Jace saw very little of Sheiral for the brief remainder of the voyage to Montport, which did not overly distress him as the change in her status from barely tolerated passenger to vital part of the crew had not been enough to lift her out of the misery with which she seemed to greet all circumstances she found herself in.
He heard her with alarming regularity, as she repeatedly exclaimed in frustration or anger over the difficulty and stupidity of the tasks to which Katryn was setting her. Jace understood very little of what was going on, though probably a bit more than she did. The fallen princess did not appear to have grasped the essential fact that however meager her skills were, they outstripped Katryn’s by a considerable margin.
Sheiral didn’t even seem to realize that there was an actual point to the whole exercise. To her, it was simply an arbitrary condition imposed upon her continued presence onboard the Horizon Chaser. To Jace, the idea of having to pay for one’s passage by wracking one’s brain towards no particular end seemed ludicrous, but judging from her rants, she considered it to be a regrettable but thoroughly ordinary part of life to be called on to recite, to perform, or to figure for an endless series of interchangeable tutors who had nothing better to do than torment her and keep her from doing as she pleased.
Jace had a notion of what a tutor was, and he was fairly certain that Katryn didn’t fit the description. He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but the Chaser’s captain had more than hinted at the idea that she was after something incredibly valuable. He couldn’t say what it was exactly, but he had an idea that it could all be summed up in one word: treasure.
Money didn’t hold any great allure for Jace, in and of itself. In the years he’d spent working for Prit, it had passed through his hands as fluidly as… well… fluid. He understood that it got things done in the world, but that was it. He’d touched it too often and held it too rarely to really understand the sort of grasping greed that could possess some people.
But treasure… treasure was a whole other story. In fact, it was several stories… most stories involved treasure at the end of the quest, in fact. So Jace was content to keep his peace for the remaining hours, to put up with being ignored and shut out of the ongoing translation effort. His part in what was now most definitely a quest would come when they got to the city, and he’d perform it without complaint.
Destiny was keeping things moving, keeping them progressing down the right path. If Sheiral ever realized that, he assumed, she’d be a lot happier with her lot in life.
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