Dragon (S)Layers Ch. 51

Chapter 9 – Past and Future Loss

"Somewhere along the line people came up with this notion that clergy of a given faith are holy and pure, thriving on piety and divine purpose where others suffer and fail. Self-aggrandizement became common knowledge and generally accepted truth, and yet like so many things about the nature of the gods and what they give us, the mechanics of things get lost under the lie of perfection.

No, clergy are not all knowing. They have help from their divine patrons, but even their understanding falls short of true divine beings like Sphinxes and the fabled 'Angels' that the old texts speak of, if you want to know the truth and you're not afraid to ask the question, I would proffer what you seek and what everyone has the right to know: the clerics of our world carry a heavy burden.

It is heavier than anything borne by man or beast. They carry it so that the gods have a medium to communicate with us, so we may witness their power and understand that we are individually cared for our divine overseers. In exchange the cleric must carry on beyond his natural years until he is called away at last to rest, when his time is finally over.

The gods never wanted us to be alone, even when they desired a reprieve from their hard work, the cleric is our common link and so shall it be in perpetuity. Where Sphinxes and Angels held the divine in their hand and shared its secrets only to a select few, we've the cleric to thank for making those secrets accessible and open. After all, it is the cleric that trained the first paladin to access divinity and in time, I suspect we will find many more accessing it in some fashion or another.

When and only when they have earned it.

There is no reason for the gods to communicate with us when we have their physical servants in our midsts, and while it may seem heinously unfair that thousands upon thousands are killed in temples the world over to find these messengers of faith, the gods know best who to hand over their power to.

Ultimately clergy are as failure prone as any mortal and a certain level of arrogance is owed to the lot they bear in life, but make no mistake, no cleric is made by accident. They are exactly as they are intended to be."

-Tamsin Labre

"Letters From the Gods, Volume 321"

~Sarah~

Well steeped tea was said to be the first line defense against the world for the sagacious mind, like some holy ward meant to stave off the monsters of the evening before and protect the drinker from the day ahead of them.

If common knowledge was wrong, Sarah couldn't tell the difference. She certainly didn't want it to be wrong. No, pleasant illusions were pleasant enough to have a tangible effect on one's mood, gods forbid they be taken away.

These morning reflections came easily as she sipped her own divine brew, bundling up in Chance's shirt and leaning against the counter. Her thoughts had been drifting for some time and everyone in the house was still asleep, leaving her to the tender mercies of familiar friends; tea and spirits. Though if anyone could have been convinced the vinegar stored in the pantry was still wine, she'd have loved to meet that person with a business proposal regarding lake front property in Mawik.

So she was left woefully sober, vaguely comfortable and bristling with goosebumps in a drafty farmhouse waiting for the sun to creep over the horizon. Oh, but she did have tea.

Yes. Wonderful, warming, tea. . . It gave her clarity and helped her focus on the future, and by the gods did she need that focus.

There were a million different ways things could go– a million different places they could go. And who would come with her? Gods, was she going to be alone yet again? What about Keiter, or even Tessarie? She looked into her empty cup for the answers already formulating in the back of her mind. She wasn't looking for solace so much as validation.

But that begot a new question, one she hadn't really considered and only struck her as she went to eat her own fill of someone else's food; did she owe Tessarie some level of responsibility? Perish the thought! Surely her giving the girl freedom had been more than enough of her part in their relationship, wasn't it?

"Woe, doth she walk the line between apathy and aloofness but to find them the same in the end." Sarah murmured to herself as she prepared some more tea. Eventually they would part ways, like any other time she'd spent in the company of her ancestral race– sooner or later she'd be put on the spot or otherwise inconvenienced as to why she didn't join her 'family' back in the Veil. Of course that was complete nonsense, but their ilk never seemed to fathom that not everything with pointed ears and a pulse was all that interested in their particular brand of insanity.

Though, Sarah had to give it to them, they had one hell of a marketing department. If she were the type to categorize the quality of people and bedmates by race, she'd probably have a shelf devoted to the 'fairest of the fair.' In fact, she probably had such a shelf that she'd forgotten about in some dingy little hovel.

The thought made her chuckle. It felt good to laugh.

But it also turned a particular gear in the back of her mind she didn't expect to feel turn over. She'd left a rather lengthy trail of bedmates across the planet, even some homes in her egress from the bowels of the Confederated Free States to safer pastures. She'd been running for so long.

She never would be free, though. Not so long as she had to rely on mundane means of transit and deal with the people who worked in the shadows– there was money in knowing where people went. There was money in defining where people went. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

Sarah mulled it over as she finished off her breakfast of left-overs and tea. There were so few places she could go; to the south was the unending turmoil of the gods blasted land, to the north, the tundra and any further east and she'd run into the same problem she had going west; sooner or later his agents would find her.

It was suicide waiting, it was suicide moving, but the idea– the galling notion of being paralyzed into inaction made her physically ill. No, this wasn't acceptable at all. She'd come too gods damned far, endured too gods damned much and on top of that she was smarter than that.

She was the most intelligent person she knew. She'd find a way out of it.

She might've had the tools she needed, even.

Yes. Sarah was an Engineer, all she needed were plans and the tools to implement them. The curvaceous half-elf set her cup down, dampened her lips and for the first time in what could've been forever, set off to find her clothing for purposes other than basic decency.

#

Sarah's boots crunched the dirt as she strode from the back door to the barn, lugging a pitcher of tea and cursing herself for not bringing her coat too. On the way she checked the carriage to see if it'd been tampered with in the evening.

She hadn't expected to see Caldion strung across the benches in a fitful sleep. He'd wrapped himself up in his own leathers for warmth and while he didn't seem immediately uncomfortable, Sarah knew well the pleasures of sleeping curled up as he was.

Why hadn't the damned fool come inside? Not only did he miss dinner, but the basic warmth and safety that came with a home too? Bloody paladins. It wasn't like they hadn't left a note– she rolled her eyes and eased back so as not to wake the boy.

Further proof positive the very concept of a paladin was categorically ridiculous and prone to failures of the spirit and flesh. Not that she was one to talk, but at least she didn't pretend she was somehow better than the average person.

Well, not usually; it wasn't her fault she generally was. Sarah halted at the door to the barn, clutching her pitcher warily. She knew what lay beyond it, and what it represented, what it was. But that was all it was, wasn't it? A representation.

No different, really, than any cargo ship in any port. It happened to be her design that inspired it, that was all. It wasn't the ship. She drew in a deep breath and licked her lips. She could do this.

What a perfect time for her glasses to feel slightly off on her nose, and gods damned, her boot's strap was loose. She muttered as she fixed the offending articles, taking much longer than necessary to do so. When she rose Haras was staring at her with arms crossed.

Sarah groaned inwardly.

The humanoid creature uncrossed her arms, the swish of her odd three piece suit being the only sound she made before reaching to the door. Sarah was pretty sure she was transmitting part invitation and part demand through her milky pupil-less eyes, but she didn't speak as she opened the door. Mercifully, she stepped aside and waited for her charge, her cleric, to gather up the courage to peek in.

And by the gods did it take time.

Sarah went through every buckle and tie on her clothing until she could've made a new outfit out of the material she'd rubbed off the old. Eventually her excuses ran thin, however, and she had to look to her handler once again. This wasn't even a certainty, she told herself, this was her testing the waters to see if she could get somewhere.

It was going to be fine.

Yes. Fine.

The Cherub gave her a small reassuring nod and with that, Sarah wandered to the mouth of the barn. The aft of the ship loomed before her, suspended on a girdle of thick ropes lashed to the frame of the building itself, under it was a skeletal platform which appeared meant to keep it from moving around more than load bearing– a good sign, in actuality.

Sarah took a step towards it. The horses on the other side of the barn seemed to take notice of her- or her Cherub- and clapped their hooves on the ground lightly. Immediately she felt bad for them but for the moment she put their needs out of her mind as she really looked at the vessel for the first time.

It was smaller than she'd remembered, this one wasn't modeled after a schooner as hers had been, it was deeper and the hull had a voluptuous swell to it, coming to a slender wedge near the fore with a proud and well angled stem. The keel itself had been carefully flattened with such a gradual and precise angle that Sarah actually had to purposefully trace it from the fore to the aft where it smoothed out into the unpainted hull.

Unlike a ship meant for the water, there was no need for a deep keel except for structure and so the two major interruptions in the frame– massive but deliberate circular holes in the the mid-fore and mid-aft parts of the ship wouldn't compromise anything. However they did give her a glimpse of the ship's ribbing.

But did she dare–

"That is the Sarah I remember," Her Cherub said softly.

The half-elf all but jumped out of her skin, wheeling on the creature with her pitcher of tea brandished like a cudgel. "Gods dammit!" She exclaimed. "Don't do that!"

"You knew I was here." The creature said before stepping around her and crouching down beside the ship. She looked up at it and then Sarah. They both knew the significance of it, they both knew it was as much a technical triumph as it was a condemnation of everything physical and emotional.

It was the embodiment of everything wrong with the Great Engineer's faith. In some way, it reflected everything wrong with Sarah, too; that she couldn't speak of it or even think of it only re-enforced that. She pushed her glasses up, holding their frame against her face with her thumb and letting out a sigh.

Finally, she murmured, "I wish you would allow me that which you took from me."

"I can't undo that, Sarah. You know that."

"It might help me re-trace my work," They both knew she wasn't petitioning for her voice in one particular regard for the technical insights, but she had to try all the same.

And, as usual, the Cherub gave her a dispassionate glance and looked up to the ship once more. "If I had done things my way, I would have stripped that part of your memory completely. It complicates things, it forces you to remember unpleasant things that–"

"That make me who I am."

The Cherub spared her another glance. After a moment she flexed her hands out and motioned to the vessel. "There was nothing wrong in your initial design, Sarah. The revisions worked out fine, the knees were solid and the mechanics were sound. The moment you accept this and stop worrying over what cannot be undone, the sooner you will be happy with your purpose."

Together they said, "How many times are we going to go over this?" And then they fell silent, eying each other dubiously. Sarah was quite grateful that the creature couldn't peer into her mind any more. So long as she was focused and didn't do something stupid like willingly invite it into her mind, she'd be all right.

"The craftsmanship is superb," Haras said by way of conversation. "I was looking it over while you slept."

"You can do that?" Typically she seemed to favor being near Sarah, it'd become something of a convention to her that the Cherub was always near.

"I knew you'd come out here; your greed always gets the better of you." And just like that she disappeared and reappeared on the deck, looking down. Sarah wanted to be upset at the notion she was thought so little of, she really, really did.

But in the end, the creature knew her inside and out and Sarah had no ready excuses or witty retorts. Instead, she crouched down under the vessel and peeked up through the gaping hole in the aft section. The ribs were indeed high quality timber and showed the trademarks of a skilled shipwright who was more conservative than her original design would've called for. There were expectations to be observed, like the way the keel tried to run the center line but had been sheered to make room for the holes– exhaust ports, really. The work around to stability had been some fairly good re-bracing of the gaps and a metal band around the hole.

Sensible enough, considering.

Considering the man who'd designed this bastardization of her work had never actually seen the internals of her own. The vibration from the wheel gears would've ripped the metal to shreds, even without the heavy cowling. It would have to go.

Unconsciously Sarah climbed up into the ship and went looking for other issues. The ship wasn't particularly large, it could've been confused for a noble's personal cargo ship, it was purposefully designed to be small. Like Sarah's schooner had been, the idea was to keep weight low and air resistance minimal while maintaining the integrity–

"Well done. Well done." Sarah found herself murmuring as she took in the dimensions of the hull once more with a more critical eye. By using a Brig as a template, the shipwright had allowed room for the internals necessary to make the ship work while allowing room for cargo and crew.

What the man- or men- lacked in knowledge was made up for in forward thinking. Had Chance had a hand in this? She smiled at that. "I'm almost tempted to take him with me," she said quietly and climbed up the rope ladder to the deck, leaving her tea behind in her curiosity.

Haras was pacing the deck quietly, looking this way and that, probably taking her own measurements and committing the entire vessel to memory for whomever she answered to. Sarah found it unnerving, a bit irritating too.

"Must you do that?"

The Cherub ignored her for the moment, stopping to survey the planking. Abruptly she looked to Sarah. "This could be pulled. . ."

"Pulled?"

Then it dawned on her. "Oh." She looked at the ship beneath her, feeling a long dormant twitch somewhere deep inside. It was a chance at a future, one in which she didn't have to run away and maybe, just maybe, a chance to redeem her failure. To find out if it really worked–

Or she could repeat the mistake she'd made and kill everyone by accident.

Sarah braced her hands against the railing looking at the ropes that held the ship up. Yes. Yes, this. . .

This could work.

"That's my Sarah." The Cherub said with a rather wolfish smile.

Not that she cared, her mind was already off and working. She peeked over the front to find a work bench with an array of tools; scorps, saws, chisels and all manner of planes and a few hammers. She took a quick inventory, mumbling to herself and squinting at the tools through her glasses.

In some far off part of her mind, she wondered what number would convince Chance to part with everything. More than that, she wondered if she could afford to bet that she could meet that number.

She was willing to find out. . .

"Yes, this'll do. This'll do quite nicely."

#

Sarah was rifling through her coin reserves when Keiter and Tess crawled out into the main room and helped themselves to the breakfast she'd laid out. There were stacks and stacks of coin arranged in no particular discernible number but they'd been accounted for carefully, each and every one of them had a mark on her scratch paper and for a moment she was certain she'd miscounted. Rechecking her numbers only netted the same result.

Keiter brushed by her, touching her thigh before taking up a chair beside her and perching himself there, cross legged and muzzle pointing at her with what she imagined was a quizzical expression. With the way his lips were turned, she never could be absolutely positive.

"I'm going to buy the boat," She murmured to her friend. "But I find myself curious where my coin has disappeared to."

Tessarie wandered to the couch in lieu of the table for her breakfast. She was clad in her dress and shoes, apparently ready to leave at a moment's notice. At Sarah's look she turned her gaze down.

"That metal reeks."

"It's the magic, dear." Sarah twiddled her fingers playfully. "Much like your own, everyone's is a little distinctive.

"It still stinks." She murmured around a mouth full.

Sarah tutted lightly. She'd long gotten used to the particular tingle of the gold's magic, just like she'd acclimated herself to Keiter's blessings and even her own Cherub's, so it barely registered to her when she picked up a coin and sniffed at it, exaggerating the 'thrill' of the dense metal. It had the desired reaction; Tess mimed choking.

Sarah laughed and went about packing her coin into a bag and then looking between the two thoughtfully.

"Where is the paladin?" Keiter said with that groggy slur she'd come to associate with his having gotten too much sleep.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "The boy slept in the carriage! Of all the places, and with all the people, he'd prefer to spend his time in a cold wagon than somewhere warm and safe." She helped herself to another cup of tea. "Utterly ridiculous."

Tess piped up. "Not everyone is as drawn to your manner, Sarah."

"People are entitled to be wrong about many things," She replied lightly. "Forsooth, entire kingdoms are founded on errors in judgment."

"Even more on good judgment." Keiter added, grinning at her look. "He should eat, though, our host has been very kind and he suffers for not accepting what is freely given."

"That he does." Sarah said indifferently before she went about preparing breakfast for Chance. A bowl of stew, some tea and fruit preserves she'd liberated from the cobwebs. All they needed was some bread and it would've been a civilized meal. Briefly she considered the number of other ways the meal could become less civilized, but her mind was too busy to indulge the more carnal parts of her imagination–