by E. S. Bell
“No, but you’d have told me and I could have stopped him.” He sighed. “He’s too young, Cel. Even with that big lizard following him around, it’s too dangerous for him to be traipsing around the Western Watch.”
Celestine happened to know for a fact that Archer Crane had been “traipsing around” all of Lunos at a much earlier age than seventeen, but held her tongue on the matter. A rapping at the door came and then Archer’s officers, three men in stiff red and blue Alliance wool, entered. The High Reverent was given a deferential bow by each and then pushed out of the circle around the desk, so that they might pore over the charts.
“We’ll send ships to Isle Devala,” Archer said after briefing the men on the situation, leaving out the particulars of Connor’s magic. “We can chase him down. Whatever cog or vessel he’s bought passage on won’t be half as fast as our corsairs. We’ll catch him, likely…here.” Archer tapped the chart with his finger.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Admiral, but we how many ships do you aim to send after him?” Archer’s withering stare made the man—a captain judging by the size of the gold sun emblem on his lapel—clear his throat. “I meant, sir, if the dragonman abducted him, we’ll want a specialized team to pursue. But if young Connor is acting of his own accord…”
The captain was subtle, but the implication was clear: Was this a serious mission using valuable armada resources appropriately, or an overprotective parent taking advantage of those resources?
“One ship,” Archer said slowly, and Celestine knew he’d heard the unspoken query too. “We can spare one fast ship to track down my son who has departed Isle Lillomet without leave of the High Reverent to whom he has pledged his service,” he said, with a nod at Celestine.
The captain breathed easy, as did Celestine; none present wished to see the Admiral lose face.
“Of course, sir,” the captain said. “I’d be happy to command the vessel to Isle Devala myself.”
Archer assented and other officers chimed in with advice on the course to take, currents this time of year and the like, but Celestine hardly heard them. Something wasn’t right. Something niggled in the back of her mind.
“But what of the big dragonman?” asked another captain. “At his size, I’d imagine he’d crush a rock or two at Stoneyard, eh?”
“This is all Connor’s idea,” Archer said, his expression turned grim. “But I’m not closing any doors, either. If the dragonman tries to interfere, you have permission to restrain him. If that doesn’t work…”
The dragonman, Celestine thought. The men closed her out of the circle around the chart, and she took her leave without a farewell to Archer. Lost in her own thoughts, she meandered out into the hallway where her lone guard, Lanik Thrakill, waited.
“Your troubled mien has not changed, Your Reverence,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to ease your burden?”
Celestine forced a smile. “Have you ever had the notion you’ve forgotten something and yet can’t think what?”
“Aye,” Lanik laughed. “Strange how the mind will tell you that you have and not what you have.”
The High Reverent laughed with him. “Isn’t it?”
“So then you have forgotten something…?” Lanik bit off his words and then shook his head, his expression stern. “Forgive me. I overstep my bounds.”
“Not at all,” Celestine said. “But I don’t believe you can assist me here as I’m not entirely sure what, if anything, is amiss. A niggling itch in the back of my mind.”
“Concerning young Connor?” Lanik’s brows came together. “His disappearance is troubling but not entirely surprising, if I may say.”
Celestine nodded. They had reached the docks and Lanik offered his arm to help her into the sloop. She took it. “Why do you think so?”
“I’ve always felt that Connor was meant for something else. He’s too good at the sword, and too pure of heart for the Shining face to deafen itself to him. It makes no sense…unless he’s claimed by another.” Lanik cleared his throat. “Again, it’s none of my business…”
“You are a Paladin of the Aluren faith,” Celestine said as the sailors maneuvered around them to sail the sloop across the channel. “It is your business, what occurs in the Temple. And you were there when he had his episode with the lightning and the storm.”
“Aye,” Lanik said. “His power is potent. Pity it does not belong to us.”
Celestine eased a sigh of relief though she couldn’t fathom what she could be relieved about. Taliah colors every discussion about Connor with ugly words for the other gods, and Archer is naturally too overcome with worry. But with Lanik, I can just…talk.
She also realized she didn’t have to talk. The rest of the short journey to the docks was in silence, but a comfortable one. She caught Lanik smiling at her once and then he looked away. His ice blue eyes took in the panorama of Lillomet City, though it seemed he wasn’t seeing it.
“My cousin—a Guildsman—looks as you do when he’s trying to work out a difficult task,” she said, as they stepped out of the sloop on the other side of the channel. Again he offered his arm and again she took it.
Her words had been made lightly but Lanik’s expression was serious. “I have only one task, Your Reverence, and that is to ensure I serve you as best as I am able and leave you wanting for nothing.”
He looked as though he would say more, but then smiled shortly, and gestured for her to walk before him, to the Moon Temple. “Your Reverence.”
Celestine walked ahead of him, as was appropriate, all the while feeling his attention on her. It was not unpleasant.
Once in the Temple, Lanik took his leave hurriedly, his steps echoing through the empty halls, and she retreated to her cell to meditate on what bothered her about Archer’s plans to find Connor, for something was definitely amiss. She was certain.
No answers came to her during her meditations, but she guessed that was likely because her thoughts were distracted, pleasant, stirring. She opened her eyes after hours of fruitless meditations, but with a smile on her lips anyway.
Fall on Your Sword
For six days, the Black Storm sailed over the Crystal Sea before crossing into the Blue Desert Sea that cradled the Isle of Lords. Six days of sailing over steel gray water and under iron clouds that blotted the sun from the sky. Six days of listening for a distress call that the merkind—healthy or sick—had returned. Six days of crisp air that tasted of ice and sleepless nights spent huddled under every spare blanket. Selena thought they must be drawing near to the Isle of Lords and yet no call of “Land ho!” sounded from above decks. Finally, it had become obvious to all that they were lost.
On the seventh morning, Cur came to the galley where Selena and Ilior sat close to Niven’s oven. Cur made a low growling noise.
“What is it?” Selena asked.
The man gestured for her to follow him above decks.
“News of our whereabouts, I hope,” Ilior said. His skin was no longer an alarming shade of white but he was still weak.
Selena rose. “Stay here. Stay warm,” she told him and followed Cur out of the galley.
“Your spell has blown us off course,” Julian told her. He didn’t look at her but kept his eyes over the helm.
“I guessed as much.”
Selena glanced around at the vistas beyond the rail. The Blue Desert Sea stretched out from the ship in every direction in swaths of unbroken blue. The air was by no means warm, but the frost had been replaced with a cold drizzle. The clouds above were thick and gray but broken here and there by blue sky. Lunos had changed as her spell had propelled them south, morphing from lands of ice and gray water, to a sea that earned its name with its blue depths. At the prow, the bowsprit was a jagged spear, like a branch broken in a storm.
“The Storm needs repairs.”
“Obviously,” Julian said. His voice held no warmth when he spoke to her now. “But the good news is that I’ve determined our location—more or less. We have a following sea
to the south and now the Isle of Lords is behind us.”
“Behind us? We’re that far south?” Selena marveled. The spell was strong. Too strong.
“Aye, we are,” Julian said. “Too far south to make sailing to the Lords practical. We’d have to turn around to reach it, fighting wind and current along the way, and with the damage the Storm has taken, that’s not a smart proposition.”
“Where will we dock then?”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “The next closest island is Saliz. If this current holds, we’ll be there in three days.”
The news sobered the entire crew. Selena could see it as she walked the decks. Every day the air was warmer, the cloud cover less heavy, but a pall hung over the Storm. Isle Saliz. Even if the Bazira adherent was no longer there, the island was renowned for its dangers, on land and in the water surrounding it.
The following morning, Cat was on her watch and would be until nightfall. Selena knelt in their windowless cabin and prayed to the Two-Faced God for guidance. Her emotions were at war: joy and hope battled fear and dread that she would be forced to take Accora’s life without provocation. The wound breathed against her chest, challenging her to feel anything but gladness that once Bazira blood was spilled, she’d be free.
The wound. It was the answer to every question.
There was a long mirror nailed to the back of the cabin door. Selena rose to her feet and faced it. It showed her reflection from the knees up. It was enough. She locked the cabin door and then disrobed. She did it fast, before her fear stilled her trembling hands.
The black crescent, like an obscene smile, was stark on her pale skin. She didn’t consciously raise her hand; it would do that on its own, she knew. Until it did, she stared, was drawn in, and then lost.
She was drunk. Head-spinning, stomach-roiling drunk. She took another gulp. It stuck in her throat, burning, while her body decided to accept it or not. By the sour bile that suddenly welled up under her tongue, the decision had been made. She staggered outside and heaved in the corner of the alley just in time. The rum burned on the way out as much as it had on the way in. She wiped her sleeve over her mouth. It was the only kind of burn she would ever know. She was certain of that.
She half-laughed, half-sobbed and blearily examined the bulbous white blister that rose from the center of her palm like a boil. The pain was bad—she had stifled a grimace at the table while the others watched her hold her hand over the candle and cheered her on. But it wasn’t a burning pain. Instead, it ached like stab wound and tingled with a thousand tiny pinpricks.
“But it doesn’t burn,” she muttered into the empty alley. “Illuria.” The blister receded and then vanished, and she slumped against the wall, fatigue now helping to steal her warrior’s grace as much as the night of drinking.
The door banged open and a man stumbled out, peering around. He spotted her and a grin spread over his face; a fissure of browned and missing teeth.
“There you are, lass. I thought you might’ve come this way. Need a bit o’ fresh air, eh? Or perhaps the candle hurt you worse than you let on?” he added with a knowing wink.
She held up her unblemished hand; the moonlight was bright enough. The man—Timon or Damon, she thought his name was—stared, aghast. Then he laughed and moved closer.
“So you’re invincible after all?”
“No,” she said, her thoughts going again to that horrible moment at Isle Calinda—six months gone and still as fresh in her mind as if it happened yesterday. She shivered. “No.”
“A wee chill?” The man loomed over her, a blurry dark shape to her rum-drowned vision. “Let old Tamon keep you warm.” He nuzzled her neck with bristly stubble. “I’ll take care of you, lass. Right here…”
She started to push him away but it was half-hearted. Why not? No man I could care about would ever want me, she thought. Another part of her whispered a warning that once the rum was flushed out of her, this would be a new kind of pain to remember. Then I’ll stay close to the rum, she replied. And nothing hurts worse than the wound. Nothing.
A shadow fell over them both and Tamon was torn off her. He staggered backwards and struck his head on the tavern wall. His eyes fluttered and then he sat on his rump, head lolling, as if he’d come out here to sleep it off.
“What are you doing here?” Ilior demanded.
She waved him off. “Go ‘way.”
“Drunk? And where’s your Aluren dress?”
She peered up at him. “You know,” she said, “I see two of everything.” She laughed while some small part of her listened with horror at the words that came out of her mouth. “Even you, Ilior. I see two of you. Two heads, two shoulders, and two…wings.”
Ilior lifted her up. She gave no protest but let her spinning head rest against his fur vest.
“We’re going home now,” he said.
“Don’t take me back there,” she protested weakly. “It’s not my home.”
“You’re drunk and you smell like that man.” Ilior’s voice was the rumble of stones down a hill. “The Temple is your home. You’ll be safe there.”
She tried to protest but couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. “Home was where my father lived.”
She wanted to add that nowhere was safe from the god’s wrath but cold darkness claimed her first.
Selena staggered backward and crashed into the cabin wall. She looked down at herself in horror, at her wound that was swallowing her own arm up to the elbow, as if she’d been fishing around in her own chest cavity for some misplaced item.
She screamed and tore her arm free. It was rimed in ice.
Bazira ice, she thought. The icy magic Accora has wielded against innocents, no matter what she might say now. She has frozen the air in the lungs of her victims, she had stilled their heart with shards. I asked the god if killing Accora was the right thing to do, and it has answered.
Selena’s legs felt strangely weak, and the muscles in her shoulders were stiff from standing still, for what number of hours she couldn’t guess. She dressed without the aid of the mirror. Only after she wore her Aluren blue and silver, and with her paladin’s sword was strapped to her waist, did she regard herself once again. The god’s answer didn’t bring her peace despite all the reasoning in the world. She knew the truth.
Accora falls on your sword…or you do.
She went to her cabin door, ready to watch Isle Saliz draw closer. Her hand was on the handle when it turned. Selena gave a start as Cat came in.
“Oh,” Selena said. “I thought you had watch until nightfall.”
Cat nodded that she did, and covered her yawn with a gloved hand. She stretched out on her bunk and slept immediately.
Selena’s heart thudded dully in her chest. She went out, shutting the door behind her. Ilior met her in the dim passageway, coming to find her.
“Are you all right? You’ve kept to your cabin since this morning…”
“I’m fine,” she said, forcing a smile. “Only hungry.”
They went to the galley where Niven had left dinner for the crew in the oven to take whenever their watch ended. The last time she had been here was mere minutes ago, it seemed, and it had been breakfast in the oven.
Another day lost.
Her hunger died. Ilior was watching her closely. For his sake, she forced herself to eat, each bite turning to dust in her mouth.
After a time, Julian came in. He stopped when he saw them. He said nothing, took his share of the dinner from the oven and retreated, presumably to his cabin. Selena watched him go and then resumed picking at her food.
“He is silent to you,” Ilior said. “Since the merkind storm. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Selena said, keeping her gaze on her plate. “I’m not surprised. He’s always been taciturn.”
“What happened?”
She looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“What happened when he took you to his cabin? He said it was to warm you but how could he d
o better than the oven here?” He gestured at the wrought iron stove beside them.
“Skin to skin contact,” Selena said, hating how small and foolish her voice sounded. “I needed it. It’s what humans do to warm one another. There was nothing untoward about it.”
Ilior shook his head, speaking as if he hadn’t heard her. “I might be more pleased if he were of a different sort, but he speaks unkindly to you and shows little respect for your station.”
“You might be more pleased about what?” Selena asked.
“About how your thoughts are filled with him now.”
Selena stiffened. “That’s not true.” Then, “He saved my life.”
Ilior shrugged. “He hasn’t been paid yet.”
Selena bit back bitter words. “It doesn’t matter what happened. He is not Aluren. And even if he were, I have the wound. No man will ever want me, not while I have it. And I wouldn’t want any man to see it. Not ever.”
Ilior leaned back in his chair, his hands folded on his chest.
Selena felt another stab of irritation knife through her. “That is satisfying to you, is it?”
He stared at her, incredulous. “There is nothing about the wound, nor the pain it has caused you that is satisfying to me.”
“I know that. I’m sorry. I just…”
“I believe he is dangerous,” Ilior declared. “He saved your life and for that I am glad but I also don’t know why, given the way he sometimes looks at you.”
Selena glared at him, ignoring the voice that told her she’d said almost the exact thing to Julian herself.
Ilior weathered her stare with a shrug and said, “I sometimes doubt his motivations for helping you.”
There was a silence. The only sounds for a moment were the creaks and groans of a ship at sea. The lantern swayed above them, back and forth.
Selena regarded her friend who had been by her side, as he was now, for the last ten years. He was the rock she set her back to, unmovable and unyielding in his devotion as a mountain is unyielding to the elements. He was there when she needed him, as she had that drunken night so long ago when the wound was new. He was always there for her, beside her, dedicating his life to her instead of pursuing one of his own. He was willing to die for her, never asking for anything for himself beyond her safety.
