The Voyages of Trueblood Cay

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Written down?”

  “I don’t know, in the giantship rule book?”

  “No. It’s just the way things are done.”

  The kheiron’s head tilted. “Who’s way?”

  “My father’s way.”

  “Ah.” Fen nodded slowly. “It was his way, but this is your ship.”

  He smiled then. A real smile that reached to the corners of his eyes. It had both a friend’s good-natured tease and an elder’s wise counsel.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” he said, and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Trueblood counted to twenty before answering, “Please stay.”

  He sighed, caught between the True Way and his way. He should whip Sixten in front of his peers to make an example, to drive the consequence home, but he couldn’t.

  I can, he thought. I can also choose not to.

  Because my ship, my rules.

  I don’t have to do everything the way Da did.

  He’d discipline Sixten privately in his study. Of course, he wasn’t obligated to communicate the decision. Especially since he now knew Sixten preferred to go meet a hiding. The lad could have the whole rest of the afternoon, plus the evening through supper, to think he was getting it in front of the crew. A good long stretch to stew in anticipation, reflect on his actions and die a thousand deaths.

  What to do about Eleven remained a conundrum, but Trueblood elected to put faith in hard work and trust the solution would present itself. He inspected the holds and settled the ledgers with Calvo. He entered the day’s events in his journal, taking especial pains with his especial penmanship, because writing beautifully soothed him. Numbers and words filed down the rough edges of his mood, and he was calm when Seven rattled knuckles on his door and asked for a word.

  “I’m not here to beg clemency for either brother,” he said. “Both deserve what they got coming. I hope you won’t take offense if I ask how you feel about giving Eleven his due. Him being ten years older than you.”

  “I’m ten inches taller,” Trueblood said.

  Seven fiddled with the string of shark teeth he wore around his neck. “Aye, Kepten, you are.”

  “I know how to put age out of the picture. Rank is only relevant here.”

  “This is true. And I meant no offense. Or to imply you weren’t capable of the job.”

  Trueblood leaned back in his chair, lacing hands behind his head. “Say what’s on your mind, Sev.”

  “Eleven gets arrogant when his pride is wounded. He hates being in the wrong, and rather than be graceful about it, he makes his fuck-up into someone else’s character flaw. He’ll use the age difference as a barrier between the strap and his ass. If you need…” Seven paused and tapped his fingers on his chin. “If you need, say, a witness,” he said carefully. “Or a sergeant-at-arms to keep him in line, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

  “I appreciate the offer and the counsel,” Trueblood said. “More than you know.”

  “The counsel is yours whenever you want, la—” The cook laughed, knuckling his mouth. “Did you hear what I almost did?”

  Trueblood had to laugh as well. “Rafil called my father lad.”

  “Well, maybe when I’m seventy, I’ll have the privilege. For now, I’ll take my thirty-three years where they belong. You know where to find me, Kep.”

  “Thank you, Seven. And when you send that bird, give my regards to your mother.”

  He squared away some last bits of business, then had the steward bring him supper in his study. Chewing over the day, he made up his mind and when the steward cleared the tray, Trueblood asked him to send both Seven and Eleven to the aftercastle.

  “What’s he here for?” Eleven said.

  “At last count, you planned on attending three of Sixten’s thrashings,” Trueblood said. “You object to a witness at your own?”

  Seven leaned against the door with a bored expression. “I have pies in the oven, Lev. Can we get on with it?”

  Eleven scowled, backed into a corner of his own device. “Fine,” he said, undoing his laces. “You can be in here but you can’t watch.”

  Seven graciously turned around and justice was served. Eleven took his due in silence, save for one or two bumpy grunts at the last strokes. He was red to the hairline and sweating when it ended, and as the brothers walked out through the sitting room, Trueblood heard Eleven say, “Godsdamn, he swings a lot harder than True did.”

  “Because he’s younger,” Seven said.

  “I think I pissed myself a little.”

  “Because you’re getting old.”

  Lejo brought Sixten in, but left the study and closed the door. With no witnesses, the lad bent over and got twelve of the best. Trueblood swung hard and while Sixten was stoic at the outset, he was a snotty wreck at the last stripe, bawling from much more than the pain.

  The job sucked. If any task was worse than whipping a fifteen-year-old boy until he cried, someone would have to tell Pelippé Trueblood what it was.

  He opened the study door. Lejo stood up, expression both grim and relieved.

  “Take him back to his cabin,” Trueblood said. “And tell the crew no story hour tonight.”

  The boatswain’s eyes widened a hair. Then he nodded briskly and took his charge away.

  Trueblood coiled the strap and put it back in the drawer. Then slammed it.

  “That’s done,” he said. “Today is done.”

  Taking away the evening tales punished everyone. But fuck it. His ship. His rules. The loss of the beloved privilege was another thing Eleven and Sixten could think about when they lay facedown in their beds tonight. And the rest of the week.

  The heels of Trueblood’s boots hit the floor hard as he went to the liquor cabinet in the sitting room. He crouched, pushed aside vintages and wrestled out the last of Ikharus’s beloved Altynian plonk. He regarded the goblets only a moment, then pulled the cork with his teeth, spit it aside and chugged straight from the bottle.

  “There you are,” Raj said.

  “Me?” Fen said.

  The pilot had two bottles of rum in his sixhand and another in the crook of his elbow. His free hand reached for Fen’s wrist. “I need you. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To get the kepten drunk.”

  “I’m not sure he wants company,” Fen said.

  “He does, he just doesn’t know he does. Lejo. Lé. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” the boatswain said, looking like he wanted to go nowhere but bed.

  “To drown Troubled’s troubles.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “I know. Possibly my worst ever. You definitely don’t want to miss it.”

  “No one can say you don’t have balls, Raj,” Fen said.

  “They better not,” the pilot said. He paused at the aftercastle doors. “Lads, if you’re going to talk me out of it, now’s the time.”

  “Like you’d listen,” Lejo said.

  Raj opened the door and breezed into the sitting area. “Salu,” he called, clanking the rum on the table. “My name’s Raj and I’ll be your steward this evening.”

  “Go away,” Trueblood said. An empty bottle of wine was at his elbow. His notebook lay open on the table, the pages blank.

  “We’re here to cheer you up,” Lejo said.

  “I don’t want to be cheered up.”

  “Too bad,” Fen said.

  “Would you all kindly fuck off, I don’t feel like talking.”

  “We’re not talking, we’re drinking.”

  The kepten gave a martyred sigh. “Get a glass.”

  “That’s my boy. Fen, get some glasses.”

  “Please,” Trueblood said quietly.

  “Pardon me. Fen, please get some glasses.”

  They pulled up ch
airs and Raj poured generous tots of rum around. They toasted and bolted them down. Then an awkward silence fell.

  Fingers drummed on glass. A little small talk went back and forth. Raj poured them more rum. Trueblood bent over his book and sketched a tree. The roots fell off the bottom of the page and the branches spread from spine to edge. Fen’s eyebrows wrinkled as the mariner drew two straight lines across the tree, right where the branches forked from the trunk. He rounded their ends, making it into a pole. Like a yard across a mast.

  “What’s that?” Fen said.

  “What?”

  “The part going sideways.”

  Trueblood scowled and his pen slashed carelessly across the sketch. “Something from a dream I had once. It’s nothing.”

  “This is a terrible party,” Lejo said. “I blame you, Raj.”

  Raj put down his glass and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I know how to spice things up.”

  “This can’t end well,” Trueblood mumbled.

  Raj got up and went into the foyer. He put hands and an ear against Abrakam’s closed door.

  “Raj, what are you doing?” Lejo hissed, sounding ten years old.

  The pilot put a finger to his lips and slipped into the centaur’s room.

  Fen felt a decidedly juvenile thrill of getting caught and he didn’t even know what was going on. He glanced at Trueblood, who had his face in his palm, but beneath the fold of his fingers, he was smiling.

  Gods, that smile.

  Raj slipped out again, a book under his arm. “Look, Pé. It’s your favorite.”

  Trueblood looked up and his face did ten thousand different things. “What the—oh for fuck’s sake, Raj.”

  Lejo put his face in both palms, shaking his head. “I could’ve been asleep by now.”

  “What is it?” Fen said, trying to see the cover of the book.

  “This is the best bedtime story,” Raj said, sitting down at the table. “Actually, the story is pretty boring, but the illustrations are out of this world.”

  “Gods, how many times did we sneak this out of Abrakam’s library?” Trueblood said, leaning forward to drag a corner of the book toward him. “Gimme that.”

  Raj slapped his fingers. “Wait your turn.”

  “What it’s about?” Fen said, craning his neck.

  “Sex,” the three men said.

  “This tome taught us everything we know,” Raj said.

  Trueblood and Lejo exchanged a glance.

  “Shut up,” Trueblood said.

  Lejo’s cheekbones flamed. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You thought it.”

  “So did you.”

  “You thought it out loud.”

  “You wish.”

  Fen felt his eyebrows knit. I’m no expert on gelang, he thought. But that little exchange was a thing.

  “You been to bed since then?” Raj asked, turning pages.

  “Me?” Fen said.

  “No.” Raj flipped a thumb across the table. “These two.”

  “No,” Trueblood and Lejo said.

  “Don’t be so touchy, lads. I think it’s adorable you were each other’s firsts.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” Lejo said quietly.

  “When was this?” Fen said to Raj.

  “When I and Lé were sixteen. Old enough to go into brothels. I couldn’t wait, but my brother has certain ideas about matters gelang—”

  “I’m sitting right here,” Lejo said.

  “—and Trueblood was still a baby.”

  “I was fifteen and taller than you,” Trueblood said, his arms crossed.

  “You’re a giantsblood, you’re taller than everyone. Anyway, we anchored somewhere in Pellandro—”

  “Denkos,” Trueblood and Lejo said, then looked at each other. “Shut up.”

  “I couldn’t get down the gangplank fast enough to learn the ways of the world,” Raj said. “These two stayed behind and…” His hand circled in the air. “Educated each other.”

  “Did Abrakam and Rafil do this to my father?” Trueblood said to the ceiling. “Is this torture some kind of shipboard ritual I didn’t know about?”

  Raj reached and pinched Trueblood’s cheek. “You love it.”

  “Unfortunately, I do.”

  “You ruined my brother for anyone else.”

  “He did not,” Lejo said.

  Trueblood looked at him. “I didn’t?”

  “No. I mean, you were fine but—”

  “Fine?”

  Raj’s laughter filled the room as he filled glasses around the table. “Drink up, lovers. You, too, Fen. You know all our secrets now.”

  Fen drank, enjoying himself, but wary. Don’t think you’re getting any of mine, he thought.

  The bottles drained away as the book and the laughter went around the table.

  “Feel better?” Raj said to Trueblood.

  “No.”

  “Liar.”

  Trueblood smiled and glanced at Fen. Woozy with fatigue and rum, Fen was slow to disengage. Reluctant, if he were being honest. Trueblood’s eyes were gold with lamplight. His skin smooth over his smiling cheeks and strong brow. His top teeth were white and straight, but the incisors and canines were slightly different lengths. His grin was like the foothills of a mountain chain.

  And he peels potatoes to calm down, Fen thought dreamily. When rubbing one out isn’t an option.

  His slurry thoughts drifted beneath the table, constructing more imagery that triggered a delayed jealousy.

  Lejo and Trueblood were lovers?

  Long ago. They were kids. Obviously not since.

  But still. The way they laughed over a few of the illustrations in the contraband book had the intimacy of a private joke. The exchanged glances and shut ups were laced with complicity.

  They were lovers. They peeled potatoes together.

  Holy horses, what is wrong with you?

  The neck of the rum bottle clinked against Raj’s glass. A single drop fell.

  “All gone,” the pilot said sadly.

  Lejo stifled a yawn against his fist. The party was winding down. Fen waited for Trueblood to say, “well, goodnight, lads” and then they’d clear out.

  Then he remembered Trueblood didn’t sleep in the quarters’ big bedroom. He slept in the foyer cabin. Between the twins. Or maybe with just Lejo.

  Either way, Fen was the one who needed to clear out.

  He rose on swaying legs. “Well, this was delightful. We should never do it again.”

  “Goodnight, Fen,” Trueblood said. “And thank you for sharing my misery.”

  “Amatos,” Lejo said, his chest hitching over a hiccup. He was so utterly likable that Fen hated him a little.

  Raj raised a hand. “Rest well.”

  And it’s all your fault for going to brothels and leaving those two alone to educate each other. Your worst idea ever. Glad I missed it.

  “Goodnight,” Fen said, and left the aftercastle feeling both befriended and lonely.

  From the Most Private Journal

  of Pelippé Trueblood

  An especial accounting of his life

  and voyages on the Cay.

  As written by Pelippé Trueblood

  (Me)

  “Pelippé,” Fen said. It rolled over his tongue as his thumb fanned the pages of the notebook, admiring the beautiful, precise handwriting and the childish sentiments.

  These are the people I love.

  Raj and Lejo are my brothers.

  They are my friends.

  We are gelang.

  I love Raj and Lejo.

  The ink swerved away from the O in Lejo, in a curve that looked harsh and angry. Written below, once more in the calm, perfect penmanship: My love is bigger than the sun. />
  Fen replaced the little leather book on the shelf. Trueblood had dozens of them, lined up in shades of brown, from honey-gold to cinnamon to walnut, like a cross-section of layer cake. His finger hovered over another, then paused.

  He shouldn’t be snooping.

  He shouldn’t even be in Trueblood’s study.

  A dark umber notebook opened in his hungry hands. The entries were more mature in this one. No grand, prequel announcement. Just the date at the top, followed by a block of neat writing, and ending with P. Trueblood.

  The writing was serious, but little drawings filled the margins and the spaces between paragraphs. Sometimes repetitive designs. Ocean wave motifs. Compass roses. A ship’s wheel. A centaur. One page had an astonishing sketch of Kepten True in his blue coat.

  Details don’t scare Trueblood, Fen thought, his fingertip marveling across every button on the coat, every kink in each braided plait, even dotted lines along the seams of True’s boots.

  Da, Trueblood had written beneath his father’s wide-legged stance. And then, like an outpouring of grief, he wrote it again and again in a slither across the paper Da Da Da Da Da… Until it fell off.

  Fen skimmed long stretches of writing. Tall masts were drawn in the margins, some half-morphed into trees, gnarled branches sprouting between the yards, twigs and leaves tangled in the rigging. He turned a page and the breath caught in his throat.

  A winged man, his suntanned torso rising out of breeches and boots. Hands on hips, looking to the side. His hair left white and a stab of blue in each eye. The wings spread from the spine of the book to the edge of the page, every feather precisely outlined.

  That’s me.

  He licked his lips, feeling his gaze grow wider. Trueblood drew the breeches low on Fen’s hips, the top grommets unlaced. At his waist, the line where his equine torso would’ve begun was meticulously shaded with cross-hatched marks. A little arrow pointed toward it, with tiny, secret words: I love this.

  A hand yanked the book away and Abrakam looked sternly at him. “That’s private.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t abuse the privileges you’ve been given. You know better.”

  “I… I do. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Abrakam smoothed the book shut and slid it back on the shelf. “If you want to know what’s in Trueblood’s heart, ask him. He’s not your father. What he wants you to know, he’ll tell you. What he keeps guarded, he’ll give you the reason why.”