept her hood up, lingering behind Vitt until she could get a better feel for her surroundings. Conversations and music swelled around her, the dining room divided by a maze-like arrangement of banquet tables and bearskin. A bar stretched across one wall, a kitchen behind it, the aroma of smoked meat from within making Carina's throat itch. On the opposite side of the room, a polished wooden staircase led to the inn's second and third stories, the doors to the rooms overlooking the proceedings below. Carina wished she had been more circumspect with her [Future Sight]. She would have liked to get a better sense of the other guests, and peek at which conversations were best avoided. Too many mouths and too many ears in this room.
Vitt, however, seemed completely in his element. He removed his gloves with a dramatic snapping of leather and spread his arms toward the man who’d greeted them.
“My title is Secondson, imbecile,” Vitt said. “The princeling is what I use to fuck your mother.”
Carina made a face at that, and was unsurprised to see the champion of Fornon rise from his table. He was a huge man, taller than Vitt and twice as wide, covered in curly brown hair. His impressive beard was parted in two braids so that the pine tree symbol upon his neck was clear. He'd stripped down to an undershirt and even that was ringed with sweat, the whorls of his sizable collection of Ink visible through the fabric. There were four others from Fornon at the table—three men and a woman—all of them similar in stature. At least these others didn't rise to greet Vitt, though they watched the Secondson warily. Lumberjocks, all of them.
“My mother lays only with the most virile men of the north,” the champion said through his teeth. “Judging by those sparse whiskers you've decorated your cheeks with, you're still but a boy.”
“Ah, if not your mother, then what did I stick it into on my way up here…?” Vitt rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. “I suppose there must be a very satisfied bear roaming these lands. Or perhaps it was your hairy sister, Breck Bucksap?”
Carina pinched the bridge of her nose. Weeks alone with him on the quiet river and she’d managed to forget what Vitt was truly like. How quickly he returned to form—joking about his cock and sauntering around like one of those goats in the corral. He seemed looser in this company, a burden off his shoulders. Carina didn’t feel the same.
Breck, the Fornon champion, woofed a laugh and rushed forward, dragging Vitt under his sweaty arm. “Come on, pretty boy, have a beer with us! We have much to discuss.”
Allowing himself to be pulled along, Vitt barely glanced back at Carina. “Figure out the rooms, would you?”
“Did it feel colder on the way up, Secondson?” Breck continued, shouting in Vitt’s ear. “That’s because you let that trolkin madwoman live! Winter spreads because Infinzel doesn’t honor its agreements.”
“Take it up with the hammer master. I’m only here to get drunk and break in his little project…” Vitt said, the rest of his words lost in the noise as he joined the table of lumberjocks.
Carina suppressed a scowl. It wouldn’t do to show any annoyance in this environment. Scanning the crowd, she quickly picked out champions from Cruxton and Noyega, and a pair of candles from the Magelab. That likely meant an archmage was here somewhere. Ahmed Roh’s replacement? She hadn’t devoted much thought to her old acquaintances—not since Samus Bind had told her about Roh’s killing. Still, she had a standing policy to never let a mage see her rattled. She would move through this room of champions like she’d moved through so many others—as if she belonged.
Squaring her shoulders, Carina focused on the silver-haired woman behind the bar who she took to be the innkeeper. In her fifties, broad-shouldered, with the pine tree of Fornon upon her neck—she leaned on her elbows while a bartender and a server hustled around her. She was in deep conversation with an oddly proportioned man, a horseshoe of hair on his head, his face flushed from ale or the company. There were two finely crafted hand axes strapped to his back. He looked to be some twenty years younger than the innkeeper, although Carina still thought the woman could probably do better. Carina sensed the balding man would be warming that stool long after the dining room had cleared out, and the innkeeper would keep right on pouring for him.
“Pardon me,” Carina said as she interrupted the flirtation, “I’d like to check in.”
The innkeeper sighed and straightened. She eyed Carina’s neck until Carina tugged down her scarf.
“Infinzel,” the innkeeper said. “I almost gave away your rooms. You’ll have a shift on the pass tonight, on account of being so late.” She jerked her square chin toward Vitt. “Don’t let that one get too drunk.”
“He’s not my responsibility,” Carina said.
“No? Well I don’t see Ben or Cortland around, so you must be wrong about that.”
“Ben’s—”
The innkeeper had turned away to fetch keys before Carina could correct her. Not that it was worth updating this woman on the composition of Infinzel’s champions. At least, Carina reasoned, news of the schism with Soldier’s Rest had been slow to travel this far north. That was good. Let these other champions learn the news when Cortland walked Guydemion’s chosen four through the door—a unified front instead of a divided pyramidal city.
“Val used to be a champion herself. She knows everybody.”
It took a moment for Carina to realize the balding man at the bar was talking to her.
“Not a bad place to retire, is it?” he continued. “I could see myself somewhere like this. Although the men of Fornon keep telling me I should’ve chosen bigger axes.”
Carina half-turned and smiled politely. She noticed, for the first time, the perfectly balanced scales tattooed on the man’s throat.
“Penchenne,” Carina said.
“Infinzel,” the man replied with mock grimness. “I suppose there should be some tension between us, yes? But I don’t believe grudges move the world forward. I’m Theo Adamantios, axe master of the 6th renown, and I meet you, fellow champion, with the open hand of friendship.”
Carina’s mouth went dry. No—she would have foreseen this. As she cycled through all the possibilities, she could not have overlooked something like this.
Theo raised an eyebrow as Carina’s silence stretched on. “Well, you need not feel any great pressure to tell me your name."
“Carina…?”
“Ah!” Theo exclaimed. “My noble sponsor rouses from her slumber!”
Carina spun at the sound of her name and barely managed to stop her eyes from widening. Sylvie Aracia had cut her hair since the last time Carina saw her—hacked it mostly off, in fact, so that it swayed about her porcelain face at jagged angles. She looked smaller than Carina remembered, but then it had been mostly gowns for Sylvie in those days, not woolen sweaters and leather. Sylvie’s features were darkened by heavy bags beneath her eyes, her lips and nose chapped, like she’d made a miserable voyage through the cold and hadn’t since warmed up.
“Sylvie,” Carina said. “This is unexpected.”
“Oh gods, if you’re here, then it’s true,” Sylvie said, tears in her eyes. “I’m not just losing my mind.”
“What—?”
Sylvie lunged in close to Carina, fitting against her in a way that would’ve felt natural four years ago, when they might have come together to share some bit of gossip. Her breath smelled stale to Carina.
“I’ve been dreaming of her,” Sylvie whispered. “She makes me lay down with her in a coffin and tells me what I’ll do. She has our coin, Carina.”
Carina stiffened. She restrained herself from activating [Force Armor] which would have shoved her old friend across the room. Her eyes danced across the tables, but no one seemed to be paying attention—except for this Theo Adamantios, whose stupid grin had puckered with concern. He couldn’t have heard what Sylvie said, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others listening by other means.
With the appearance of gentleness, Carina put her hands on Sylvie’s shoulders and eased her back. Carina dug her fingers into the flesh, but Sylvie didn’t seem to notice.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sylvie,” Carina said. “Have you been ill?”
“The monkey,” Sylvie said. “She’s coming for us.”
