Chapter Four Hundred and Thirty — Balancing the Budget
Chapter Four Hundred and Thirty — Balancing the Budget Once we were docked, I let Amaryllis deal with the port authority. The Shady Lady had to be untied just before we came in for a landing, and it was now being moored into place right next to the Beaver. We were actually sharing a docking spot since the Lady was so much smaller than a normal ship. It only made sense to cram her in between the Beaver and the pier.A longer gangway was brought out and hooked onto the Beaver’s side, just a bit away from the crunched-up section of railings to our side. Once we were properly locked into place, a grenoil in a dockmaster’s uniform came up the ramp and greeted Amaryllis.I left them to it, vaguely aware of their relative positions at the back of my mind. First, I had to check out a few things. I pulled out a clipboard from the captain’s office and went to the kitchen to make note of what was left in the pantry. That didn’t take long, because we were running low on just about everything.It was impressive how much a few people could eat. It wasn’t like we could pop over to a corner store mid-flight to pick up some snacks or anything, and we were all pretty active. Between shipboard duties and training and that big fight with the pirates... well, we were all burning whatever calories we were taking in.I made a note to make sure everyone ate well while in port. The restaurants and such here would have much better food than what we could prepare on the Beaver.“We need a cook,” I muttered to myself as I checked the washroom. There were a few things we’d need for there too, toiletries and such that we’d used up.After that it was over and across to the engineering section of the ship, where I found Awen idly tinkering with something. “Broccoli?” she asked as I came in. I didn’t spend all that much time down here. The room smelled like Awen; oil and grease and lubricants. She'd secured a glass jar to the low ceiling and imprisoned a lightball in it, and there were small portholes in the compartments' walls, but it simply wasn't enough — the room was dim, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust.“Hi!” I said. “I’m going around and checking on our supplies. We’ll probably be in Port Royal for a while, so we should stock up while we can.”“Oh, that’s a good idea,” she said. “I’m missing a lot of little things.”I bobbed my head. “I figured as much. What sort of stuff?” I raised my clipboard to take notes.Then Awen bombarded me with a list that I was pretty sure wouldn’t fit on my page. Screws of four different sizes, nuts, bolts, some cloth for the sails, a different kind for the balloon, a few parts for different places on the ship. We had emptied out a lot of our patching supplies and needed glue and leather strips, and ropes. My head was almost starting to spin before I raised a hand to slow Awen down.“My hand is cramping,” I said.“Ah,” she replied. “Is it too much?”“Not at all. If we need this stuff, then we need it, no getting around it.” The individual things probably didn’t cost much. How much were screws? A few copper for a handful? All together it probably added up, but we had a budget for maintenance and it only made sense that we’d need extra after everything that happened. “How about we take a day this week to go out parts shopping?” I asked.“That would be nice,” Awen said. “I’ll need a few things sooner rather than later, though.”“Mhm, that makes sense. We can always head out and buy a few things from the docks, I think.”“They’ll charge extra,” Awen warned.“Ah, then just the things we really need in the short term, then. We have a while to fix the Beaver up. He’s gone through a lot.”Awen nodded. “Oh, I’ll need paint, too.”“Paint? I think there’s a bucket or two somewhere.” My ears twitched, and I kind of just knew that we had some buckets over in a cupboard in the crew quarters. The same paint I’d used to give the hull a fresh coat of sunshine yellow.“Awa, we need to mark our kills.”I blinked. “Huh?”“The sylph do it,” Awen said. “On the front of their warships. They have a tally. We won against three pirates, right? I think the pirates had those kinds of markings too.”I puffed my cheeks out, that sounded... well, I wasn’t sure if it was bad or not. I certainly hadn’t noticed those kinds of markings on the pirate ships, but I also hadn’t been looking. Maybe if we had a few notches the pirates would have thought better than to pick a fight with us. “Well, I can’t say it doesn’t sound cool,” I said.Awen grinned. “Red paint?”“Can’t we make them nice, cute marks?” I asked. “Flowers, maybe?”“No Broccoli, I think kill notches need to be a bit intimidating.”“Flowers can be,” I argued.Awen giggled, then flushed at her own giggling. She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Sorry.”“Hmph, well, fine. I need to get back up. There’s still work to do!” I gave Awen a hug, because I felt like it, and hugs were the best way to give temporary good-byes, then I headed back onto the deck where I ran into Clive who was chatting with the rest of the crew. “Clive! I’m making a list of things we need. Can you think of anything?”Clive narrowed his eyes and thought about it very seriously for a few good seconds. “Yes, yes, there’s somethin’,” he finally said.“What’s that?”“I need some tobacco for my pipe,” he said.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.I blinked. “Uh... okay.” I added it to the list.“We should get some beer too,” Joe added.“Rum!”“Grog!”I shook my head. I didn’t mind that we had that kind of stuff on the Beaver. It was fine to have it, and I wasn’t going to belittle someone for liking that kind of stuff, but I wasn’t going to put it above food on the list. “I’ll see what we can do,” I said.With my list created, I headed over to the gangway where Amaryllis was just saying goodbye to the docking official.“How did it go?” I asked.“Not bad,” she said while looking at a sheet he’d given her. “Rates here are a little higher than elsewhere. Not too badly so, but there’s a dragon tax that almost doubles the cost for a berth.”“A dragon tax, huh?” I leaned over, trying to see the page. There was a docking fee, then a few other fees, and at the bottom a “Draconic Protection Fee.” “The total’s not that bad,” I said. If I remembered correctly, it was about the same as what we paid in the Snowlands.“He mentioned that they lowered their fees as much as they could. The dragon tax is a flat doubling of the cost, and if they kept the rates at what they used to be, no one would use the port.”“That must be tough,” I said. Some of the fees were there to make the port some profit, but at a well-managed port a lot of those fees would be used up paying for workers and maintenance and buying new equipment to keep the port up to date.Amaryllis shrugged. “I think they’re managing.”I’d noticed that well over half the berths in the port were filled when we came in, and there was plenty of traffic in the air, so the port couldn’t be doing that poorly. “Well, I guess there’s not too much we can do about it.”“It’s something,” Amaryllis said. “I don’t think it’s a big concern yet, but we should be careful about it anyway. So, what’s the plan for the rest of the day?”It wasn’t too late in the day, the sun was overhead, though there was a layer of greyish clouds forming above. Deepmarsh was a humid, rainy place, so that wasn’t all that surprising. “I have a heap of things I want to get done. Do you think we should do some sort of guard rotation on the Beaver?”“This is probably one of the safest ports outside of the Harpy Mountains,” Amaryllis said.“Really?”“Broccoli, there’s a Dragon tax. No one is going to try to steal from a dragon. And if our ship is stolen or damaged, that’ll cut into the dragon’s margins. You saw what Cholondee did to those pirates. I bet we could leave the Beaver entirely unattended and it would be fine. Not that I’d actually chance it.”“Oh, okay then,” I said. “Well, in that case, I think we should split up into friend groups!”“Friend groups?” Amaryllis asked.“Like teams, but friends.”She rolled her eyes, but her huff told me that she knew what I meant, even if she found it a teensy bit silly.“You can be in my friend group, if you want!” I said. “I want to go visit Booksie’s shop, to see if she’s there. And I have this long list of stuff to buy for the Beaver too.”Amaryllis reached for my clipboard and I handed it over. She scanned through the list, nodding along until she came to the end. “These are snacks for the crew,” she said.“Yes?”“And you think these are necessary? We’re working on a budget, you know.”“I think it’s important. We need to keep morale up, and snacks work for me.” She looked up, clearly wanting some clarification on that. “When I’m sad, I like eating comfy food.”She shook her head. “Right, I suppose it’s not a terrible idea. And it can’t be all that expensive. But Broccoli, you are aware that we haven’t made a copper penny in weeks, right?”“Huh?”“We’ve been spending money left and right and hardly made any. The gold we earned in Sylphfree was impressive, certainly, more than I expected us to earn in a long time, but we are spending more than we’re earning now.”“So you’re saying the Beaver needs to work?”“The repairs will set us back a little.” she shook the clipboard. “These things won’t be free. Then there’s paying the crew, fuel, docking fees. We started with a decent amount of gold for the trip, then we earned a lot more in Sylphfree, enough to keep us aloft for another couple of years, but only if we’re careful about our spending.”“Okay,” I said. “Maybe a visit to the Exploration Guild, then? We can check it for quests that we can do.”“That’s not a bad idea. Once we know our next destination, we might want to look into carrying some cargo. Just enough to negate the cost of the trip.”I gasped. “We could have passengers!”“The ship... is equipped for that. But we’re using most of most of the rooms that passengers would take for ourselves. We have room for a couple of people, I suppose.”I grinned. “We’ll make friends, and coins, and get to where we need to go. It’s kind of perfect!”“I’ll see who wants to stay and who wants shore leave. We don’t know how long we’ll be here for, so do we want to make a simple all-day rotation, or should we do half days?”“Ah, I think alternating half-days might be best? One group gets the morning off, then they stay with the Beaver that night. The next day we can switch it around.” That way everyone would get some evenings and mornings off, alternating every day. That’d give everyone a chance to have fun in Port Royal. “Oh, and we need to see about paying everyone.”“Right, let’s get that sorted,” Amaryllis agreed.
* * *
Chapter Four Hundred and Thirty-One — Bookseeking
Chapter Four Hundred and Thirty-One — Bookseeking The first order of business, now that the Beaver was sorted, was checking up on Booksie! Since it was such an important mission, I decided that we should go out to scout as a big team, but Amaryllis said that I couldn’t bring all of my friends at once.Caprica wanted to poke her head into the Sylphfree embassy anyway, and Calamity said he’d go with her, to make sure she was safe, which was really nice of him.“Is everyone ready?” I asked. I was standing on the edge of the gangplank, one step away from leaving the Beaver. I had my usual outfit on, with my turtle helm plomped onto my head, mostly because it provided great shade from the sun poking through the clouds.Otherwise, I was dressed in the more casual clothes we’d picked up in the Snowlands. A big teal sweater that was very comfy over a pair of loose pants. I had a nice blouse under it, but it was mostly hidden by the cozy sweater. I liked the look. I think sweaters just made people so much more huggable.Amaryllis and Awen were standing behind me, also in more casual wear. Amaryllis in that all-white tracksuit-looking-outfit we’d picked up, and Awen in a long blue dress with a thin jacket atop it. She’d let her hair go loose, and it was catching in the wind.“Ah, I’m ready,” Awen said. She clutched onto the satchel hanging by her side and it clinked metallically.“Are those tools?” I asked.“You never know,” she said.Well, I supposed I didn’t always know. Maybe we’d run into some bolts that needed tightening? “Alrighty then! Let’s go!”It was interesting to step off the Beaver. My ears tingled for a moment, and then it felt like I was pushing through something like a warm waterfall. I noticed it almost right away as my sense of the Beaver grew distant. I was still vaguely aware of the ship and the crew on it, but it was like hearing a song you knew that was being played from a few rooms over. The notes and noise was all mushy and distant and indistinct, but still recognizable.“You look weird,” Amaryllis said. “If you need to use the head, you might as well go now before we’re halfway across the city.”“No, it’s not that,” I said with a grin. “Just my Captaining skill being weird. I can’t feel the ship as well.” I glanced down, just to confirm that I really was only one step away from the Beaver.“Hmm, well, I suppose it is a skill meant to be used on a ship, and you’re no longer on it.” Amaryllis slipped past me on the gangplank on her way down. “Highly specialised skills are just like that. Now, speaking of highly specialized skills, can you blast me with cleaning magic?”“Huh?” I asked as I walked after her.“Broccoli, this entire outfit is white, and while Port Royal is definitely one of the cleaner cities I’ve ever been in, it’s still dusty. I’m going to be a mess of stains long before we arrive at Booksie’s shop, so I might as well leave the Beaver looking proper.”I laughed, then pushed a nice amount of mana into my cleaning aura. It wallopped away any dust and grime, leaving the three of us as neat as clean as though we'd spent three hours at the baths and laundry.“Thank you,” Amaryllis said. “Now, to the book shop, right?”“I think that’s where we’ll find her,” I said. “Unless she moved in with Rhawrexdee already?”“A-already?” Awen asked. “They can’t have been dating for more than two months! That’s... almost scandalous.”“It would be outright scandalous, but he’s a dragon,” Amaryllis said.“Does that make it less scandalous?” I asked as we started towards the city. There was a wall separating the docks from the city proper, though it looked a bit old, as if Port Royal had outgrown it a long time ago.There were a few areas we had to pass through in order to get into the city, and I recognized them as checkpoints. It was a little strange, I hadn’t noticed that at all the last time I was here.“It’s less that it’s less scandalous and more that he can get away with it without being bothered,” Amaryllis said. “That is the purpose of a scandal, after all.”“Huh?” I asked. “What do you mean?”“Why are scandal bad?” Amaryllis asked.I blinked. “I guess because it might make it hard for the scandalees to do stuff? Or it might ruin their reputation, I guess.”“It’s usually something that’s good gossip,” Awen added. “Um, in the sense that it’s gossip that spreads well, not that it’s good that people know about it and stuff.”“Scandals are a way for someone to discredit someone else by painting them as immoral, undignified, or untrustworthy,” Amaryllis said. “Which doesn’t mean that the person isn’t one or all of those things. But it is essentially a sociopolitical tool. It can be a distraction, or a smokescreen, or just a way to make a rival look like a fool.”“Oh, that’s not very nice at all,” I said.Amaryllis shrugged. “A scandal, real or manufactured, captures attention. It stokes the fires of outrage, indignation, or moral superiority. Once those emotional levers are pulled, rational discourse often takes a backseat. And whoever instigated the scandal can then direct that emotional energy wherever they please. Like a puppeteer pulling on the heartstrings of the public."“My mom was really good at that kind of thing,” Awen said. “But it never worked on uncle.”“Because your uncle, like Rhawrexdee, doesn’t care. That’s the downside of scandal as a weapon. Used against someone with actual, non-political power, it doesn’t work unless that person cares.”The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.I supposed that made sense. In any case, it didn’t matter that much. I don’t think I’d ever done anything scandalous.The checkpoint in the wall was guarded by a sleepy grenoil guard who eyed us for a moment before sighing. “Hello and welcome to Port Royal. Is this your first time here?”I shook my head. “We’ve been here before,” I said.“Ah, so you know ze procedure. I’m going to use an inspection skill on you. Please stand still.” The guard’s eyes lit up and he scanned me up and down with his gaze. Then he did the same to Amaryllis and Awen. “Hmm, welcome to Port Royal, ze jewel of Deepmarsh.” He stepped aside, letting us through.Port Royal was even busier once we were past the outer wall. There were all sorts of people moving about on the main road that cut through the heart of the city. I remembered the first time I’d been here, what felt like years ago. The people had all seemed so strange and almost alien, but now I actually recognized so many.There was a pack of drolls that looked a bit lost to one side, a few Ostri from the desert just to the west, even a few humans that had probably come over from Mattergrove. I followed a sylph that was darting by with my eyes and grinned. This place was the fun sort of busy.Still, the most common sorts of people here were the locals, grenoil, harpies and humans, the people from the areas nearest to Port Royal. This city was meant to be ruled by the grenoil, though I suspected that Rhawrexdee’s mom might have something to say about that.We had to cross another wall to get to the part of the city where Booksie had her shop. The guards there weren’t nearly as sleepy, but we got through mostly thanks to two of us being from the Exploration Guild.With the guild having such a big presence in the city, membership afforded easy access to the better parts of the city.I wasn’t sure what to think about the way Port Royal was divided. Each area closer to the noble quarter required more permissions to get into. It seemed like a security thing at first, but I had an inkling that it was also a way to keep poor people and undesirables out of the nicest parts of the city, which just seemed... kind of icky.Amaryllis and I chatted about it as we got a teensy bit lost among the maze of streets in this part of the city. It took asking a nice grenoil gentleman for directions before we found our way back towards the bookshop.Booksie’s bookshop was a tall but narrow building, squeezed in next to a butcher’s shop and an apartment building along a side street. There was a sign out front, a book with a pair of bunny ears sticking out of it.“Is it open?” I asked as I walked up to the windows and pressed my nose against them. There wasn’t much light inside, but I couldn’t see far either, not past the stacks of books by the windows. I pulled my head back, then cleaned off the smudge my nose had left on the glass.“Ah, it’s not locked,” Awen said as she tugged the door open.I smiled, but in reality I was feeling... I didn’t know how to describe it, actually. Something like worry? Trepidation, maybe? It was a tingly swirly feeling in my tummy, excited but also a little scared.I pushed past it. Broccoli Bunch wasn’t going to pass up a chance to meet an old (relatively) friend just because of a little bit of worry!Slipping into the shop, I was struck by the smell. I took a big deep breath while the bell over the door continued to jingle.“One moment!” came a call from the back of the shop.I grinned wider. “Booksie!”There was a clatter, then the thump of a heavy book hitting the ground, then a pair of black ears poked out from above a bookstack. “Broccoli?”Booksie came around a pile. She was in a summer dress covered by an ink-stained apron. She had more ink on her hands, I noticed, and a long smudge across one cheek. The smudge shifted as she smiled wide.“Hi!” I said.Then we bounced towards each other for a hello hug. I’d forgotten how nice it was to hug a bun. The ear hugs were very comfy and nice. I sagged into it and felt Booksie do the same.“Broccoli! I haven’t seen you in forever,” Booksie said. She looked past me and to my friends. “Amaryllis, Awen, hello!”They got hugs too, of course. Then lots of apologies as Booksie spread some of the ink from her apron onto Amaryllis’ outfit. She squeaked and smudged it around with a handkerchief until I wiped the stain away.“Ah! How have you three been doing,” Booksie said as she settled back onto her heels. “Are you still exploring? Scolding handsome dragons?”“We are,” I said. “Well, maybe not the dragon thing. But we have been travelling a heap, making new friends, seeing stuff, I’ll have to tell you all about it. But what about you?” I glanced at her hands. There was a ring there that I couldn’t recall seeing. “Is it true that you’re getting married?”Booksie flushed red, from her cheeks up to the base of her ears. “You heard about that?” she squeaked.“All the way off in the Snowlands,” Amaryllis said.Booksie hid her face with both hands. “Oh no!”“Oh no?” I asked. “It’s not true?”Booksie smiled, sighed, then waggled her hands uselessly. “It’s a long story,” she said. “And one that needs to be told with tea while we’re not standing by the entrance. Come on, I have a reading room in the back. I’ll explain the whole thing.”
* * *
