The Voyages of Trueblood Cay

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Meré,” he said, approaching on careful feet. “Are you all right?”

  She lifted her head. Her face was swollen and tear-streaked, and yet lit up from within and without, glowing in a way he’d never seen before.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, patting his pockets. In books, gentlemen always gave a handkerchief to a lady in distress. Trueblood had nothing in his pockets but lint. Should he offer her his sleeve?

  He was growing frantic. “Merevhal, what’s wrong?”

  “For fuck’s sake, I’m up the mast.”

  “What?”

  She gave a shrill half-laugh, half-sob into her hands. “I’m having a baby, you twerp.”

  The Cay nearly capsized with shock and delight. Unbeknownst to Trueblood, Dhar and Merevhal had tried for years—decades to have a child. Now, at the beyond-hope age of forty-nine, the old girl was harboring a stowaway, as the salty dogs liked to say.

  Dhar fainted. His mother, Osla, screamed with joy at the prospect of finally having a grandchild. Kepten True poured a glass of Altynian plonk for everyone and Merevhal strutted the decks like she’d invented procreation.

  Then she started puking.

  She’d never been seasick a day in her life, now she was parked permanently at the leeward rail, green to the gills.

  “It’s to be expected,” the Sisters said, waving three hands as one. “She’ll be over it soon.”

  Except she wasn’t. The sickness only worsened, going from a shipboard joke to a serious concern and making Dhar essentially useless. Finally, Abrakam put a hoof down and told the kepten to get Merevhal off the ship.

  Abrakam almost never tells my father what to do, Trueblood wrote in his most private journal. But when he does, my father listens.

  So the wretched boatswain took shore leave and Trueblood was posted in her place.

  He’d been trained well, and when taking the minoros in hand, he copied some of Merevhal’s techniques, and some of his father’s. Little by little, he carved out his own way of managing the crew. He knew he was doing a good job by the approving glances of the majoros. He knew the job was even better when his father had no complaints. A quiet “well done, lad,” was all he needed to lay his head down at night and sleep peacefully.

  He was sleeping when Murder attacked the Cay.

  Long ago, the earth was one. Then the stars were stolen from Nydirsil, the Tree of Life. Her branches separated from the stars and her roots tore free from the seabed. The earth cracked, splitting the land apart. Water rushed in to divide the continents and destroy the Nye forests. Mountains sank beneath the waves, or rose up where none had been before.

  Monsters and demons poured from the rent ocean floor. The two most heinous creatures were the twin kraken, Murder and Misery. Ruthless hunters who destroyed ships and seafarers with their poisoned tentacles.

  The history books would record Murder’s attack on the Cay as happening within the South Channel. Raj Ĝemelos always insisted they were in the Horn, while Abrakam swore they were still in the Western Sea.

  “Kraken,” the night watch cried, ringing the mast bells and slicing the ship’s pre-dawn quiet in two. “Kraken, to starboard! All hands on deck! Kraken!”

  The Cay was not a heavily-armed ship and had never needed to be. The skilled crew could rig the sails on a moonless night in frigid weather, but they were unprepared for an ancient leviathan drawing whirlpools in the ocean with nine venomous tentacles.

  Over and over the monster breached, his slimy body slicing into the water and building up the chop. The ship spun through the maelstroms, pitching and rolling. Sailors piled up as they were thrown from port to starboard, from bow to stern. A thick mist enveloped the ship. The rain blew sideways, slicking the decks.

  We’re going to die, Trueblood thought. Like many others, he’d been thrown out of bed when Murder hit the ship. He’d lit against the edge of the dresser and blood trickled from his clanging head. Through the pandemonium came a moment of regret for not writing in his journal the evening before. If he’d known today was the last day of his life, he would’ve made a better ending.

  But who will tell the story?

  “Longboats,” Kepten True shouted from the afterdeck. Somehow he loaded his voice into the center of his chest and shot it like a harpoon through the fray. His eyes were everywhere, his orders slapping bandages on the wounds Murder tore open. He sniffed out panic like a hound and turned it into productivity.

  But then the kepten went quiet.

  His last order dwindled in mid-call and his eyes widened in an awed dismay.

  “Da?” Trueblood followed the stupefied gaze, out beyond the roiling sea. The mist swirled and parted like a pair of curtains. The wind hushed and the rain softened. Murder bubbled beneath the water’s surface and disappeared. The ship turned one more circle and settled. Everyone stared.

  Later, no one would describe what they saw the same way.

  It rose up like a wall of golden honey, reaching five needles into the sky.

  “Da, what is that?” Trueblood said.

  “The Kaleuche,” Kepten True said. “Isn’t that…”

  “Remarkable.” Rafil came close to the kepten. With the same transfixed expression, he took Ikharus-Lippé True’s hand. Years fell away from both faces and they stood like two little boys at a puppet show.

  “What’s for you won’t pass you by, lad,” the rope master said, his grizzled head on the kepten’s shoulder.

  It was at that moment, Pelippé Trueblood later wrote in his most private journal, when I realized Rafil was in love with my father. The kind of impossible love that becomes a vocation. Love cloaked in a lifetime of service. An undeclared devotion that settles into your skin like a tattoo or a scar. Forever yours because it can never be his. Irrevocable because it will never be returned. Pure love that’s worth more than your own life. I wonder if my father knew. But of course, he must have.

  Murder smashed a tentacle across the Cay’s bow, cracking the foremast and the reverie. Sailors screamed as they tumbled from the rigging and crashed into the sea. Kepten True’s face snapped back into authority and he began barking orders to offload the crew.

  “Pé, see to the safe,” he shouted. “Raj, get the charts.”

  Trueblood and Raj ran aft, bursting through the aftercastle doors. In the kepten’s study, they seized charts from the rack and yanked the ship’s safe from its inlaid cubby. Running back through the sitting area, Raj stopped short outside Abrakam’s room.

  “What are you doing,” Trueblood cried. “Come on.”

  Raj hesitated, then his face darkened and he thrust the charts at Trueblood, tucking them between the safe and Trueblood’s chin. “Take these.”

  “Raj, we don’t have time.”

  “Shut up, the books are too important.”

  “They can be replaced.”

  “Not these.”

  Abrakam slept on a pallet on the floor of his cabin, with one long pillow instead of two short ones. Raj stripped the case off and started pulling books off the shelves. Not a careless sweep but a swift and meticulous triage, as if he’d been drilled on what were the valuable and irreplaceable tomes.

  “Hurry up,” Trueblood said, his arms straining under their load.

  With a groan of exertion, Raj hefted the sack of books on his shoulder and the two sailors ran out of the aftercastle. Back on deck, the majoros had bridged the gap between the ships with long planks and were sending the minoros across to make a human chain. Crates and casks started passing hand to hand. Coils of rope were flung over.

  “Pé, Kep wants you,” Lejo said, handing the charts to a sailor and taking the safe himself. “Hurry.”

  Only three remained on the Cay now. Kepten True at the wheel and Abrakam at one of the harpoons. And Pelippé Trueblood, running to the afterdeck for his final orders.

  “
Take the wheel,” Kepten True said. Trueblood put a hand on the spokes but Ikharus shook his head. “No, take the Kaleuche’s wheel, Pé.”

  Trueblood hesitated. As the rainy wind whipped his face, he stared at his father one long, intense moment, framing the mariner in his mind, pinning him to a painted picture.

  True stared back, as if doing the same. “It’s time.”

  Their hands reached to clasp. Then slid to wrap around forearms. Each touched the other’s shoulder and their foreheads came together.

  “Gelangos,” Kepten True said. My one at hand. The one I belong to.

  “Gelangos.” For an icy moment, Trueblood clutched his father, feeling he might weep.

  Don’t leave me. This ship is too big. Da, I’m not ready.

  True slid both his big hands around his son’s face. “You are my true blood,” he said. “And I love nothing the way I love you. Do you understand?”

  Trueblood waited for the follow up, Answer your commander.

  His father held still and silent.

  “Yes, Da,” Trueblood said.

  The mariner kissed between Trueblood’s eyebrows and then stepped back. “Go,” he said. “Take the helm of that ship the way I taught you. Remember what I taught you and I’ll be with you until the end.”

  “Aye, Kep.”

  “Hold her broadside. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Aye, Kep.”

  “Valentos,” the mariner called as Trueblood sprinted toward the gangplank spanning the two ships. My brave one.

  It was the last thing his father said to him.

  Pelippé Trueblood was nineteen when he took the wheel of the Kaleuche at his father’s order. Standing head and shoulders above the shattered crew, he held her broadside as Abrakam came across, his bow and quiver slung across his shoulder. He watched his father surrender the helm of the Cay without a backward look. Soaked and resplendent in his blue coat, he stepped onto the gangway between the two ships.

  “Murder that, you bloated squid,” Ikharus-Lippé True yelled at the water below.

  Then he looked up and grinned at his son.

  Trueblood’s blood froze, remembering a day long ago when he first climbed the Cay’s main mast.

  “I’ve seen too many sailors achieve excellence on the open sea,” True said sternly. “Then grow careless once land is in sight. We do not strut as the end of a task is near. And when the job is done well and completed properly, no strutting is required. Excellence needs no announcement. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Da,” Trueblood said.

  “Da, no!” Trueblood cried.

  A single tentacle punched out of the ocean, coiled around Ikharus-Lippé True’s ankle, and yanked him off the gangplank. Like bait on a hook, he flew in an elegant arc through the sky. A rainbow of blue, black and white.

  “Da…” Trueblood’s throat shattered around the scream. He let go the wheel and went running for the railing. He had a foot on the crossbar when Dhar and Calvo lunged and wrestled him down. He fought through their arms like an enraged bull, spitting curses and yelling for his father, now dangling upside down by an ankle.

  Abrakam thundered by. “Bring him down,” he hollered at Seven, who’d posted up at one of the harpoons. Beniv was at the other, swinging the deadly bolt around with his feet, the trip cord tight in his teeth. Abrakam clattered up to the foredeck, bow drawn. Archers were crawling up the rigging and lowering themselves into the sheets.

  “Aim for the eye, lads,” the centaur cried. “A kill shot has to be in the eye.”

  Trueblood screamed for his father, but no sound came out. His voice moved like a soundless knife at the back of his mouth, silently howling as Murder shook the kepten like a doll. As if True had something in his pocket and the kraken wanted it badly.

  Beside Trueblood, Raj made a choking noise, filling Trueblood’s peripheral with blinding white light. Then Lejo started convulsing, and that side of Trueblood’s vision began to sparkle like the fuse of a sunpowder bomb.

  Caught up in Murder’s tentacles, the kepten glowed with a strange light. It both stabbed like Raj and twinkled like Lejo. The stronger it got, the harder Murder shook him.

  What is happening? Pelippé Trueblood thought, going blind with grief and terror.

  Raj fell to his knees, tearing at the neck of his shirt. Light poured from between his fingers and the corners of his eyes. Lejo clawed at his own buttons, a shimmering luminescence spilling out his mouth.

  Furious Kepten True wasn’t giving up what he had, Murder smashed him first on the deck of the Cay, then down into the ocean. Back and forth like a vicious pendulum, trying to break what he wanted out of the mariner.

  Within his young body, Trueblood’s heart fractured into pieces.

  No.

  Don’t.

  Give him back to me.

  One final chop with three tentacles and the Cay split behind her bow. Murder flung Kepten True away, a toy he was finished playing with. Like a bluebird, Ikharus flew through the air and crashed onto the deck of the Kaleuche, limbs splayed at horrible angles, blood pouring from his mouth and ears.

  Trueblood crawled to him. He gathered the mighty head into his arms and bayed like a wounded dog. Blood soaked his white clothes as he wept for his Da, his only, his one, his giantsblood, his gelangos.

  Rafil came crawling to them, his wizened face pulled taut with horror. “Oh, lad,” he said hoarsely. “Oh, lad, don’t pass me by.”

  “Help him,” Trueblood choked. “Rafil, help me.”

  The twins were sprawled on the deck now, hemorrhaging light. It filled Trueblood’s eyes like the sun and through the glare burst a hot-white silhouette, winged with four legs.

  The Horselord had arrived.

  He promised, Trueblood remembered. When it was my father’s time, il-Kheir vowed to take his soul himself. It’s a great honor.

  “No,” Trueblood said, pulling his father tight against him. “No, you can’t have him. It’s not time. I’m not ready.”

  Rafil slumped on his knees, weeping inside-out. The shadow of the Horselord came closer, arms outstretched. Trueblood grabbed harder at his father, clutching at blood and bone and braids, ready to kill whoever or whatever attempted to take Ikharus from him.

  “Leave him alone,” he cried into the light, his voice in shreds.

  He seized and clutched as the deadweight in his lap went even more dead. An orb of glinting, twinkling light rose from Kepten True’s chest and floated into the kheiron’s hands.

  “Lad, lad,” Rafil cried. “My one, don’t leave me.”

  Trueblood’s mouth moved helplessly. No, give him back. He’s mine.

  “I need you, Pelippé,” il-Kheir said.

  Except the voice was female. The light dimmed and it was the Horsedam, ele-Kheir, rising over him and holding his father’s soul.

  “You must do this for me.”

  I can’t.

  “Do this for me. For your father and your twins. For my brother and his son. For the world.”

  You can’t have him. Give him back.

  “Look at me, Pelippé Trueblood.”

  He hated her, but he looked up into the white-hot light.

  “What’s for you won’t pass you by.”

  A woman’s mouth kissed him.

  Everything split down the center, folded back around and turned inside-out.

  O wonderful, remarkable, beautiful, you are mine, my lovely, scented like spice and silvery cool like the moon that—

  Then something plunged into Trueblood’s chest and tore his heart apart.

  The kheiron flew west across the desert with a human boy on his back.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “It’s all over.”

  Little arms tightened around Fen’s waist. The kheiron’s war paint had turned the boy’s arms and hands scarlet.
“I want to go home.”

  “I know. You’ll be there soon. Hold tight, now.”

  They turned south toward Zeuxis. Three kheirons flew to Fen’s fivehand side, and another pair to his fourside, each with a dye-smeared child strapped to their back. Strapped tight. Never again would Fen il-Kheir let a rider fall.

  “Why are you all red?” the boy asked when his tears subsided.

  “We’re redfinches,” Fen said. “We deliver the souls of the damned.”

  “Us?”

  “No. Them.” Fen flipped a thumb over his shoulder. “Those men were damned.”

  “You got them?”

  “We got them. All of them. They’ll never do this again.”

  The last stars clung to the night sky’s mantel. On the horizon, the constellation of Nyos lingered, the belt of three stars twinkling at her waist. Her mighty bow was drawn back for eternity, the arrow aimed straight at the group of stars that made Minos the Bull.

  “Funny how Nyos and Minos look like they’re locked in endless battle,” Fen said. “When really they’re a tragic love story. Do you know it?”

  The bull was Nyos’s beloved companion. Fierce in appearance but gentle in disposition. Dozens of tales chronicled his blunders into hilarious trouble of one kind or another. He entertained the ancient world with his dopey ways until Nyos shot him by mistake. The fool became a hero, set in the stars forever.

  “Now you know,” Fen said. “You tell that story to your friends when you get home. Tell them how the charm of Finches rescued you, delivered the souls of the damned, and flew you home past the constellations. You’ll be their hero.”

  The boys were left at a safe house in Zeuxis. The establishment could accommodate the kheirons, but Fen preferred to sleep outside the city. And where Fen went, his charm followed.

  They made camp along a branch of the river. At this time of year, it was loud and frothy with mountain runoff. The roar barely masked the clings and clangs of armor dropped on the ground, but it was no match for the screaming when the kheirons waded into its icy rapids. Ululations of triumph mixed with agonized screeches. The water ran red and black as they frantically scrubbed the dye out of their hair and off their skin, howling and laughing with a manic edge.