Chapter 11 - Faceting

Cutting through the outlands, the Murky Prospector exited into the vast expanse of sky. Here, trade routes were thin, and the air grew aggressive. Past the skyland of Jamescott and further into Argentian territory, was just one place that the Radephian military would think twice about chasing them into.

A couple of days into their flight, they got back into the rhythm of taking watch in shifts. A few weeks prior, they would have had to maintain basic repairs on the ship. With four extra pairs of hands, and paws... there was some extra in-flight time for training.

With the immediate threat of arrest gone, their conversation settled on something that was on the back of everyone's minds. The one last person who had yet to get a piece of them. They circled around the galley table.

"She'll want her cut." Edven grumbled with a glass in hand. The captain told him not to drink, but tonight she gave him an exception. He wiped the grease from his hand with a clean rag, now that he could wash them properly. His towering automaton stood in the corner of the room motionless. "With a find like Prism? She'll claim it as hers. Mark my words. She'll 'tax' us like our last find."

Cowel stood with his leg perched up on the chair, with the chin of his serval companion resting on the seat. "If it's alive, would she even want it?" He had spent days with Prism now, and the connection to it was increasing. The stone spoke to him in a language without words. Responding to it remained difficult.

"Lillian rewards boldness..." Alanea leaned against her closed personal cabin door with a cloth doll pretending to sit on her shoulder. "...and punishes anyone who she thinks is defiant. To her, I'm sure we have been very defiant." She touched the hull where a scorch mark once was. "We've already evaded one of her scouts. Returning with something that could buy us a fleet and hesitating to offer it. That would get us killed."

Kuthe adjusted the gold-rimmed spectacles on his snout. "The queen knows of its value and its power, captain. Presenting Prism to her as mere salvage would insult her. To present it as an entity is a different negotiation entirely." He glanced at Cowel. "One that requires extensive explanation."

Their journey through the outer skylands was isolating. Prism's existence had already altered their perception of the world around them. Despite Alanea's stoicism, she felt the consequences of the situation press against her. The owl, which had stayed a constant source of mischievous amusement since its manifestation, observed her more frequently with unsettling intensity.

It would float down from her shoulder and nudge through her charts. With its six eyes unblinking, riffling through their meaningless lines as if looking for something. They were meaningless to both of them, as the routes she'd planned outways were not going to be used at this point.

Abandoning Prism wasn't going to help. The Umbral Cult and the military would have no problem searching the ends of Una for the stone. It would have worked had they made it far out in secret, but they could not determine if they were still being monitored. If they assumed Prism safe somewhere and left with verifying its safety, that would be naive. If they waited to make sure Prism was safe, they would risk Prism's discovery. The only way to ensure its safety was to physically protect it.

Kuthe wasted no time. He began instructing Cowel on how to better communicate with the allgeminel and also to protect himself from external mental intrusion. These thoughts and fears of the Inquisitor still polluted his mind with difficult emotions.

"You have learn how to filter those thoughts." Kuthe's voice gravelly muttered as they both sat cross-legged over the vault in the cargo hold. "Without you as a conduit, the stone has no means to channel and direct its energy. It will overwhelm you. That can cause you harm and leave Prism vulnerable."

Cowel struggled with the mental exercises. It required a type of focus he had rarely used. That of a zone or a tunnel; playing a sport or game to win. He closed his eyes, trying to visualize a barrier. The allgeminel's aspects and emotions were constantly changing and difficult to manage and tune to. Such an extraordinary object required an extraordinary keygemite, something he was not.

"It's too much." Cowel admitted, with his forehead creasing from failed concentration. A bead of sweat fell from his hair, and it was barely above freezing, only thanks to the hot water barrel next to him. His wooden cat was unfazed by his struggle, playfully rolling over the ground. "I feel everything it feels. Sometimes I feel things that aren't even... its. They are like echoes of others' emotions. Yours... hers..." He pointed, whispering, toward the captain in her closed room. "...the keygemin's too." He looked down toward the playing wooden serval whose hair he brushed with his hand.

Kuthe nodded and pursed his lips as much as a kobald was able to. "An allgeminell is a nexus and focal point for all gemin energy. It is not just a broadcaster, but also a receiver. You feel ripples of things across all of Una. This is one of the reasons why mental training is important. It is not just for Prism's safety, but is also... for your own sanity."

Kuthe stood up and grabbed an aging book from his shelf. "These here are various gemstone cuts. Part of my job as a gemer is to identify the worst parts of a gemin and remove them." Kuthe looked at the space in the floor where the vault was located. "To bring Prism up to its fullest potential, it needs to be cut. I think it is best that you choose what shape that is."

Cowel sat motionless with the book in his hands, paging through the delicate cloth slowly. "You're the expert. I have no idea what would be best for---"

Kuthe cut him off before any doubts could set in. "You do know. The stone trusts you, and I know you will make a wise decision. It can see the pages through your eyes." He didn't tap his cigar case even once before pulling one out to light. "What does it want to be?"

As Cowel wrestled with selecting a gemstone cut, Alanea found herself increasingly relying on the uncanny instinct of her owl-doll familiar. The charts that she had marked and annotated were quickly becoming irrelevant. The doll would flutter toward a specific direction with its many eyes fixated on some unseen point in the distant sky.

The captain prided herself on planning her navigation. Following these bird-brained, erratic cues with her hand on the wheel made her double-check her vision for signs that would invalidate the doll's guidance. Sometimes it was a favorable gust of wind in the sails, or a floater that would have hit the ship. The owl-doll seemed to anticipate every minor threat to the craft with unnerving predictive capability. The doll lifted its stuffed wing to point to a ship-sized skyland hidden in the fog up ahead. She was humbled entirely.

Her bearing was set toward the skyland of Great Circus. Lillian Von was a pirate queen whose charisma was as legendary as her inhumanity. She had built her empire on a foundation of corpses. The Prospector, as a vessel under her banner, was bound to an agreement. They were under the protection of Lillian so long as they paid their dues.

Presenting a piece of Prism was impossible, and handing over a being of such innocence was dreadful. Lillian Von is a woman who saw every object as a commodity. Keygemin, land, drugs, kobalds, sex, dreamers, explosives, time, influence. If it could be bought, she sold it. The captain would have to negotiate a trade for Prism's freedom and convince Lillyvon that they did not intend to cross her for better pay elsewhere. They would still be in agreement if they made no value from Prism. They can't owe her a percentage of nothing.

Over the last few days, the galley had become a forum of intense debate. It wasn't so bad with fresh coffee and friendly meals. The chill upper atmosphere did well to preserve the more perishable food.

"We can't just dance our way up Lillian's carpet with a shiny gemstone..." Edven had dealt with her once before and had his goods taken from him when he was a few years greener. "Lillian will see it as a trophy to parade around. She does not care if it has 'feelings', or a 'soul'." He made air quotes with his fingers, as he didn't believe it himself entirely. Even with a stone man sitting motionless with four glowing yellow eyes in the corner of the room.

"We definitely can't run forever. We're already fugitives of Radeph, and the Cult will catch us at every aeroina we try to dock. Apparently, they're in with the Port Authority." Alanea countered and threw her arms up to the ceiling in disbelief. "While we're in the carnival, nobody can touch us but her. I figure being against one group is better than being against two."

Alanea pointed to a large closed chest of gema and gemin she'd taken out of the vault that morning. "We owe her a portion of our finds. One-fifth of the sale. I'm sure it will be enough for her to overlook Prism."

"Captain." Cowel's voice was rising. "Prism is one fifth of the lives onboard this ship..." He looked toward Kuthe, who had been cutting Prism on his lapidary to create facets since the vault was opened that morning. "If Lillian plays any games with our lives, I'd be willing to sacrifice myself for Prism... Is anyone else here willing to do that!"

After a full bead of silence, Kuthe clapped his fingers against the side of the crank-driven flat wheel base, sprinkling gemin powder and water across it. "Prism is an allgeminel. Its value far exceeds any kind of material wealth. To Lillian, it will represent a new kind of currency. A means to expand her influence and to solidify the control over her domain."

"So, we defy her? She already knows we have the stone. They scouted us the moment we left the swamp. Those scouts sold our location to anyone who would pay to listen." Alanea's voice entered a dangerous tone.

"We present her with a different kind of value." Kuthe's reptilian eyes were buried deep into the stone through a magnifying lens. "We show her that Prism, in its freedom, is more valuable than it enslaved. We demonstrate its potential in a way that will benefit her without her having ownership over it." Kuthe examined a freshly ground facet for errors in measurement and found none.

Cowel's mind was still struggling to recover after days of mental training. While Kuthe's lessons initially focused on defense, he had moved on toward understanding and channeling Prism's energy toward offense.

"You are suggesting we set Prism?" Cowel stood up from the table and slowly walked toward the stone being cut, covered with slurry from the grinding operation. "This was your plan the whole time?"

Kuthe smiled toothily with his mouth open, looking up. The top of his head and eyes were covered with a complex contraption of magnifying lenses. "Gemin, like these magnifying glasses,... are lenses. Gemin, when shaped in the right way, focus their power." He looked down to examine the same facet again. "While I agree you made the right choice, Cowel,... do you have any idea how difficult it is to cut a briolette sphere?"

Cowel stared down motionless with his hands open at his side.

Kuthe laughed at his own coming agony. "Cutting removes the worst parts of the material and will make Prism into its best self. Prism is not the stone, but is within the stone. What I remove is just elemental crystal." He turned the dial of the lapidary arm to the next facet angle. "Cowel, you are going to set Prism."

"What?... I don't." Cowel had somehow known that this time would come, as if by deja vu. "We have no idea what it would do."

Kuthe didn't raise his head and continued his work the same way he had practiced it over the last century. "We are fools to set this stone, but we would be bigger fools not to." Kuthe kept his mouth open and teeth showing even though he was looking down at the lapidary plate. "Setting it might kill us, but that makes it no different than anything else we've dealt with."

Their discussion and journey continued. The ship made slow and deliberate progression around the outways skylands. With the assistance of her owl familiar, the captain took to flying in areas with low visibility. The few ships she did see, hugging the land, she avoided just in case. If she couldn't see them, they probably couldn't see the Prospector.

While in the region, there were occasional distant glimmers created by rather colorful Radephian frigates. Each sighting was nerve-wracking, but these decreased the closer they approached Argentian sky. Lillian's territory was just outways of the heart of the Argentian countryside. They would have to pass through a highly populated skyway to approach. The scattered barren skylands of the outways became more verdant and cultivated as they drove.

The crew was by now accustomed to the beauty of frontier exploration, except Kuthe, who would live in a city every day of his life if he could. Though they were happy to be back in civilization, they could not enjoy it due to the requirement of maintaining constant vigilance. Every single ship in the sky was a potential lethal threat.

Thus, Alanea spent a lot more time up on the cabin deck with her hand on the ship's wheel. Her usually active plush owl sat motionless on her shoulder. Its eyes were fixed on the horizon. If it weren't for blinking, it could have been mistaken for a toy. The doll's silence was more unsettling to Alanea than its jokes. Nothing to avoid, and no nearby threats. This could mean nothing less than a lie.

The captain knew of the pirate queen and her methods. The moment they hit her territory, they would be pulled from the ship. She would extract what she was owed one way or another. What was one-fifth of priceless? They needed Lillyvon's protection, network, and resources to keep safe. At what cost? No, rather, what is that value exactly?

Edven climbed up the galley ladder to the cabin deck. "Our rations are still looking good, but we'll be back on dry food if we wander much longer." The captain didn't reply, but exhaled a full breath from her nose.

The debate continued below as their voices reverberated in the galley room. They were pirates, yes, but they were scavengers. Everyone had killed someone during their life, in self-defense, but they didn't seek out causing harm. Petty crime, shoplifting... sure, but they weren't the fighting type. All except Alanea, anyway.

As Alanea navigated over the outways Crestfallen Forest, the atmosphere became thick with the scent of old rain. The sounds, too, were different, birds mostly. Out in the open sky, there were some birds, but not like flying over a forest. Flyfish were everywhere, but the only sound they ever made was a thud when the ship struck them.

The captain fixed the bearing since the skies were calm and left from the wheel and went down to the galley. She then began preparing herself a simple meal.

"I thought you hired me to cook." Cowel entered the galley smiling and started gathering up ingredients to make a hearty stew for everyone on board. "Have you seen the stone yet? It's almost done."

She grabbed a piece of hardtack to gnaw on anyway. "Is it? I'm worried that cutting it will make it look more valuable."

Kuthe spoke up from the short stairs from the cargo hold. "Cutting a gemin does make it more valuable, yes."

"That's good... Yeah." She chuckled, waving the hardtack around like a magic wand.

Kuthe polished the polished stone with some floatcotton webbing. "It really is a beautiful object." Kuthe almost kissed it, but that would ruin the finish. "I can't wait to see what you become."