father’s idea of a filing system was stacks of paper on desks, and more stacks in boxes. But after two days of investigative work, Dale began to see that there was an organization to the chaos. A hidden system. Once he could see it, he began to understand what his father was doing. Those two weeks, Dale was in early; he left late. With the daylight, he made slight adjustments to the yard—placement of certain containers with specific types of scrap. Nights were spent in the office poring over the books, receipts, and records of business dealings. It gave him a sense of the business, a business built largely around salvaged scrap parts.
Organizing inventory and pushing papers at a desk was quite a departure from his former life. At first, being “your own boss” was a welcome change from the regimented life of a soldier. But once he got past the challenge of getting the shop operational, Dale grew quickly bored. It didn’t take long for him to realize that he lacked that certain penchant for business; namely, he lacked the love of money. Without proper motivation, Dale spent hours at a time swiveling in his father’s leather chair, wondering how his life had become an aimless routine of disassembling ships and selling their salvageable parts for scrap.
After closing shop one evening, Dale wandered along the docks. Under fading light, the still surface of the Amaranthian Sea beyond the bay looked like a sheet of glass. Along the harbor were anchored ships—an entire community of seafarers with their laundry hanging on cables across obsolete masts, smoke stacks rising from the galleys above deck. The scene brought to mind his childhood fantasies of setting sail toward an endless horizon into the unknown beyond, free and elsewhere. A life at sea that ended drearily in a stinking bay. He had grown so far from that boy for whom it was so normal to dream.
Dale walked beyond the boardwalk and into the streets of the waterfront. There, he stopped at the overpass, the one he and Sparrow crouched under after the fight with Marcus.
Then he made his way along the main streets of the Central District toward the Southside, toward Azuretown.
Although most of the residents of Azuretown were still Azuric, it was no longer uncommon to see hip, young urbanites patronizing businesses for an exotic experience. Where there were once herbal apothecaries and merchants selling live chickens, there were now trendy nightclubs and fusion restaurants. The unthinkable a decade ago—seeing a non-Azuric sitting among the locals, shoveling mouthfuls of noodles with a pair of chopsticks and drinking rice liquor around smoky food stalls—was so common now that it went unnoticed. Even the signs and menus had been changed to accommodate the outside world.
Dale barely recognized the place Sparrow had shared with his mother. Like the rest of the block, the yellow building had been renovated. It was no longer yellow, nor was it a housing complex for the underprivileged. It had been converted into some high-end bathhouse. Venturing further into the neighborhood, Dale came to an entire fenced-off block full of dirt mounds and broken slabs of mortar and brick. There was a construction site where the forge used to be. Azuric men covered in dirt and dried sweat shuffled out with their pickaxes slung over their shoulders.
“What’re you doing here, peach?” asked the foreman, “peach” being the pejorative for people of fair skinned ethnicities. Namely, the Grovish and the Silven.
“There used to be a forge here,” Dale said.
“There used to be a lot of things here.”
“What’re you building?”
“A glue factory, not that it’s any of your business. Now, move along. The suits don’t like outsiders snooping around. Especially on Rogue turf.”
“The Rogues? The Carousel Rogues?”
“Yeah, the Carousel Rogues. What’s the matter with you?”
“In Azuretown?”
The foreman chuckled.
“Listen, you better get going. Curious people
Organizing inventory and pushing papers at a desk was quite a departure from his former life. At first, being “your own boss” was a welcome change from the regimented life of a soldier. But once he got past the challenge of getting the shop operational, Dale grew quickly bored. It didn’t take long for him to realize that he lacked that certain penchant for business; namely, he lacked the love of money. Without proper motivation, Dale spent hours at a time swiveling in his father’s leather chair, wondering how his life had become an aimless routine of disassembling ships and selling their salvageable parts for scrap.
After closing shop one evening, Dale wandered along the docks. Under fading light, the still surface of the Amaranthian Sea beyond the bay looked like a sheet of glass. Along the harbor were anchored ships—an entire community of seafarers with their laundry hanging on cables across obsolete masts, smoke stacks rising from the galleys above deck. The scene brought to mind his childhood fantasies of setting sail toward an endless horizon into the unknown beyond, free and elsewhere. A life at sea that ended drearily in a stinking bay. He had grown so far from that boy for whom it was so normal to dream.
Dale walked beyond the boardwalk and into the streets of the waterfront. There, he stopped at the overpass, the one he and Sparrow crouched under after the fight with Marcus.
Then he made his way along the main streets of the Central District toward the Southside, toward Azuretown.
Although most of the residents of Azuretown were still Azuric, it was no longer uncommon to see hip, young urbanites patronizing businesses for an exotic experience. Where there were once herbal apothecaries and merchants selling live chickens, there were now trendy nightclubs and fusion restaurants. The unthinkable a decade ago—seeing a non-Azuric sitting among the locals, shoveling mouthfuls of noodles with a pair of chopsticks and drinking rice liquor around smoky food stalls—was so common now that it went unnoticed. Even the signs and menus had been changed to accommodate the outside world.
Dale barely recognized the place Sparrow had shared with his mother. Like the rest of the block, the yellow building had been renovated. It was no longer yellow, nor was it a housing complex for the underprivileged. It had been converted into some high-end bathhouse. Venturing further into the neighborhood, Dale came to an entire fenced-off block full of dirt mounds and broken slabs of mortar and brick. There was a construction site where the forge used to be. Azuric men covered in dirt and dried sweat shuffled out with their pickaxes slung over their shoulders.
“What’re you doing here, peach?” asked the foreman, “peach” being the pejorative for people of fair skinned ethnicities. Namely, the Grovish and the Silven.
“There used to be a forge here,” Dale said.
“There used to be a lot of things here.”
“What’re you building?”
“A glue factory, not that it’s any of your business. Now, move along. The suits don’t like outsiders snooping around. Especially on Rogue turf.”
“The Rogues? The Carousel Rogues?”
“Yeah, the Carousel Rogues. What’s the matter with you?”
“In Azuretown?”
The foreman chuckled.
“Listen, you better get going. Curious people
Similar Books
