The Prince's Mark

Chapter Thirty One

A gust of freezing air assaulted Tracou where he sat and he hugged himself in an attempt to prevent unsightly shivering. Someone like Pendaer or Ina would have commented on this in some way, but Yash simply observed him. Maybe this was a kind of Winlean joke. Keeping the window open to show that Winleans could handle the cold and that foreigners couldn't didn't sound especially funny to Tracou, but he knew nothing about Winlean humor.

"Dezmek dislike the cold?" Yash asked at length.

"Usually..."

"Let's get you away from the window. Dezmek Tracou, would you mind taking a look at something for me?" Yash asked as he stood up.

Tracou nodded, eager to leave the cold.

Yash led him over to the table with various bits of parchment he had been hunched over earlier. A map of Dezmer lay on top of everything else, Winlean words scribbled on certain areas of the country. On the brittle, aged parchment, the faded shape of Dezmer seemed a little off. No towns, roads, forests, cliffs, or anything else had been marked on the map—essentially it was a few, empty lines and some text Tracou couldn't understand.

Why did Yash have a map of Dezmer?

"Where in Dezmer are you from? Are you from Terel?"

Despite being the capital of Dezmer, most people outside of Dezmer didn't know its name. Tracou looked for Terel on the map. Where Terel should be was a word in Winlean, but that was the only named area as far as he could tell.

"No, but I travel through it often. I'm from Ergakan."

"Ergakan?"

"A village by the coast." Tracou pointed to the approximate area on the map. "About half a day's walk to the ocean on a good day."

Yash grabbed a thin brush, dipped it in ink, and left a few curly letters on the parchment next to Tracou's finger. "Tell me about Ergakan."

Relieved that he would be able to talk about something he understood, information flowed from his mouth with abandon.

"Ergakan is a village with not quite two hundred people. We have some fishermen that live there, but most people are farmers. Oh, but since we're so close to the port, sailors in the navy pass through the village twice a year. There aren't many other villages in the area because the soil is better inland. My family has held the land there for generations, though, and Ergakan usually does fine."

"There's a port nearby?"

"Yes, a small one. It's only active twice a year—in the spring when the sailors leave and in the fall when they return."

Carefully leaving another note on the map, Yash nodded. "If you had your own ship, you could make a tidy profit for yourself and for Ergakan. You could sell fruit and anything else from your village directly to Winlea..."

That was never something Tracou had considered. Truthfully, the port near Ergakan wasn't as close to Winlea as others, particularly one that was several days north of the village. But traveling by ship would be fast enough to make the difference negligible. Maybe if he struck this deal, Ergakan could grow.

But that had never been his goal. Once he returned, Ergakan would hopefully be fine. Only Mirthal's position was precarious.

"You're uncertain?" Yash asked.

Tracou blinked up at him. "Ah... I, um. I don't have the means to commission a ship right now."

"I see. Because of those Aodehsh you're stuck with, right? You have to do the woman a favor, which means spending money."