Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [285]
There was nothing to be done about it. The captain dragged the unconscious young man back into his office and put him on the thread-bare couch. The man had been carrying very few possessions. The only thing he clutched was a bundle of paper that he held in his arms like it was more important than life itself. He was terribly thin, and the clothes he wore were in rags. The sole of his one shoe was missing, and his foot was covered with blisters. There were cuts on his hands too, like a rope burns, making the captain wonder if he had been climbing some mountain somewhere.
Stranger still was that even before the young man had regained consciousness, another person came asking after him—this one a boy. He looked like an ankha starseer, or perhaps he was actually a sorcerer. He wore a long black robe that went down to his ankles, and he carried a staff topped with a heavylooking gem. Yet he was only eleven or twelve years old at the most. He, too, wanted to go north.
“You with him?” The captain asked.
The boy glanced at the pale face of the young man lying on the floor. “No, not with him. I merely knew that he was going north, and that if I followed him, I could go there as well.”
From the utter lack of concern in the boy’s voice, the captain concluded that he actually didn’t know the other man. When he had looked at him he hadn’t raised so much as an eyebrow. Pretty cold for such a young one, the captain thought.
But the boy who looked like a sorcerer said he had money. The captain, not being in the business of taking people at their word, took a down payment. He was about to ask how the boy had made the money when he thought better of it. On second thought, I don’t really want to know.
The youngster helped himself to the paper bundle the unconscious man had held so dearly. He nodded and smiled as he examined its contents.
“What’s that, then?” the captain asked.
“None of your business.”
“Hmph, you sure are a brazen lad, aren’t you.”
“I’m a customer.”
The contents of the package appeared to be some sort of diagram, but of what, the captain couldn’t say.
When, at last, the young man regained consciousness, he began speaking earnestly and in a hushed tone with the boy. The captain brought food and water up to the office and caught snatches of their conversation. It was mostly the boy who was speaking.
“I heard about you from the Precept-King…”
“The mirror will be broken for sure…”
“I don’t care what it is you want…”
No matter what he said, the boy always seemed aloof and uncaring—though the words he said made little sense. The young man seemed utterly cowed and unable to put up much of a defense. Before long he was bowing his head and begging the boy to join him on his journey northward. It turned out that the young man’s down payment to the captain had been the whole of his funds. He was going to take passage and leave me short half my income for the month.
Because of the unusual circumstances, the captain took great pains to keep his clients in the office and out of sight. Thankfully, the boy and the young man did not seem interested in venturing outside at all. This worked well for the captain, who didn’t fancy spending any more time with them than he had to. Whenever he did have to say something, the boy favored him with a look cold enough to freeze a man solid.
The oddness of the situation grew daily. As it happened, the boy seemed quite well-heeled for his age, and his staff surely had value. The captain, for his part, began having thoughts about stealing the staff and selling it for some extra money.
Of course, the captain kept his thoughts to himself. There could be no way the boy suspected anything. But once when he was bringing his clients their meal, the captain’s