Chapter 42

With his weapons issue sorted, kind of, Luke started working on securing passage on a ship. That turned out to be decidedly more difficult. He made his way through the city until he reached the docks, then started asking around for ships willing to take on passengers. Most of the dockhands and sailors didn’t know, didn’t care, and weren’t impressed with the amount of XP they could feel coming off him.

More than once he was threatened with violence, and on two different occasions someone actually did take a swing at him. Luke fended off the attacks and left in a hurry. He wasn’t eager to start a dockside brawl that might get him arrested, even if he was confident that he’d win. It was amazing how few people were above level 10. That had to mean something. It wasn’t hard to gain levels, but it was rare for him to meet anyone higher than him.

He'd chalked it up as low population village life the first few times he saw other humans, but now he was in a big city and it was still everywhere. It maybe made sense that the average level would be lower since people would specialize in their work and not everybody needed to go hunting monsters or defending the city, but that should mean that there were a few people who were much higher level.

It had only been a few hours since he’d arrived in Valtira. There probably were people like that, and he just hadn’t run across them. Still, it was an odd coincidence. Something funky was happening there, but it was a mystery for another day. For now, he needed to find a sailor who wasn’t an idiot, an asshole, or both.

Walking around questioning random people who were working wasn’t the solution he needed, but he wasn’t sure who he needed to be talking to instead. There was no internet to look up the answer, no website to get a customer service number, nowhere to fill out an order form, and nowhere to put in a credit card number.

Which meant he needed to find new problem-solving methods, and he didn’t have a clue what they were. So far, he’d just been asking random people, but he seemed to have found a cross-section of the population who were all perpetually pissed off and unhelpful. Maybe he could find someone dock-adjacent who’d be more approachable.

“Move it, you jackass!” someone yelled at him.

Luke looked over and saw a dockworker with a heavy looking barrel balanced on his shoulder. He glared at Luke and pointed towards the nearby warehouse. It wasn’t like Luke was even in his way either. There was plenty of room to go around, but everyone on the docks acted like this.

“Piss off,” he told the dockworker. “You can walk around.”

The barrel hit the ground with a thump and the dockworker stomped forward to crowd his space. “What was that, you little shit?”

“Are you serious with this?” Luke asked. “What’s with every one of you pricks down here looking for a fight?”

The dockworker didn’t answer. Instead, he swung at Luke, a full-body, twist-at-the-hips, all the weight behind it right hook. It came nowhere near hitting Luke, thanks to [Unarmed Martialist]. He slapped it aside with one hand and popped the dockworker in the face with a quick jab, just hard enough to rock the man back on his heels.

“Must be a cultural thing,” Luke said. “Look, I’m really not interested in a fight. I’m just trying to find a ship that’s taking passengers.”

The dockworker’s response was a blistering string of cursing and swearing which started in Thalian and quickly transitioned into another language Luke didn’t know. He thought it might even have switched to a third somewhere in the middle, but by then he was too busy blocking punches to pay much attention.

“Just stop,” he said. The dockworker had maybe half his strength and none of his agility. Luke wasn’t going to get hit, and even if he did, it wasn’t going to hurt.

“What, you too chicken shit to fight back?” the dockworker spat out. “Come on, you fish fucker. Why not take a real swing?”

“I’d really rather not.”

He blocked a few more attacks, tripped the dockworker up, and sent him sprawling with a planted foot to the ass. Before the crusty old bastard could get back on his feet, Luke turned and walked away. He ducked down the first alley he saw, hoping the dockworker wouldn’t follow him. A few had tried that, but he figured with the cargo being there, the man wouldn’t stray too far away.

“You should have just knocked him for a loop,” a new voice said.

Luke started and spun in place. He wasn’t used to people sneaking up on him, but there, sitting on an empty crate, was a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old with bright blue eyes and long, strawberry blonde hair that she’d tied into a literal knot behind her head. She was dressed much the same as the dockworkers themselves, except on her the clothes were far too big, and also far more ragged and threadbare. He could see toes through the spots in her shoes where the sole had come loose.

“One across the jaw, one to the balls, then kick him in the back of the head when he’s down,” the girl said.

“What good would that do? I kick his ass, six of his buddies come to his rescue. Then I’m running. Even if I stayed and fought and won somehow, so what?”

The girl shook her head and hopped off the crate. “You don’t get how it works down here. That’s why you can’t get anyone to talk to you.”

“That so?” Luke asked. “What am I doing wrong then?”

“You have a foreign accent. Your skin is too pale. Half your outfit is homespun farmer clothes, but you’re also wearing templar armor, boots, and cloak. Whatever game you’re playing, they don’t want to get dragged into it.”

When she put it that way, it made a lot of sense to Luke. He hadn’t realized the stuff he’d pulled off those dead guys was that recognizable. None of the farmers he’d talked to had remarked on it, but he guessed the church didn’t send a lot of enforcers out to minor farming communities. They probably had a heavy presence in the city itself, heavy enough that people recognized their outfits.

He needed a whole new wardrobe, which meant spending more money. That meant he needed a way to make money, since he suspected he was already going to come up short on a boat ticket, but now he had even more expenses on top of that.

“Why are you telling me this?” Luke asked.

“Simple. You don’t know what you’re doing. I know what you need to do. I need money. You have money.”

“So, what? You want to be my tour guide? And how do you know I have any money?”

“You’re looking to book passage on a ship, so you must have at least a little money, or you’re a complete idiot. I figure it’s not that you’re stupid, it’s just that you’re not from around here. You don’t know how things work, and you could use the expertise of someone who does. So you want some help or not?”

“Depends what it’s going to cost me,” Luke said. He wasn’t sure he trusted a little girl to actually be helpful, but her guesses had been surprisingly insightful so far. Plus it wasn’t like he’d had any luck. As long as she wasn’t asking for outrageous sums of money, he might as well see if her advice was worth anything.

“Tell you what. I know where you can unload that templar gear. I’ll go with you, make sure you get a good price. I get half what you make off it, and I’ll help you find some stuff to blend in and show you where you can make money fast.”

Since he had no idea what the gear was worth, he’d have no clue if he was getting ripped off when he went to flip it. Any deal where this kid got a percentage of what it sold for was good; it meant she’d try to get as much as she could for it. Or that she was running a scam with the pawn shop and was just trying to trick him into thinking he could trust her.

Luke had no way to know for sure, but the fact was he was hopelessly ignorant about even the most basic of things. He had no idea if he had a lot of money or a little, though he suspected that the weapon he’d commissioned was worth a lot, which probably meant he had a decent amount leftover. It would be so easy to lose it overnight just by getting ripped off by someone who smelled a sucker.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Zea.”

It was probably a fake name, or a nickname. Or hell, now that he considered it, everybody whose name he’d learned so far was… weird. He supposed her name could really just be Zea.

“Zea? Nice to meet you.”

“What’s yours?”

It wasn’t clever, or original, but he figured it would work. “Sucal.”

“That’s a weird name.”

Luke scowled. “No one asked you.”

“You should pick a better fake name.”

“God damnit,” Luke muttered. “Fine, what should my name be?”

“Something common enough that no one will remember how weird it is,” Zea said seriously. “Maybe Ellis?”

“Ehhhh…”

“Torgin? Ferdart? Vyndus? Cendran?”

“Stop, stop. Just pick one.” Luke did not like Zea’s evil grin, so he quickly amended, “One that isn’t stupid and is commonly used.”

“You’re no fun,” she pouted. “Fine, for real then? How about… Aldrick?”

“Sure, fine. I’m Aldrick as far as anyone in this city is concerned,” Luke agreed.

“Great, nice to meet you, Aldrick. Now, let’s get rid of that temple gear before the wrong person notices and sics an inquisitor on your trail.”

“Maybe we should find at least some replacement shoes first,” Luke said.

“Get ‘em at the pawn shop. You need to get out of that stuff right away. You should honestly bundle up the armor and the boots inside the cloak, which you need to turn inside out, and carry it so that nobody sees.”

“Seems like that would draw a lot of attention,” Luke said. “Better to be mistaken for a templar than caught with contraband.”

“Oh, sure,” Zea agreed. She waved a hand towards the market district. “Over there. Where we’re going, someone might try to kill you if they think you’re doing a church raid.”

“What the fuck is a church raid?” Luke asked. The name was certainly evocative enough that he had ideas, but he hoped he was wrong.

“What’s it sound like?” Zea gave him a flat stare. “Church types come through, looking for ‘heathens’ and ‘blasphemers’ to abduct and do Gods only know what to them. You see a squad of templars coming, you get the hell out of the way and pray you’re not interesting enough for them to chase you down.”

“Jesus Christ, that’s fucking barbaric. And the people just… let them?”

Zea started laughing. “Gods, you must be from really, really far away. Come on, foreigner. Let’s get you taken care of so I can get my money, and you don’t get killed. Maybe you can tell me how you ended up with half a templar’s kit to begin with on the way.”

“Looted some dead bodies. I needed new shoes,” Luke said.

Zea sucked in a hissing breath and shook her head. “Take them off and walk barefooted. It’s not going to kill you.” She wiggled her toes to accentuate her point. “If a whole brute squad got killed, the church’ll be looking for someone to blame. They’ll come down on you like Dar himself marked you to die.”

Luke had no idea what that meant, but he figured it was probably bad. Hopefully the walk wouldn’t be too far though. He kicked off the boots, undid the straps to the armor, laid it all on his cloak, then tied it up into a bundle and threw it over his shoulder. “You’d better be right about all this, kid.”

“Kid?”

“Uh…”

“I’m not a kid. I’m twenty-three.”

“Shortest twenty-three year old I’ve ever met,” Luke said.

“I’m a dwifkin, idiot.”

“Oh, right.”

Whatever the hell that was.