text: The sail to Stetguttot Heath was the longest I had ever been at sea. It took close to three weeks chasing the variable westerly winds from the southern tip of the Archipelago to its northern reaches. My new, permanent lodgings onboard Alessia’s boat proved invaluable. My own space, and an actual bed, however small, made the journey pass with relative ease. Still, I couldn’t help but feel relief when we finally spotted the landmass of Stetguttot Heath emerging from the oceans ahead. The islands in the north of the Archipelago tended to be larger than those in the south, and Stetguttot Heath was no exception. A series of hills like the points of a crown rose from the ocean. Tufts of uneven wild grass littered the steep banks, broken by pockets of white stone. As we got closer, I could see more apexes rising in the distance, and further back the tallest hills crested even higher. The entire island was a series of peaks and troughs rolling across the land. We began circling the island, looking for a safe place to land the boat; the steep banks and rocky waters proving too dangerous a place to moor. Then, on the south-east corner, we spotted a small wooden harbour. Three high wooden jetties jutted out from the shoreline into the sea. Next to one, another vessel bobbed waywardly in the choppy waters. The third jetty was stunted, its second half having collapsed into the ocean. Broken stalks rose from the water, bent at odd angles, supporting nothing but air. The other jetties looked little safer. As the tide rolled through, they swayed with the current, the joints of the columns creaking, small gaps appearing between bindings. We delicately slid up to one of the jetties, being careful not to bump it too hard in case we should send it toppling into the ocean. As we stepped off the boat, the planks creaked beneath us, letting out a panged ache with each step. “Any last advice for dealing with people here?” I asked Alessia, as she stepped up behind me. “Tell them that they can’t build jetties for shit,” she said, staring down at the ocean between the cracks in the planks. “Yeah. I learned that one too,” I replied, my voice flat. “Beyond that? Your guess is as good as mine. I knew how to get here, nothing else.” We took slow steps up the slip until our feet met firm land. A small stone causeway had been built, creating a level surface between the two hills that rose in all other directions. Some twenty metres’ climb up the hill to our right, we could see a large building tucked into the hillside. “Go see who we can find?” I suggested. Alessia shrugged, but nodded for me to lead the way. The wooden structure was probably thirty or so metres across. It was made of plain-brown planks mounted vertically on end, with a steep, sharp pointed roof. On the broad side I could see two small windows seemingly placed at semi-random, their heights not quite aligning. Approaching the building, we found a sign nailed to the door. It was perhaps only fourty centimeters across, and written in simple black font. “Harbour Office. All visitors must report.” I turned to Alessia and raised my eyebrows. “Guess we’d better report then,” she said wryly, reaching past me and knocking on the door. “Come in,” came a dry voice from the other side. Inside, the room was dark and gloomy. Lightless shadows crept across old desks and lopsided shelves laden with books. A few weak lanterns did their best to fight off some of the gloom, but their reach seemed to only cover a quarter of the space, giving colour to select parts of the building. At the far end, we could see three office workers sitting in a circle - two men and one woman. They leaned back in their chairs, their feet propped up on the tables. As we stepped inside, their eyes turned to us, but they didn't stand. "Hello, how can we help. Are you registering a ship?" "Yes," Alessia replied. "We've moored up at the jetti outside." "Excellent," one of the men replied. He stood up with an odd excitement, and began flicking through books on a desk next to him until he found the right one. He turned the pages and settled on a blank page. "What's the ship type?" he asked, while rummaging through the drawers in his desk. "B-Class trading vessel" The man produced a pen and held it up triumphantly before taking down information from Alessia regarding the ship. “And what's the purpose of your visit?" "Well, we were hoping to find out about someone who lives here, or at least did." The eyebrows of the woman still sitting suddenly raised. "Oh, I can probably help you there. We keep records of birth and education here. What's the name?" "Sannaz Lytta" She looked up and to the right. "Don't recognize the name. But we can have a look through the records. They're organized by year. Do you know how old they are... were...?" "No idea, I'm afraid. Adult. Not old enough to stop being active. So... older than twenty, but less than sixty." I winced, fearing how unhelpful I was being. The woman let out a small, sharp cackle. "Not much to work with," she looked over to the shelves of books to her right, "but we'll find them." She walked over and grabbed five thick ledgers off the shelves. "Halifax, get off your backside and help." The last of the workers still sitting rose and walked over as the woman placed the books down on a table under one of the lanterns. "Everyone grab a book and start searching." While the mission of finding the record was bound to be laborious, I was shocked how easy it was to find out more about our target on Stetguttot Heath. Back on Tima Voreef we had had to complete an errand and even then blackmail our way to simply see a record in a book. Yet here, the people couldn't have been more willing to help, almost relieved for a long but arduous task that at least broke up the monotony of doing nothing. Inside the books were a series of columns, each row representing the an islander.. I read the columns at the top. *Name, Section of Birth, TBU, Section of TBU, Occupation at 25, Section at 25, Occupation at 35, Section at 35...* I glanced right, the last column no more than a centimeter across, a tiny "Section at 75" scrawled in the margins. In the book I was reviewing those final few columns were always empty. But all too often, so were earlier ones. Given the years I was looking at, everyone here should be in their forties by now, but way too often only the first two columns were filled out. Whether the blanks were from a mismanagement of records or life I couldn’t be sure. I had gone through maybe twenty pages of names when suddenly one of the men raised his finger to the air. "Found him." The woman leant over and inspected his work. "That's the right record alright. He's thirty-seven, from Section F." She spun the book around and pushed it towards Alessia and I. We both leaned over to the read the first few columns. Sannaz Lytta, F, 17, F, Digger, F, Digger, F. "I assume Section F is a location?" I asked. The woman nodded. "There are fourteen sections across the island. F is pretty far from here, north-western tip, but you can walk there over a day or two across the hills." "What's TBU," I asked. "Test for Better Undertaking," the woman replied. "Everyone at age fifteen takes a test to determine their skill levels. Both general intelligence and knowledge of certain areas like engineering, medicine. Key skills. From there we determine what career people should have." "So one test when you're fifteen and you decide who becomes a doctor and who goes into manual labour?" I asked through gritted teeth that hid my pensiveness. "Yes," the woman replied. "There's a committee in Section C that work at designing the test, revising it over the years to make it the best it can be. Ensuring it has the right variation - not too easy, not too hard" I looked down at the ledger. "And a score of 17?" "Bad. Real bad." The woman shook her head, snickering slightly. "Your guy's a moron. Probably why he was assigned to be a digger." "A digger?" Alessia asked. "Yeah. They dig," the woman said, tilting her head forward. "There's a bunch of mines in Section F. Diggers do the initial brute work of clearing out new routes so the miners can come along and pick out the copper." I looked up to Alessia. The man who had left Stetguttot Heath, had the money to hire an army from Tima Voreef, and then left to murder Deer Drum had spent twenty years underground clearing out tunnels. The background seemed so benign that I couldn't make sense of it. I had expected a scorned island leader, a guerilla fighter, and instead found someone whose own island deemed them an idiot and sent them to a life of digging. Alessia looked back at me with a small shake of her head before turning back to the woman. "We know Sannaz left here. He ended up attacking an entire island, virtually wiping them out. But you have no idea who he is, no idea what may have led to him doing that?" The woman's neck craned back and her eyes widened. "Honestly, with a score of 17 I find it remarkable he would ever have been able to leave. Probably wouldn't have realized you can't breathe underwater, walked right into the sea and drowned." She turned to the other two workers, and they let out a chuckle on cue. "Are there any other records on this man? We need to find him," Alessia said. "No other records. Only thing I can think of is to head to Section F and ask around. See if anyone there knows anything." Alessia looked around the room. "Two day trek you reckon?" The woman nodded. "We can pack some stuff from the boat, a few provisions," Alessia said, turning to me. "Up for a small camping trip?" "After three weeks on a boat, a few days on land sounds delightful." “Oh, I’ll make a sailor of you one day, Ferdinand. But, meanwhile, let’s get packing.