And shit on Trueblood’s feet.
“Fenros,” one of the White Mares cried from beneath the rowan tree.
Her sister raised her voice in reproach as well but now both centaurides were drowned out by the rumble of Fen’s silver hooves as he galloped away.
Trueblood stared after him, open-mouthed as three dung apples squelched between his toes. “That went differently in my head,” he said softly.
Then he laughed. Peal after peal, it roared out of his chest and belly, until he set his hands on his knees, wheezing. He waved off the approaching mares, unable to address their concerned expressions, he was laughing so hard. He went on waving and dismissing through the guffaws. He was still chuckling as he trudged away from the pool and toward the open beach to wash his feet.
Fen stood at the windows of his bedchamber. They faced the sea and he could see Trueblood making his way up the grassy incline. One of the White Mares walked alongside and he had a hand on her withers. He stopped often to lean on her flank. His steps grew slower until finally the centauride knelt at his side.
“Will you honor me by riding?” she undoubtedly said.
And of course Trueblood would know to reply, “The honor is mine.”
Now the mare moved briskly but smoothly up the path. Trueblood swayed a little on her back, his head bowed. Fen rested his brow and palms on the glass and watched two lilac-robed nurses hurry out to help the kepten inside.
Fen’s hands curled to fists. He contemplated punching out the glass but what good would it do his pounding heart and the anger roiling his stomach? It burned his chest and throat and turned his breathing to ragged hitches. It pulsed between his ears, pressing on his eyeballs until they threatened to spill over.
“You don’t get to do this to me,” he said through clenched teeth. “I owed a debt to your father. Not to you.”
A last flash of white from Trueblood’s shirt and the door shut behind him. The wide lawn was empty now.
With the back of his fourhand, Fen wiped his brimming eyes. What the fuck was he crying about anyway? He never cried. After what he’d been through, nothing was worth his tears. No trial or tragedy could make Fen il-Kheir break down. Nobody fucked with his autonomy or his agency and no one—no one—made him do anything he didn’t want to.
No one except Pelippé Trueblood.
He first put eyes on the mariner’s son when the boy was nine days old. Pelippé’s naming ceremony was Fen’s first public appearance since his rescue and recovery. The effort to ignore the stares and whispers in the great hall left Fen with little interest for the occasion. He offered gelango to the mariner, kissed Noë Treeblood’s little hands and gave a quick glance at the baby in the bassinette. Checking off the formalities, politely doing what was expected of him so he could get the fuck out of here.
He turned to go and something, some strange urge or compulsion, as insistent as a yank on his tail, made him look back.
And he shifted.
A kheiron would have a difficult time describing the mechanics of shifting. It does, however, involve a conscious decision. If pressed, Fen would say he first moved his awareness into his moonstone, found his equos within and let it flow into his body. Intention, then visualization, then the act.
When he shifted in front of Pelippé Trueblood, it was instantaneous. No decision on his part. It just happened. Utterly beyond his control. He blinked twice before realizing he was staring through a horse’s eyes.
The great hall receded, taking all the faces and stares far away. Fen stretched his neck further toward the bassinette. A fine, black fuzz covered the baby’s delicate skull. His round eyes were open, fists waving. He cooed a little giggle, as if Fen in equos delighted him. Dozens of gifts for Pelippé Trueblood were stacked on a long table, but Fen’s was the best.
Thank you, the baby’s gurgling laugh said. It’s just what I wanted. How did you know?
If he were in humos, Fen would’ve blushed. His silvery head dipped and he thought, I don’t know. I just did.
Filled with a strange shyness, he rolled a hoof onto its coronet and added, You’re welcome.
Then he was back in kheiros, dizzy at the abrupt shift and embarrassed at the hall’s fixed attention. He walked out of the ceremony, which pissed off his father, but he couldn’t stay one more second in that collective staring.
He avoided the mariner’s family and wrote off the incident. Until it happened again.
And kept happening.
Nearly every godsdamned time he saw the brat, Fen shifted into equos. Standing as his truest self, with his heart on display. Down at the grotto this afternoon, he nearly tied his will in a knot to keep his equos under control.
I decide, he chanted through the struggle. I decide my fate, I decide my form, I decide which direction I live my life. No one else.
He kept his body in kheiros and kept his eyes straight ahead. Except when they were on Trueblood.
You keep looking at him like that and you’re either going to shift or start rubbing against the rocks.
He looked away. For all of five seconds.
Fine. Look. Get a good eyeful and then knock it off already.
Trueblood was walking out of the pool and he was lean as rope. Whatever his strange illness had been, it consumed every bit of fat on his long frame. His ribs showed in his dark skin. A strange scar ringed the center of his chest.
“As if his heart had been torn out and set on fire,” Joenne Windsong had said.
He stood naked on the beach and Fen gazed harder at Trueblood’s skin than he did the scar. Smooth over all that corded muscle. Nearly hairless. In the shade it was like walnut. Beneath the direct sun, it shone mahogany. He looked like the pictures of Truvos, the sea god. Except one of his braids had come undone and the bit of freed hair bobbed by the side of his head like a clump of pollen.
Which of course, made him fucking charming.
When Trueblood was dressed and his quick strong fingers were busy braiding, Fen judged it was safe to come out. He loped up the bank and shook himself off. Fully in control, he turned to go.
And shifted.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
He pulled back to kheiros. And then, for the love of Khe, he was unfurling his wings like a colt showing off for the fillies. What was it with this godsdamned Pelippé Trueblood?
To save face, he shit on the man’s feet.
Fen’s face burned hot against the window panes, knowing he’d gone a little too far. Although as he galloped from the beach, he swore he heard laughter behind him. Which was almost worse than shouted curses or threats.
Gods, his father was going to kill him.
Naturally one of the White Mares ratted Fen out. Any minute now, he’d be called on the Horselord’s carpet to answer for his scatological prank. Il-Kheir used a leather tawse to discipline his warriors, but he didn’t ever whip Fen. What would be the point? The slavemasters in Arcodolori used to entertain themselves by trying to flog Fen’s wing markings off his back. They took turns shredding the skin bloody, but couldn’t break or bend the silver tracings, which made them lash harder. A tawsing was a joke by comparison. Fen would nap through it.
While Nyland’s healers had worked wonders with salves, ointments and unguents, little of Fen’s body remained free of scars. Il-Kheir would have to be a special kind of sadistic prick to want to put his own decorative mark on such a marred canvas. When vexed with his offspring, he punched Fen instead.
Fair enough. But one of these days, Fen was going to punch back.
Meanwhile, he was still standing at the windows, fists curled, looking across to the infirmary wing and hoping Trueblood would come back out.
Why did he piss Fen off so much, yet made his soul want to show its best side? One glimpse of giantsblood and Fen shifted into equos. His head bowed, his hoof posed. It just happened.
An
d he hated it.
A cleared throat and a rattle of knuckles on his door. “Mysire, your father wishes to see you.”
With one last glance to the courtyard, Fen went to collect his due.
The Horselord’s chambers occupied one small wing of the pavilion. A few attendants and two of Sevri’s generals milled about the foyer.
“Good evening, Father,” Fen said. He hadn’t used Da in twenty years. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Leave us,” il-Kheir said to the kheirons.
“Actually, I prefer this be witnessed,” Fen said.
The Horselord’s voice raised a fraction. “Leave us.”
A hollow thumping of hooves on stone followed by the deathly click of a door closing.
Fen inspected his fingernails. I survived a month on a slave ship, he thought. I endured a forced march across Arcodolori and lived on a chain for two years. I am the Finch and I’m not afraid of anything. Least of all my father.
“From the day you entered this world, you’ve always preferred an audience,” il-Kheir said.
“Am I here to be analyzed?”
“What you did to Trueblood was unconscionable.”
“It was a joke.”
“It was a disgrace. You owed Kepten True your life.”
“We’ve had this conversation already.”
“Watch your mouth,” il-Kheir said.
“Oh, I’m sorry the truth coming from it hurts your tender heart. I often forget you’re actually capable of feeling pain.”
Fen often forgot how quickly his father could cover space. All at once he was smashed up against the wall, a rough hand covering his mouth.
“You know nothing of my pain,” il-Kheir said, his voice hoarse and dangerous.
Then tell me, Fen thought, eyes burning above the clamp of his father’s palm. Tell me what I did. Tell me why I was your brave one on the ship coming home, but then overnight you became a stranger.
Il-Kheir’s hand pressed harder. “Kepten True lies dead in the crypt and you shit on the feet of his son. Instead of remembering who you are and acting like an heir of the Horsefolk.”
His flank drove Fen further into the stones. He was one hundred and fifty years old, with the strength and power of the entire herd in his massive body. By kheiron reckoning, Fen was barely past adolescence. Still evolving and no match for the Horselord. As his temple was ground against the wall, he didn’t yield or cower, but he didn’t struggle either.
One of Sevri’s forelegs wrapped around Fen’s, hobbling him. “The priestess said you’d spend more time looking backward than ahead. If you won’t take it upon yourself to face your future then it’s up to me to turn your head in that direction.”
Like liquid, he shifted into humos and his hand pulled away from Fen’s face. It came back curled in a fist, each finger ringed in silver.
The blow hit Fen’s cheekbone like a crossbolt. Pinned to the wall, he had no cushion or means to deflect. The pain burst like a bubble and flooded his entire face. He set his jaw, shook his clanging head twice and stared hard at his father.
Sevri was so angry, his body didn’t know what shape to take. He shifted from humos to equos to humos again, finally settling into kheiros. Breathing hard, his pale eyes filled with murder and his voice dangerously soft.
“You will apologize to Pelippé Trueblood,” he said. “Don’t make me tell you twice.”
“Twice you had the chance to let me die,” Fen said. “I don’t know why you didn’t take either of them.”
“Because unlike you, I finish what I start. Now get out of my sight.”
“Story of my life.”
Once he believed in happy endings and tales with a satisfying moral. But now, more than ever, he felt like a walking copy of the Truviad. A book cut off in the middle of a sentence, the narrative left to dangle helplessly without exposition or an arc.
And it was his own father who tore his page in half.
You must understand, legantos. Sevri il-Kheir was not always this way.
He’d been shy as a foalboy. Intense and contemplative next to his father’s carefree exuberance. Given his way, Sevri would live in equos forever, giving all his ardor and passion to the pegaso mare, Zoria. She owned his heart and body and he would know no other lover but her. He never tasted a human kiss, never felt a four- or fivehand slide below his waist, and never lay between the sheets as a man. He fervently believed his soul bond with Zoria equaled anything found in a bed, even surpassed it. When she died, the warp and weft of his existence ripped down the center and left him in tatters. His sanity teetered on a precarious edge and to keep from tumbling into the abyss, he heaped all his love, all his grief, all his devotion and all his fears upon his only son.
When Tehvan was taken away, Sevri’s reason for living went with him. Bereft of the last link to Zoria, the Horselord went quietly mad.
He tore the world apart looking for his foalboy. He joined his legions with Queen Nysiema’s army and they swept through Minosaros in a frantic but methodical invasion called Tehvan’s War.
Il-Kheir and the queen turned cities upside-down and shook them out, dislodging all manner of evil. They eviscerated the underbelly of the underworld, but Tehvan il-Kheir was never among the rescued.
Sevri died a thousand deaths in the two years Tehvan was missing. His face wore the expression of one who is constantly ripped in two. A face both slack with grief and contorted with rage. Once, his eyes had been the gold-streaked blue of lapis lazuli. Now they were hard like slate and perpetually narrowed at the world, looking for Tehvan in every corner. He strained so hard to see, his eyelashes fell out. He ground his back teeth until they cracked. He always stood cross-armed, hiding the tremor in his upper body. Palms and arms burning with the need to hold his flesh and blood.
As his desperation mounted, he consulted with people he always labeled as charlatans—oracles and soothsayers and prophets. They were no help. His contempt only increased, and even projected backward to the priestess present at Tehvan’s birth. It was she who predicted the motherless, breech-born foalboy was doomed to a life of despair. Taking first steps in ground soaked with his mother’s blood heralded nothing but calamity. A kheiron who didn’t hear his own dam’s death cries could never be a king attuned to the needs of his race.
The priestess implored Sevri to show mercy to the herd by abandoning his only son and siring another heir on another dam. Sevri insisted the priestess abandon any such idea. He pressed the point by breaking her neck.
To say this wasn’t a fortuitous beginning to Tehvan il-Kheir’s life is an understatement.
I swear to you, legantos, the stories and the songs are true. When the news came via falcon that Tehvan was rescued, il-Kheir was in the air before the paper reached the floor. The tenderness with which he gathered his brave one’s head to his shoulder was witnessed and immortalized. It really did happen. This was the kheiron we ought to know and this is the behavior by which we should judge Sevri il-Kheir.
As I told you before, it’s not always best to know the truth when others don’t.
The best surgeon in Nyland declared Tehvan’s broken limbs were beyond repair. For the second time, the Horselord was advised to abandon his son, this worrisome foal who’d been dragged backward into the world.
“He’s suffering, mysire,” the surgeon said.
“Mysire, he’s in torment,” the priestesses said.
They came at him from all sides, despairing and panicked and reproachful.
“This could go on for weeks.”
“We can end this misery. I give you my word, with three beads of fadara, it will be quick. Painless and dignified.”
“We beg you, do something. He can’t go on like this, he’s in agony.”
“Mysire, even if he survives, he will never walk again. Not on two legs, not on four. His life won’t be
worth living.”
What was a desperate father to do?
Any father would’ve lost his mind, but Sevri il-Kheir was both father and king. His reign was a link in an unbroken chain forged from starsilver. The chain stretched backward in time, thousands of years, to the first kheiron, the son of Khe.
But the first il-Kheir had been a twin.
His sister, ele-Kheir, was both first and last. The world had seen thousands of Horselords but only one Horsedam. She lived on the side of the moon that never showed its face to man and knew neither heir nor death.
Ele-Kheir moved in darkness but it was said she could work miracles.
Her ultimate little brother, her ancestral nephew many times removed, needed a miracle.
Sevri didn’t go to the Horsedam with entreaty. He went with a bargain.
Everything has a price, legantos. The world is transactional.
This for that.
Miracles are expensive, but the Horselord was willing to pay.
On the night of a new moon, when Lunos turned away from the earth and showed her secret side, Sevri offered his soul to ele-Kheir, in return for Tehvan’s fully-restored life and limbs.
This for that.
My soul for his legs.
What many people don’t know is when you sell your soul, you sell what lives within it. Within the soul’s deed was Sevri’s connection to his son. He knew this and he signed the agreement. He signed away his compassion. He signed away his reputation and legacy as well, because ego lives in the soul. Once the deal was made, Sevri forgot it even existed. Or why it existed.
Not one song or story would recount the extraordinary and selfless lengths Sevri went to to save his son. No one, Fen most of all, would understand the Horselord’s overnight change in attitude or his strange, cruel ambivalence.
Nobody would ever know what transpired beneath the new moon that night, when Lunos’s back was turned on the world.
Ele-Kheir certainly would never tell the story.
And il-Kheir didn’t know the story was his.
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay Page 14
