by E. S. Bell
“She has a small stateroom for passengers. Two bunks, a trunk for your things and no room for anything else. Not big enough for your dragonman, I’m afraid.”
“The proper name is Vai’Ensai,” Selena said darkly, “and a hammock in the forecastle will suffice for him.” Despite her harsh tone, she felt hope rise for the first time since Captain Olin had cast her and Ilior adrift. She thought of the seer’s reading and her first card, The Voyage, but brushed it aside.
Of course there will be a voyage. This is Lunos. There is always a voyage.
She turned back to Julian. “She sounds fine. And you say she’s fast?”
“Aye.” Julian tried his wine again, made the same grimace and sat it back down. “I’ve topped her out at twelve knots. I can have you to Isle Saliz in four weeks, weather providing.”
Selena kept her expression neutral. Four weeks. She could be facing her first target in little more than a moon’s turn.
Careful. You don’t know if he’s trustworthy. He opened Mallen’s throat easily enough.
“Four weeks to Isle Saliz? That seems optimistic.”
“Is that not ideal?” Captain Tergus asked. “I had heard you were in a hurry.”
“Talk is like rain here,” Selena said, “constant and bothersome.”
He shrugged. “Aye, but the talk neglects to mention why you’re voyaging to such an unpleasantly vicious island. Or is that not something I’m permitted to know until you hire me?”
The Paladin eyed the captain steadily. “I’ve been sent by the Alliance to kill two Bazira adherents.”
Julian leaned back. “That seems…unlike you. From what I’ve witnessed out in that alley, murder in cold blood isn’t your thing. In fact, I seem to remember a lecture from you on that very point.”
“I’ve been commanded,” Selena said stiffly. “I have no choice. And…”
Julian raised a dark, arched brow.
“I am bound to obey.”
“And that’s it. That’s enough to abandon the morality that spares the life of a pirate who threatened you with rape?”
Selena shivered but kept her voice stern. “It’s more complicated than that but not relevant to our business association.”
“If you say so. But you really should heal yourself,” he said. “Your shoulder is as damp with blood as it is with rain. And your cheek…” He made a face. “People ‘round here will think I roughed you up. Not that they’d care.”
“Ilior would care,” Selena said.
The captain was right; her sleeve was darkened to the elbow. Her cold had prevented her from feeling the pain. She poured from her ampulla, reached for the moon, and spoke the word. Beneath her tunic, her flesh knit itself. The blood stopped flowing but she reeled with mild dizziness.
“You shouldn’t have wasted your energy on that pirate scum,” Julian said. He hailed the barmaid. “Take this back and bring me something that doesn’t taste like piss.”
The barmaid took the wine glass with a smirk. “That might take a while.” Sweat beaded her lip and glistened over her ample bosom. She gave Selena a strange look and moved off.
“Everyone is deserving of a second chance,” Selena murmured.
“Are they?”
“That is one of the founding principles of the Aluren faith. If I didn’t believe that—or practice that—I’d make a very poor Paladin.”
There was a silence and then Julian asked, “And does using healing prayers make you shiver with cold when it’s boiling out?”
Selena hesitated.
Julian sighed. “Very well. Let’s get your conditions met so that I may ask these questions freely. Am I hired or not?”
Selena studied him for a moment, or tried to. Healing her shoulder had compounded her weariness until she struggled to keep her eyes open. “Yes. You’re hired.”
“Good,” the captain said. “So?”
Selena made to take her cider again, but her hands trembled and so she held them near the fire instead. I may as well tell him. There’s little point in prevaricating. “I am the Tainted One. You’ve heard of Isle Calinda? At the end of the war?”
Julian nodded.
“I cast the spell that destroyed the Zak’reth armada and the four hundred people who called Calinda home.” She glanced at the captain. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m listening.”
Selena tried to feel if he were toying with her; she found she was fairly good at reading people. But he was walled off. Not a hint of what he was thinking was revealed on his face.
“After the spell was cast, I was weak as I am now, only a thousand-fold more. I nearly died. But the Two-Faced God was angry with me for the innocent lives lost and smote me. Though I am an Aluren Paladin, a warrior for the Shining face of the god, it marked me with the symbol of the Shadow face: a crescent moon. To show its displeasure with me.”
Julian was watching her intently with his gray-green eyes. Their light color and his olive skin told her he was Farendii, and she wondered if he fought in the war. And on which side? He was strikingly handsome, she thought, but in the same way a finely wrought dagger can be beautiful.
The barmaid returned and plunked a glass of rum on the table. “Enjoy.”
“And this wound makes you cold?” Julian asked.
“Always. I haven’t known warmth in ten years.”
“You feel no heat?”
“I sense when it’s there,” Selena said, her voice low, “but it does nothing to warm me.”
“The only reason I ask,” Julian said after a short silence, “is that the safest and quickest route to Saliz is a north-eastern bearing at the edge of the Heart Waters. To avoid most of the pirate traffic, it’s best to sail as close to Ice Isles as possible. And unless we stock my ship so that she’s over-laden and slow, we’ll have to dock at Isle Nanokar for supplies anyway.”
“I want to avoid the Ice Isles,” Selena said. “With my wound, any additional cold is a…well, it’s a torture. And Ilior—the Vai’Ensai who accompanies me. His blood is cooler than ours. While it will be uncomfortable for me, for him the cold could be dangerous.”
Julian rubbed his chin. “That complicates things.”
“I suppose, but it can’t be helped.”
“I don’t get it,” he said, sounding irritated. “Why would the god punish you for ending the war? Many hundreds of lives were saved by what you did. It makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. I killed four hundred innocent people—”
“Who would have died anyway at the hands of the Zak’reth, and with far less mercy than a quick drowning.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Selena started to say and then the tavern door banged open and Ilior was there. Rainwater dripped off his wing and horns. He surveyed the room that had gone silent, and then strode to where Selena and Julian sat.
“You were gone too long,” he said, and then saw the wound on her cheek. “What…?” He rounded on Julian, fist clenched.
Selena rose quickly—too quickly—and gripped Ilior’s arm to steady herself. “Ilior, this is Captain Julian Tergus. I have hired him to sail us to Isle Saliz.”
The words did nothing to pacify Ilior who glared at the captain with wrath in his eyes.
“He’s not responsible for my wounds,” Selena said impatiently. Exhaustion infused every bone in her body. “He…helped me. Come.” She gave Ilior’s arm a pull. “Let’s depart.” To Julian she said, “Tomorrow, after I’ve rested, I would like to see your ship. Did you tell me her name?”
“The Black Storm.” He tore his gaze from Ilior and regarded her. “And you never told me yours, Selena Koren.”
“Didn’t I? Then how did you know my name?”
“You ended the war. Everyone knows your name.” Julian Tergus shrugged. “Your god is a fool.”
Sebastian Vaas watched her out of the window. The rain was coming down again, and Ilior shielded her from it with his single wing. Where the other wing had been
was a nest of bone and scarred flesh. Selena shivered with cold and staggered with weariness, and Ilior held her with one arm. Sebastian thought it would have been so easy to follow her into the night, drag her into an alley and do what he’d done to the bastard who’d laid hands on her. But the dragonman complicated things. And if rumors were true, Selena could summon a sirrak with a word.
Even so, it wouldn’t be too difficult. His mark was weak and desperate to trust. Her eyes—the same blue color of the water around his atoll—had been so full of hope when he’d told her he had a ship. But if he ended her soon, he’d have to sail to Saliz alone for Accora.
I might need the Aluren to lure the Bazira out. I’m not trekking through the jungle searching for the old bag on my own.
He nodded at this rationale and leaned back. The rum tasted vaguely like paraffin oil but he tossed it back and signaled for another. He raised the new glass. “Here’s to my last job,” he murmured.
The second drink burned a path down his throat and he slammed the empty glass down with a thought to return to his ship. His eye caught hold of a stunning young woman sitting in the corner. Alone. She wore a revealing velvet gown of deep crimson. Her lips and cheeks were stained with the same color and her raven hair fell in loose ringlets that might have fared better in a cooler climate. They drooped in the heat, as did the plume in her wide-brimmed hat that rich, city ladies on larger islands favored.
Sebastian thought this woman might be of that ilk, but if so, she was a long way from any cosmopolitan city. Like her curls and her plume, she seemed worn down by Uago, by the heat and the filth. Her dress was not so fine as it first appeared, but frayed at the hem, and the lace ruffles of her sleeves were torn and stained. She shifted under his scrutiny but gave him a measured look, then inclined her chin to the empty chair beside her.
Sebastian considered the offer. While the rest of his crew frequented the brothels at shore leave—and were likely doing so at that moment—he abstained, preferring to bed women who came out of willingness, not necessity. But his gut told him this woman was different. It was possible she was a harlot, but he doubted it. Her dark eyes regarded him with a strange mixture of cold aloofness and desperation. There was a story there; the question was did he want to hear it?
He supposed he did as he rose and strode the three steps to her corner. She tried to hide her relief behind nonchalance but he caught it anyway. He took the chair opposite her small table and drew a silver case from an inner pocket of his black long coat and offered it to her. She took a cigarillo from it with a trembling hand. He lit their cigarillos from a candle burning on the mantle above the hearth. Soon, a soft haze of smoke hung between them.
Silence. Sebastian exhaled twin plumes from his nose. “Well?”
“She was pretty, your friend with the dragonman,” the woman said. She inhaled delicately from her cigarillo and it blew out in nervous little bursts. “But sick, yes? She looked sick.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Seems like bad luck to take on sick passengers.”
“Worse luck to listen in on business that doesn’t concern you.” Sebastian regarded her through his smoke. “What do you want?”
“I want you to break whatever agreement you made with the sick woman and make a new one with me. I want passage off this island. Tonight.”
Sebastian said nothing for a moment and then whistled for the barmaid again. “Rum. A bottle.” He looked at the woman, eyebrow cocked. She nodded. “Two glasses.”
“What’s your name?” he asked when the barmaid had gone.
“Eleanor. Eleanor Rathbone. Of Lillomet City.”
“Rathbone,” Sebastian said. “Sounds like a fine family name. Tell me, Lady Rathbone, is there a lordly father sitting on a pile of doubloons and bemoaning his missing daughter somewhere this night?”
Eleanor sniffed. “You’ve been listening to too many silly ballads. But you were correct about one thing.”
“The money.”
“Aye. Take me back to Isle Lillomet and you will have more gold than that sick woman promised you.”
“She’s not sick,” Sebastian snapped, and waited as the barmaid set down a bottle of rum and two glasses that were mostly clean. “And how do you know what she promised me?”
“I don’t,” Eleanor said. “But whatever her price, I will double it.”
Sebastian sipped his rum and grimaced. Selena Koren hadn’t talked price. A mistake. I was too eager and she might realize that if she stops shivering long enough. He cursed his lapse, and tossed back the rum so as not to actually taste it.
“That’s a generous offer, Eleanor,” he said. “How did you end up stranded on Isle Uago?”
“It’s a long story and one I don’t care to repeat if it’s not necessary to our negotiations. Suffice to say I was betrayed by a man who…” She swallowed hard and looked at Julian, her dark eyes haunted. “A lady eschews discussing personal matters. Especially if those matters are of an…intrusive nature.”
Sebastian felt a rush of blood behind his eyes. The same rush that clouded his vision red when that filthy pirate had groped Selena Koren in the alley. His thoughts were torn back farther, as they always were, to the war. To Mina, and the Zak’reth soldier bent over her, rutting like a wild animal…
He caught Eleanor’s eyes and though she didn’t move, she may as well have nodded.
“What say you, Captain?” she whispered, smoothing the folds of her shabby dress. “Will you help me?”
Sebastian finished off the rum and poured another. He hadn’t intended to drink so much this night but the sharp edges of his memories needed dulling.
“You have the gold now?”
“Upon landing on Lillomet. My family will reward you handsomely. You have my word.”
“That’s not enough, I’m afraid.”
“It’s all I have.” Eleanor’s hand crept over the table and she ran her fingers lightly over his. Her glove had once been white but was now as shabby as her dress. And bloodstained. “If you require…something more,” she swallowed, “I have a room at the Marchand.”
Sebastian withdrew his hand. “I’m not for hire, Lady Rathbone,” he said. “I’m already engaged. And even if I weren’t, I don’t sail to the northern islands of the Watch. Ever.”
“Why not?” she asked.
Because only a fool with a thousand doubloon bounty on his head sails past the Stoneyard Prison.
“I just don’t,” Sebastian said.
The beauty of Eleanor’s face became shadowed with fear. “I see.”
Don’t do it. Don’t complicate things, Sebastian thought and then heard himself say, “I can take you to the Eastern Edge. Or the Ice Isles, if we dock there for supplies.”
“East is precisely the exact opposite of west.”
“Aye, but it’s off this shit-stinking island of cutthroats and rapists.”
“It’s not home, Captain, and home is where I want to sail next.”
Sebastian felt irritation rise to his throat like bile. “It’s the best I can do. Take it or leave it.”
Eleanor glared at him for the space of three heartbeats and then sat back in her chair. Her lower lip quavered and he could see she was fighting valiantly not to lose her composure right there at the table.
Gods be damned, I don’t need this aggravation.
But Eleanor Rathbone took a final drag off her cigarillo and tossed it to the floor. Her emotions mastered now, she said, “A generous offer, Captain, but I’m afraid I must decline. I’ve been apart from my family for too long. I don’t think I have the stomach for another long voyage. But if you would be so kind as to walk me to my room at the Marchand, I would be most grateful.”
Sebastian watched her gather her shawl around her shoulders, grateful that she covered her breasts that strained against her crimson dress. She rose from her chair with grace, and held out her hand. Sebastian finished his rum, tossed a few kroons on the table and gave her his arm. She clung to him as they made t
heir way from the dingy tavern.
The rain had dwindled from a downpour to a drizzle, and though it couldn’t be more than twilight, the sky was as murky as full dark. The boardwalk was alive with pirates, wenches, vendors, and drunks, all weaving to the Uagan melodies of shattered glass, the occasional scream, and the muffled sounds of fists finding flesh. Sebastian realized just how much he had drunk, as the cacophony of Uago put him off balance.
“If I were you, I’d get off this island by any means necessary,” Sebastian told Eleanor.
She glanced at him sideways. “Your concern, Captain, is heart-wrenching.”
He snorted. “Suit yourself.”
Eleanor led him down the boardwalk, past the docks. “Is your ship yon?” she asked.
He craned to look where she pointed and heard the shuffling of booted feet behind him. Without thinking, he shoved Eleanor to the ground. She fell into a puddle with a shriek of pain and surprise, skirts flying.
Sebastian ducked instinctively, and a club whistled above his head. Dark shapes surround him. As he reached for his scimitars the club struck him between the shoulder blades. He fell to one knee, a scratch of burlap brushed his cheek and chin, and then darkness descended. The sack was pulled tight around his throat so he could scarcely breathe. All the while, the club battered his arm, his kidneys, and then a foot to the back shoved him face down. He sprawled on the boardwalk, the breath whooshing out of him.
Press gang, he thought, and a wave of irritation flooded him, washing away some of his inebriation.
A knee pressed his back and his arms were yanked behind him. He let a loop of rope go around each wrist then twisted his arms with the technique he’d learned on Isle Juskara. He felt the slack he wanted but his captors did not, and was hauled to his feet.
“That was bloody easy,” said one.
Sebastian would have laughed except they’d clubbed him and choked him and bagged him, and so he silently promised them all death instead. He wheezed and stood hunched over, seemingly defeated, accessing the situation. One captor behind, two in front.
One of the men in front got close, feeling for weapons. Sebastian head-butted him with a swift, violent blow to the nose, then thrust his head backward, striking the man behind him. He felt the man’s grip on his bonds fall away. Sebastian stomped on his foot with the heel of his boot, then drove his elbow into his gut.
