Kael stood on the quay holding a steaming cup of coffee. A gentle rustle sounded as the chains draped from his shoulder caught the wind.
"Valerian Eireindaile?"
Kael turned and extended a hand. "In the flesh."
An old man in a captain's hat shook it.
"Someone of your standing really shouldn't be making this trip." He said it sincerely.
Kael waved a hand and smiled. "Please. Don't mention it."
He had spent some time considering how to get north when word of the expedition reached him. Every year, Luminaires boarded this vessel to search the northern reaches. The reason had changed over the centuries but the tradition hadn't.
It had started with a rumour, as most traditions do. Many thousands of years ago someone claimed to have found evidence of an inheritance left behind by Serene Moon Demon Paragon. The Inheritance of Serene Moon Demon Paragon does not belong to the one who finds it. It belongs to the one it has already decided upon. Were the words.
At first the expeditions drew people with genuine conviction. Luminaires and mortals who believed luck had already chosen them, who wanted to test that belief. But as the years passed without result the conviction gave way to tradition, and tradition gave way to something closer to a grand annual gamble. They went for the journey, for the scenery, and for the story to bring home. But underneath all of that they went because some distant part of them wondered if this might be the year. If they might be the one.
Kael supposed Serene Moon Demon Paragon would have found that either deeply amusing or entirely predictable.
Probably both. But really, how could he know.
Kael had come for none of those reasons.
He needed to go north and find Rosalie. The new scenery and the change of pace were welcome additions, nothing more.
"How long does the trip usually take?"
The old man removed his hat and fanned himself with it, squinting at the clouds.
"Well. If the weather is on our side, a few months?"
Kael followed his gaze upward.
"I'll be in your care then."
The man shook his head, flustered.
He and his employed crew were probably the only mortals aboard.
The ship itself was impressive despite its age. Three masts, each carrying a white sail large enough to cover a street. It could hold close to a hundred people including staff.
The deck was already filling with low ranking Luminaires when Kael stepped on. The vessel had started its life as a merchant ship before being refitted for leisure, adding private rooms, open tables, and somewhere below deck a bar and a high end restaurant that everyone aboard would inevitably use. All inclusive, and at around twenty mindstones per person.
Not much to him anymore. But for some of the Luminaires boarding around him it was probably the most they had ever spent on enjoyment in a single transaction.
Kael ignored them and made his way to the lower deck.
When he opened the door a high pitched shriek echoed and a platinum haired girl fell from her bed onto the floor.
"What— What are you doing in here?!"
Kael tossed his gloves onto the upper bunk.
"There were more passengers than usual this time. The captain asked me to come here." He looked around the small room. "We're sharing."
His eyes moved over her briefly.
Glacial eyes, the same shade as his own. Hair so white it bordered on platinum. Fair complexion, small build. And approximately his age, which was the detail that settled on him with the most weight. He wouldn't be able to avoid conversation.
He glanced at her shoulder and sighed inwardly.
A family crest depicting a silver willow.
The captain had made a point of putting the nobles together.
He extended a hand.
"Valerian Eireindaile."
She froze for a fraction of a second when she noticed his crest, then visibly relaxed.
"Yvette Whitlock." She shook his hand.
When they had finally settled around each other the door creaked open again.
A young man their age stepped in and looked around with an awkward smile. Brown hair, styled but not overly so. Matching brown eyes.
"Hey. You guys too?"
Kael stopped himself from pinching the bridge of his nose. Another noble.
He dropped down and shook the hand, introducing himself again.
'Keiran Redgrave.'
He noted the name.
There was always an undercurrent of tension when peer nobles met for the first time, each one secretly assessing the other's crest and rank and what both implied. But it didn't take long for that to ease here. For now this was closer to a holiday than anything else, with none of the politics or expectations that usually came with the status.
Kael left the two of them and made his way up to the deck.
The ship had only just departed but Sole was already a distant speck on the horizon. Seagulls circled overhead and dove occasionally whenever the propeller displaced something worth eating below the surface.
He took a deep breath.
This was a considerably superior way of crossing the ocean than walking.
Kael found a lone chair near the stern and sat down. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
Sole was many times more exhausting than Velthoria had been. That was counterintuitive enough to be worth examining.
In Velthoria his life had been on the line constantly. The pressure had been total and the decisions had been desperate and somehow that had produced something close to a flow state. No choice was complicated because the immediate stakes made everything obvious. Survive. Don't. The simplicity of it had its own terrible clarity.
Now, with no real pressure except the assassins and the politics, he was adrift in possibility. He could focus on refinement. He could develop the shops. He could pursue the secondary pathway, the Asterite blade, the Obsidian Shard recipe, the coin and whoever sent it. There was no obvious next move because every move was available simultaneously. That abundance was, surprisingly, more taxing than any single threat had ever been.
He rolled the silver coin between his fingers.
Of course, he would never choose Velthoria again. His progress looked slower without the rapid forced advancements that crisis produced, but the foundation he was building now was incomparably stronger. And he was a different person than the one who had arrived there. Not just in capability but in understanding too.
When the stars had replaced the blue Kael made his way to the quarterdeck.
"I never got your name."
The old man let out a startled laugh. "Alfred."
Kael walked over and leaned against the rail beside him.
"Have you been sailing long?"
"I was born on the ocean. My mother always said those born on it would never have to fear it." He laughed quietly. "I've grown wiser than that. What about you?"
Kael looked at him for a moment.
Unusually candid for a mortal speaking to a noble. But Alfred was at the age where people had decided they'd had enough of caution, and the bottle loosely held in his other hand made that even more legible.
"How do you know we're heading north?" Kael asked after a while.
Alfred reached to his side and produced a device.
"A sextant. Heard of it?"
He placed it carefully into Kael's hands.
"Hold it steady. Now find a star."
Kael raised it toward the sky.
"Through the glass you'll see its reflection. Turn the small screw until the star appears to touch the horizon."
Kael adjusted it slowly.
"Good. Now read the angle."
"Thirty two degrees."
Alfred nodded. "That angle tells us the star's height above the horizon. With the right star and the right time, we can use it to find exactly where we are on the ocean."
Kael lowered the sextant and looked up at the countless stars above them.
"Interesting."
He raised it again.
It was a precise instrument. Elegant because they had been refined by necessity over a long time. No mote had produced this. A mortal had, through the patience that came from needing to know where you were in the middle of an ocean or dying for it.
He sometimes wondered how far humanity would have advanced if motes had never existed. Not in terms of power, but in terms of knowledge. Every tool built before motes had required someone to sit with a problem long enough to solve it through careful measurements. The sextant was one such solution. Whole branches of knowledge that had been abandoned the moment a mote could approximate the same result with less effort.
But approximation wasn't the same as understanding. A mote that let you navigate wasn't the same as knowing why the mathematics of star angles corresponded to position on a curved surface. One gave you the answer and the other gave you the principle behind the answer, which meant you could derive new answers from it indefinitely.
Motes had made certain questions unnecessary. And unnecessary questions had stopped being asked. And somewhere in the questions that stopped being asked were probably answers that would have helped even Luminaires, if anyone had thought to keep asking them.
He handed the sextant back to Alfred.
"How long did it take you to learn to read it?"
"Couldn't say. I was holding a sextant before I learned to walk."
Kael gave a nod and turned his gaze back to the stars.
Not long after, Yvette came rushing up from the lower deck. She made it to the rail, leaned over and puked. Then she slid down onto the deck, pale as a sheet, and looked up to find Kael watching.
Horror crossed her face.
Before she could say anything Keiran came running out and took the rail beside her, doing exactly the same thing.
Alfred said nothing. But his shoulders shook.