[h1]The Saga of the Iron Gods - Wormwood[/h1]

[h5]Chapter 8: Grais the Master Criminal[/h5]

Asten swam down through the clear water, hunting among the rocks for small red shellfish that clung in clusters in shady spots beneath the overhangs or among the tall sea grasses. Before long, he had to surface for breath, and came up with a handful of the tiny shells, which he dropped into a pouch hanging at his waist. Gazing out across the bay, he watched as an island drifted past, slowly making its way out over the reefs. He had fallen in love with the Roaming Isles the moment he had seen it, and knew there was nowhere left to run. He was home, and nobody knew his face. Here, the pace of life was slow and easy, timed as it was by the comings and goings of the islands. A group of fishers walked across the island as it moved, passing from the western edge where they had been catching small shimmering fish that shoaled together in the bright waters to the eastern edge as the caves of the red-beaked eels were beginning to come into view. Asten smiled to himself, before diving back into the water to continue his hunt.

Somewhere else in the Isles, a little flat boat drifted towards a jetty. The pilot pushed their long oar into the water in silence as they steered alongside the wooden walkways that jutted from the edges of a small island. Their passenger tossed a handful of gold coins onto the deck, and stepped off onto the jetty. Without stopping to pick up the coins, the pilot quickly pushed off again, leaving the stranger to whatever dark business they had here. Their feet clicked on the wooden walkway, until they came to a small watchtower that they climbed unchallenged by the tower’s usual occupants who stepped aside, perhaps a friendly gesture of trust, or perhaps out of fear of what could happen if they tried to stop the stranger. High in the tower, they could see out across the bay, over the nearby islands as they drifted around one another.

The Roaming Isles was a place of great beauty, a shallow blue sea with smooth waters, surrounded by a ridge of rock that ran between the arms of a great sweeping bay. Protected not only by the jutting headlands, the place was watched over by the ocean gods known in the local tongue as C’arsa. The huge crabs walked the shallow seas, carrying the currents with them, and tending to the reefs, the fields of sea grass, and the smooth wastes with equal love and attention. Their great grey shells just crested the water’s surface, growing thick and lush with grasses and trees, living islands on which the locals built their homes. The stranger looked out across the ever-shifting landscape, but not with the usual awe and admiration of a visitor. For them, the constant movement merely held them back, made their task harder. Several times already they had arrived at an island, only to find they had already searched it. They kept moving while they weren’t looking, and it was making what should have been a simple task drag on for hours.

“Asten! How’re the sunweavers today?”
“Grais!” Asten smiled as he pulled himself up out of the water, leaning on the bobbing jetty’s edge.
On the platform, sitting cross legged on the warm wooden surface, was a young girl. She wore a bright and carefree smile, and laughed happily as she shook her long, braided hair over her shoulder. Like Asten, she was dressed for diving, in a short skirt and light top that would dry quickly in the warm sun. She carried a wide belt over one shoulder, hung with bags of hooks, bait, and other fishing gear she may need. But unlike Asten’s modest suit of near waterproof material, hers was expensive and luxurious, with intricate patterns of sea creatures woven into the fabric, and the protective panels that hung over her hips were made from a lustrous shell, carved by hand into a lightweight, but strong armour.
“They’ve been breeding since I last hunted here.” Asten tossed a bag of the little red shells to her, which she hung on her belt with an approving nod. “So what are you doing here?”
“Oh you know me.” she grinned, “I like to visit all the islands…” She leaned towards him, twisting so she could bring her face almost to his. “But if you must know, I’m looking for an accomplice.”
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Oh, come now, Asten!”
“No. Not after last time. I don’t want to deal with the knight again.”
“It’s worth it, you know. There’s things out there beyond your little shellfish.” She sat back, turning to glance in towards the island. “And besides-” She turned to see Asten’s hands vanish into the water again.

By the time he resurfaced, she was gone. He hauled himself up onto the jetty with another bag of sunweavers, untied his hair, and let it fall loose about his shoulders, before wandering up onto the island to sell his catch to the market traders. Few were skilled enough to hunt the little red shellfish, but with Grais as a tutor, he had quickly mastered the art of diving, and was now the go-to source for many of the sellers in the Isles. His catch would fetch a decent price, even discounting the bag he had given to her. He came away with his pockets full of coins, and headed over to find a boat to carry him home. He was almost to the jetty, lifting a hand to wave to the pilots when someone grabbed him, their arms wrapping around his waist. With a yelp, he was pulled into an alley between a small tavern, and the trader’s guildshouse. Trying to wrestle himself free, he twisted to find Grais smiling down at him.
“What is this!?”
She released him, and stepped back.
“Sorry, but I can’t take no for an answer, Asten.” She laughed, a high cool laugh that always relaxed him even though it always preceded a risky venture. “I told you it’d be worth it, and it will. Pleeease!”
Asten glanced back out into the light, thoughts of home competing with the adventure that Grais’ schemes always promised. He sighed.
“Just-” he started, holding up a finger, “just promise me we won’t end up in the cells again.”
“I can’t. You know that. But if we get caught, I promise I’ll tell the knight it was all my idea.”
“I wouldn’t bother. I think he already knows that.” Asten smiled.

It was rare for a god to die. Nobody knew how long the C’arsa had lived, but they certainly weren’t mortal. Young crabs could be seen scuttling around the sea bed, learning to command the water, and tend to the creatures that lived there, and their growth was carefully measured and followed until they were large enough to breach the surface, and the first buildings could be placed on their backs. But the end of their lives was something much less well understood. No C’arsa had ever been recorded as dying a natural death, no sickness ever befell them, and none ever grew too old. But a few times through the ages, one was killed, eaten from the inside by an unnatural parasitic worm that bored holes in their very shells. When the time was near, their islands would be abandoned, the buildings left to sink beneath the waves when they fell. The spirits of the gods crossed from reality, and passed into the firmament, the space between space.

Grais had witnessed the process once in her young life, when she was a child. A small C’arsa, home to a few shops and the messenger’s guildshouse had fallen near the southern edge of the Isles, and she had watched as the people lit spirit candles, floating them out over the water. She had sat in silence as they sang a song she didn’t know the words to, a sorrowful tune that was passed on always in the hope that those who learnt it would never need to sing it. Now, she looked down upon the carcass beneath the clear waters, its legs skewed at odd angles, and the boreholes visible in its shell.
“What happened?” Asten’s voice was a whisper, hushed and reverent.
“It was eaten. It happens, once every few hundred years.”
“And we’re here, to…?”
She pushed herself up, and knelt on the deck of the little flat boat. Asten rolled over, leaning on one elbow.
“The old messenger’s guildshouse is down there. Last month, I was exploring along the ridge and I found it. Something’s been there and smashed it all open. There’s a box. In the cage.” Her eyes shone.
The guildshouse, much like its replacement, had a large metal cage built at its heart, where valuable items would be kept until they were either sent out, or collected. Whatever was in there, she knew it had to be worth the effort of protecting it, and thus worth the effort of stealing it. She had weighed the knight’s morals against her own, and decided with a shrug and a grin that stealing something everyone had forgotten even existed wasn’t really stealing at all.

The boat drifted gently on the low waves, and as they dived, Asten looked back up at it with worry. There were no islands out this far, nothing to tether it to. If it was swept beyond the ridge… Grais grabbed his shoulder, and pulled him back from his thoughts. The C’arsa was a horror up close. He could see the holes cut into its shell ran deep, right through pink and ragged flesh that the normal creatures of the sea couldn’t even touch. It was covered in them, boreholes criss-crossing through it like a rabbit warren. Grais’ eyes remained on the crumbling ruins of the guildshouse. The walls had been torn apart by something big, and the cage lay exposed and open to the waters which had begun to eat away at its bars. Rust clung to it along with a fledgeling coral reef, a few branches and fan-like forms jutting out from the lower edges. And in the middle, with sea grasses growing from its sides, lay a large wooden crate with the last flaky remnants of lettering painted on the side.

Grais swam down further, until she could touch the bars of the cage. Between the fans of coral, she showed Asten the rusted columns, thin and weak and ready for just a gentle shove. They surfaced together, gulping down air as they clung to the boat, their legs kicking beneath the water.
“What do you think, then?” she asked, between deep breaths.
“It looks ready to go.”
“Could you get inside? If we can wedge the oar in, we can twist it from both sides.”
Back in the pulsing silence of the water, Grais led them down again, carrying the long oar with her. Asten squeezed between the bent bars, pulling himself through where his hips caught between them. With the oar passed through, Grais leant against it, pushing it while Asten did the same, to twist it between the bars. Flakes of rust rose through the water, until the oar slipped from Asten’s grasp, and he desperately pulled himself out of the cage to surface.

When Grais joined him, she slung the oar up onto the deck, pulling herself up after it. She rummaged in the bags beneath the little curving canvas roof at the back of the boat, returning with a small metal tin of medical supplies.
“You’re bleeding, by the way. I saw it in the water”
“I’m fine.”
“Let me-”
“Come on! We can do it this time. The bars were already going.”
He vanished again beneath the water, before she could say anything more. With a splash, Grais followed, again pushing the oar into the cage where Asten already waited. The bars creaked and whined, but with a final jolt, and a spray of bubbles and flakes of rust, they gave way, twisting out of shape and opening up a gap large enough to drag the crate through. It took two more dives to do it, the box clung to the broken metal and needed pushing from inside. When they finally managed to lift it up to the boat, it weighed the deck down so much it threatened to tip the front edge beneath the water. Grais smiled as she lay panting on the deck, her feet trailing into the warm sea as the sun slowly dried the water on her pale blue diving clothes and dark brown skin. Asten sat on the crate, and began to gently turn them around to paddle back towards the Isles.

They arrived close to Grais’ home, a little first floor place in a curving row of box-like buildings that ran around the edge of the island. She didn’t want to risk dragging the crate further than they needed to, in case the knight saw them. On the jetty, she sat on top of it, swinging her legs and grinning to herself, thinking of all the mysterious riches it could contain.
“Thanks again.” she smiled as Asten walked past to slot the oar back into the wooden rack at the edge of the jetty. “I’ll make sure you get your fair share when I’ve opened it.”
“You better,” he laughed, “I’m not doing that again. It’s-”
He stopped, staring past her. She turned to see a boat arriving at the far end of the jetty. The pilot was just turning it to come in when their passenger moved, passing over the water in a single step, impossibly far. The air rang with a low vibrating drone.