Trailblazer Read online

  Maybe the things she’d taken for granted in the past actually had much deeper meanings.

  When Essley approached a door Sally had seen once before, Sally paused. “You said no before.”

  She’d been attracted to the stout but somehow also sleek store, with its sharp edges and smooth seams. Something about it suggested a more sophisticated type of fabrication than any other place in Pivot. This was Sujan’s store, and he was a highly acclaimed master technie.

  A quiver of excitement ran through Sally. She didn’t know what to expect, but the place seemed wonderfully grand to her nonetheless. Like a cave of wonders or a treasure trove.

  “That was when we didn’t have an appointment,” Essley said. “I made one when I first saw your invention. Somehow, I figured one way or another, you and Sujan needed to meet.”

  The mercenary looked extremely pleased with herself.

  “You’re sure?” Darthrok paused with his hand raised to ring the doorbell, giving Essley a dubious look. “You know how he can be.”

  “How can he be?” Sally asked.

  Essley made a dismissive gesture. “He’s not that bad, when you understand him. Besides, if anyone can handle him, Sally can.” She shifted her gaze to Sally. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”

  Sally hoped that was true.

  Essley rang the bell, and when the door made a loud click, she opened it. Darthrok followed. Sally hung back for a moment, just in case they got thrown out on their ears by the notoriously inflexible technie. When they didn’t, she cautiously stepped in behind them.

  Once inside, she froze. A feeling of wonder seized her innards and then seeped all the way out to her fingers and toes.

  Sujan’s shop was amazing. There were multiple worktables and neat stacks of storage bins, as well as rails screwed into the wall. Each worktable was carefully arranged, either with an empty surface or with a few things sitting at right angles to one another.

  It was as if precise, mechanical angels had arranged everything here. The storage bins were all of the same size, perfectly positioned, and lidded so that they gave no hint about their contents. The hanging rails gave Sally more to view as they anchored hooks that held a variety of tools, all hung up shortest to longest.

  Impeccably organized.

  Though the care that had been put into the layout and upkeep was impressive on its own, what really set Sally’s insides on fire was the feeling of purpose.

  Every item in Sujan’s workshop, she was certain, was here for a reason and would never go forgotten or neglected. And what things he must create in such a place! What wonders he must repair!

  Whatever problem she might ever encounter, surely, this place contained a solution.

  She even loved the smell. Metallic and a little burned with a hint of freshly-cut wood.

  A clipped, distinctly Eastern-sounding voice broke into Sally’s reverie. “If you aren’t going to close the door, kindly take two steps back so I can.”

  Sally looked behind her. Two steps back would put her on the doorstep outside the shop. If she did that and he closed the door, he’d be slamming it right in her face—oh.

  Right. Sujan was irritable, and he’d just told her off before she could even greet him.

  But she was Sally Streetmonger, not some nervous adventurer. If he thought a few rude words would chase her away, he was in for a surprise.

  She closed the door and strode forward, extending her hand to him. “I’m Sally. Good to meet you.”

  He looked at her hand with disdain. “What’s that for?”

  “A greeting that’s customary for my people. You’d be rude to refuse.” She smiled at him pleasantly, noticing for the first time that he was probably the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

  Gorgeous, really.

  He arched an eyebrow. It made him look arrogant, but somehow no less good-looking. “I don’t touch people I don’t know.”

  The cold disdain in his voice, for some perverse reason, only made Sally’s smile widen. She’d always been courteous, even when someone stabbed her to death. But today, some wild seed of naughtiness suddenly made her want to vex this dismissive man.

  “Well, you know me now. Sally. Remember it.” She snapped her fingers with an elaborate flourish.

  She justified her wicked impulse to herself, reasoning that since karma was a measurable phenomenon in Everternia, surely Sujan had some payback due to him, and why shouldn’t Sally be the one to deliver it?

  As far as she was concerned, the math worked.

  Essley and Darthrok, however, stood gaping at her as if she’d lost her mind. She gave them a sunny smile.

  Turning back to Sujan, she assessed him.

  Sujan Souk, CM.

  Class: Maker.

  Specialty: Technie.

  He had no money on him at the moment, and he looked like he’d give her a good fight.

  Hmm. He clearly didn’t recognize her. No CMs had, thus far.

  She wondered about his fighting skill. He seemed about as formidable as her, and both of them were supposedly capable of pounding Essley and Darthrok into the dirt, even though Sally had no weapons skills and no combat experience.

  That, in itself, was a puzzle.

  “Your shop is beautiful,” she told him.

  He blinked. Whatever he’d expected her to say, that hadn’t been it. He recovered quickly. “Since you made an appointment, I assume you came here for more than sightseeing.”

  She smiled. “Indeed. I’d like your expertise.” She gestured to her bag, then to an empty worktable. “May I?”

  He made a half-hearted gesture of permission.

  Carefully, she set the gifting box on the table and removed her door alert mechanism, arranging it so he could see her intentions. “I got this far, then I got stuck.”

  Sujan moved closer, looking like he was curious in spite of himself and trying not to show it. “It’s interesting. I haven’t seen an adventurer try to do something like this. It’s an alarm system, right? For security?”

  “More like, just a long-distance doorbell,” she said. “And I’m not—” She almost told him she wasn’t an adventurer. Why? She might be a CM, too, but she had earned the right to call herself an adventurer. Why had she been tempted to tell him her secret?

  She needed to be more careful. She nearly made a serious mistake.

  “I’m not skilled enough to finish it,” she finished smoothly to cover her misspeak.

  “It’s not terrible work for a mid-level technie,” he mused as he picked up one of the smaller pieces. “But this material isn’t compatible with the rest. Either you need to switch this out to something we can forge-weld, or we can change out all the rest and join it with a laser torch.”

  “I can’t fasten the two together?” she asked, leaning closer to examine the piece he held. “Like with bolts or something?”

  “You could, but the other metal will wear because it’s softer, and the two parts will end up walking away from each other, causing your fasteners to break. Then the whole contraption is likely to get destroyed, if it’s working at the time. A wrench in the works, as we like to say.”

  She made a humming sound of understanding. It was just as well she hadn’t been able to get those pieces to fit together right.

  But wait. He’d called her a mid-level technie.

  “What do you see when you look at me?” she asked.

  He pulled his attention from their work to look at her, startled. Sally realized how close their faces were and pulled back just a little, trying to be subtle about it.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Assess me, please,” she said.

  Frowning in puzzlement, he gazed at her intently. “Sally. Hidden class. Hidden specialty. You look like you’d be a good match in a fight.”

  He shrugged.

  “Hidden class and specialty? Have you seen that before?” she asked.

  “I don’t recall.” He returned his attention to the device. “I can complete thi
s for you in two days. It will cost you six gold. Do you accept?”

  He’d slipped back into his canned responses. Sally felt like she’d been slapped. Speaking to him was much easier than trying to speak to Essley and Darthrok. When she talked to Sujan, words just fell together in the right ways, without her even having to try.

  She’d felt like they were having a real conversation, when in reality, he was just going through one of his interaction loops.

  The realization stung her.

  “I accept,” she agreed flatly. She palmed her coins, then deliberately reached toward him and pressed them into his palm. She touched his hand with both of hers and watched him, hoping the contact would cause him to wake up, just like she had.

  She held her breath, hoping.

  His hand closed around the coins and he pulled away. “Let’s keep this professional, miss.”

  Sally winced. She shouldn’t feel hurt. She shouldn’t.

  So why did she?

  Inspiration struck her. “But I don’t want you to do the work,” she said.

  He blinked at her. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m a technie,” she said, and while that hadn’t been true when she’d walked in, it was now. Officially, anyway. She logged her new class and specialty right then and there, officially, and she felt a sensation like a dozen doors within her mind suddenly flying open.

  Wow!

  “Assess me,” she told him.

  “Sally, what are you doing?” Essley asked.

  Sally held up a staying hand and sent Essley a pleading look. She’d explain later, or at least try to.

  Rather than complain about having already assessed her, Sujan did so. “Sally. Class: maker. Specialty: technie. You look like you’d give me a good fight. You are not yet apprenticed to anyone.”

  “Not apprenticed?” Sally looked at Essley and Darthrok. “How do I choose a mentor?”

  They shrugged. Darthrok said, “We’re the wrong class to ask that. Entrepreneurs have class, specialty, and subspecialty rather than doing an apprenticeship like makers and scholars do.”

  Right. She knew that. Sometimes her energy got ahead of her knowledge.

  “I choose you as my mentor,” she said to Sujan.

  His eyes lit up and for the first time since she’d entered his shop, his mouth turned up in a smile. Wow, he was even more beautiful when he was happy.

  He laughed.

  “Your work is acceptable, but unremarkable,” he said. “You have to prove yourself worthy of my teaching.”

  Ouch. Sally grimaced. Then she realized that he had just said that her work was unremarkable for the mid-level technie he believed her to be.

  Sally grinned, realizing she was legitimately a mid-level technie. How was that even possible? She was ahead of things already. “Right. I’ll be back in two days, then.”

  With another quick look around at the place she intended to see a lot of in the near future, she led the way out of the shop.

  “What was that about, Sally?” Darthrok asked. “You looked like a whipped puppy one second, then grinned like a fiend the next.”

  Essley focused on the other matter. “You decided to be a technie? Wow! Congratulations!”

  Essley wrapped Sally in a big hug.

  “Uh, yeah,” Darthrok said. “That, too. Congratulations.”

  He smiled and put his fist up. Remembering the gesture from before, she bumped her own fist against his, feeling quite pleased with herself for learning their sometimes-odd ways.

  “I have a new plan,” she said, beginning the walk back to her own store. Until she had the alert set up, she didn’t feel comfortable leaving it for very long.

  “What’s the plan?” Essley asked.

  “Become Sujan’s apprentice.”

  6

  “Wow, your first quest!” Essley chirped as they arrived back at Sally’s shop. No adventurers stood waiting for her, and Sally didn’t have the sense of doom of having impatient customers that she’d had before.

  That was good, but it would be much better when she had the notification system installed so she’d have a constant awareness of what was going on in her shop. She had become an adventurer, and a technie too, but she was still dedicated to the idea of serving her customers well.

  She wasn’t sure how she’d balance her development as both an adventurer and a technie, but she felt certain she’d discover the solution to that particular puzzle.

  She’d keep trying until she figured it out.

  “First quest,” Sally agreed, satisfied. Out of habit, she grabbed a cloth and began wiping her already-spotless sales counter. When she realized what she was doing, she dropped the cloth, dismayed.

  Apparently, her old subroutines were still active. She’d have to stay mindful of that. She didn’t want to behave like an automaton. She made her own choices now.

  She paused to splice some words together. As soon as she’d left Sujan’s shop, she’d returned to finding speech somewhat difficult. “Did you have a quest to become mercenaries?”

  Hah. Perfect grammar. Nailed it.

  Darthrok shook his head. “Nah, it’s different for us. Our quest is basically showing up at a thieves’ den, declaring our intentions, and getting beaten to death. So, we have to be prepared with a godsend, and when we regenerate, we run back to the spot where we died, where we’re accepted as one of them.”

  Sally shivered. That sounded terrible! She much preferred the quest method. The idea of dying repulsed her.

  She didn’t even know if she was capable of earning godsends, since she wasn’t like other adventurers. She’d probably need to try, at some point, but she hoped she’d never need to use one. Not only did dying seem abhorrent, but she wasn’t sure what would happen if it occurred.

  She feared that she’d go back to how she used to be, and for her, that was the worst thing that could possibly happen.

  “What do you think you need to do?” Essley asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sally answered cheerfully. “I’ll books more.”

  “Books?” Essley gave her a curious smile.

  “Books!” Sally rushed down to her store’s control room, then back. She carefully put the three books she’d taken from the abandoned factory on her shop counter.

  “Books!” she repeated.

  Darthrok came closer and read the titles. “Mechanical Theory, Practical Electricity, Supply Chain Management Essentials. Where did you get these?”

  Words failed Sally. She struggled, but none of the relevant terms bubbled to the top of her thoughts. “When we…went…”

  Frustrated, she sent a desperate look to Essley.

  “The factory?” Darthrok asked.

  Sally pointed at him. “Yes! That!”

  Why was it so hard to talk to her friends, but effortless to talk to Sujan? It also seemed that the more enthusiastic she felt, the more elusive her words became.

  “I wondered if you’d grabbed something.” Essley sent Sally a sly smile before flipping Mechanical Theory open and scanning a page. “Wow. This is some dry stuff. Did you read this, Sally?”

  Dry? Did the pages seem brittle? They’d seemed to be in good shape to Sally. “Yes! Good book!” She felt like an idiot saying such basic words. No, not an idiot. An infant. So for sophistication, she added, “Very good book.”

  Darthrok edged closer, peering over Essley’s shoulders. “Wow. Okay, well it’s not my thing, but I’m glad you like it. I guess that’s how you learned enough to make your door notification device?”

  Sally nodded. “I learned a lot.”

  Oh, wait, that was a whole, normal sentence. Cool.

  “You’re a woman of unknown talents, Sally Streetmonger,” he said as he stepped away from the book, as if relieved of some giant burden.

  “Hang on,” Essley said. “Is Streetmonger even her name anymore? I don’t see it when I look at her.”

  They both fastened their gazes on her, leaving Sally feeling a little weirded out by the ex
cessive attention.

  “You’re right, it’s gone,” Darthrok said. “And Sujan didn’t mention it either. He just saw her as ‘Sally.’”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Essley said. “What do you think, Sally? Are you still Sally Streetmonger?”

  Sally furrowed her brow, focusing her attention inward. She’d always been Sally Streetmonger. If others no longer saw her as that, did that mean she still was?

  No. Never mind how others saw her. Did she feel like Sally Streetmonger?

  Yes.

  And no.

  She was still what she had been before, but she was more. Better. Smarter. Stronger.

  “What do you want us to call you?” Essley asked.

  Want. What she wanted mattered now. It mattered more than anything, didn’t it? Everything she’d done, from the moment she’d stepped out of her shop and viewed the sky for the first time, had happened because it was her choice. She wanted to be the person who chose. She wanted to be that kind of strong.

  “Sally…Strong,” she said. “I’m Sally Strong.” Then, to everyone’s great surprise, but most of all her own, she burst into tears.

  Interestingly, it was Darthrok who patted Sally’s shoulders while she had a brief, violent cry.

  She hadn’t even known she could cry. Another first. All these new feelings went to such extremes. She wished she had a handbook to navigate it all.

  She felt entirely overwhelmed, but also, somehow simultaneously amazing.

  Feelings were weird.

  Darthrok handed her a wadded-up piece of some kind of cloth that, by Sally’s estimation, was fairly clean and worth exactly one copper. She accepted it and dabbed at her cheeks.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m okay,” she said. Her voice had a strange waver in it that she’d never heard before.

  He rubbed her shoulders and patted her back. “That’s your first cry, right? Did you get extra experience or anything?”

  Sally searched her internal fixings. Though she had experience levels, she couldn’t read them. She could only tell when something was in her learning pool and causing her stats to actively rise. Not that she needed to be able to see that. Since learning so much from the books, she could feel when her learning pools were filling. If she read too much in one sitting, her senses swam with the overabundance of information and she’d have to wait a while before adding more.