10. Sleepless night

In the middle of the night, a lone figure stumbled out of the inn.

Somehow, Alistair looked worse than he had after days of sewer work. The reason should have been obvious, which only made his failure to consider it more irritating. The starbloom-gathering job happened deep in the night, long before dawn. Only after he had eaten his evening meal and stretched out on the bed had the problem fully reached him. How was he supposed to wake for it? Asking the innkeeper to knock on his door at first light was common. Asking her to do it in the dead middle of the night was not. So, with no better option, he had chosen not to sleep. Now he was paying for that decision.

The night outside Verevain was darker than he would have liked. Some islands had weaker secondary stars that gave at least a little light after sunset, but Emerier was not one of them. Once the yellow star sank, darkness settled deep, broken only by lamps, torches, and whatever light people carried for themselves. Fortunately, the steward had warned him about that. Before returning to the inn, Alistair had spent another painful twenty shards on a second-hand shardlamp. Watching his hundred shards shrink so quickly in a single afternoon had been deeply unpleasant, especially after how hard he had worked to earn them, but this expense had felt necessary.

The lamp itself was a simple thing, more craft than beauty. A shard holder sat above a metal disc engraved with a basic flow pattern, all enclosed in wood with a handle fixed to one side. Two small levers on the underside let the user set the brightness to faint or strong. In theory, a decent lamp consumed about one shard per day at the weaker setting, or a few hours if used at full brightness. The seller had sworn his lamp still performed close to that standard. Alistair would learn soon enough whether the man had been honest.

He made his way through the quieter streets toward the gate, his old clothes back on and his newer ones left behind in the room. The choice had been obvious. A night spent outside the walls, walking through damp earth and wild growth, would ruin whatever he wore. Better to save the clean set for the tavern kitchen and use the ragged, smelly old clothes for work outside the town walls.

The guards at the gate quickly understood what he was doing. Gatherers came through here every night, and the sight of a shardlamp and a sack answered any questions. Outside the walls, the danger changed. Voidlings were not afraid of starlight, but darkness helped them. The few creatures that managed to survive near settlements found easier cover once the town’s light no longer reached them. For that reason, the gatherers stayed close to the walls and moved only where the guards’ sight, and arrows, could still reach. Alistair had asked the innkeeper about that before leaving. She had told him it had been a year since the last sighting near the walls and three times that since anyone had actually died from it. The answer did not remove all caution, but it kept him from turning back.

Out beyond the gate, scattered points of light were already moving through the darkness in the search for starbloom. Their lamps floated like dim wandering stars above the ground, bright enough to mark their positions but too weak at that distance to reveal faces. That suited him perfectly. If the light had been stronger, his clones would have been much harder to conceal.

The situation unsettled him and thrilled him at the same time, though Alistair would not admit to either.

As soon as he moved beyond the bright edge of the guarded area, he summoned his first clone and gave it the class he wanted. He chose Seeker.

It was one of the classes he had struggled to gain in the Hall. At first, he had wanted something like Scout or Pathfinder, something built around finding, tracking, and navigating. Those trials had failed, but he kept pushing, narrowing the wish, reshaping it, and changing it slightly until he asked for a class focused less on routes and more on the target. Eventually the Five had answered. Seeker’s base skill, Keen Find, did not help much with establishing the path, but it gave a sense for the direction of nearby targets.

Once the clone appeared, the night no longer felt so vague. A faint pull settled in his awareness, more instinct than thought, guiding him slightly to one side. Less than a minute later, he found the first flower. The bloom stood pale and delicate among darker leaves. The pair of Alistairs crouched, plucked it quickly, and moved on. Another tug. Another plant. Then another. Soon the work found its rhythm.

The clone’s presence helped more than he expected. Even as another version of himself, the clone broke the worst of the eeriness. Once the pattern became comfortable, the fear eased enough for him to focus properly.

The results came quickly. Within minutes he had passed ten flowers, which meant his first guess had been correct. The Guide responded as well, though in smaller pulses than he would have liked. Each discovered flower brought a faint + EXP, so slight that he might not have noticed it at all if he had not been watching for it. The gain from the Seeker class was almost insultingly small, but it came again and again, slowly adding up. It was enough to soothe the first flare of frustration.

When the clone reached its time limit and dissolved, the stronger +++ EXP for Clonemancer followed soon after. The stronger response pleased him more. Whatever rules governed his main class, it clearly approved of choosing the clone for the task.

He summoned another Seeker clone and kept moving.

After that, the night moved faster than he expected. He had to stay aware of the other gatherers, adjusting his route whenever one of the floating lamps drifted too close. The trick was hiding the clone from view without moving in a way that would attract notice. He could not keep too far from the wall either.

By the time the lamps of the other gatherers began drifting back toward the gate, he had almost forgotten how tired he was. Only then did he realize the blooming window was ending. He did not want to risk holding on too long and losing what he had earned to the first return of light, so he dismissed the active Seeker and headed back with the others.

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He did not even need to think about where the warehouse was. The line of sleepy gatherers carried him there.

Seeing half a dozen tired youths already ahead of him made him briefly uneasy. For a moment he imagined the flowers withering in his sack before they could be counted, all that effort turning into nothing while he stood waiting in line. Fortunately, the town staff handling the deliveries were faster than that. The line moved with practiced efficiency.

When his turn came, the man at the table looked at Alistair with obvious surprise. The size of his harvest was enough to draw attention. Realizing the danger a heartbeat too late, Alistair hurried to explain.

“My friend’s share is in there too,” he said, putting embarrassment into the lie as though apologizing for bringing two loads at once.

The man glanced past him at the line, then back at the sack, and nodded with immediate understanding. It was a plausible enough explanation. Gatherers worked together. Friends combined loads. No one wanted to waste time before dawn.

That was enough to save him from becoming the center of attention when the count was announced.

Two hundred and twelve flowers.

Twenty-one shards.