Later was not long away, for Stansolt emerged the day before Impetuous and Irresistible Daughter's launch to convey his determination to glorify the occasion further with an undertaking of his own.
“Mr. Dirant, how is your swimming?”
“As is typical for someone born next to the Ontoffemmiror.”
“Then I have my second rower.”
“Which is to say, we splash around a little in our youths, just by the bank. It was nothing but trivial exercise insufficient to confer real proficiency.”
The caveat did not dissuade Stansolt, who anticipated no call for activity more strenuous that that on Dirant's part, aside from the rowing of course. Dirant might have pleaded a deficiency of Muscle and had it accepted on the basis of his class's typical statistical profile, but 36 was not so low as to render him infirm. Even had he been willing to descend into dishonesty by implication, a young man's instinctual reluctance to emphasize his relative physical inferiority would have prevented it.
Stansolt's investigation had not unearthed the name of the client, likely an organization rather than a single person given the resources involved, but the people he bribed had observed a connection between the construction and a small island nearby suited for clandestine activity. That described much of Ililesh Ashurin of course. Among its countless islands, countless not because of limits to the numeracy of cartographers but rather because the islanders dissuaded foreigners from counting them, far more could be put to some use than ever were, and upon rare occasions only did any come under inspection.
The launch occurred in the middle of the day when most employed within the town enjoyed an interval of leisure. They were free to rest from their morning labors in preparation for those of the afternoon and ponder philosophical questions such as who made the world how it is and what could be done to correct it. For that reason the event attracted a crowd and encouraged a relaxed sort of celebratory atmosphere, the kind such that the entrepreneurially minded sold food to the bystanders but did not put themselves out preparing specialties such as festivals often boasted.
Dirant Rikelta and Stansolt Gaomat missed all that when, much like the piano movers too busy to attend the concert, they rowed out from the beach south of Wawamd on business intolerant of delay. They did not consider themselves deprived. Even in town, not all went who were able. One of Dirant's alleged coworkers, Mr. Radalim, had expressed his intention to watch as an expression of gratitude since Konental foresaw so little business that day that the branch closed early, while Mr. Hlindol and Mr. Osintant planned to exploit the early closure by going, as they put it, “out.” What diversions there were in Wawamd and its environs for foreigners remained unknown to Dirant, who would certainly inquire deeper if he ever returned, which he would not.
Ignorance has this compensation, that he was able to imagine their doings on the day without regard for fact, a process more entertaining by far than performing his duty on the Northern Sea. Stroke. Had a local lady caught the eye of one of the two, his attentions resented by a native accustomed to getting his own way but so far unable to win her heart? Stroke. A part-time job of secretly replacing scarecrows and startling the vermin who had become inured to the terror of the inanimate kind? Stroke. Was there horse racing elsewhere on the island so that they expended their salaries on transient thrill only to become entangled in the immoral and violent world which lies beneath all gambling, much like fairy halls under the hills? Stroke.
The clouds forbore from raining, proof that the weather itself respected a genius, and the waves were far from wild. It felt to Dirant as if a contrary swell rose every so often to undo their progress of the previous hour, but it was not so. “It is this custom of looking backwards that causes it,” Dirant theorized. “So long as Combem is in sight, I cannot believe we have traveled far.”
Poets might describe islands as emeralds set in turquoise which made joyous ornaments to a horizon otherwise severe, or else as prototypes of continents crafted by the gods and superior for that just as we must admit the individual pieces of the true artisan to be more appealing than goods produced in greater number by a host of laborers working under a supervisor's instruction. The alternative is to admit instead that we overpaid, an unthinkable concession. Combem however resembled a chubby fellow wearing a bulky beige coat adopted because of the frequent rains in the region who, returning from the nearest well, trips and lies sprawled while the water spilling from his bucket surrounds him and reflects the sky and mirthful sun.
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“We have not and will not,” Stansolt assured him. Being a Battler and blessed with the usual array of stats for an elite combat class, his speech had nothing of the wind in it that Dirant's then possessed. The discrepancy caused raised the question of whether they meant the same thing by “far,” but perhaps because they had both traveled widely, the answer proved to be that they did.
Their destination, reached while they could still see the heights of Combem, approached closer the poetical descriptions. Ringed by its beach, its verdant interior had not yet been removed in favor of spruce houses and wheat fields, and in place of Combem's lumpiness it directed itself in an orderly manner toward a single peak much as did the tent of a Dvanjchtliv hero amid his battle-won herd. The island's one flaw, that it refused to conform to the perfect geometry of a properly cut emerald, conferred upon it rather the charm of unblemished nature rather than the opprobrium which the better part of society attaches to the sloppy.
An inlet looked to extend even under the rising peak for a way, and if anywhere illicit activity might be carried on, it was there. Nothing of the kind could be detected at the distance Stansolt allowed the boat, far but nothing insuperable with a telescope's assistance. The interior segment could not be descried from there. He directed the boat in an arc around the island to a shore on the opposite side where they beached it. There they deployed their mechanisms of deceit, which consisted merely of fishing rods set in the sand near the boat, and inside that they arranged a cover to give the appearance of two fishermen napping, exhausted from their exertions in reaching the place. From there they proceeded without words made unnecessary because of Stansolt's foresight across the island to a vantage point on a headland from which the cove could be viewed.
The wisdom of sending forward the Ritualist immediately rather than scouting ahead first might be questioned, but not by Dirant, whose experience of violent incidents with Battlers in the vicinity had convinced him to prefer being nearer rather than farther. As for leaving the boat unguarded, he had brought nothing irreplaceable, and if some criminal came by to disable it, that malefactor would presumably have one of his own which might be substituted.
From the headland they confirmed that bribery is the font of genuine knowledge. There were islanders in the grotto, perhaps mainland Obenec as well, Dvanjchtlivs, and a ship moored at a pier. Nearly every element of that scene surprised. The number of the islanders seemed excessive for any enterprise possible to carry on there, to say nothing of what looked to be residences farther back in the cavern. Importing Obenec therefore seemed altogether superfluous, provided they were such. They wore at least the loose shirts and pants all dyed pink on the theory that it made them easier to pick out if cast upon the sea; paintings such as “The Port Near Hendlerv” had made that attire famous as the costume of Obeneut's sailors. Then there were the Dvanjchtlivs, a tribe not so renowned for sailing that most smugglers would think to exert themselves in hiring any for that purpose. Given their armor, sabers, crossbows, vigilant gazes, and readiness for inspection by a general or any deputy thereof, their employers evidently agreed.
“Those are or were king's marines, or else I must consider resigning,” Stansolt muttered.
To turn to the ship, that by itself was as common in Ililesh Ashurin as intemperate insults in a theater review, but two peculiarities distinguished it. First, that it was inside a grotto invited speculation that the opening had been artificially enlarged at such expense as could only be met by people who hired dozens of Utenec workers, Obenec sailors, and Dvanjchtlivan marines. Second, the entire hull had been painted a mixture of blues and whites consistent with both modern ideas of camouflage and descriptions of the mysterious raiders lately tormenting the kingdom of Saueyi to the southwest. Witnesses of the heinous attacks had been able to give little detail aside from the look of the ships and the strange fact that the raiders who landed, girt in armor and intimidating helmets complete with obscuring visors, behaved not like rowdy bandits but rather went about their looting without a syllable of speech in any language, a display of discipline rare outside of military corps such as, to give an example, Chtrebliseuan king's marines.
“It is my own excitability I am sure which drives me to unreasonable conjectures you are surely capable of contradicting, Mr. Stansolt.”
“Your Discernment has more to do with it, Mr. Dirant.” Stansolt's even tone permitted no idea of facetiousness on his part. The importance of the inquiry into the eventual destination of Adaban arms had risen. The danger involved rose also, but at a lower velocity, and the prospect of an undignified death caused by a smuggler angry that someone discovered he had exceeded his annual permitted amber shipments to Chtrebliseu by twenty pounds distressed a young man more than falling in the service of a country. Preferably his own country, but Saueyi sufficed. It was a respectable kingdom responsible for much of the contemporary understanding of rituals.
