Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Six — Have You Tried Asking?
Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Six — Have You Tried Asking? “So, how are we going to do this?” I asked.“That depends,” Amaryllis said. Her head feathers were still dripping a little, even though she’d just patted her head down with a towel a moment ago. I wasn’t so dry myself-I strapped my breastplate on and it felt a bit humid. Cleaning magic wasn’t drying magic, that was a whole other thing.“Depends on what?” I asked.Amaryllis closed her locket and turned towards me. “It depends on how seriously we want to take this little side-mission of Sylvie’s.”“Well,” I said as I tilted my head to the side and cleaned out my (human) ear with my pinkie. “I think she wasn’t lying about the cargo thing. It doesn’t sound all that complicated. Go to the port, ask around, discover why the cargo’s missing, then ask the people there to send it back to the grenoil.”“I don’t think it will be that simple,” Amaryllis warned.“Ah, it could be many things,” Awen said. She seemed to be feeling a little bit better now that she was all dressed up and ready to go. The bathhouse might have strained her social skills a little; she was a bit of an introvert. “But, ah, we won’t know what those things are until we go and look.”I bobbed my head up and down. “Awen has a good point, we’ll never find out if we don’t go and check things out on our own.”Amaryllis shrugged, “Then we go and find out. I feel like we’re moving without much knowledge on our side though. This doesn’t tell us much.” She waved the stack of papers that the secretary had given us. There were maybe four pages in all, most of them copies of forms and contracts that used a lot of words to say very little. They did have the cargo’s information though, dock numbers, manifests, and the supposed port of arrival.“It’s a start,” I said. “Come on, it’s still early in the day. Maybe once we’re done we can do a little bit of sight-seeing? We keep getting sidetracked from playing tourist.”“It’s hardly a priority to go around and gawk,” Amaryllis said. “Besides, once you’ve seen one sylph building, you’ve seen them all. A box is a box.”I held back a giggle, because while it was funny-and not entirely wrong, the sylph did like their straight angles-it wasn’t terribly nice to mock an entire nation’s architectural style like that. I was sure they had good reasons to build everything in such a square way.We exited the bathhouse, and after a bit of chatting to figure out which way was which, headed out towards the outer edge of Goldenalden.The port that the cargo was supposed to be at wasn’t the same one we had arrived at. There were a few ports around the edge of the city, and we were heading to one that was further in, past the red district to the south.The further we travelled, the more the city changed, especially as we moved past the first set of walls and into the next district. The buildings of Goldenalden were clearly all kept at a decent level of repair, but as we left the center of the city, there were still signs that maybe there wasn’t as much maintenance going on.There were also fewer and fewer non-sylph the further from the purple district we moved. I started to feel a bit uncomfortable from all the strange looks we were getting from the sylph we crossed.It had to be worse for Amaryllis. While I got curious glances, she got outright glares and hostile glances. Some sylph kids would point to her and then run off screaming when we approached.It wasn’t very nice to see, really. They didn’t know Amaryllis except that she was a harpy and they were being kind of rude. Then again, Amaryllis could be a bit rude right back, which probably wouldn’t help things if they did actually try to talk to her.We arrived on the edge of the port soon enough, a part of the city that was quite busy. Carts moved by, tugged along by big draft horses or smaller donkeys or even strange goats of all things.Because of the way that Goldenalden was placed right on the side of a mountain, it meant that large sections of the city were much lower than the parts above. The airship port used that to its full advantage, with the shear wall used as free space from which they could build big docks where ships were parked.A few larger, boxier vessels were moving into the port even as we approached, one of them being guided in by a tugboat.“That looks like the right spot,” Amaryllis said. She gestured to a lighthouse sticking out of the side of the port, with a domed roof that had some complex assembly of mirrors and reflectors on gantries being worked by a pair of sylph. A sort of longer-range signalling device, I guessed. The bottom half of the tower looked more like an office building, with brick walls and windows all over looking into older-style offices.“It says Port Authority on the side,” Awen said.“Good enough for me,” I said.We crossed a busy road-after looking both ways, of course-then moved across the equally busy yard to the port authority. There were a couple of dozen large warehouses not too far away, many of them with their doors open and cargo flowing in and out nearly constantly. I imagined that maybe the things we were looking for were in one of those.We stepped into the port authority. The lobby was a tight little spot, with a counter at the end blocking off the rest of the room from the entrance. Sylph in officewear were moving about, shuffling papers over and generally looking quite busy.“Broccoli, you might want to do the talking here,” Amaryllis said.“Are you sure?” I asked.“I am,” Amaryllis said. “I have the impression that the sylph here aren’t the well-bred and polite sort that we’ve been dealing with so far.”The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.“Oh,” I said. That was disheartening to hear. Then again, it was just a hunch on Amaryllis’ part, maybe things weren’t nearly so bad.I walked up to the counter at the front. Unfortunately, it wasn’t occupied. That was, until I flagged down a passing office worker with a wave. “Hello?” he asked.“Hi,” I said. I decided that maybe things would be better if the office worker thought I was someone a little more important than just plain-old Broccoli Bunch. People in general tended to be a little more responsive and respectful to people they thought were in charge of things. It wasn’t great, but that’s how a lot of people acted. “I’m Captain Bunch, of the Beaver Cleaver, and I’m here because I’m looking for some cargo that I think was misplaced.”“Huh,” the office sylph said. “You’ll want to take that up with Isaac. Second floor, near the back.”“Thanks,” I said.He darted off, continuing on with whatever work was on his plate. I glanced to my friends, got a few shrugs in response, then moved around the counter and towards a stairwell at the back. We didn’t make it far before a sylph lady with a mean looking scowl intercepted us. “Where are you going?” she asked.“Uh, to the second floor?” I said. I probably didn’t sound all that certain, which was fair seeing as I wasn’t. “To see a Mister Isaac about some missing cargo.”“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.“Do we need one?”“Obviously,” she snapped.“Cool! Can I get an appointment then?” I asked. I tried to smile to make sure she didn’t feel slighted.I don’t think it worked. “Your sort are always barging in where you don’t belong,” she muttered. “You can get an appointment by mail. Do you know how to write?”I worked my jaw. That hadn’t been nice at all. “I think I’ll just take my chances and go check to see if he’s busy or not. It'll be faster that way.”“I’ll call security,” she said.I blinked at her. “I thought you might be trying to help us at first, but you’re really not. Don’t you have better things to do?”That was apparently not the right thing to say, because the sylph lady became extra snippy and stomped off. “I will be getting security,” she snapped as a parting shot.“Awa, we should probably go upstairs faster,” Awen said.“Good idea,” I said. “I could probably have handled that better.”“I was about to use some magic to tie her beak shut and puppet her into a closet,” Amaryllis said.I considered it for a moment. “That would be a lot ruder than what I said, I think. Also, probably illegal.”“Yes, but it would have taught her an important lesson about the value of being polite to strangers. Did you see her level? She had no business being so rude to three people who outmatch her so completely.”“Amaryllis, you know that judging people just based on their strength isn’t nice.”“It’s not about being nice, it’s about having common sense,” Amaryllis said.The second floor was the same as the first, a big open-floor office broken up by pillars here and there. There were lots of filing cabinets and entire rooms to the side filled with properly organized stacks of paper.I stopped a younger sylph who was walking by and asked him to point us towards Isaac’s office. That turned out to be an office way out on the other end of the floor. It had a door, but it was held open, probably because of all the sylph slipping in and out of the room.A bigger sylph was plopped behind a huge desk, imperiously looking over pages and pages of notes and manifests that others placed before him. He’d sign them, sometimes make a note, and occasionally he’d bark something to the sylph who’d given him the page before they ran off again.“Maybe you two should wait out here,” I said. It looked a little cramped in there.“Sure,” Amaryllis said. “We’ll keep an eye out. Scream if you need some help.”I nodded and slid into the room. At a guess, mister Isaac was the sylph in charge. The pages he was taking were cargo manifests. He seemed to be the equivalent of a living computer, though I’d never seen a computer dress someone down for making a mistake before.When it was my turn I stepped up to his desk, placed the papers with the information for our cargo down before him, then smiled as best I could. “We’re looking for this,” I said.He stared at the page, then brought his head up. “Who in the world are you?” he snapped.“Captain Bunch,” I said. “I’m here on behalf of the grenoil embassy. Their cargo seems to have been misplaced so I’m, ah, investigating.”“Are you even allowed to be here?”“Would I be here if I wasn’t allowed to be?” I asked. The answer was yes, yes I would be there if I wasn’t allowed to be because that was probably the case.He stabbed a finger on the page. “Warehouse seventy-four. If it’s not there, the Mitchhum family probably stole it, that’s their area.” He shoved the paper forwards. “Now go, some people are working here.”“Thanks!” I said as I took the pages back. Warehouse seventy-four, that seemed easy enough to find.“Broccoli,” Amaryllis said as she barged in.“More weirdos,” Mister Isaac muttered.“We have company, the security kind,” Amaryllis said.“Oh, shoot.” I looked around the office. There was a window at the back. A glance down revealed that it was a two floor drop to the ground below. I’d fallen from way higher. “Awen, come in my arms, Amaryllis, can you glide down?”“Sure,” she said.Isaac protested as we opened his window. I was apologizing the entire time.Awen clung onto me as we hopped out of the window and made our escape. Now we just had to find the cargo. Easy-peasy!
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Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Seven — Haystack
Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy-Seven — Haystack “This is neither easy nor peasy,” I complained.The area with warehouses was way, way worse than I had imagined. I thought it would be a few rows of warehouses, with the interiors filled with all the cargo passing through the port. But I was wrong.Instead, there were several rows of warehouses, with warehouses above them, and then some warehouses below them too. The sylph had a whole system of elevators, cranes, and scaffolds so that they could use the limited space they had to maximum effect.That meant that everything was a whole complex array of passages, ramps, and lifts, with carts being pushed around all over by sylph who weren’t usually in a good mood when we happened to step into their way.The warehouses had nice big numbers next to their doors, which was helpful.Less helpful was the way the warehouses started at forty-two, went to sixty-seven, then had single digits beyond that for a bit. Some even had letters at the end, for some inexplicable reason.“And the sylph claim to be sophisticated,” Amaryllis muttered.“Maybe there’s some sort of logic to the system that we, ah, just don’t get?” I tried.“I think the warehouses were numbered as they were built,” Awen said. She pointed across the street and down. The road, which was really more of a grated catwalk, ended at a set of rails, and we could see down a couple of floors across. “The bottom floors are all lower numbers, and they tend to go up.”She was right, the warehouse across from us went from thirteen, to fourteen, to sixteen, to twenty-one.“So they’re always rising in number, but they don’t have odd or even sorting, and the numbers sometimes skip a few,” I said.That had nothing on the warehouses who had multiple numbers next to their doors, for some unfathomable reason.“Alright, enough of this.” I walked away from my friends for a moment and flagged down a passing sylph. He had a hardhat on, and a sort of yellowish tabard over plain clothes. “Excuse me, sir. Could you point us towards warehouse number seventy-four please?”“Huh?” he asked. Then he pointed towards the far end of the street. “That way, left, then right at warehouse one-one-one.”“Thanks!” I called after him. That had been easier than I expected. “Come on!”We navigated around the maze of warehouses, and I realized that I didn’t ask which level warehouse seventy-four was on. That was a bit of a mistake, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, not unless I flagged someone else down, and I really didn’t want to interrupt another worker. None of the sylph on the roads were idling either, it was impressive. Or maybe they just had their own little corners for relaxing?We had to go down a level when we came upon a block in the road, then back up around the next intersection.Warehouse one-one-one was easy enough to find, the three numbers being painted all up the side of the building.“There it is!” Awen said as she pointed ahead and down.We were a floor above the closed doors of warehouse seventy-four, which meant we had to backtrack to the nearest elevator, then go down a floor and back to where we’d been.In the end, the three of us stood in front of a pair of wide doors, hanging in place on a set of coasters. There was a smaller door next to the main entrance, so I walked over to it and knocked.Nothing happened.“Well, this isn’t great,” I said. “Maybe we can come back tomorrow? We know more or less where it is, now.”“And lose another half-day?” Amaryllis asked. “I bet I can blow that smaller door right off its hinges.”“That would be a crime,” I said.“And noisy,” Awen said.I nodded along with her.“I could pick the lock, I think,” she went on.I stopped nodding. “Awen!”Awen shrugged. “I don’t want to have to come back either.”“You two are giving into the idea that crime solves problems way too easily.”“If we’re not going to break in, then we can at least check things out inside, right?” Amaryllis said.“I... guess, but it’s locked up,” I said.“Just here. Look at the side, they have vents,” Amaryllis said.I moved to the side a little, and in the space between the two warehouses, where a lot of junk was collecting at the bottom, was a small sort of alleyway. The warehouses did have vents on their sides. “That would still be breaking in,” I said.Amaryllis rolled her eyes. “Fine. The warehouse above isn’t locked up, we’ll see if there’s a staircase or something.”I nodded. That would be better. That way we could at least say that we were just looking for the grenoil cargo, without breaking and entering. Just... entering. I was pretty sure that wasn’t as bad of a thing to do. It wasn’t like anyone lived in the warehouse.So, we went all the way back to the elevator, then back up a floor, and then back to warehouse number seventy-seven, which was just above our target.Amaryllis grabbed my arm and had us wait as a group of sylph left the warehouse with a couple of empty carts.“Are you stopping me from walking into a busy warehouse because you don’t want to raise suspicions?” I asked.“Yes,” Amaryllis said. “That’s exactly right.”“That doesn’t sound all that nice of you, Amaryllis. If we were allowed to be there we wouldn’t need to be sneaky about it.”“Oh no, please don’t act sneaky. There’s nothing worse than looking suspicious to attract undue attention. Just walk as if you’re allowed to be there.”Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.“Implying that we’re not,” I said.Amaryllis patted my head with her talons. “Just follow along and don’t ask any difficult questions.”I pouted as I followed Amaryllis into the warehouse. She really was walking as if she owned the place. Awen didn’t quite have that level of birdy swagger, but she did make an effort not to hunch her back as she walked, and was looking around with open curiosity as we stepped into a wide room, filled with rows of shelves where boxes and crates were resting.“They use tags,” Awen said.I followed her gaze and noticed a long tag stapled to the side of one of the crates. The paper was yellowish and looked pretty cheap, and the stamps on it were a bit faded, but they were still legible.“Maybe the tags on the grenoil boxes fell off?” I asked. “It might explain why they got lost.”“Maybe,” Amaryllis said. “But I’m loath to attribute to stupidity what could be attributed to maliciousness.”“Doesn’t that expression usually go the other way around?”Amaryllis didn’t reply. We moved past the entrance, and immediately turned right and away from the brightly lit entrance. The warehouse wasn’t all that wide, really. It was more tall and deep, with three main rows of shelves and a lot of boxes stacked up on the ground between them.Amaryllis snapped her talons and summoned a small ball of swirling mana that she used to light the path ahead. Awen did the same next to me.I focused, nose scrunching up hard, and managed to make a small light of my own. It wasn’t all that bright, but combined with my friend’s light it was more than enough to see the stacks as we moved into them.The floor was wooden planks, and a glance at the ceiling above revealed that they’d used entire tree trunks as joists. I figured the warehouses probably got pretty heavy when they were full, so they had to build in consequence of that.“Here,” Amaryllis said. She gestured ahead to a part of the floor at the very very back where there was a hatch.“It looks a little dusty,” Awen said as we came closer. She knelt down and grabbed a ring from off the ground before tugging it up. The hatch shifted, barely, then refused to budge. “Heavy.”“Maybe if the three of us worked on it?” I asked. Awen let go and backed up while Amaryllis and I both grabbed the ring and pulled.“Pull harder,” Amaryllis grunted.I let go of my magical light and grabbed the ring in both hands.I pushed stamina into my legs and lower back, then really gave it my all. Amaryllis groaned next to me, and together we got the hatch to lift, little by little, until it was nearly ten centimetres open.Then my hands slipped and the whole thing crashed down with a whump.Amaryllis coughed, and I pushed some Cleaning magic out to clear the dust we’d kicked up. “You know, Awen, maybe if all three of us lifted,” Amaryllis said.Awen stepped up between us, a large metal clasp in hand, and hooked it to the hatch’s loop. There was a chain on the clasp that ran up to the ceiling. I followed it up with my gaze to a pulley block above, then back down to a large locking wheel on the far wall.Awen began cranking the wheel with one hand, and the hatch started to rise.“Or you could do that, that is also helpful,” Amaryllis said, a bit sheepishly.I glanced down the hole leading to the floor below. The hatch was obviously large enough to let some cargo pass down, probably using the pulley system that Awen had found. That meant that there wasn’t a ladder or anything to get down by. The sylph workers probably just flew up if they needed to.The bottom was only four meters or so down, so I sat on the edge of the hole, then scooted forwards. “I’ll check for a ladder,” I said before dropping.I landed with a heavy thump on the wooden floor below, then created a small light to see by. More shelves, with more crates, though a lot less than we’d found on the floor above.There was also a distinct lack of ladders with which to help Awen and Amaryllis down.A chain rattled from above and came to a stop at about head-height. I looked up, hand raising to illuminate the ceiling, and Awen’s legs as she crawled backwards down the hatch.Amaryllis leapt down next to her, wings spread to catch the air and magic roiling below her to create a sort of cushion just before she landed talon-first next to me.Awen hopped down and sighed. “That was harder than I thought,” she said.“Sorry, I should have carried you down.”She shook her head. “It’s okay. I like figuring out my own solution now. It... it’s good.”I laughed. “Okay then. But if you ever do need help, then you know you can ask, right?”She nodded, very seriously.As long as she knew that. I grabbed the manifest and hovered my light above it so that I could actually read it. “Ah, more numbers and letters,” I said.Amaryllis moved closer and peeked over my shoulder to read the list too. “Great, we’ll have to walk all over to find that. If it’s even actually here.”“If what is in here? Trespassers? Because there are plenty of those.”All three of us jumped, and I flashed my light towards the corner.A rather scruffy pair of sylph were standing there, looking mighty displeased about our presence.“Who are you?” Amaryllis asked.“We could ask the same!” the sylph said.Then the door at the very far end of the warehouse slid open so fast it banged against the wall. “This is warehouse security! Come out with your hands raised!” someone screamed from just outside.“Oh no,” said the sylphs partially obscured in the shadows.“Oh no,” I agreed.
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