Remus hushed him absentmindedly, channeling threads of mana into carved glyphs on the side of the telescope. The vision enhanced, he could see the waiting men on the pier. Two of them, holding lanterns, eyed the approaching boat.
Turning the telescope to the left slightly, adjusting the range, he panned out to the slowly approaching ship. It held no light sources, just a dark shape cutting through the water. Remus could see men on board, readying ropes to dock.
The dark boat smoothly aligned with the pier, the two waiting men’s lanterns finally giving illumination to everything. Ropes were flung from the small ship to the duo as they tied it down to the pier. Remus channeled mana into a different glyph, picking up the audio from the distance.
"This it?" a pier guy asked.
"Half shipment," the spokesman on the boat answered, the lamplight not strong enough to fully make him out.
"Too risky to move so much, so we bring half," he continued. "We bring the rest, same time, in seven days."
Remus listened to his accent. It had been a very long time since he’d been in the Garden. But he knew for a fact it wasn’t an accent associated with the Lux Kingdom. A delivery of some sort from abroad.
"Okay, I’ll tell our boss." A pier guy nodded.
"And tell him. Our boss expects the full value returned, as agreed. They are investing big in your boss. The trust with this, he better deliver on it, or else."
The speaking pier guy just nodded quietly, the air of a man who knew these threats were astronomically above his pay grade.
Movement began on the ship, the darkened figures carefully lifting a long box. From this distance, the crate had the dimensions of a coffin. Gently lifting the elongated box, it took about four of them to carry it down a ramp off the ship, placing it onto the pier.
Dusting his hands, the ship spokesman continued.
"It is very volatile. Careful with it. We’ll be back here in seven days. Same time."
Nothing else was said. The pier duo untied the ropes, tossing them back. The ship pushed off and quietly went back into the current, drifting off as quietly as it came.
The two pier guys just stared at the box, quietly arguing about how they were going to move it.
Remus left them to it, closing the telescope.
"Well?" Jack asked quietly, his attention flipping back and forth between the docks and Remus’s expression.
"It seems I have a date in seven nights’ time," the knight replied.
"Will you trust me enough to catch you?"
"Will you fall for me?"
Remus opened his eyes, awoken again from dreams. Every night so far, upon returning to the Garden, sleep was the one thing he had not done successfully. Like his time on the run, when he had a brief moment, he slept for what was necessary and no more.
Sitting at the side of his large bed, he took a deep breath, rubbing his face.
It was still night outside the window, the moonlight floating through the gap in the curtains without a care. The light revealed scars all over Remus’s body. His arms, shoulders. He ignored them all. His thoughts were lost in the events of the evening earlier.
Selecting Captain Jackson had been a fine bet.
As soon as Remus entered that tavern, he’d identified a few candidates, with Jack sitting at the bar like a bonfire. He had squeezed himself beside him to have a drink, listening to his conversation while judging his temperament as he idly chatted to the bartender and those beside him.
The scent of the sea hung on his hair and clothes like perfume. His clothes and mannerisms implied he owned a boat. His authoritative demeanor suggested he was unlikely to follow the lead of another on a vessel. But with the man’s hands bearing the marks of a ship’s wheel, Remus gambled.
The rest was conclusive.
All that was left was to get to know the man, and Remus liked what he heard. Everything else just needed a little push.
He enjoyed getting to know the man on his boat, and he would be very useful going forward. What they talked about spurred his memory, the events he had buried deep for an age.
"For the Kingdom..."
The dagger piercing above his heart. It was sudden, unexpected. On reflection, despite the slow telegraph to his training, he didn’t even react.
It just happened.
Slid right in like it belonged, a sloppy strike.
It wasn’t even the attack that pushed him backwards. It was the shock and realization of it all.
Then the hands. All those reaching hands with vice-like grips. Grabbing him from behind.
His arms.
His shoulders.
His hair.
They all just came out of the air behind him, violently claiming anything they could get a hold of.
And pulled.
Despite all the shock, the speed of how it happened.
Remus still remembered them all. Their faces all watched him, fading into the distance of that grand room as he was dragged across realms.
All twelve of them.
Some stone-faced.
Others shocked.
A few appalled.
But they all played their part regardless.
And not one of them raised their hand to cry out for it all to stop.
The doorway Alec Blake was dragged through closed on all those faces, his last vision of freedom and the Garden.
And he remembered each and every one for an eternity.
Lifting his hand from his lap, he summoned the dagger from his spatial storage.
This dagger, his oldest companion, had seen some shit with him. And how they met? Embedded in him, inches from his heart.
Rotating it in his hands, Remus looked it over.
It was an odd dagger, more ornamental than functional in the beginning. It had plenty of scratches and dents now from centuries of use. The hilt was perfectly straight, a smooth hexagonal shape from the bottom.
No pommel or cross-guard. Just a purely straight weapon, with an alien balance.
Remus just continued to rotate it in his hand, staring at it, then past it.
Remembering.