Chapter Twelve

  Porcelain Riddles

  Elias couldn’t say whether this Jalander looked like the man he’d been expecting, for assumptions would require he had any expectations at all. The truth was, up until the moment he met the guy, Jalander had been nothing more than a name—nothing more than another piece in a confounding puzzle.

  But here he was, flesh and blood, not to mention a healthy head of hair. Even braided, it draped down to his waist. Jalander had the complexion and cultural markings of someone from the Southlands, with interwoven tattoos covering his neck and jawline, weaving into one another like waves upon water. Silver piercings lined the cartilage of his ears. And yet the tattoos were faded, his earrings tarnished. If the lines under a man’s eyes could be tallied, Jalander might have been fifty, though Elias knew a hard life could add a few years.

  “Tea?” Jalander asked after shutting the door behind them.

  The moment he felt the mercy of warm air, Elias realized just how dangerously cold his body had become. “Please,” he practically begged. “Mind if I sit by your fire?”

  “Make yourself comfortable,” his host told him.

  Elias removed his boots, then flattened his palms against the radiant aura of a well-fed fire. His fingers burned red. His toes were completely numb.

  “Not used to this weather where you’re from, are you?” Jalander commented from his kitchen.

  Another detail this stranger apparently knew about him, not that Elias was surprised. Peering around the room, he tried to learn something about his host, perhaps to even the playing field. He couldn’t decide if the space was his office or his apartment. Jalander obviously lived here and, by the looks of it, had for some time. A library said a lot about a man, and the books here could be counted in the hundreds. They weren’t particularly organized, mind you, many sprawled across the long desks that overtook his living room, and that too probably said a lot about a man.

  A kettle whistled and Jalander returned, a minute later, with two porcelain cups brimming with tea. Elias’s was chipped at the handle. “Thanks,” he said, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire.

  Jalander pulled up a wooden chair and joined him by the hearth. “I imagine you have many questions,” he said.

  “You could say that,” Elias replied, not knowing where to begin. “How do you know who I am?”

  “Your father,” Jalander explained. “We were close friends for many years. Closer than most. I knew you lived in Acreton with your mother. I heard she passed away a few years back and wondered where you might end up. Despite your father’s best efforts, it appears fate found you even in the middle of nowhere. I am sorry for your loss.”

  Elias was not sure what he meant about fate. He took a sip of tea and burned his tongue.

  “Careful,” Jalander said.

  Elias took a slower sip before placing the tea back in its saucer. “You said I’m a collector. A collector of what?”

  “Before I answer that, let me first ask you something, Elias. Have you ever made a relic disappear? Maybe you convinced yourself that you must have misplaced the coin, but deep down you knew otherwise. The relic had truly vanished.”

  Elias confirmed as much. “On the way to Sailor’s Rise and again a couple of months ago.”

  Jalander nodded expectantly. “And did you notice anything afterward? A feeling, perhaps, or an uncanny ability?”

  “Yeah,” Elias said, nodding with newfound certainty. “Lines in the air. There was a shooting competition at the Night Market. It was a few hours after a relic had disappeared right out of my hand. Every shot I took, it was like… I knew where the bullet would go. On that eighth shot, I swear I saw a green line in the air, hovering between my barrel and the bottle. I won, if you can believe it.”

  “I can,” Jalander said. “What you felt was a temporary high.” As he said this, Jalander retrieved a pipe and matches from a side table, lighting the former with a series of quick puffs. He handed the pipe to Elias.

  “I don’t smoke,” the boy informed him.

  “Indulge me.”

  Elias accepted the pipe. He stared briefly at the smoldering embers inside, then put the pipe to his lips, inhaled, and immediately coughed out a cloud of smoke.

  After a moment had passed, Jalander asked, “How do you feel?”

  “My head’s a little dizzy,” Elias admitted, “though I wouldn’t call it an unpleasant feeling.”

  Jalander snatched his pipe back and chuckled. “I, on the other hand, no longer feel a damn thing.” He took a long puff before continuing. “Doesn’t stop me, of course. You’re an amateur collector, Elias. You have not awoken, and yet a dream burns inside you, in the dark recesses of your mind. Right now, relics may trigger a temporary high, but the sensation won’t last forever, my young friend. If you keep smoking a pipe, as I do, soon you will stop feeling that not unpleasant feeling.”

  “Is there no way to hold onto it?” Elias inquired.

  “Eager, are you? I suppose the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Jalander banged loose the ashes from his pipe into a hollowed tree trunk—his apparent ashtray. He fetched a pouch of tobacco from a nearby drawer and began packing another bowl. “If you were to awaken, you would hold onto the power you experienced, yes. It would become a permanent part of you.”

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  “That’s what I want.” Elias hardly had to think about it. “Permanent power.”

  “You’re young. You don’t know what you want.”

  “How does one awaken?”

  “Awakening is unique to the collector,” Jalander said. “You will either find the path, much as you found the path to my humble abode, or else pass by it unaware. The moment—if the moment ever comes—manifests as a dream. There will be no mistaking this dream. It will… reveal things.”

  “Answers?” Elias asked.

  “More questions,” Jalander said. “Power is just a word, and a path is only that: one direction of many. If you take this path, you will be following in the footsteps of our ancestors. We are but vestiges of what we once were, and most of us will stay that way. But some inherit a rare connection to the past. Even fewer follow that connection. It is a long and arduous road, and those who follow it we call collectors.”

  Elias still found the term strangely unassuming. “Why collectors? Seems a little, I don’t know, subtle.”

  “Subtlety is exactly the point. You’ll learn the benefits of keeping a low profile if you haven’t already—or the consequences of failing to do so. Most people spend relics. We keep them not only to ourselves but in ourselves. We collect.”

  Elias had so many questions. Most of them were decidedly logistical. Jalander could wax philosophical until dawn, but Elias was panning for gold, and every nugget of information was invaluable. “How do I consume relics?” he asked. “I know I’ve done it, but… I don’t entirely understand how I did it.”

  “I cannot tell you that, I'm afraid, any more than I could tell you how to relax. It is unique to the collector. All I know for sure is that the ability exists within you. That’s where you’ll find your answer, and the answer may change over time.”

  That nugget was, perhaps, a little less valuable. Elias would contemplate those words later. With the “how” vaguely covered, “how much” was next on his mental checklist. “How many relics must I consume in order to awaken?”

  “You want a number?” Jalander cocked an eyebrow.

  Elias most definitely wanted a number.

  “With awakening, it is less about the price and more about the process. But awakening is just the beginning. It will give you some control of your ability. You will be able to summon its power at will, whether or not you’ve recently consumed a relic, but a novice you shall be with a novice’s short reach and meager grasp. Ascension: now that is when one becomes a serious collector. And for that, you’re looking at a thousand, two thousand. Really depends on the collector.”

  “Relics?”

  “It ain’t coppers.”

  Elias would have preferred hearing a few hundred. He so far had eighty relics to his name, which was already more than he’d ever possessed. He was attempting the math in his head. If he actually saved half his current earnings, it would only take… many, many years.

  “It’s not just the amount,” Jalander added. “You are not simply adding to a pile. You are trying to rebuild that which has been shattered into countless pieces, for that is what relics are: the shattered remnants of a bygone age. The cost for each increment of power increases, yes, but you must also make those relics a part of you. Many a failed collector had both the blood and means to ascend. What they lacked was comprehension.” He slapped his chest with a weak fist. “That comes from within.”

  “And only I can figure that part out for myself,” Elias repeated.

  Jalander smirked approvingly and took another drag from his pipe. “You understand. Or at least you understand what you must understand. In any event, you are getting ahead of yourself. I see that getting ahead of yourself is a character trait of yours. You have not even awoken yet, Elias. Learn to walk before you run.”

  “Help me walk, then,” Elias insisted.

  Jalander either coughed or laughed—Elias couldn’t tell—and asked, “Do you have a relic on you? I’d rather not sacrifice one of mine. Not as wealthy as I used to be these days.”

  Elias always kept a few relics on his person. He retrieved one from his pocket and presented it to his host upon an open palm. The light of the fireplace brought out one of the coin’s hidden colors: a calming amber, his favorite.

  “Tell me about the first time you consumed a relic,” Jalander instructed him.

  “I didn’t realize it had happened until after the fact,” Elias said. “Our ship flew into a sky rift. We thought we were done for, until the Valshynar discovered our hapless vessel and led us back to freedom. Just before we returned to the normal world, there was a flash of light. I remember clutching the relic in my pocket.”

  If Jalander was surprised to hear such an unlikely tale of peril and rescue, he certainly didn’t make a show of it. “And the second time?”

  “It was the total opposite. I was alone in my room, not doing anything. Just thinking.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  Elias shook his head, until it came back to him in bits and pieces. “I was thinking about relics actually. This idea popped into my mind. That often happens, but this was different—like a vision almost.” He held up the relic he was holding now as if recreating the moment and said, “I imagined the relic in my hand was but a shard of some greater crystal—that somehow I might piece them all back together—and then I closed my fingers. When I opened them again, the coin was gone, just like before.”

  “To summarize,” Jalander jumped in, “in both cases you were holding a relic. In both cases you wanted something: to live in the first case and to rebuild something in the second. These are deep wants, Mr. Vice. What is it you want now? What is it you want deeply?”

  “Answers,” Elias said without thinking.

  “Then close your fist, and you might find one tonight.”

  Elias wrapped his fingers around the relic, slowly as if acting out a ritual, letting his desire for knowledge permeate every part of his body, until want flowed through his fingers and toes, until desire formed the melody of each breath and every heartbeat. He opened his hand.

  Winter’s cold had cracked the contours of his youthful skin, and the visible crevices of Elias’s empty palm reminded him of summer soil back home. “Gone,” he whispered the word.

  “You may yet make a fine collector, my boy,” Jalander said.

  Elias looked up at him and chuckled. “You make it sound so posh.”

  “Well, we are in Sailor’s Rise. You best get used to posh. Relationships are their own kind of currency, especially in this town. Speaking of which, I’m afraid I must cut our meeting short. I know you have more questions, and I definitely have more to say, but tonight I have business to attend to, and I’d rather you not cross paths with my colleague.”

  Elias nodded. He did indeed have more questions, but even this much was a lot to take in. “I’m not entirely certain why you’re helping me, but I appreciate it,” he said. “My father must have been important to you.”

  “And to you,” Jalander added, as if it needed to be said. Perhaps it did. “The next time we speak, I will call upon you,” he continued, guiding Elias toward the front door. “Tonight was a necessary risk, but I have visitors on occasion who mustn’t know we are in communication if you wish to live your life freely.”

  “I do,” Elias said, lacing up his boots.

  “Then do not return until I say it is safe to do so, and obviously do not mention our rendezvous to anyone. Keep your head low, and next we meet I shall tell you all about the Serpent Moon School—and an even rarer gift I suspect you possess. The gift that helped you find this place.”

  “What do mean?” Elias finished with his footwear and began layering on his winter clothes. “What rarer gift?”

  “You sensed it, didn’t you: the path that brought you here tonight.”

  Elias opened his mouth, the queries so plentiful they spilled out before he could sputter them.

  “Next time.” Jalander held open the door and stood watching as Elias braced for the cold.

  With a long walk ahead of him in the dark hours of winter, an amateur collector thanked his host and departed back into a frozen city, still with more questions than he had answers.