Tale #15: Ironclad People

"Do you think its Vinclav?" Jurren asked, his eyes transfixed.   Suus stopped, a small rundlet hoisted over her shoulder. She looked up the metal walls of the ironclad that towered above their comparatively puny alclad windcutter. Being one of the tallest HJT ships with five masts, the comparison was certainly humbling. "It's just a girl, Jurren. How about you get back to scrubbing?"   "She's blighted," he noted.   "Some people blight. It's a choice as far as I'm concerned."   "There is no magic on Borealis, right? And this is a Borealian outpost. No magic, no blight. So why is she blighted?"   Suus squinted. The girl looked pretty small from down here. She stood at the side of her enormous ship and appeared to be looking right back down at Jurren. Though distant, it was easy to spot the snow-white hair: the mark of the blighter. "Who knows. Maybe there are non-magic ways of blighting. What those technocrats do up on the South Pole is beyond me. Just look at their ship. Imagine we had a behemoth like that..."   "It's Vinclav," Jurren insisted.   "What the gears are you on about, Jurren?!" Suus was starting to get annoyed. She had to bring the rundlet over to the rest and Jurren had to scrub the railing, and here they were, prattling about bloody Vinclav while Jurren gave the blighted Rim City girl the googly eyes.   "Think about it, Suus," he proclaimed, "the whole island of Guantil-ya, locked up all of a sudden? I came here as a kid once with my dad. Many decades ago. That city, Suus, it's beautiful. Humongous. They have towers taller and broader than you have ever seen, and inside there are halls stacked on top of halls. But these days... No one sets foot on Guantil-ya. No one sees Rim City anymore. Why? It's Vinclav."   "You say that like it explains everything, but it doesn't," Suus replied impatiently.   "He came back. Walked right out of the ocean probably, right onto Guantil-ya. Built himself an animancer's lair there or something. Now he's eating the souls of the Rim City people, that's why all the folks anyone ever sees on their ironclads are blighted. Vinclav locked that girl's soul away. It's gotta be Vinclav."   "You know," Suus said, a bitter taste in her mouth, "for a superstitious git, you sure say his name a lot. Better watch out, or he's gonna come and get you, eh? How about you don't make assumptions about other peoples' souls before you've even met them, oh wisest of mages, Jurren the Blockhead?"   Jurren lifted his hand in a non-committal wave, still transfixed on the girl. "She is looking right at me," he said.   "And you're looking right at her, what's your point?" Somehow this line annoyed Suus more than all the rest.   "I think she wants me."   "Oh get over it, she doesn't, you stinking piss-pot!"   "Not my body, Suus. I think she wants my soul. She's been staring at me real funny-like."   "You're so full of crap!"   "Listen, Suus, I think if I look away, she's gonna get my soul, you know? It's gotta be Vinclav..." He sounded distant, as though in a trance.   A shiver was running down Suus's spine. She sat down the rundlet. "Jurren. Look at me, you moron. There is no Vinclav on Guantil-ya and he's certainly not a feeble girl stealing your soul with her eyes. You're being daft!"   "I can't look away, Suus. She's been staring at me all this time. She hasn't moved an inch."   Her face contorted in anger, Suus yelled up to the other ship: "Hey! Hey, you! Girl on the deck!"   Nothing happened for a moment; then the girl lifted her hand and waved at them.   Suus waved back and then punched Jurren in the shoulder: "There, just a girl standing around bored. The only thing you two don't have in common is that you actually do have work to do you lazy git! Now get too it before the captain sees you slacking off."   Jurren snapped out of it. "Yeah..." he muttered and scurried off.   Suus shook her head again. <Git.>   A heavy hand suddenly rested on her shoulder and she flinched so hard, she almost pissed herself, still tense from the situation. "Wha?!" She turned around to see the old captain.   Captain Meeuwenberg was a weather-beaten old-timer who had already had his first command well before the Birth of Balsibart and his onslaught, and had served as a captain in the Commonwealth of Corsia navy during the Pirate Wars of Jamphel Yeshe. His deep scars and wizened skin, framing icy-grey eyes, crowned by wind-blown grey hair, made him look as though he had seen everything and then some. "Crewman Dommerholt."   "Y-yes, captain?!" she exclaimed shakily, standing in attention. She was in trouble now.   He gave the white-haired girl in the distance a cursory look. "Don't talk to the Guantil-ya people. Don't engage them at all, ya hear?"   "A-aye!"   He patted her on the shoulder. "Theys are strange folk. Blighters and some such. I've heard tales of some of them wearing ghastly prostheses and things like that. People who have to deal with them say they ain't right in the head. I happen to be one of those people, crewman. Leave them all be. Leave them be and they'll leave us be. Keep things simple."   "Yes, sir!"   "Good. Now pick up that rundlet and get back to work, you slacker! The sooner we're done, the sooner we can leave this gears-forsaken place..."   He stepped away laboriously, muttering under his breath.   Suus cursed and picked up the rundlet. Of course she had gotten the talking-to while Jurren had walked away scot-free. When she ventured another cursory glance to the girl, she saw her waving again. She lifted her hand and waved back, defiant of the captain's orders, and went back to work.

— Guantil-ya, Wexling of 1699 GE.