The Sea King

by C. L. Wilson

  Gradually, his thundering pulse slowed and his breathing returned to a calm, unhurried rhythm. Alysaldria gave his locks one last maternal stroke, then released him.

  He rose on trembling legs, humbled by his mother’s tremendous gift. “Moa nana, Nima.” My thanks, Mother. “But you should not have given me so much.”

  Her eyes still shone pure molten gold, but she looked weary and drained. Pale beneath the deep bronze of her skin.

  He was about to express his concern when Alysaldria’s eyes rolled back and she collapsed into the cradle of her throne.

  “Nima!” Dilys lunged for her, catching her slight, slender body and lifting her out of the throne. “Uncle Calivan!”

  “Get the healer!” Calivan snapped to one of the guards standing by the throne room. “Dilys, this way. To the antechamber.” Swiftly, his face etched with concern, Calivan led the way down the stairs behind the throne to the antechamber below. “Put her on that chaise.” He pointed to the long, cushioned lounge set against the wall of the private chamber beneath the throne room and went to fetch a cool cloth and a glass of chilled, salted water while Dilys set his mother down.

  She had already come around by the time Calivan returned with the cloth and the water. She waved off their hovering concern, though she accepted both the drink and the damp cloth. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine,” Dilys argued. “You fainted.”

  “And it’s my own fault,” she said. “Calivan has been telling me I’m not eating properly. I suppose I should have listened to him.”

  Dilys cast a concerned look at his uncle, who snapped his fingers at one of the guards who’d followed them down to the antechamber and ordered, “Have the kitchens send up something for the Myerial to eat. Immediately. Tell them to send whatever they have on hand. No delays. They can make something more substantial for her later.”

  “Tey, Lord Merimydion.” The guard bowed and hurried out.

  Dilys turned back to his mother. She struggled to sit up, only to collapse weakly back against the chaise. A cold hand of fear squeezed Dilys’s heart.

  “Nima, it is more than not eating. You are not well.” Her paleness today. That tremble in her hand before she’d given him her blessing. She was beginning to Fade, that loss of strength that befell some Calbernans, particularly after great tragedy or heartache, when their sorrow became too great to bear. To Calbernans, love and happiness were not simply emotions. They were as essential as air and water. A Calbernan could not live without them.

  “Nima, you cannot ask me to leave you now. I won’t do it. I won’t go.” He would devote himself to her entirely, pour upon her all the love in his soul to keep her strong. He would do whatever it took, no matter the cost to himself.

  “Tey, you will.” She shook her head. “I will allow no further delay. You will travel to the winter lands and you will bring back a daughter for me to love, a daughter to mother my grandchildren. I will hold your child in my arms.”

  And suddenly her decision to Speak from the Sea Throne made perfect sense. No wonder she had sworn an unbreakable vow to give her life to make his daughter strong. No wonder she’d commanded him to sail tomorrow to Wintercraig and claim his wife. She’d known she was beginning to Fade.

  “Then I will stay, Alys,” Calivan said, reaching down to stroke his sister’s hair.

  She grasped his wrist and shook her head again. “Ono. You and I have already discussed this. There is no one I trust more to protect my son’s back amongst the oulani than you.”

  “Nima—”

  “Alys—”

  Dilys and Calivan protested in unison, but Alysaldria would not be swayed.

  “Ono. Dilys, you will go tomorrow, as planned—with your uncle and with no more fighting between you. You will court this Season your uncle and the Council have chosen for you and you will win her love. Then you will bring her home to Calberna and give her children to bring you both as much joy and pride as you have brought me. That is what will make me happy. That is what I need from you.”

  “Nima.” His throat was so tight his voice came out hoarse. He took her hand, pressed his lips to her palm. “As you require, so I shall provide, moa nima.”

  The sun was still low on the eastern horizon the next morning as Dilys headed to the palace docks, where a glossy blue canal boat was waiting to take him to his ship. He and his Uncle Calivan had shamelessly browbeat his mother last night until she had agreed to let her twin stay with her until she was stronger. Dilys would go on ahead, to begin his courtship of the Seasons, and Calivan would join him in a month or so, once Alysaldria had regained a measure of her strength.

  As Dilys reached the perimeter of the palace gardens, a Calbernan stepped out from behind one of the manicured hedges.

  “So, you’re off to claim your oulani.”

  Dilys’s body tensed. His mood—already troubled—grew darker, and he turned slowly to face his cousin Nemuan, the son of the previous Myerial.

  Tattoos covered Nemuan’s body from neck to toe, with hardly an inch of unadorned bronze skin showing anywhere between, but unlike most Calbernans, whose tattoos were inked with the iridescent blue created from royal anemone, mother of pearl, and crushed silverfish scales, half of Nemuan’s markings had been drawn in matte-black squid ink. Records of all the years he’d spent on the seas, not seeking gold and glory, but absolution and revenge for the loss of his sister, Sianna, and his mother, the Myerial Siavaluana.

  Only two years older than Dilys, Nemuan had been a boy of eleven when the accident had claimed the lives of Sianna and Nyamialine, and ultimately Siavaluana as well. Too young to seek his own death for his family’s honor, but not too young to go to sea. For ten years, he’d sold his sword without profit, facing battle after battle, mission after mission, to prove his strength, his skill, his command of sea and the ships that sailed it. To free himself from the stain of his family’s failure to protect its women. Only after those years had he turned his mind to gold and glory, his desire towards earning a liana of his own. Unfortunately for Nemuan, those years of rage and fury had left their mark on more than just his skin. Though he had amassed gold and glory enough for a liana of his own, he had yet to win one.

  He was waiting, he said, for a liana worthy of the son of a Myerial. And just like his cronies in the Pureblood Alliance, Nemuan made it clear he thought Dilys should do the same.

  “Nemuan,” Dilys greeted his cousin without enthusiasm. “I thought you were still at sea.”

  His cousin smiled, but no humor lightened the flat, dark gold of his eyes. “And miss the day a Myerial’s son sails off to fetch an oulani bride?”

  Dilys’s lips tightened. “What’s done is done, cousin,” he said. “No amount of sacrifice will ever bring your mother, Sianna, or Nyamialine back to us. It is time for you to set aside your fury and your grief. Claim a liana of your own to give you children. Seek what happiness this life yet holds for you.”

  “I do not forget so easily as you,” Nemuan spat.

  Dilys’s lips tightened. “I forget nothing. But I cannot change what is, only what will be. And I choose life, for me and the children my liana will bear me.”

  “A Myerielua worthy of the name would say it was better to see House Merimydion die than sully Calberna’s royal line with oulani blood. In Numahao’s name, Merimydion, act like the Prince of the Isles you’re supposed to be, not some spineless, self-serving weakling without the will to do what’s right.”

  Dilys’s eyes narrowed. The points of his battle claws pressed against his fingertips, wanting out. “Careful, Merimynos.”

  “You were given the chance to choose what was best for Calberna—to keep the bloodline of the Sirens pure. And you turned your nose up at it.”

  “I was offered the chance to wait five years before wedding a girl grieving for her lost love. I chose instead to seek a powerful daughter for House Merimydion, a daughter for my nima to love, one whose heart is not drowning in grief.”

&nb
sp; “A choice that’s good for you and no one else.”

  “The Myerial does not agree.”

  “The Myerial is—”

  “Mua!” Silence! Dilys’s hand slashed through the air. His expression went hard as stone. “Your insults to me, I can let pass, but do not speak words about my mother that I will be forced to make you regret.”

  Nemuan’s lips curled. “As if you could.”

  A split second later, Nemuan lay flat on his back, Dilys’s hand at his throat. The face of the former Myerial’s son was turning a satisfying shade of puce.

  “I could,” Dilys said. “I could very easily. And you’d do best to remember it, pulan.” His mother had given him more than a little power. She’d all but drained herself for him, making him more than a match for his motherless, sisterless cousin.

  Dilys released Nemuan and rose in one swift, smooth motion. Leaving his cousin lying there, Dilys crossed the coral slab of the dock and stepped aboard the glossy blue canal boat. “Don’t bother coming to see me off,” he said.

  At the back of the boat, two Calbernans shoved long poles into the clear water of the canal, pushing away from the courtyard dock. As the boat moved down the canal towards the harbor, Dilys could feel Nemuan’s narrowed black eyes boring into the back of his head. The two of them had never been particularly friendly—not at all since the deaths of Sianna and Nyamialine—but their shared blood had always kept them civil. Clearly, those bonds held no longer.

  Dilys knew that in Nemuan, he now had an enemy.

  Chapter 2

  Konumarr, Wintercraig

  “Calbernans, who claim to be the favored race of the goddess Numahao, all possess seagifts that enable them to manipulate currents, commune with creatures of the sea, and swim without needing to surface for air. They are rightly called Sealords, as the oceans of the world obey their commands.” The small, golden-skinned boy standing at the head of the small schoolroom gripped the edges of the leather-bound book in his hands and turned expectant eyes towards his teacher.

  “That was excellent, Jori.” Gabriella Coruscate, the Summerlea princess known more commonly by her giftname Summer, smiled at the young boy and took the book from his hands.

  The seven-year-old beamed proudly. “I been practicing with Mam.”

  “You have been practicing with your mam,” she corrected kindly, “and, yes, I can see that you have. You’ve made excellent progress, Jori.” The boy’s cheeks flushed a sweet, red-rose beneath his golden skin, making the smattering of white freckles across his cheeks glow like stars. He looked so earnest and adorable, with his big blue eyes and the sheafs of straight white hair slanting across his brow, and so proud, too—his spine straight, his narrow shoulders squared beneath his threadbare but pristinely washed, starched, and neatly mended shirt—nothing like the timid, painfully shy child who’d first stepped into her classroom two weeks ago. Unable to stop herself, she reached out to ruffle his hair, and was rewarded with another beaming smile and a palpable pulse of joy that suffused her with soothing warmth.

  Summer let herself bask in that warmth for a moment, then stepped back from the lure of Jori’s affection and turned to return the book to the neatly ordered bookshelf standing against the wall.

  “All right, class. That’s all for today. There will be no school tomorrow so everyone can attend the welcoming celebrations for the Calbernans. So, I’ll see you again next Modinsday, when we’ll start the next chapter in Tanturri’s History of the World.”

  She laughed at the chorus of groans from the students. They much preferred reading adventures and heroic epics like Roland Triumphant: Hero of Summerlea or The Great Hunt—a predilection shared by Summer’s sister Khamsin, the Queen of Wintercraig, who had founded Konumarr’s new public school—but while those texts made for an exciting read, they didn’t expand students’ knowledge of geography and history beyond the shores of the Æsir Isles. Khamsin was determined that the graduates of her experimental new public school should emerge with the ability to read, write, do arithmetic, and have a useful foundation of knowledge in history, geography, and commerce, which is why she’d pressed her sister Summer into teaching this first semester. Children naturally flocked to Summer—and what parent would refuse to let their child attend a class taught by the most beloved princess in the Æsir Isles?

  Summer wasn’t entirely convinced that these children—many of whom would go on to join their parents in farming, fishing, sheep herding, or trapping—needed an education that went beyond basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, but Khamsin insisted. Who knew? Maybe she was right. Summer’s own tutor had been fond of history, proclaiming, “A wise man learns from those who came before so that he may duplicate their successes while avoiding their mistakes.” Even if the children never needed to know why long-dead kings had plunged their nations into war or how the battles had affected the world, the part about avoiding the mistakes of one’s forebears was probably a lesson worth learning.

  Certainly, it was a lesson Summer had taken to heart.

  In any event, Tanturri’s History was the students’ least favorite text. Summer secretly agreed with them—she’d always found it a dead, dry read—but since Wintercraig’s queen had included it in the curriculum, Summer would plow through it all the same. Hopefully, she’d found a way to make the material more interesting, both for her own sake as well as the students’.

  “Lily”—she nodded towards the pregnant young woman at the back of the class—“suggested you might enjoy Tanturri more if we made costumes and acted out some of the historical events. What do you think of that?” When a small chorus of cheers replaced the groans, she smiled. “Excellent. Costumes it is. We’ll plan our costumes for the first chapter and go to the store on Turinsday, where you can all practice your arithmetic by deciding how much of each fabric you’ll need and how much it will all cost.”

  She stood by the door as the children filed out, saying good-bye and offering each one a personal word of encouragement for their continued efforts in class. In response to her praise, their joy washed over her like a swell of nourishing warmth. She watched them scatter—some racing home, some racing off to play in one of Konumarr’s many parks, the younger ones skipping into their waiting mothers’ loving embraces—and forced herself to keep smiling despite the ache of bittersweet longing that burned in her breast.

  After they were gone, Summer stood in the schoolhouse doorway, closed her eyes and turned her face up towards the sun, letting the soothing radiance soak into her skin, bringing with it a surge of potent energy that slowly eased the ache in her heart. As a royal princess of Summerlea, she and her sisters all had a particular affinity for the sun—a trait which, as they recently discovered, was owed to the blood of the Sun God, Helos, that ran through their veins.

  There was a small sound behind her. “Your idea was a hit,” Summer murmured, without opening her eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I hope you know you’re going to help me with all the sewing the children don’t do themselves—and I have no doubt that will be the bulk of it.”

  There was a short, uncertain silence, then a small laugh. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Gabriella turned to smile at Lily, the pretty young Summerlander who’d arrived in Konumarr only a few days after Summer’s own arrival two weeks ago. Lily’s husband had died in last winter’s rebellion, leaving her pregnant and alone. She’d heard about the Calbernans coming to court willing women, so she’d walked and hitched rides from her home in Summerlea’s northwestern province, the Orchards, all the way to Konumarr. She’d arrived with a burgeoning belly, no place to stay, and only a scant handful of copper pisetas to her name. Khamsin had offered her free room and board at the school in exchange for helping to clean the school and prepare the classrooms each day, but after the second time Gabriella had found Lily standing in the hall outside one of the classroom doors, listening to the lessons, she’d convinced the girl to assist her in the classroom instead.

  “Yo
u have a good way with children,” Summer said. “You’re going to be a wonderful mother.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness.” Lily smiled shyly and stroked a hand over her rounded belly. She was a lovely girl, Summerlander dark, with wavy black hair, beautiful dark-chocolate eyes, and deep, lustrous brown skin, but it was the earnest sweetness of her spirit that Summer found her most attractive quality. From Lily’s telling reluctance to speak about her life in Summerlea, the way she jumped at loud noises or sudden movements, and the shadows that sometimes haunted her eyes, Summer gathered the girl had seen more than her share of rough times, but Lily hadn’t let those times harden her gentle heart. That took strength. The kind most people missed because it was so subtle.

  Abruptly Lily flinched, gave a muffled grunt, and clapped one hand to her right side. “Ow. Little sprout here has quite a kick.” She laughed and patted a spot on her belly that was visibly moving as the child in her womb stretched and turned inside her.

  Summer’s gaze fixed on that movement and the ache in her heart surged back to excruciating life. With it came a trembling deep inside and a feeling of terrible pressure, like the rumbling of a volcano preparing to erupt.

  She turned abruptly away to pluck her shawl from the peg by the door. “I should go,” she said. “My family will be waiting tea for me. I’ll come in on Helosday and we can review your plans for the children’s costumes.” Not waiting for a response and without risking another glance in Lily’s direction, she headed for the door. “Enjoy your weekend, Lily.”

  What was happening to her?

  Summer took deep breaths as she walked briskly through the streets of Konumarr, heading for the bridge that crossed the wide, deep Llaskroner Fjord to connect the city to the palace on the fjord’s northern shores. Ever since coming here three weeks ago, the wall of calm, serene control she’d spent a lifetime building around her magic had been crumbling. And not just with small, minor cracks either, although that would be bad enough. No, the foundation of her self-control, her ability to sublimate her own desires, had suffered a major seismic shift.