The Secret's Keeper and the Heir

by Jackie McCarthy

  Though he tried to avoid them, Teagan couldn’t help meeting the hideous man’s unblinking eyes. Nor could he avoid the ruddy hand that touched his frightened face. A shiver shot through his small body, unbidden, which caused the nightmare to laugh.

  His cackle was cut short. From off to their right there came a shout. Teagan turned his head from the hideous monster in time to see a woman dressed in gray rush into the room. She spoke with a forcible tone, though her face betrayed underlying fear. Behind her, lending strength to her threat, stood a brawny hunter—a Bruin.

  Teagan turned back to see the nightterror’s reaction, but he found the space beside him unoccupied. The monster had disappeared. Looking at the door through which the man escaped, Teagan squinted his eyes against the bright winter sun. He saw no one.

  After the better part of an hour had passed in searching for and securing the room from the Cleft Man, the orphanage madam reached down and grabbed Teagan’s un-bandaged hand. She squeezed it gently and smiled at him—a warm, motherly smile—and spoke softly. Though the boy didn’t understand her words, he saw that she directed his attention to the Bruin behind her, who stepped forward.

  Teagan didn’t need to understand their words to know what was happening. He was about to be adopted.

  The Bruin bowed his head in greeting and nodded at the madam, indicating that she might leave. Watching her depart, he drew closer to the child’s bed and lowered himself onto another one nearby. He crossed his arms and sighed, then spoke in aggressively punctuated phrases, mere noises to the boy, though he was sure he could read into it the Bruin’s fear at the cleft-faced visitor.

  With a sudden motion that indicated a need for immediacy, the Hunter stood and threw back the boy’s thin blanket. Reaching towards the wall above, he pulled down Teagan’s heavy furs and helped the boy into each.

  Before long they were out in the stark, white world. The Bruin prodded urgently at Teagan’s slow, unsteady step, driving him to go forwards and faster. Hydrated and rested, but still more exhausted that he’d ever known, the boy pushed himself on. Still, despite their speed, he could not shake the sense that they were being followed.

  * * * * *

  Other boys, when discovered in places they weren’t supposed to be, might feel compelled to learn from their mistakes. Lucivak wasn’t such a boy. After his guardian had gone out in the morning to buy their passage off the Isle to some as-yet unknown place, Lucivak decided to explore the town he would never see again.

  Though his cautious mind looked out for eyes that might be following him, Lucivak passed for several hours without any sign of undue attention. Less worried about tempting fate than upsetting his guardian, however, he turned back when the morning was still young, re-entering the moth-eaten rooms he was soon to leave.

  The door was ajar, which gave the boy a moment of pause. Looking inside, he saw the gray hair of Fenric within his usual armchair by the hearth.

  “You’ve left the door open, old man,” said Lucivak brashly, trying to sound as confident as he knew how. “I appreciate that you wouldn’t want me to be locked out, but I could’ve just knocked.”

  Fenric neither moved nor spoke, which the boy knew to be a sign of only the deepest disapproval. “Don’t be angry with me,” he said. “I just went out for a walk. My legs were restless, there’s no harm in that, so enough of the silent treatment already!”

  When his guardian didn’t respond to this with his usual biting wit, Lucivak grew nervous. He took a step nearer the chair, seeing Fenric’s hand resting at his side. “What, did you fall asleep?” he asked, his heart racing. “Honestly, it’s like you’re barely trying. Fenr—”

  As he stepped nearer, however, Lucivak spied a dagger sticking out from his guardian’s sagging chest. Eyes growing wide, the boy took a panicked step back only to find that he’d stepped into the reach of an intruder.

  With an ease of instinct that surprised even himself, Lucivak took hold of the man’s dagger hand, swung it round, sent the moldy metal weapon clattering to the ground, and kicked the man down to meet it. The intruder, choking for breath from the unexpected blow, gagged as he flailed upon the floor. Lucivak picked up his weapon and stabbed him quickly in the gut—a non-fatal blow, but a painful one. The man screamed.

  “Who are you?” the boy demanded.

  The intruder grinned through his pain, “I know who you are.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “It’s all that matters,” answered the man.

  Lucivak realized there was no point in denial. “How many people know?” he asked, imperious.

  “Enough,” said the man. “I was left in case you returned. The others are checking the town, but they’ll be back.”

  “Well, I won’t be here,” Lucivak said, pushing himself off the floor and pulling the dagger from the man’s bloody side. He rushed to his room, throwing on only the most essential clothes. Moments from running through the door, Lucivak smoothed down his trousers and felt the small shape of the tiny gold button in his pocket, where it had once again been forgotten. His heart fell as long-forgotten instructions rushed into his mind.

  The man named Fenric was dead. He, Lucivak, had been told what to do if this were to happen…had been told what his duty would be.

  The boy searched the room for a slip of paper in a hurry, as though he might still outrun his fate. Pulling to himself a bottle of ink, the boy’s eyes flickered once more to the bloodied man before turning to the blank sheet.

  “Oy, I thought you was running,” said the man.

  “I shall,” said Lucivak, carefully penning his introduction. “But there’s some final business to take care of first.”

  “Business more important than your life?” asked the man, unbelieving. “Maybe it’s harder than it seems, being a royal.”

  “I’ve found that to be true, these past years,” Lucivak said.

  “Past years? What’s that now?” asked the wounded man. “And here I thought royalty was its own kind of life sentence.”

  “You’re more correct than you know,” said Lucivak with a quixotic smirk. Looking back down at the page, he considered what kind of inky designs he should make with his quill. Should he write of his fear in that moment? Should he take this letter as his chance to sound brave for all of posterity? Or should he simply do as he was taught and write without passion, with clear instructions for the reader?

  The boy looked up suddenly, addressing the intruder, “Will they catch me if I run?”

  “They’ve got fast horses and they ain’t shy about searching the village,” said the man. “In fact, they’re like to kill any woman and child what gets in their way, if you’re harboring any ideas of hiding out in the cottages. Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, this is an island. I’d say the odds is in our favor.”

  Lucivak averted his gaze. He didn’t know the people of this town—he hadn’t gotten the chance to—but they were still his people, and he didn’t want to be the cause of any deaths. “Then I mustn’t hide,” he concluded.

  “That’s a good boy,” nodded the man. “No, you mustn’t.”

  His writing forgotten, Lucivak continued his questions. “How did you find us?”

  “Lucky break, you showing up at the Lender’s,” said the man openly. “We’s needing the reward, too, and no mistake. We’s needing it badly. And here we heard the prince had been killed in the Dunes a few years back. Wishful thinking on their part, I suppose, since here you are.”

  “Here I am,” echoed Lucivak vaguely, his eyes misting.

  The intruder chuckled to himself and coughed into his sleeve. He repeated a more quiet, “Here you are.”

  Lucivak felt suddenly very light. The heaviest things in his body seemed to be the air in his lungs and the beat of his heart, though their counts now seemed so very limited. He hadn’t woken that morning thinking he would die that day. It seemed almost absurd. As fear opened his senses, Lucivak smelled the overwhelming sense of decay around him. He saw how t
he grime of age had filtered the room’s light through a grit of green—felt that the table below him was alive with mold. He felt alive himself, so painfully alive. And soon, he would be gone—to begin his own decay.

  “Will they be quick about it?” he asked, his words sounding far away and strangled. “Will it hurt?”

  The man’s eyes, moments ago bloodthirsty, softened. His tensed body relaxed. “Why, you’re just a little one, ain’t you?” he asked, looking at the boy across from him for the first time. “Dressing as a prince, but just a boy, truly. I regret this business, I truly do.”

  “As do I,” said Lucivak, unable to keep the tremor from his voice. “I suppose it really is too late to run?”

  The man nodded sadly, “I suppose it is.” With a gentle voice of business, he gestured to the paper and quill. “What was it then, that you’d risk your life for?”

  For the first time in several moments, Lucivak recalled what he sat down to do. He nodded a thanks for the reminder. “There’s a job to do,” he said to himself. “The play must go on.”

  The light had shifted across the room by the time Lucivak finished the short letter to his satisfaction. He folded it carefully, wondering each second if the action he performed would be his last. Dropping the gold button into the letter, he sealed the outside with wax.

  Lucivak looked up into the fading light of his rooms. Letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, he took the note to the door and hailed a small boy. He handed the child the letter and a shiny coin for his trouble.

  “Take this to the messenger for me,” he told the carefree boy while holding up a small coin, “and this gold will be yours.”

  The boy took both, nodded, and ran away, his entire life ahead of him.

  * * * * *

  “I might as well die!” Lucy cried, plunging her face into a plush blue pillow. She lifted it and sobbed, “Or be sick. I should be sick. I should swallow poison and make myself sick!” Her face disappeared into the pillow once more and the low wail of a muffled scream escaped.

  “My poor Lucy,” said Simone soothingly, gently patting the crying girl’s back, “please don’t speak of such terrible things, you must know it upsets us.”

  Adeline nodded, though the motion went unseen.

  Lucy turned her head to the side and spoke through half of her mouth. “But what else can I do? I can’t wear that hideous child’s dress to the most important ball of my life!”

  “Why not?” Emibelle asked coldly, sitting apart from her sisters and tending to her needlework. “You weren’t going to be presented anyway.”

  Lucy turned into the pillow again and sobbed loudly. Patting the poor creature, Simone spoke to her sister, “Emi, be nice.”

  “Nice?” Emibelle said with a scoff, “Listen to her, she is a child. She should wear a child’s frock. It’s, like, poetic justice or something.”

  Lucy’s head shot up suddenly, an idea having come to her. “Can I borrow one of your dresses, Simone?”

  “You may…” said Simone doubtfully, “but you’re so much taller than me, they’d end up being the same length as the one you have, I’m not sure that would help.”

  Lucy’s eyes shot across the room. “Emibelle, you’re tall,” she observed, rising hopefully to her knees, “please let me borrow a gown? I’ll do your chores for a month.”

  Emibelle shook her head. “Look at your shoulders. If I let you borrow anything you’d stretch it out and I’d never be able to wear it again.”

  “Three months?” Lucy pleaded, revising her offer.

  “It’s a nice little dress, Lucy, even if pink isn’t in fashion,” Simone said, trying to delay the bargaining. “You shouldn’t be so hard on it. Right, sisters?”

  Emibelle nodded impishly. “The ruffles caught the air quite nicely,” she said, “as it soared through the air and onto poor Master Lorey’s head.”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Simone, ignoring the insult in her sister’s words. “The ruffles will move very nicely when you’re dancing.”

  “And the length will let you show off your footwork,” Emibelle added with a sneer. “I know how you’ve slaved over it.”

  Lucy fell over the side of the couch, melting into her own plea. “Please Emibelle, I can’t wear that dress. I’ll do your chores—I’ll do whatever you want—for an entire year. Please, please!”

  “Oh Lucy,” Simone began softly. Though she loved her younger sister, she knew it was never a good idea to be in Emibelle’s debt. “I don’t think you should—”

  But it was too late. “Done,” said Emibelle, a look of triumph on her face. Lucy shared this look, but only because she hadn’t yet considered the consequences. Drying her eyes, she looked about the room with fresh excitement. Perhaps the world wasn’t so bad after all.

  * * * * *

  Jas was dejected. He drove the meaty part of his fist into the Turnagain’s heavy beam, his spirit torn. “Maybe if I just talk to him—”

  “You know he doesn’t want to believe me,” interrupted Whyl, the inmate of the room Jas was attempting to bloody. “I don’t fault him. The Scribe’s powers of persuasion are the stuff of legends.”

  “Aye, I’ve noticed,” Jas said in agreement, rubbing his forehead in frustration. “There must be some way to break the spell.”

  “Tell me,” Whyl said, “how did you meet the Captain?”

  “We attended University together,” Jas replied distractedly.

  “Sailors at University?” echoed Whyl, surprised. “That seems like a lot of education for, if you’ll pardon me, more of a hands-on kind of job.”

  “Well, we were both the youngest sons of merchant families,” Jas said by way of explanation, “so becoming sailors wasn’t supposed to be in our stars.”

  “Yet, here you are,” Whyl pointed out with a frown.

  “Here we are,” Jas said with a sigh. He rubbed a final time at his brow and then sat down to elaborate on his story. “We both studied business and trade law. We were to be the earth-bound counterparts to our seafaring older brothers.”

  “But that’s not what happened,” Whyl observed.

  “Nay, not for Kaille at least,” Jas continued. “Me? I had no head for numbers and laws. Never had a passion for it. Never had a passion for anything really, except one thing,” he said, holding up a lone finger. “My father would take me out on our family ship, the Harricor, and even as a child I knew that the fair wooden lady was to be the love of my life.”

  “So what did you do?” Whyl asked.

  “I begged my brother Wik to take me on as First,” Jas explained. “Made a good case for myself too, what with our experience working together under our father. He said that would be just fine.”

  “So you sailed with him?” Whyl asked.

  “Nay,” Jas disagreed. “The day we were to leave I came to the docks to find them vacant. The Harricor was gone. I rushed back home, to our family house, and that’s when I found the note,” Jas said this with a sigh, burying his face in his weathered hands.

  “The note?” Whyl encouraged.

  Jas raised his head and reached out to strike the solid wood hull again. It didn’t even register his force. “The note said that he’d taken another man as First—his old friend Knotly,” Jas said with a growl. “I was too inexperienced, he said, too…too wild. I was a little untried, it’s true, but it’s nothing a few months in the blue wouldn’t have cured. I was wild, though, that’s the truth.”

  “What did you do?” Whyl asked.

  “I decided I’d have to prove myself. I looked for another ship,” Jas answered, “and my old school friend was hiring. I mean Kaille, of course. So, I got my experience. I tamed my spirit. When the Harricor docked again, I made my case to my brother.”

  “But he didn’t take you?” Whyl probed.

  “Take me? He laughed at me!” Jas shouted, his voice full of bitterness. “I was always the younger brother in his eyes—always the boy who lost at Stones and then wailed in our mother
’s arms. Or if I was an adult to him, I was always the young man who pissed away his fortune at taverns and brothels. And he, as the eldest? He’d always been taking things away from me. And why not, they were his! But the Harricor…she was the hardest thing to lose. And that wasn’t even the worst thing he did.”

  “What was the worst?” Whyl asked, his attention rapt.

  “He died,” Jas said simply. “Of the brine fever, or so they say.”

  Whyl averted his eager gaze, not expecting this gloomy turn. “A sad thing to be sure,” he said gently, “but wouldn’t the ownership of the Harricor then have fallen to you?”

  “Nay,” Jas said with a shake of his head, his arms flailing drunkenly. “The ship had never been Wik’s at all, but my father’s. The old man listened to my pleas to be named the new Captain, but he wasn’t really listening.”

  “Why ever not?” Whyl inquired. “You’re his son.”

  “He…he had plenty of reasons to be ashamed, not the least of which was how I’d dropped out of University,” Jas said, a tone of regret in his voice. “But more so…I was pretty heavy into the drink then…sought out a pretty sordid scene…did a lot of things I regret. I don’t touch it anymore, not a drop, but that’s still how he thinks of me, no matter what I’ve done since. I think he always will.”

  “So what happened to the Harricor if it didn’t go to you?” Whyl asked.

  “Knotly,” Jas managed to say before he choked on the name, as though it was toxic. “My father let that twisted cur of a First take my ship.” Standing suddenly, Jas rushed to the doorframe and gave it several good kicks before settling back into his seat. “Sorry, it’s not easy to talk about.”

  “No. No, poor man,” Whyl said soothingly. “Let’s change the topic and speak of Kaille, then. How came he to lead the Turnagain? Was his brother ill also?”

  “Not ill, nay, though I’d thought something like that until a few months ago,” Jas said, seeming relieved at the shift in attention. “He and the Master Kaille, their father, had fought in the battle of the Usurper, so it would seem.” Jas, still slightly unhinged, laughed awkwardly. “I didn’t even know they were political. But then, I didn’t know the family like Ben did.”