The Voyages of Trueblood Cay

by Suanne Laqueur

  You’re so beautiful, Fen thought.

  “Watch,” Trueblood said. “If you rub the wood…” He did so and held his fingertips to his nose. “It sticks to your skin for a little while.” His hand danced past Fen’s face. Fen inhaled spice and skin and his mouth watered. His eyes followed the hand’s trail through the thick, heady air, sparkles in its wake that drifted slowly to the floor.

  He shook his head hard. “Can’t believe you kept this from me.”

  Trueblood smiled and his tongue touched the edges of his upper teeth. “It’s a magical place, but it’s also the darkest place on the ship. The ceiling is low and… I didn’t want you to be afraid.”

  Fen swallowed. “Who’s the bed for?”

  Khe, but his mouth was so juicy right now.

  Trueblood moved a few inches toward it, hands on hips. “Anyone. Sleeping down here is a privilege you earn. A reward. Rest of the time it’s shut up tight. The one time my father whipped me in front of the crew was when I was in the Cay’s nyellem without permission.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Unlawful entry and I didn’t shut the latch properly.”

  “You told me he only punished disrespect,” Fen said, looking at Trueblood’s broad back.

  “I disrespected the nyellem and the kepten’s rule.”

  “Double trouble.”

  “Almost. Nine is a typical beating. I got twelve that time. Bare-assed over a barrel with the whole crew watching.”

  Fen’s eyes followed a shiver of memory as it made Trueblood’s shirt ripple from nape to waist. He easily could’ve blamed the residual Nye in the walls for what happened next. He knew what he was doing. But he had no idea why he did it.

  Other than he wanted to.

  And every scented board in the walls nodded, saying, Yes, yes, go ahead. By all means. We insist.

  He reached out his fivehand. Stretched his ringed fingers and rested them gently on the hard curve of Kepten Trueblood’s backside. And said, “That must’ve hurt.”

  The room went quiet as dust. Then Trueblood’s back and shoulders expanded in a huge intake of breath. They hitched with a single chuckle, then deflated. “Hurt my pride more than my ass.”

  “Still…” Fen’s fingertips wandered up a little. Then down. “Tastes like shit when you disappoint someone.”

  “Yeah. A beating basically makes your outsides sting more than your insides.”

  A long, spicy moment of silence. “You must miss him.”

  The kepten’s coiled locks shook as he glanced over his shoulder and down his back. “Every day.”

  Fen took his hand away. “Sorry.”

  Trueblood looked up. “Don’t be sorry for touching me.”

  Their eyes held. Trueblood turned more. Fen stepped backward. They turned. And stepped. The wall bumped Fen’s shoulders and told him it was far enough. Trueblood came the rest of the way. Lips slightly parted and eyes full of bewildered curiosity. He put one hand on the wall by Fen’s head. Then the other.

  Their eyes reached through bubbling sparkles to touch.

  What do you see? Fen thought, which left his mouth as, “What the fuck are you staring at?”

  “You,” Trueblood said. “All day long, all I do is stare at you.”

  “Why?”

  The kepten ran his hands up and down the wall. Once. Again. A third time. Then his fingertips pressed lightly on Fen’s face, lined up along each cheekbone.

  “Because I want you so bad,” he whispered.

  Fen closed his eyes and inhaled the scent that had no name. His own fingers plucked at the hem of Trueblood’s shirt, gathering it into his fists, working up the courage to slide beneath.

  Trueblood shook as his hands found the wall again. His head lowered and he put his forehead on Fen’s shoulder. His breath drew in with a hiss when Fen touched his back. Tentative at first. A few shy fingertips. Then his full, brave palm. Then both hands.

  “Khe, man,” Fen whispered.

  Trueblood turned his head a little. The apple of his smiling cheek swelled round against Fen’s shoulder. “Usually ‘man’ sounds like an insult from you.”

  “Does it?”

  “Mm.”

  “What about now, man?”

  “Not so much.”

  Fen shrugged his shoulder and caught Trueblood’s head in his hands. He drew in a long, shaky breath. “This is crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t breathe.”

  The kepten’s finger touched his mouth. “I know.” He drew along Fen’s bottom lip. “Me neither.”

  They kissed. The walls of the nyellem folded together, turned inside-out, splintered apart in sparkles and soap bubbles that popped in Fen’s ears and danced behind his eyelids in orange and yellow and pink and purple.

  “Fen.” Trueblood breathed the name like a song. Moaned it like soft music. His tongue tasted of truth and life and home and a long search finally ended.

  You’re here. Here you are.

  No place I can go where you can’t find me.

  The mariner’s mouth kissed down his neck and a sound squeezed through Fen’s throat. The blood flowed hot in his veins, swelling hard between his legs, writhing and wanting, he wanted so bad, he wanted so much. It was right in his hands, everything he longed for in his arms, but so many things had been cruelly snatched away from him before. Even as his embrace grabbed and clutched, it was full of hesitation.

  Was this for him? Could this be his?

  Breathing hard, Trueblood’s head lolled on Fen’s shoulder again. “Feels like I’ve been falling in love with you for a long time.”

  Fen’s ears touched the incredible words and shivered. “I loved you the first time I saw you.”

  Trueblood’s head came up and his smile broke open like an egg. “You shit on my feet the first time you saw me.”

  Fen laughed, fingers closing in fists in Trueblood’s clothes. “No, you moron. I mean the first time. When you were a baby. At your naming ceremony, when I shifted into equos without thinking about it. Because something in you makes me want to show my good side.”

  “All your sides are good,” Trueblood said, his hands sliding warm and strong around Fen’s face, pressing their brows together.

  “You make me want to be better.” Fen turned them, putting Trueblood’s back to the wall now. They kissed. Harder this time. Yanking arms from their shirts and putting hands on bare skin. Wrestling and rocking, weaving one arm on top of the other, over and through and across and pulling tight like a knot. Fastening each other down. Holding it there tight.

  “It’s so much,” Trueblood whispered.

  “It’s not enough.” Fen ran his hand down Trueblood’s stomach. Hesitated. Then took one lace in his precise fingers and pulled it loose.

  “Kepten,” someone called from another universe.

  Their mouths startled around the kiss, drew away gasping and panting.

  The call came stronger. “Kepten!”

  “I’m in the middle of something, lads,” Trueblood mumbled, his fists tight in the kheiron’s hair.

  “No place on the ship where they can’t find you.”

  “I know.” He kissed Fen again. “We should talk more about this later.”

  “We should.” Fen ran a hand along Trueblood’s jaw. “It’s long overdue.”

  Trueblood turned his mouth into Fen’s palm for a warm, damp instant. “Wait for me. I’ll go deal with whatever they’re carrying on about. And then I’ll meet you. Back here. Later.”

  “Later.” Fen had never known such a beautiful word.

  “And we’ll talk about it.”

  “In depth. And when we’re done talking, you can fuck me on that bed.”

  It slipped right out of his mouth. Wild and honest. Tinged with fear, only because he wanted it. For the fir
st time since he was twelve years old, he wanted it desperately.

  Trueblood’s fingers pressed Fen’s skin. Eyes wild in the dark. An open mouth with words piling up in the back of his throat, but unable to get any of them to come forward.

  His speechlessness was intoxicating.

  “It’s a reward, right?” Fen said, closing his teeth around the mariner’s bottom lip. Relishing this power coursing through his body. This foreign joy in being a man so he could lie with another man.

  “I’ll tell you what the reward is,” Trueblood said. “It’s not fucking you on that bed. It’s taking you to the bed in the kepten’s quarters. I’ve been keeping it empty all this time because I made a promise I’d only lie down there with someone I love. And just so we’re crystal clear, I’m so in love with you, I can’t sleep at night. Neither will you. Do you understand?”

  “Got it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “That bed is so big, you could get lost in it. But believe me, I’ll find you.” His mouth crushed down. All of his body pressed Fen, hot and tight and hard. “If I don’t sleep, you don’t sleep. All night long, I want to find you in my bed and wake you up.”

  Groaning, Fen took one last taste of his kiss and then shoved him away. “Go. Your crew needs you.”

  “All right.” Shirt slung over a shoulder, he stepped back and tied his breeches. “Dammit, I’m pitching a tent. This is going to be embarrassing.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Horseshit, you’re sorry.” Trueblood opened the door and stood silhouetted an aching moment. His finger raised and pointed. “Shut the door when you leave.”

  “I will.”

  “Shut it tight. Understand? Answer your commander.”

  His heart exploding in his chest, Fen answered. “Aye, Kep.”

  A smile more brilliant than the sunrise stretched Trueblood’s face and at that instant, Fen would have killed for him.

  The smile snuffed out like a candle flame when the shouts of the crew above rose up.

  “Kepten,” they wailed. “Kraken! Off the port side! It’s Misery!”

  “Fuck,” Trueblood cried, and bolted for the stairs, his shirt falling to the floor.

  Shirtless as well, Fen took the extra second to make sure the door of the hold was shut tight, then ran after.

  Behind him, the nyellem hugged itself, shivering in joy, joy, joy, joy…

  The fight against Misery was glorious in its terror.

  In later years, the crew would tell the story, and speak of how Kepten Trueblood had bravely commanded the ship that terrible day. Calling battle stations and strategy, barking orders right and left, all the while standing shirtless at the helm and keeping the Kaleuche under his strict control.

  “Fen,” he cried, like a song. “Bring her down.”

  One hand holding the mighty wheel, he brought the other to his mouth and his teeth scraped Fen’s ring from his finger. Fen caught it in one hand as he reached for his bow with the other.

  A crack like a cloth shaken out as his wings unfolded.

  “The eye,” Abrakam cried after him. “Fenros, the shot must be in her eye.”

  “Bring her down, Fen!” the crew called.

  “Get back, lads,” Trueblood hollered from the helm.

  Misery breached, a forest of tentacles snarling in the air, one just missing Fen’s leg. Her swollen body slapped down and the ocean caved in on top of it. Water bucked and heaved under the port side, knocking crew into a pile against the opposite railing.

  Archers clung to the rigging with shins and toes as they fired their bows out to sea. Finding an assault rhythm of riddling the depths to make Misery come to the surface, where Fen would be waiting.

  “Keep her angry,” Fen called, flying by to snatch a full quiver from Melki. He swooped past the helm and called to Trueblood, “Turn starboard. Bring us ar—“

  A splintering crash as one of Misery’s tentacles busted through the port railing. Crew scattered like wet rats. A bone-cracking howl as Sixten was dragged across the deck, his ankle trapped in Misery’s grip.

  “Six!” Eleven came barreling out of the melee, a double-headed axe in both hands, ready to chop.

  “No,” Abrakam cried, running down the sailor and trying to wrestle the axe free. “You cut that tentacle, you’ll kill us all.”

  Eleven screamed as his brother was dragged over the side, fingernails leaving gashes in the wood. The axe clattered down. Footsteps pounded.

  “No.”

  “Lev.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Eleven, stop.”

  One last cry of despair and Eleven threw himself into the frothing waves, following Sixten to death.

  Fen froze in the air, heart in his mouth. Arrow nocked, wings fluttering, he looked back over his shoulder. His eyes met Trueblood’s and their combined horror and anger was a tangible thing, electric and sharp and sinister.

  “No, Fen,” Trueblood cried. “Let him go. Bring her down.”

  Fen turned back as Misery breached, tentacles unfurling in a shower of droplets, a tatter of white cloth clinging to one sucker.

  Fen saw red. Then redder. His fury sharpened to a point and his skill narrowed to the tip. Through the gap in the railing Misery reached. She got one slimy leg curled around the mizzen mast.

  “Fen, do it,” Trueblood screamed behind him. “Fucking take her down.”

  Fen waited. Patient and courteous. Eyes unblinking.

  Misery reached further, her head emerging from the chop. Her tentacles whipped through the air, gray-green and slick, water sluicing off the iridescent scales. A cracking of timber, the groan of splitting beam, shouting and cursing and screaming. Fen heard it all, but didn’t take his eyes off the kraken.

  “Turn around and look at me, whore,” he said. “Roll over and see what I have for you.”

  Misery froze. Her grotesque head turned and she looked up at the kheiron.

  “From one whore to another…” Fen’s fingers let go, poised delicately in the air as the taut string collapsed against the notch of the arrow.

  It flew.

  The aim was true.

  Not a sound as the bronze tip pierced Misery’s upturned eye.

  It shuddered as it lodged in the skull.

  An elegant, economical and gorgeous shot.

  Father should’ve seen that, Fen thought. Maybe they’ll tell him one day, how—

  “No,” Abrakam cried. And his terrible call echoed behind Fen.

  “No.”

  “Kepten.”

  “Trueblood.”

  “No. Trueblood, no…”

  Fen il-Kheir hovered on the steaming air, his back to the ship.

  If I don’t turn around, everything stays the same, he thought. The priestess said I’d live my life looking behind me. My father punched my head to get it to face the right direction. I mustn’t turn around. Don’t make me. Let me stay here. Let me keep looking ahead. That way. Toward my future. With him.

  “Pelippé,” Lejo screamed.

  No looking back, Fen thought. I must face the future.

  “Pé, no!” Raj cried.

  Weeping rolled over the waves as the last bit of Misery slipped below the surface.

  Fen turned around.

  Long ago the earth was one.

  Then Nydirsil, the Tree of Life, tore her roots free from the seabed, unleashing the unspeakable evils imprisoned in the bowels of the earth. The two most heinous creatures to break free were the twin kraken, Murder and Misery.

  Murder’s venom was instantaneous. Misery’s was far more sadistic. Victims of her poison lay in torment, reliving their worst moments. Suffering their harshest pain and grief and shame and devastation. Misery worked its way into their hearts until they broke. It took over their minds unti
l they were lost. It killed slowly. Excruciatingly. And enjoyed every minute.

  Misery lay dead on the bottom of the ocean floor now, one of Fen’s arrows through her eye and lodged in her soft skull. Her venom continued to pump out in the cold depths, creating a noxious patch that glowed sickly yellow and violet, rising in red steam off the waves. The Kaleuche managed to catch the wind’s death rattle and sail clear of the poisoned air. Then the wind dwindled to a breeze. Then to nothing.

  The ship bobbed in a dead calm.

  The crew sat about the decks. Listening to Seven weep for his brothers, staring at their hands and waiting for Trueblood to die.

  Misery’s tentacle had left deep gashes across Trueblood’s back, their edges bubbling with a green foam. The bleeding had stopped, which Abrakam said was a bad thing. Flowing blood might get some of the venom out.

  The crew held him down so the centaur could cut the wounds deeper. Trueblood bucked and writhed. He screamed. He begged. He bawled. He panted through his teeth, sputtering and hissing. Eyes and nose dripping and fingers clawing the air.

  The crew was disintegrating under his agony. Breaking down and weeping as they grabbed and clutched and sat on Trueblood’s furious body. Fen made a stone of his heart, going deaf, dumb and blind. Thinking only of Eleven, who threw himself overboard so he could die with his little brother.

  When this was over, Fen planned to do the same.

  I’m done, he thought. I’ve done all I can do. My life has been good enough. I can do no more.

  Finally Abrakam stepped back. “It’s the best I can do.”

  The Ĝemelos washed Trueblood’s back and bound it. Their twinned expression was gray and stunned, but their strength and tenderness was absolute as they carried the kepten down to the nyellem.

  “It might comfort him,” the centaur said. “It may even help.”

  “Can anything help?” Dhar asked, his face swollen.

  Abrakam turned away, shaking his head. “Let him rest, lad,” he said. “Let Fen be with him.”

  Once the Kaleuche’s nyellem was stacked floor to ceiling with casks of spice. Now it only contained the memory of kisses and a bed, where Kepten Trueblood lay facedown, dying.