Chapter 6: Sunlit Streets

Chapter Six

Sunlit Street

Elias’s carefully told tale had worked its intended magic, shielding him from further accusations, and two more days passed without incident before Sailor’s Rise finally glimmered in the distance. He had only ever pictured the great city towering over him or sprawling out of sight. From afar, his imagined metropolis appeared so contained, capping a low-lying mountaintop amid far greater mountains. But scale was often an optical illusion, as any good trickster knew.

As The Sleeping Sparrow descended closer and closer to the city, its true size became plain to Elias. The city’s sky port was larger than he ever would have guessed. It was not a distinct district so much as it was a ring that circled the entire city. All of Sailor’s Rise was built to serve its encompassing sky port, from which countless docks reached out beyond the circular city like the protruding spokes of a ship’s wheel. Wooden docks and metallic docks, some newly built and a few worryingly decrepit—appendages the city might shed down the mountainside. There were docks barely large enough for the ferries that shuttled people around the city, while others appeared built to board vessels the likes of which Elias had never seen.

The Sleeping Sparrow’s wooden berth was somewhere in between, neither modest nor particularly grand, fit to match the medium-sized merchant ship as a foot slides into a familiar shoe. Like the ship itself and the man who owned and operated both, The Sleeping Sparrow’s dock was perfectly practical.

“We call it the sparrow’s nest,” Bertrand informed Elias as the two young men stepped off the ship.

“Clever,” Elias said.

“Thank you. I actually came up with the name myself a couple years ago. One of my greatest contributions to the family business.”

“A fine one, indeed. That reminds me, I was wondering why you call your ship The Sleeping Sparrow?”

“Have you ever seen a sleeping sparrow?” Bertrand asked.

Elias shrugged.

“They’re bloody cute is what they are. The way they tuck their chubby necks in—like little accordions.” Bertrand attempted an impression before hastily abandoning the effort. “We get sparrows in our backyard.”

“Did you also name the ship, Bertrand?”

“When I was thirteen years old, if you can believe it. Father says he’s not the creative type, so he let me name The Fairweather Company’s new flagship vessel a few years back. It also has a nice alliteration to it. The Sleeping Sparrow. Alliteration is an important quality in a good name.”

Elias didn’t disagree.

As more members of the bird-themed ship’s crew disembarked behind him, the tired traveler stretched his legs and reacquainted himself with solid ground. Captain Fairweather reeled him back before he could wander too far.

“Elias,” the captain said. “What are your plans here in Sailor’s Rise? I heard your speech, but I mean specifically. Do you have work, a place to stay? I know you have naught but the single relic I refunded you. It won’t get you very far.”

Elias didn’t have the heart to tell the captain that, actually, he now had no relics. How he had lost the much-appreciated coin was an unsolvable mystery. It had just disappeared, never to be discovered again, despite his many efforts. Perhaps that’s what his friends in Acreton would say about him: vanished without a trace, nowhere to be found.

As for the captain’s questions, the answers were no and no, respectively. He had no work and no place to stay. Elias’s first instinct was to reassure Bertrand’s father that he would figure it all out, but instead he simply stared up at the larger man and shook his head.

“That’s what I thought.” Captain Fairweather exchanged a glance with his son, who was standing awkwardly between them, doing another, this time inadvertent sleeping sparrow impression. “Look, lad, I’m down a person at the shop,” the captain continued. “It’s less lugging crates and more face time with customers. But you seem like a handsome and well-spoken young man, and that story you told suggests a certain proclivity for sales.”

“I can barter, sir,” Elias assured him.

“Right,” Captain Fairweather said after eyeing him up and down one last time. “We’ll draw up a contract. Come see me later today. I suppose you’ll be needing accommodation too.”

“Pa.” Bertrand stopped his father from walking away. “Captain Fairweather, sir. Mind if I take Elias for a tour around town. It’s his first time in the Rise, after all.”

Captain Fairweather turned from his son to the crew members behind him, unloading shipments onto the dock, and responded with a resigned shrug.

* * *

As Elias and Bertrand wandered about the labyrinthine roads of Sailor’s Rise—many of them uphill and rather grueling, the newcomer quickly learned—Elias couldn’t help but compare fantasy with reality. It wasn’t the city he imagined. The Sailor’s Rise Elias once envisaged had been too orderly, its streets too wide and too straight, its alleys too clean. The real Sailor’s Rise seemed to have been planned one addition at a time, its winding roads and tilted buildings locked in a frozen battle for space.

It was the nature of its exceptional location, though it all looked a little precarious to Elias: a city balanced upon a mountaintop.

Bertrand explained that it was quite the contrary. The city was a fortress, he said, impossible to raid except from within (which admittedly had happened once or twice). Its unreachable location—save by airship—made it the perfect trading port. Sailor’s Rise was a sanctuary for commerce, the safest place on the continent to stow one’s wealth.

And, for some, the best place to generate it too.

Bertrand beckoned him down a narrow street that soon turned into an expansive tunnel. Beneath the tunnel’s domed ceiling, a bazaar of colorful stalls peddled sparkling jewels and colorful garments alongside baked goods and fresh produce. Elias reached into his vest pocket and felt his current balance: zero relics. He possessed but the single copper he never bartered with, though the only thing it could afford here was a coin trick.

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Bertrand, on the other hand, had just been paid. He stopped to procure a golden-crusted blueberry pie. “For tonight,” he said.

“It looks delicious,” Elias replied.

“It tastes delicious too,” his acquaintance confirmed. “We’ll have a slice together, you and I, after dinner.”

“I’m joining you for dinner?”

“Got other plans?”

Elias shook his head, unable to contain the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. It was one less problem to worry about, knowing where he’d acquire his next meal. “Thanks, Bertrand.”

Bertrand didn’t hide his smile. “We do well enough, my family,” he said. “We’re not members of the city’s ruling merchant class, but we can afford an extra seat at the table. As you’ll soon discover, this city has many layers.”

“What do you mean?” Elias asked.

Bertrand hemmed and hawed and ultimately started at the top. “Only the largest companies have a seat on council,” he explained. “Supposedly, they’re most qualified to write the rules that govern business in Sailor’s Rise, as if success implies wisdom. It certainly doesn’t imply altruism. As you might expect, the rules that benefit one business don’t always benefit another.

“And then you have companies like ours,” Bertrand continued as they exited the bazaar onto a sunny side street. “There are many ways to turn a profit in the Rise. Businesses here come in all shapes and sizes. The Fairweather Company—we’re traders, primarily. We’re content as we are. Others are always scrambling for a seat at the big table. Many more are fighting to keep from falling into the red, from falling down another layer.”

“Lowtown.” Elias recalled the Valshynarian woman’s warning. Lowtown had a reputation for swallowing people like him, she had said, into its “ever-growing shadow.”

“Lowtown,” Bertrand confirmed. “The name encompasses everything below the docks that circle this town. Lowtown used to be small—the city’s excess spilling over the edges. Not so anymore. Sailor’s Rise can only expand in one direction, and that’s down the mountainside. When I was a kid, only poor people lived in Lowtown. These days, Lowtown is becoming a sort of second city.”

“It doesn’t sound entirely terrible,” Elias said.

“There are bad parts,” Bertrand clarified, “but it depends on whom you ask. This city’s true number-one export is snobbery. Anyway, I thought we’d swing by Fairweather Provisions. It’s just a couple blocks this way.” He pointed in the direction of this way.

“Fairweather Provisions?” Elias asked.

“Fairweather Provisions is the family shop, as the name suggests, and your new place of employment.”

The shop in question was located on a relatively quiet street, across from a jeweler and a wine store. Most of the businesses on this particular tree-lined block sold luxury goods, Bertrand said. Their customers were primarily artisans on the market for high-quality materials.

The cursive lettering advertising Fairweather Provisions reminded Elias of the intricate style used upon The Sleeping Sparrow’s wooden bow. Bertrand would later mention the importance of brand consistency, an aspect of the business he evidently took very seriously.

A shopkeeper’s bell chimed softly as the touring teenagers entered the skinny store. Elias spotted two women inside—one his age, the other old enough to be his mother—inspecting and discussing some item he couldn’t yet see.

“That’s Briley.” Bertrand nodded toward them. “Briley Soren. She works here.”

“Which one?” Elias needed clarification.

“Younger,” Bertrand said. “Handsome. Short red hair. Sharp jawline. Eyes that radiate a nonchalance beyond her years.”

“I figured it out at younger.” Elias looked down at the table beside him, covered in familiar reddish-brown blocks. They were stacked into tidy pyramids. “This is clay from Sapphire’s Reach,” he observed, before also observing the price tag. “This is robbery, Bertrand.”

“This”—Bertrand picked up a block of clay—“is the business. And keep your voice down, would you? We’ve got a customer.”

Elias apologized, ashamed of his embarrassing oversight.

“You look at this, and you see only a block of clay.” Bertrand brandished the block in question. “I want you to consider everything it took to bring this clay here. An airship traveled halfway across the continent and back to buy it and ship it here. That includes the cost of crew members, the cost of feeding said crew members. They’re hungry fellas, believe me. Then there’s the cost of procuring the clay itself, of renting this store, of painting its walls with fresh paint, of printing flyers to advertise our wares across the city. And don’t forget the cost of Briley’s paycheck.

“They are not just paying for a block of clay,” Bertrand concluded.

Elias took this lesson to heart, recalling that Acreton was not immune to similar price hikes. It was the cost of business, as Bertrand said. Elias simply needed to be on the side of business.

When the store’s single customer departed, her recently procured goods in hand, Bertrand ambled over and introduced Elias, the newest sales representative of Fairweather Provisions, to the currently working one.

If Briley had initial impressions of her future co-worker, Elias couldn’t read them on her pensive face. He could read some people like an open book, as the saying goes, but Briley Soren was shut tight. Briley Soren was a closed book with a plain cover whose only printed words were Briley Soren.

“So, this is your solution to our staffing shortage,” Briley said.

Bertrand nodded. “He will share your busy shifts and cover your slow ones. Father—Captain Fairweather—is drafting up a contract.”

“Nice to meet you, Briley,” Elias inserted himself.

“Sure. Do you have sales experience, Elias?”

“I would say I have relevant experience,” Elias said, “and I worked a lot of jobs back in Acreton.”

“Acreton.” She raised an eyebrow as Bertrand raised a single shoulder.

“It’ll be fine,” he assured them both.

* * *

The Fairweathers’ red-brick house resembled the house Elias had imagined one day owning. Smaller, perhaps, but only because his imagination was so big. Indeed, more than anything else he had seen that day, their medium-sized abode looked like a scene from the fantasy version of Sailor’s Rise that Elias had cultivated over the past year.

The yard around the house was hardly larger than the house itself, with a few leafy, late-summer hardwoods for added privacy. Given the land-constrained nature of the city, any yard at all was considered an enviable luxury, Bertrand bragged.

They met with Captain Fairweather in his wood-paneled office upstairs, which overlooked their slender backyard. Peering out its bay window, Elias successfully spotted a couple of sparrows and smiled.

“Here’s your contract.” Captain Fairweather slapped a piece of paper onto the oak desk between them. The timeworn table looked as old as the man towering over it, much like many of the room’s curated artifacts—the collection of a captain who had seen the world and brought it home in pieces.

Elias felt a sudden wave of exhilaration as he took the quill from Captain Fairweather’s calloused hand.

The details of the contract were straightforward enough. Elias would be paid two relics per shift, which was twice what he typically earned in Acreton. He was free to find his own accommodation, “but if you prefer, we have an available room here,” Captain Fairweather said. “My daughter, Bertrand’s sister, moved out some while ago. It’s just the three of us now, the missus, Bertrand, and I. If you choose to board with us, your pay would be reduced to one relic a day. That covers rent and food.”

“It’s a good deal,” Bertrand interjected, encouraging Elias’s agreement with widened eyes and a dramatic nod.

Not that his new acquaintance needed encouragement. Elias had known his answer as quickly as he’d known he would take this job. “I would love to stay with you and your family, Captain Fairweather, if you would have me.”

“You left your bag on the ship, by the way,” the captain mentioned. “Eagerness is a fine quality in a young man, but don’t let it be accompanied by forgetfulness. The bag is in your new room. I had a feeling you’d say yes.”

Elias apologized and promised to do better.

Captain Fairweather amended the contract accordingly. “Just sign here and the job and the room are yours, for as long as you earn them.”

Elias was once again eager to act, eager to sign his name and start his new life, but the quill hovered in his hand for a few seconds as the captain and his son stared on in surprise.

Finally, he signed his name.

His new name.

Elias Vice, the signature read.

“I thought you were a Fisher,” Captain Fairweather said.

“I was a Fisher,” Elias replied. “Vice was my ma’s maiden name. Elias Fisher lived his life in Acreton. I’m a citizen of Sailor’s Rise now.”

Of this, he was youthfully certain. Elias Vice would not be the common man from whose rusted cocoon he had emerged. He would be a great merchant in the merchant republic of Sailor’s Rise. He would be a master of commerce, a leader among leaders. And it started with this signature.

Bertrand looked down at the contract and back up toward Elias as he stepped forward with a friendly backslap. “Well, how would Elias Vice like some dinner and a slice of delicious blueberry pie?”