Ascended

The docks were quiet.

I’m not sure why I had been expecting movement. Maybe because the moon was out, so I could see even better than normal. Thanks to my Touched transformation, my eyesight in the dark was almost as good as it was during the day. The only difference was that everything had a purple hue to it at night. That took some getting used to and I still hadn’t completely adjusted to it.

There were guards at the previously empty post, and I assumed there were guards at the other end as well, but the north side of the city was around the bend and a ways away. I wasn’t sure just how big the city was, but whoever built the walls had carved out a very large area in order to take advantage of one side of the city not needing a wall. That meant that the city was much longer than it was wide, which unfortunately gave us a lot of waterfront to cover.

“Master Eveth.” I looked over at the blonde woman beside me. “What do you think we should look at first?”

“Master…” Eveth giggled. “That sounds so weird.”

“It’s your title and we need to use them in public.” I didn’t know who might be eavesdropping, but a little caution never hurt.

“I know, it’s just…” The blonde Wrangler bit her lip. “Not something I ever dreamed of having.”

“Okay…” I wasn’t sure what to say. Becoming a Bokor was what my entire life had been preparing me for. The only other option for me was death along the way. I wasn’t sure what the future prospect for a Human Zombie Wrangler was other than death, like the rest of her group had suffered. It made no sense to me why Humans would want to risk their lives to do something that the Bokor were sworn to do for them, but that was probably something I’d never be able to understand.

“I mean, mom was trying to set me up with that Ethan Mordrow. She wanted me to take time away and have some kids.” Eveth wrinkled her nose, then flexed her fingers. “I’m glad I got this power. I never wanted to settle down…” She paused and turned to me. “Can Bokor even have kids?”

“Not that I know of.” Even with all the orphans who came to the island, I’d never seen or heard of any of them coming from Bokor parents. Though that may have just been because there were so few female Bokor and a male Bokor being with a Human female was a good way for the infection to spread to her. I shuddered as I thought about the implications.

“Huh.” Eveth shrugged. “One less thing I have to worry about.”

“What about Ziggy?” I didn’t know who any of my blood family was, though I felt like if I did, I would want to make sure they were taken care of.

Eveth stepped onto the dock and started walking towards the end. “I mean, he can’t stay with us.” She looked around to see if anyone was going to stop her. “It’s too dangerous.”

She had a point there, but I’d been younger than that when I’d been made an apprentice. Though to be fair, I’d spent most of my early years with the Bokor on the island, learning how to do the various chores that the Bokor needed done.

“So you want to find somewhere to leave him?” I watched her step into one of the rowboats that was tied to the side of the dock. There was one other small boat tied on the other side. Every dock that I could see had the place at the end open, even though there was rigging to tie a boat off on them.

“What are you doing?” I walked over and stood on the dock beside her.

“Seeing how hard it would be to steal a boat.” She looked around as she stared slowly drifting away from the dock. “Doesn’t look that hard.”

“Or it could be that after the reprimand that they got, the guards are all too scared of crossing us to think about stopping you.”

“Good point, Byler. Catch!” She threw a rope that was attached to the boat at me.

I caught the rope and pulled her in.

“You’ve established that security is still bad.” I helped her step back onto the dock after I tied the boat back off.

She held onto my hand for only as long as she needed to steady herself.

“Right.” Eveth dusted off her hands as she looked around. “Maybe if we knew what the ships were carrying, we’d have an idea of where to look?”

“Yer lookin’ fer the ghost ship.” A gravelly voice behind me made me jump a little.