Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service Read Online Free Page A

Carter passed his blade to a man who had been acting as his second, trying to ignore Duncan’s sister who was fixing him with a stare strong enough to burn wood lacquer off a cabin’s walls. The second carried Carter’s borrowed weapon over to the carriage.
    ‘This wasn’t my doing,’ Carter protested to Willow. ‘Duncan challenged me. What was I to do, be known as the biggest coward in Northhaven?’
    ‘I don’t know who’s the biggest idiot out of you two,’ said Willow. ‘It takes some choosing.’ Willow shook her head wearily before following her brother to the family carriage.
    ‘I’d offer you a lift back to the town,’ Benner Landor told Jacob. ‘But I reckon these two should be kept apart for a while.’
    ‘We’ll walk,’ said Jacob, his gaze hardening on his son. Carter’s showing mighty little repentance for having come within a hair of running through a boy he used to call a friend. ‘And use the time to discuss this foolery.’
    Carter watched the carriage depart with nonchalance. ‘You mean you’ll talk, Father, and I’ll have to listen, same as it ever was.’
    ‘You got something to say, boy?’ said Jacob. ‘Maybe about why you’re out here brawling and not working at the library where you should be? About how you’re planning to ship out from Redwater? Your mother agreed to sign your papers for the seaman’s guild apprenticeship has she? Because I know I haven’t.’
    ‘You don’t need an apprenticeship to sign on with a skipper. There are plenty of ships that will sign you on without papers.’
    ‘Sure there are,’ said Jacob. ‘If you don’t mind lighting out on some tub loaded down with twice as much cargo as she can safely carry. There’re sheets on your bed more sturdy than the sails those seabed-scrapers venture out with. Use your head, boy. I want a son, a living son, not a collection of bones scattered on the bottom of an ocean.’
    ‘Standing in the river tickling trout twice a week doesn’t make you an expert on matters nautical,’ said Carter. He looked around, noticing they were almost the last people left in the clearing. ‘Where’s Adella?’
    ‘She got onto the Landor carriage. Old Benner might be tighter than bark on a tree but he’s got a gentleman’s manners to go with his self-made fortune.’
    Carter angrily lashed out at a sod of grass with his boot. ‘Damn!’
    ‘Nobody held a gun to her head to make her accept the ride,’ said Jacob. ‘You think on that, boy. Then you think what your mother would have done to me, if I’d been the one out here.’
    ‘You? What have you ever fought for?’ said Duncan, bitterly.
    ‘Only that which counts,’ said Jacob. ‘This is the trick of getting through life. Only stand up for what counts. Give it a few years, maybe you’ll start to mull on what counts might be.’
    ‘Why does everyone believe they got the right to tell me what to think and how to act and who to be?’ spat Carter. ‘You, that rich little turd Duncan, Adella, Willow, the Master of the Codex at the library. Do I tell any of you how to behave? Do I wake you up to nag you every minute of the day with your shortcomings? No! I keep it to myself; because I figure how you act and live is your concern. I think it’s time I got some of the same courtesy!’
    ‘And I think it time you finish the day where you should’ve started it. Working at the library. And to make sure you get there, I’ll be walking with you every step of the way.’

    In the end, Jacob and his wayward son only had to walk half the ten-mile journey to the library. They hitched a lift with a cart coming out from the Radiomen’s Guild in town. Both men sat on the cart’s tail, behind a pile of wooden crates, each box holding dozens of message tubes. The sun grew hotter. Jacob rested under the shade of the cart’s tarpaulin cover – raised on four poles above the flatbed – while Carter swung his feet lazily in the bright light. Carter rode in silence. Content