Boxy

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT · READING EXCERPT

Enter the story

The man from Ardan set a bronze weight on Jhal’s map, squarely over the stain where the western coast disappeared.

“You’ve been north before.”

“North of Mornstead.”

“How far?”

Jhal moved the weight aside. “How far are you paying for?”

The man leaned back. He had hired a private room above the counting house, but left the shutters open. Market noise drifted in: wheels on stone, an argument over a cracked jar, a fish seller shouting a price. Below the window, a hammer struck at uneven intervals. Jhal had been listening to it while the man inspected his boots.

“Vaelreach.”

Jhal kept one hand on the map.

“That far,” he said.

“You know the stories.”

“I know people who tell them.”

“And what do you believe?”

“That most of them haven’t been there either.”

The man’s mouth shifted, almost a smile. He drew a folded sheet from his coat, smoothed it with both palms and turned it round. A list occupied half the page. The rest was blank.

Objects of local manufacture. Writing, where available. Description of inhabitants. Location of occupied settlements. Means of access.

Jhal read the list twice. “You want a road.”

“I want information that can be checked.”

“An occupied settlement isn’t a ruin. People usually object when you take their things.”

“Purchase them.”

“With whose language?”

The man folded his hands.

Jhal had recovered missing loads for merchants and tracked down people for their families. He knew how to wait when a client stopped answering. Sometimes the silence made a job simpler. Usually it made it more expensive.

“You were recommended as resourceful,” the man said.

“I’m also expensive.”

They spent the next quarter hour proving it. Jhal asked for half up front; the man offered a quarter. They settled on a third. It would cover his lodging, a new waterskin and provisions, without another shopkeeper asking about his credit.

The rest would be paid upon delivery of satisfactory evidence.

Jhal tapped the word satisfactory.

“An object. A record of what I see. A route another person could follow.”

“Evidence of the Vaelborn,” the man said. “You could bring me a cup bought in the next street.”

“Then don’t pay me for a cup bought in the next street.”

The man pushed the agreement across the table.

The signature beside the Meridian affiliation was neat and deliberate. Later, Jhal would remember the shape of those letters more clearly than the face above them. Now he was looking at the sum beneath his own name.

He signed.

Outside, Jhal bought two hot pastries and ate them beside a wall. A small tolvay with a torn ear watched each mouthful from beside his boots.

“I paid for these.”

The animal waited.

Jhal broke off a piece. Another tolvay darted from under a cart and stole it before it touched the stones.

“You’ll have to be quicker,” he told the first.

He gave the first animal the last corner, brushed crumbs from his palms and went to buy provisions.

By the time Jhal reached the western approaches to Vaelreach, the advance had become food, wool, ferry charges and a pair of snowshoes he had laughed at when he bought them. He travelled alone. Guides refused him well before the roads ended; the last one demanded more than the unpaid balance of the commission.

He kept notes as he went: distances measured in days, water sources, a broken stone span visible above a stand of black firs. Beyond that span he found the old ruins through which he could enter the northern country.

Snow lay deep in the roofless chambers. Doorways rose above his reach; their lower courses had settled into rubble. He found cuts in the stone that might have been writing and copied two short lines before his fingers stiffened. Better two marks drawn faithfully than six invented by a shaking hand.

An old passage led under a fallen wall. Near the far opening Jhal had to take off his pack and shove it ahead of him. Wind hissed across the gap. Beyond it lay a sheltered ravine, and along the rock a path barely wide enough for his shoulders.

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End of excerpt. This site presents a selection from the manuscript.