Chapter Text
Burloak Tavern, one of only two such establishments in Sylvany’s Jorum Valley, had been dead all week, and Jessamine knew tonight would be no different. She had cleaned everything in sight at least three times, served herself lunch and an early dinner from the untouched soup of the day, and eventually ran out of things to stare at. Perfect timing for what appeared to be some sort of mid-air crash in the darkening sky, a large solar vessel, cracked and smoking, drifting slowly, resignedly, to the forested surface of the planet. Jessamine set her professionalism aside, poured herself a pint of purp cider and set up at a table by the window, breathing in the petrichor and sulfur of the surrounding swamplands and the smoke filling the sky. A trio of smaller vessels hovered around the dying craft but she couldn’t tell if they were coming or going, lifeboats or looters.
Jessamine didn’t care. She was bored half to tears, her whole body an irritating strobe of dull pain. She knew medical leave would have to happen soon, but she needed to see this through. Alden worked so hard back home besides, and for so little. Once this assignment was finished, they would be set for months and Bonchance would, best case scenario, see Sylvany as more trouble than it was worth. The planet’s expanses of virgin forest would stay, for the moment, virgin, and the sylvanium would stay safely in the depths of the ground where it couldn’t hurt anyone. That was what Jessamine hoped, and why she sat here day after day in the empty tavern writing report after report of dissenting locals, a slim 30% of which had been real conversations.
Sylvany didn’t want anything to do with Montressor, but Jessamine knew that most people here didn’t really know what they wanted, what was good for them. Sylvany was sparsely populated, primarily by cervids, ursids, mustelids, hircids, and some clades of felid and canid. It had a low human population excluding hybrids, and those humans who did come to Sylvany typically came from Montressor for arboriculture work and stayed, often for a cervid or hircid partner or an affinity for the wilderness, still well within reach of their seething, smoking homeworld and just a two day’s sail from Crescentia. They tended to be wholesome, family oriented and under-educated, farmers and carpenters and shipwrights.
Everything aside, Sylvany hadn’t been home for years. Jessamine had left at 13 for high school on Montressor, staying with her aunt in a town just slightly larger than the one she had left. She met Alden, another Sylvanese human-mother-cervid-father mix, at Crescentia Trades College, and it had been them against the worlds since. He had been there for her when her health, always delicate, finally began to fail, and she had been there for him through the myriad minor tragedies that seemed to stalk him like some sort of vengeful spectre; the gory accidental deaths of both of his parents, his twin sister’s constant run-ins with the law and his draconian employer.
Footsteps on the stairs outside, a shadow in the window, a large one. Jessamine slid off her stool and back behind the bar, tucking her cider out of sight.
She could tell at a glance that he was ursid. They tended to run tall and broad unless they were hybrids, and he must have been nearly 7 and a half feet. Jessamine had known a hybrid girl in school, Sybil Sammon, whose ursid father married her cricetid mother and produced a 4 foot tall daughter with no other cricetid features, followed by Sybil’s younger brother Norman, 6 foot 7, with his mother’s cheeks, rodent teeth and twitchy pink nose.
He had an awkward, swaying gait, which Jessamine couldn’t fault him for with hers getting worse every day, and he wore a large leather glove only on his right hand. He must have some sort of weird pet he left back on his vessel. Similarly, he wore a sort of tattered, greasy scarf over the right side of his face. Jessamine wondered if he had scars he didn’t want to be bothered about and empathized further. She hated the way people looked at the braces on her legs and had taken to exclusively wearing long skirts. Sometimes she wished she could disappear entirely, but would never mention that to Alden.
The man sat at the bar, facing her with only his left side, and smiled. She couldn’t guess his age, somewhere between a rough 45 and a hale 60, but she guessed he was handsome once, he seemed to carry himself like he still was.
“Evening, sir. What’ll you be having?”
“Dealer’s choice, love.” He had a conspicuous Sylvany Highlands brogue, native to the planet but far from home, and Jessamine could tell from the way he spoke and smelled that he was a smoker. She hoped secretly that he might let her have a hit or two on whatever he had in that huge jacket of his, even though she and Alden had been quitting together. She obliged, pouring him a red ale from Ellenwood, full-bodied, not much to her taste but a popular one at Burloak.
“Would you like to order any food?” To Jessamine’s relief, he shook his head. She was in no mood to go back to the kitchen and ask Uri, Burloak’s booze-drenched mustelid cook, to make something requiring more effort than ladling the morning’s mystery meat slurry into a half-washed bowl. She put out a basket of hardening sliced bread in case he changed his mind, taking a piece for herself.
“How’s business?” the stranger asked after a long drink. She hadn’t expected him to be much of a talker but, then again, they were the only two there.
“Slow, but it’s to be expected this time of year. Nobody wants to come to Jorum during the rainy season.”
He made a low sound of assent. “Valley’s half flooded.”
Jessamine looked out at the surrounding swamps, the trees hanging over the mirror of murky water, heavy with precipitation. The stranger took another drink. “Do you live around here?”
“Not for a long time.”
“Do you work around here?”
He shook his head. “I work, but not around here. Not really around anywhere. Around everywhere, more like.”
A trader, maybe, or a smuggler, or a crewman on any given vessel. Jessamine wondered for a moment if he’d been on the vessel that was currently dying above them. She found herself tracing a finger along a scratch on the bar, wondering what had left it.
“I’m from a few towns over originally,” Jessamine confessed. “Here on a work contract, but soon I’ll go back to Montressor.”
The stranger’s brow knit slightly. “Montressor, eh? I met a lad from Montressor a while back. Young pup, 15 or so, I don’t think you’d know him.” Jessamine shook her head. She hadn’t known a 15 year old since she was 15, and that had been 13 years ago. “You like it?”
Very much was the first thing Jessamine thought to say, but when she gave it a bit more thought she wasn’t sure. She liked her house, she liked that she lived there with Alden, she liked their neighbourhood and the neighbours and the tavern that they went to on the weekends and the river, one of the less polluted in Montressor’s Braemar province, where they would take a bottle of wine and a basket of food on nice days. She liked her friends and she liked the plants she and Alden grew in their pathetic little garden, but Montressor as a whole…
“It’s home now.” Jessamine shrugged. “I don’t have a life on Sylvany anymore.”
The stranger raised his glass. Jessamine retrieved her cider to reciprocate and they drank to no longer having a life on Sylvany. She was now drinking with a customer. If Bonchance could see her now…
“You know-” the stranger wiped his mouth with the back of his ungloved hand. “I relocated to the Lagoon Nebula. You could do worse, should you ever want to leave Montressor.”
Jessamine almost laughed. “What, are you independently wealthy or something?” If he was, he certainly didn’t look it.
He smiled crookedly. “Or something.” He dug in his jacket. “This is me place.” Jessamine picked up the worn business card. The Silver Fish, it was called, the logo a sort of replica of a pirate flag, only the skull was ursid, two ichthyoid skeletons overlapping directly below.
“What sort of place is it?”
“Not terribly unlike this one, love.” He drained his glass, didn’t even have to gesture for Jessamine to know it needed refilling. “Not as nice, but…”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s very nice.” She wasn’t sure. Different areas of The Lagoon Nebula operated on very different ends of the spectrum of class, and from the looks of this man, it didn’t exactly seem like he was in the business of waiting on elegant tourists from Crescentia and Pelsanor. “Well, maybe if I’m ever out that way, I’ll stop in.”
The stranger nodded. “You ever find yourself out there and you’re in trouble, you come straight there. If I ain’t there, you tell whoever is that Uncle John sent you, they’ll fix you right up.”
Jessamine studied the card before slipping it into her pocket. She didn’t intend on ever taking him up on that offer, knew she’d likely never find herself anywhere near The Lagoon Nebula, but it was almost comforting. “I don’t suppose you would be Uncle John?”
“That’s what they call me.”
“Jessamine.” She offered her hand. “Or I guess that’s Niece Jessamine to you, Uncle John.”
Uncle John grinned. “I like you.”
In the kitchen, Uri dropped something and let loose a string of profanity. Uncle John smiled.
“Ignore him,” said Jessamine. “He’s been back there all day with no customers, I think he drinks the cooking wine.”
“That’ll do it. You know, years ago, I was a cook on a commercial vessel, we was out there for… must have been six months or so. That kind of work’ll make you mad.”
“Yeah, this job’s about to get me there. I won’t be here for much longer though.”
“What’s next for you?”
Jessamine wondered exactly how much she should tell this man. She knew he was from Sylvany but not exactly local. He didn’t seem like the overworked bumpkins she was used to coming across, who were often too exhausted to hold a conversation and just wanted to drink until it didn’t hurt to walk home. Bonchance wouldn’t send spies out, would they? Spies from Sylvany? He said he hasn’t lived here in a long time… Suddenly, she wished he’d leave.
“Medical leave.”
Uncle John’s mouth tensed. “Hm. Sorry, love.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s a genetic condition. Wingfield’s Myalgia. Runs in cervids. It’s nothing serious, it won’t kill me, anyway.” Jessamine shrugged. “My husband and I want to start a family. I’m hoping this will be the last work trip they’ll send me on.”
Pity always worked with the higher-ups. Jessamine wasn’t proud of it, but she wasn’t proud of working for Bonchance either.
Uncle John drained his glass, then leaned back, observing something out the window for a few seconds. Jessamine couldn’t parse his expression.
“Right, love. I should be on me way. Best of luck to you and your husband. And I was serious about that. The Silver Fish.” He pointed a finger at himself.
“Of course, I appreciate it.”
“Hopefully you won’t ever need it.” Jessamine scribbled out his bill and handed it over. He dug in his pocket, withdrew a handful of coins and frowned. “Might be a little short.”
“It’s alright, you’re my only customer of the day, I’ll take what you have.”
He dug in his other pocket and brought out a tight fist. “This should more than cover it, but your boss might have questions.”
Jessamine hadn’t seen her boss in two weeks. She motioned to the list above the bar, the various currencies Burloak would accept. “We can take Montressorian, Syvlanese, Pelsanorian-”
Uncle John opened his hand and Jessamine almost fainted. Three thick gold pieces the size of purp pits spilled onto the bar and, in the middle of it all, a ring with a luminous blue stone. Uncle John picked it up and held it out to her.
“I never drink if I can’t leave a good tip.”
Jessamine took the ring, held it apprehensively in her palm. It seemed almost too beautiful to exist in such a backwater place, she almost feared it would disappear if she blinked or breathed.
The piddling geological education she had received at Crescentia Trade had at least given her the name for the stone set in the gold band, as well as the ability to tell by sight and touch if it was real. It was. Uncle John stood in place, aiming a knowing smile at her.
“This is a Kalepsian opal.” She turned the ring over, looked at the setting and found what she had expected she would find. “This is a Bonchance Kalepsian opal. These don’t exist anymore, how did you get this?”
“If I told you, love, you wouldn’t believe me. Take it. Pawn it if you want, or keep it. Might be good to have in a tight spot.” Uncle John pushed his just-a-few-cents-short Sylvanese payment across the bar, along with his extravagant tip. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m running late.”
Jessamine swallowed her deluge of questions. “Alright, then. It was nice to meet you, Uncle John, and, uh… thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Likewise, Miss Jessamine,” he said from the door, not turning back. “Remember, The Silver Fish.”