((Closed to Max Dirks))

The distinctive smell of the cartographer's shop brought forth memories of home and Lorelei found herself struggling to keep back her tears.

Everything had been fine while the teen had been out on the sea. The voyage from Corone had been long and relatively uneventful, she had vomited only two times before the sea sickness abated and they had but a single storm to break the monotony of crossing the westernmost part of the Kebiran Ocean. She had spent her days with her books, either tucked away in her cramped cabin below deck or sitting cross-legged underneath one of the three masts, where she was out of the sailors' way. Nobody had bothered her and she had bothered nobody in return. The ship – a three-mast carrack named Wailer – was owned by the Vorguk – Stokes Trading Company, and the captain had kept his men in perfect order, despite the presence of a girl. So much order, in fact, that by journey's end Lorelei almost wished for one of them to make some sort of advance. But like the sea and the captain, the sailors had been cold and remote, all of them Salvarians judging by their pale hair and skin that was bronzed above the collars and cheese-white beneath it. She had been just another passenger and they were on just another northern run.

The gravitas of her undertaking hadn't truly bothered Lorelei while aboard Wailer. Yes, she was definitely going somewhere, but the ship had been such a self-contained world of its own that it never truly felt like leaving the island of Corone and striking for some distant shore. At that point, Salvar had been just a shape on the map, a collection of lines and letters and little illustrated forests and hills that could had been a hundred miles away, or a thousand, or a million, just as Corone might've been or Fallien or even the far continent of Kebiras. The sea was the great equalizer, the relentless eraser, the azure limbo that made distances inconsequential.

And even when the flat horizon had started to give way to the jagged shapes of the green shores, Lorelei had been fine. After all, most coasts and coastal towns looked similar, with their busy harbors and swaying ships and stale fish smells and loud foul-mouthed folk. It was only once her feet actually touched the smooth wood of the pier and she raised her eyes to the town of Gorodin that the teen felt first real pangs of homesickness. For even as her eyes gazed at the rustic architecture of the mostly wooden structures surrounding her and her ears were filled with foreign accents she could barely understand, Lorelei for the first time truly realized that she was in a world so different than the one she had known all her life. And even more important than that, she felt the true weight of the fact that she was braving these new shores all on her own.

She had managed to hold on to her composure then, willing herself into the town proper and starting her search for the information. It was when she entered the map shop that the hammer struck. The place was small and poorly lit, with only a pair of yellow lanterns aiding the pale light that came through the dusty windows of the storefront. But it was the smell that overwhelmed her, that musty tang of oiled leather covers and dusty parchments long forgotten on top shelves. Her mind fled back to Corone, back to the monastery of the Grey Monks, back to the library where she had spent first dozen years of her life, back to the place where she had a bed and a roof over her head and friends and not a true care in the world. She wanted to go back. She couldn't do this. It was too much. She wasn't her father.

“Help you, missy?” a voice beckoned form deeper in the room, where dimness turned to what looked like almost complete darkness to Lorelei's eyes still accustomed to the brightness of the spring sun. It took her several seconds to actually see a large mass of flesh and fat sat behind one of the wooden desks. He was bent over a piece of parchment with what looked like the world's largest magnifying glass in one hand and a quill in another.

For a couple of moments the desire to run out of the shop and back to The Wailer was almost tangible, pulling at her legs, her body, her heart. She managed to chase it away with a shake of her head and a deep breath. No, she had to at least try to do this. Nobody else could. Nobody else cared.

“Uhm, yes. I, ah, I need a map of this region,” Lorelei said tentatively, taking a couple of steps deeper into the shop. Her approach ultimately revealed the puffy face of a balding man that looked about fifty, with two pairs of glasses hanging on his nose.

“How much?” the man asked. He eyed his customer, but there wasn't that much to see. Wrapped in a dull gray cloak almost from head to toe, it was only her pale face peeking out of the cowl that gave anything recognizable to the observer.

“How much?” she repeated, her dark thick eyebrows dropping into a puzzled frown.

“How much are you looking to spend? The basic maps are fifty,” the cartographer pointed with the quill to a wooden shelf filled with rolled up scrolls. “They go up from there, in both cost and complexity. Take a look. But be careful!”

Lorelei nodded and approached the stack of parchments, pulling one out and carefully unrolling it, all the while aware of the inquisitive eyes of the owner. The map contained only the basic features and outlines, with only the main roads and rivers marked and the largest settlements named. It would not do. She moved two shelves to the right, pulled another and found it more to her satisfaction. The illustrations were still rudimentary, but most of the towns and villages were there as well as a webwork of road and waterways.

“How much for this one?” she asked, finding her own voice overly timid and hating herself for it.

“Two hundred.”

She was getting robbed, but it wasn't that surprising. The cartographer marked her as a tourist, and he wasn't that far off with his assessment. “Is it to scale?”

“Of course it's to scale. What kind of business do you think I run?” the man retorted, but there was no real anger in his voice, only mild annoyance of someone who had to answer stupid questions and do so often.

“Do you have any maps of Kalev Highlands?” Lorelei asked, trying to sound only mildly interested in it, trying to mask that this was precisely the thing she had come for.

“And why would you want that, kid?” he asked, dropping his quill and pulling one set of glasses off his nose.

“Study purposes. I'm from Radasanth University, you see, and we're on an excursion. And one of our tasks is updating the map archive.” It was the story she conjured up during the voyage, and she delivered it with as straight of a face as she could.

“Is that so?” the cartographer said, his hand going to his unshaven chin and giving it an uninterested scratch. In the silence of the room it sounded as if his fingers scrapped across sandpaper. “So this excursion was all about crossing a thousand leagues of ocean in order to get some maps? Radasanth University must have plenty of money to spare.”

“There are other tasks as well, which I'm not at liberty to reveal,” Lorelei said.

“Convenient. One of them wouldn't be actually going to the Highlands, wouldn't it?” the man asked, one of his bushy eyebrows raised. Lorelei remained silent for the moment. She was perfectly aware that the man didn't believe her, but what did it matter in the end? She was a paying customer and her business was her business.

“But of course it wouldn't,” the man continued. “Coming from the Radasanth University you would surely know that there are no trade routes to the Kalev Highlands. No trade and no official contact whatsoever with those traitors.”

His emphasis of the word was punctuated with a further rise of his eyebrows.

“And unofficially?” she asked, nervously fingering the edge of the map in her hands.

The balding cartographer studied her for a long while, to the point where it seemed to Lorelei that the silence stretched for minutes. It looked to the teen that the man was gauging her, trying to estimate if he could trust her. She didn't have her hopes up he would. After all, she was a mere walk-in from a foreign land. Why in the world would he ever trust her, especially after the flimsy story she offered?

“There are...ways,” he finally said after an audible sigh.

Lorelei waited, saying nothing. If the man would share the information, fine, but she wouldn't beg for it. If he was about to offer it so freely to a stranger, then surely such data could be obtained from other sources as well. Which wouldn't be that surprising, now that she thought about it. The Andvall were officially traitors and officially the enemies of Salvar and officially they were hated by most. And yet nobody truly bothered to conquer them, not the local law enforcement and not even the almighty Church of the Ethereal Sway.

“There are certain people who still trade with the Andvall tribes and make the northward trip on occasion. If you post a notice at the alehouse down at the docks, somebody usually shows interest,” the man shrugged and picked up his quill again, preparing to go back to work.

“Just like that?” she asked, her hands now at her narrow hips. “I post a notice about going to a place where no one officially visits and nobody but the right people notices it?”

“Well, not if you put it dumbly like that,” he raised his eyes again. “Simply mention a trip north and add a word 'paramount' somewhere in the notice. Those interested will notice it. Might take a couple of days, though, so better rent a room. And you better have some real gold. These people aren't cheap.”

Lorelei couldn't have hoped for a better start to her quest. She had expected to spend weeks in Gorodin, digging up the information and way to reach Kalev Highlands. Yet it seemed there was a sort of a public secret when it came to the Andvall, and nobody really cared much about their treason charges here. So she dropped the two hundred for the map and went out into the crisp fresh air with renewed vigor. For the moment the weight that was threatening to crush her only minutes ago was lifted and she could breathe with full lungs. For the moment things were going to be fine.