CHAPTER 58: SENTIMENTAL VALUE

  Elias was piecing himself back together. When he’d first met Victoria Bane and realized the opportunity to buy the mill had passed them by, the news blasted through him like a cannonball. Indeed, he had felt like that racer who took too many shots, only to end up engulfed in flame, plummeting into the fog, like a fiery blossom wilting in the mist.

  But after scrounging through the rubble (and a few encouraging words from his crew), Elias remembered how much they had won over the past twenty-four hours. They had won The Emerald Cup, for starters, and fifty thousand relics to do with what they pleased. It was an unbelievable amount of money, far more than The Two Worlds Trading Company had ever possessed. They had also landed a promising business deal, if not the deal they had hoped for, thanks to Mrs. Bane and her unexpected interest in their venture.

  And to top it all off, Elias had ascended. That alone should have filled him with joy, a sense of purpose, a sense of very real power. Alas, he needed to reset, but his body was still too riled for sleep, deprived of it though he was.

  And so, instead, he went for a walk. Solitary strolls had been a favorite pastime of Elias’s back in Acreton, a way to fill the slow hours of life on the flatlands, to take flight from his simple life full of simple people possessing only simple imaginations. For while the body wanders, the mind wanders farther. Back then, he would amble down to the river. Today, the ocean would do just fine.

  The crew members of The Sapphire Spirit had gone their separate ways for the afternoon, agreeing to meet for dinner at a local inn where they would spend the night before departing in the morning. Briley had old friends to catch up with, Iric and Gabby had sights to see, and Elias simply needed some space.

  He also did not mind the rain, which had picked up again. Elias left via Hamford’s northern gate, exiting onto a muddy road that presumably led to the next small forest town, not that he would follow it far enough to find out. He wanted to spend some time in nature, and nature was refreshingly nearby. Sailor’s Rise was, by comparison, a prison of urbanity.

  Past snapping branches of coastal evergreens, he discovered a secluded pebble beach and his box seat to take in the greatest show on the Great Continent. Or just outside of it. That was the ocean’s allure, after all: it was the bleeding edge of the world.

  Elias inhaled its salty air and stared out at Briley’s ocean. What had she seen at the end of that cloudy horizon, he wondered, and what truly waited beyond it? Would its empty waters bring a brave sailor to the same unknowable place that waited beyond the stars of his youth? No one had ever sailed far enough to find out, or maybe they had simply never come back.

  A twig snapped behind him.

  Elias thought it might be a deer—Briley had mentioned there were a lot of them prancing about the Isles—but the figure that appeared through the brush was decidedly human-shaped. Whether the man in question was walking to the water or headed toward Elias, the latter could not say.

  “Afternoon,” the man said, stopping beside him but staring out to sea, his intentions as ambiguous as his appearance. He was better dressed and kempt than most Hamford residents and seemed a little out of place in their present setting, though perhaps no more than Elias. The two were also of a height, but the blond man was stockier and stronger—or at least he looked stronger.

  “Afternoon,” Elias said back.

  “I saw your ship fly in earlier,” the man replied, still gazing out at the ocean. He looked not much older than Elias. “Here on business?”

  “We are. How did you know it was my ship?”

  “Hamford is a small town. No one is anonymous here. Speaking of which, I’m Orin.” The man called Orin finally separated his gaze from the horizon and offered a hand.

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  Elias shook it. “Elias. Nice to meet you. Are you here on business as well?” He was making an assessment based on appearances.

  “Something like that, but my stay is probably longer than yours,” Orin said. Elias had not noticed it from afar, but now that he had the man’s attention, he got a better look at Orin’s narrow-set eyes. From one angle, they had seemed a simple blue. But up close, glimmering beneath those currents of cobalt, pale green shone through like a bed of jade.

  “I also hear you won The Emerald Cup,” Orin added. “Now that’s one hell of an achievement. As I mentioned, word travels fast here. As do you, apparently.”

  “We were hoping to make a timely business deal,” Elias explained, “but fast wasn’t fast enough.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Elias shrugged. “It actually kind of worked out in the end. We didn’t acquire what we came for, but we’re not walking away empty-handed.”

  “I’ve taken the route from Sailor’s Rise to Hamford myself on a few occasions,” Orin mentioned. “I was surprised you made it here so quickly, given when the race ended. You must have flown faster than any ship I’ve ever seen.”

  Elias was not sure what he was getting at. “We did just win The Emerald Cup,” he said. “Perhaps we are the fastest ship on the continent.”

  Orin smirked. “I thought maybe you knew some shortcut unbeknownst to me.”

  “It’s a pretty straight line through the air. The winds favored us, though still not enough.”

  “Ship racing is a hobby of yours, I take it?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I’m more of a collector myself. Old relics and such.”

  Their conversation quietly capsized at this tsunami of a revelation: a statement that would have been received as utterly innocuous by the common man—but that was, to Elias, an unbridled accusation. And yet how does one deny the charge without acknowledging the question asked?

  “Can’t say I’m much of a collector myself,” he attempted, trying to hide the rising panic in his voice. “Far too busy for hobbies, I suppose. I’ve always enjoyed drawing, though lately my focus has been on my business.”

  Had he said too much? Too little? Jalander had told him that the Valshynar had eyes everywhere, men and women stationed in cities all across the Great Continent. Even in Hamford, it would seem.

  “Forgive me.” Orin bowed an inch. “I thought I had recognized a kindred spirit.”

  “Just a businessman with a fast ship.”

  “I’m sure you’re more than that.”

  Elias had come here to relax, but relaxation was a distant island from his current vantage point. Aborting the situation seemed the safest route forward, and so he said, “It was nice to meet you,” turning his back to the ocean.

  He did not make it very far down the pebble beach before Orin asked after him, “Might I see that ring on your finger? Like I said, I’m a sucker for old relics.”

  Elias turned around without halting, growing the distance between them heel-first. “It’s nothing, merely an old memento from my father. Its only value is sentimental, I assure you. Have a pleasant afternoon.”

  Orin started walking after him. “I insist.”

  Elias stopped, but only because running would have been an outright admission of guilt. In his head, he reconstructed the case Orin must have built against him. The irony in all this was that The Sapphire Spirit had not been fast enough—or rather that Elias hadn’t been a skilled enough sky rift navigator—but from another, equally calculated perspective, their arrival had still come too soon. No doubt the man had also detected the green in his eyes, just as Elias had caught its hues in Orin’s. And now the ring. Had he already gotten a good look at it? A single oddity might be construed as coincidence, but three clues made a strong case, indeed.

  “You’ve gone rogue, haven’t you?” Orin said flatly.

  “I think you have mistaken me for a pirate, sir,” Elias asserted casually, though he could feel himself turning flush. Would his red face be the fourth and final red flag?

  Orin clearly had all the evidence he needed. “You know what I mean.”

  Elias only sort of did. “I’m minding my own business,” he said. “Maybe you should mind yours.”

  “Then let me see your ring.” He nodded toward it, coming ever closer.

  “I take it you’re no man of the law, and I have somewhere to be.”

  Orin picked up his pace as Elias could not quite decide between fight or flight, hoping that float was still an option. His hand hovered over his holstered pistol, his instinctual instrument of self-defense, though his rapier and parrying dagger hung from the other side of his waist, and he had gotten better at using both of them.

  Orin eyed his weapons, then the man to whom they were equipped. He had a sword of his own, a saber, ready to be unsheathed. “You’re coming with me,” he said, gripping its hilt.

  The consequences of coming with him flashed before Elias as he tried to imagine an entire second life in the few seconds he had to respond. Jalander had been crystal clear about this precise moment. If he came with Orin, if he was found out, there would be but one option on the table: to become one of them, to join the ranks of the Valshynar. To do what they say, to go where they go, to be as powerful as they wished—but no more powerful. But worst of all, Elias would have to give up everything he had built since coming to Sailor’s Rise. Not only his business but every relationship too. Bertrand. Briley. Any hope he still clung to with Abigail. Iric and Gabby and even the goddamn cat. All of them. Two years ago, he might have taken the offer, but now?

  “No,” Elias told him. “I’m not coming with you.”

  Orin unsheathed his saber. “Do not make this harder than it needs to be.”

  “It’s what I do,” Elias confessed.