The Meeting of Worlds

Newcomer

1260 AU/905 AR/2695 PL/3852 LC

Yonkeito, Aheiwa

Chajjara poured another cup of tea.

"You will not partake?"

Mau shook his head.

"Not at the moment. I'll stick to passion-juice." Especially with the sigil glowing on the bottom of the glass and keeping the juice lightly chilled. Bless the Salvian who invented that spell, unless it was one of Chajjara's ancestors.

"Bad manners not to sample your own merchandise," said Chajjara with a grin. "Offered freely to you, too."

"It is possible to have too much tea," grunted the Zanguenese merchant. He took a sip of his juice. Ah, nice and cool. Bliss. Cool in the heat, instead of warmth in the cold. The only way to live.

"You are by far the worst tea salesman I've ever met," remarked his friend, setting his tea down on the patio table.

"Oh, I don't know. You already bought the tea from me."

Chajjara laughed. "Ah, it's good to have you back on the island again."

He cracked a grin. "It's been too long. My circle has been really invested in trade with Qoldishtar. You know, I honestly didn't think those flame-crazy southern savages drank anything except blood soup and fermented moose milk, but there's always room for surprise."

"Always," echoed Chajjara.

Chajjara's mountain villa had a magnificent view of the harbour; maybe it was something in the air, but Mau could even make out the individual ships. There was his own, for example—a junk, of course, but one of high quality. Mau never really liked to be out of sight of his ship, and his friend respected that.

"So, what's been new on the island?"

The painter took a sip of his tea. "Another hurricane, just off the shore. The Hercuans are making a fuss again, trying to get the populace to convert." He scoffed. "As if. They've been Thavarayas for centuries. Babbling on about the redundancy of their gods isn't going to help." He took another sip. "Especially given the deflector that the Temple of Atwa was able to pull together against the hurricane. Prayers to their God weren't exactly helpful, regardless of what they say."

Mau raised an eyebrow. "This is regular stuff, Chajjara. What are you hiding?"

"Now, why would you think of that?" said Chajjara, perhaps just a little too innocently.

"Don't mess around. What's really going on?"

Chajjara pinched the bridge of his nose. "If you must know, we received a rather unusal crew of merchants in the harbour this year. Dark-skinned, but not brown like normal people, or coppery-red like you Zanguenese. More…golden."

"Golden men?" Mau scoffed. "Come on. That's just an old legend. 'Golden men in the far west of the world' and all that. What, and did they sail on golden ships too?"

Chajjara stared impassively at his friend. "You don't believe me?"

"I have my doubts, that's all."

"Take a look down at the harbour."

Mau scanned the bay below. "There's the Starsong. Couple of ships from Trei Men, twelve Salvian ships, a Hercuan dhow or three, lots of local vessels…what am I looking for, old friend?"

"Notice anything odd about the one on the far end? On your left, I mean."

Mau squinted. Come to think of it, there was an odd ship—large enough but flatter than he'd expect, and with an odd squared sail that seemed to mix elements of junk and dhow. And it was just possible, from this distance, to make out—

"Can you…?"

Chajjara nodded, then pressed one of the flat beads on the bracelet he wore and muttered a spell. Mau felt his eyes narrowing in on the ship, even though everything else was still clearly there. Just…out of focus.

(There were benefits to being friends with a Salvian.)

"Are those eyes on the side?"

Beside him, Chajjara grinned.

"Odd, isn't it? Never seen that done before. Come to think of it, I've never seen a ship made of that wood before."

"This is…" Mau paused. "You'd think it would have been the talk of the dock."

"The Temple got involved," said his friend, by way of apologetic explanation. "A mild enough spell, but it keeps the visitors from being seen if we don't want them to be." He must have seen the expression on Mau's face, because he added, "It's just standard practice, you know that, they probably put the spell on you when your ship docked. It's not like we're hiding that they're there."

"Just making it bloody hard for us to actually locate things," muttered the merchant.

"Come, now, I just showed you the ship, didn't I? I think I can also see about arranging a meeting with them, if you would like."

Which, in Salvian, meant something along the lines of: I've already done set it up. You want to trade? Consider it done. In exchange, please want to trade.

Mau sighed, and leaned back in his chair. "Anything I should know about them before we meet?"

"They claim to be from a country called—ah, I can't pronounce it, give me a moment—" Chajjara fumbled with another couple of beads and muttered another spell, and a light, slightly nasal voice said "Irthiron" in the air.

"À seh lohn?"

"Something like it, anyway. It's a large island off to the northwest. They worship personalized quinternities of gods but insist that they don't do any magic, which is a little odd. They're not too bright—didn't even bother learning the local language—"

"You didn't bother learning the local language. You just use that translation spell."

"I'm an artist, I don't have time to worry about learning languages. Anyway, they don't even seem to have developed beyond crossbows yet, and they're well-overdressed for this weather. But they know about the Telepath Dominions, and Bamboo Island, and they know about the Ashenacom. Remember, those camel-riding zealots? Apparently they've just broken free of their empire."

"Hmm," said Mau.

"Oh, and they have silk to trade."

"Silk?" Now this was interesting. "Where would they get silk from? I thought it only grew in western Kiram."

"And on their island, it seems." Chajjara touched a bead and made a gesture, and a sheer white dress floated through the air towards them, rippling like a ghost in the wind. "I told you, I'm an artist. And as such considered one of my people least likely to want to trade with alien sailors. They gave me this as a gift for a lady friend."

"Have you got a lady friend at the moment?"

Chajjara grinned his shiny-toothed grin. "I plan to."

"Loit-chouh."

"I'm taking that as an expression of flattery. So…might you be available for dinner tonight? I have a few other guests, but I'm sure you'll get along just fine."

Blast. A tempting proposition. And he really did need to get his cargo back on track after the frankly disastrous sales pitch in Qoldishtar.

"It may be worth a try," he said, which was Zanguenese for: I'm interested. "But I have my doubts. Even if they do have silk, what are the odds a bunch of primitive islanders would be willing to trade it for something like tea?"