Mermaid Precinct (ARC)

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  THIRTEEN

  All Kustro wanted to do was kiss the boy.

  He’d been working the docks since he grew hair on his nethers. His parents had served as portmasters for two different sections of the docklands, and Kustro did scut work for them both, later becoming a portmaster himself. In fact, he was the youngest person ever to be made a portmaster, but considering that he grew up with it, it wasn’t surprising that he knew more about how things ran on the Cliff’s End docks than people twice his age.

  At least until Lord Blayk took over from Lord Albin. Then, all of a sudden, the portmaster positions were streamlined. Where the docks used to be divided into a dozen sections, Lord Blayk halved that, leaving six portmasters out of work—and three of them were Kustro and his parents. His parents hired on as deputy portmasters under their former colleagues, but Kustro wasn’t willing to take a pay cut to do the same job—and have to report to someone who had been his equal a week before.

  Then Lord Blayk was arrested for something—Kustro didn’t know the specifics, and the rumor mill was on full for that one. Based on what the sailors around the docks were saying, Blayk was arrested for anything from patricide to attempted murder of the king and queen to embezzling tax funds to attempted murder of Lady Meerka. Kustro didn’t really care, he was just happy that the person who’d cost him his livelihood and who’d maimed his parents’ livelihood was now in a dungeon somewhere or hanged.

  Unfortunately, his brother Lord Doval didn’t make things any better. He seemed to think that six sections of dock were sufficient, and kept things as they were.

  Kustro tried to work as a deckhand, but he quickly discovered something about himself that he’d managed not to learn despite living and working on the docks for a decade and a half: he got seasick.

  It was embarrassing more than anything. He’d worked with seafaring vessels his entire life, spent more time near the Garamin Sea than anywhere else, yet it took him until he was almost thirty before he learned that he couldn’t go on a seafaring craft without being violently ill.

  His parents were kind enough to support him while he tried to figure out what he could do for a living. Even if he was willing to be a deputy portmaster, all those positions were filled, and nobody else would hire him for a lesser position given that he was a qualified portmaster. “The job would be beneath you,” they kept saying, even though what was really beneath him was starving to death.

  Midwinter was slow, of course, as it always was, and then spring came with first the Gorvangin rampages, and then the influx of refugees from Barlin after the fire.

  The former were disastrous, as two of the victims of the rampages were Kustro’s parents. The latter meant there was more work at the lower levels that refused to hire Kustro.

  But eventually, both those problems worked in his favor. For one thing, he inherited his parents’ small house on the River Walk, so he had a place to live. And with so many people pouring into Cliff’s End, employers were less fussy about who they would employ, and Kustro found himself doing scut work up and down the docks.

  He had applied to fill one of his parents’ positions as a portmaster, but they instead promoted two deputy portmasters and hired other people to take over as deputies to replace them. Kustro was more than a little bitter about that.

  There was plenty of work, at least, so he could continue to feed and clothe himself. But he wanted to be a portmaster again. With actual seafaring work cut off thanks to his weak stomach, that was where his ambitions lay.

  His work ambitions, anyhow.

  One of his many gigs was to be one of the deck cleaners for Sir Louff’s yacht when it was in dock—which is was regularly, as the nobleman didn’t actually like to go out to sea very often. What he liked was being able to say he had a yacht.

  It was on that gig that he met Asch.

  Asch was Sir Louff’s nephew, and he was in charge of the yacht when the nobleman wasn’t around—which was a great deal of the time.

  It was lust at first sight for Kustro, who found himself doing something he’d never done before: do poorly on a job so he’d be called back to fix it and do it better.

  Of course, doing so risked him getting fired, but it meant spending more time near Asch.

  For a long time, he said nothing, content to admire Asch from afar.

  But then there was the first really hot day of the year, when Asch was out on the deck sunning himself completely naked.

  From that moment on, Kustro was determined to, at the very least, kiss Asch.

  He volunteered for more shifts on the yacht so he could be near him. If a higher-paying job presented itself that conflicted with time he’d committed to Sir Louff, he prioritized Sir Louff so he could gaze upon Asch’s form.

  Everything in Kustro’s life had gone to shit. He was barely making enough coin to survive, and then only because he inherited his home—and he would gladly have given that up to have his parents back. He had been cut off from his calling, stuck working for the people who should have been his peers.

  But he had Asch’s beautiful body to stare at. It was crude, it was base, but at least it gave him one thing to care about.

  Eventually, Asch started to notice. At first, Kustro was worried that Asch would take offense, but he seemed to be enjoying the attention. He spent more time sunbathing when Kustro was working, and offering him overtime more than once.

  In truth, Kustro had no expectations of anything developing between him and Asch. He was a defrocked portmaster working as a deck hand. Asch was the son of a noble.

  But Kustro did want to kiss him just once.

  He thought he had the opportunity. It was a morning gig cleaning up after a party on the yacht the night before. Some of the partiers were still passed out and drunk in the common area of the yacht, in fact. Kustro and one other deck hand, a dwarf named Chalsarig, cleaned up all the foodstuffs and half-drunk mugs and filthy bits of furniture.

  Asch asked Kustro to come up to the bridge, and Kustro did so.

  “Do you find me attractive, Kustro?”

  Kustro found himself unable to speak.

  “No need to answer,” Asch said. His voice was like honey, as beautiful as the rest of him. “I know you do by the way you stare at me. Tell me, do you have any plans to further this attraction?”

  “I would never presume,” Kustro stammered.

  “You may presume.”

  “I—I simply wish to—to kiss you.”

  Asch blinked in surprise. “Is that all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting. I believe that I can accommodate that request.” Asch leaned in, his lips parting.

  For the first time in almost a year, Kustro felt happy. He was finally getting something he wanted. Ever since Lord Albin died, everything he’d received had either been something he merely needed or, more likely, something horrible. To actually receive a true gift from the universe seemed a blessing from on high.

  “What in Ghandurha’s name are you doing?”

  Naturally, the gods saw fit to yank that happiness away from him just like everything else. That voice belonged to Sir Louff, who entered the bridge just as Asch was leaning in to kiss him.

  Sir Louff was apoplectic at the sight of his son about to kiss him. “How dare you? Bad enough you consort outside the wedding bed, but you do so with another man, and a common deck hand, at that? You,” he said to Kustro, “get off my yacht! Don’t ever let me see you again!”

  Kustro had expected this the moment Sir Louff had invoked Ghandurha. Worshippers of that particular god tended to frown on any form of affection that was outside a marriage contract, and that god also would never bless such a contract (or any manner of contact) between members of the same sex.

  Asch did, to his credit, try to stop him. “Father, you shouldn’t let Kustro here go. He is the one who figured out how to get that Emmegan paint off the prow.”

  For a brief moment, Kustro thought his job at least might be saved. Sir Louff had been furious
about the Emmegan paint, but Kustro knew someone who could get his hands on the only thing that would remove the magickally enhanced paint from a surface. And Kustro right there swore that he would never reveal that source to anyone who worked for Sir Louff if he lost his job.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. “I don’t care,” Sir Louff said, “if he cleaned the entire yacht with his tongue! I will not have anyone tempting you away from Zaroa!”

  Kustro had no idea who Zaroa was at the time. Later, he found out from Chalsarig that she was the daughter of another noble, and the person to whom Asch was affianced.

  And that was that. Kustro wouldn’t get to kiss Asch, nor would he keep his best regular source of income.

  At first, he was tempted to blow off his afternoon job, which was to prepare a ship for scuttling. It was damaged in a fire, and Kustro was one of the people hired to make a final run through it to make sure everything of value was removed, and often you got to keep anything you did find, above and beyond the silver you were paid.

  Kustro decided to go to that job. Partly, he went because it kept him from thinking about the fact that he was likely never again to either see Asch, or ever work for Sir Louff. And partly because he couldn’t really afford to alienate another employer.

  This turned out to be the best thing possible, because when he dug around the cargo hold of the ship, he found a loose deckboard.

  Prying the plank completely away, he found a single scroll, which had a seal decorated with the symbol of the Brotherhood of Wizards.

  A spell!

  Barely, Kustro managed to rein in his excitement. He hid the scroll in his tunic, not willing to take the chance that the boat’s owners would simply claim it and just pay him the one silver. Spell scrolls were worth a pretty coin.

  Best of all, when he got home that night, he found a package left for him, with a note from Asch. “Consider this severance pay and an apology.” Inside the package were five gold coins. A pittance to such as Asch, but it probably salved his conscience. Besides, that was a month’s wages for Kustro, so he could hardly complain.

  Then he read over the spell on the scroll. It gave the caster invisibility for one hour, and was good for four castings!

  He immediately enacted a plan. First, he got some Emmegan paint. Then he cast the spell and painted graffiti on some random boat while invisible. The next night, he did the same to another boat, then to a boardwalk.

  For the fourth and final casting of the spell, he did the same on Sir Louff’s yacht, right on the hull where everyone could see it.

  All four times, he painted the words, “Ghandurha is a louse!”

  From what he’d heard, Sir Louff was even more apoplectic than he had been when he’d walked in on Kustro and Asch. Especially since nobody seemed to know how to get the paint off. According to Chalsarig, Sir Louff was even more furious when he found out that the only person in his employ who knew how to get rid of the paint was the one he fired for trying to kiss his son. At which point, he got even angrier, but refused to even consider asking Kustro for help.

  Kustro’s only disappointment was that he didn’t get to watch his meltdown.

  That, and that Sir Louff didn’t actually die from his head exploding with fury.

  Chalsarig also mentioned that the Cloaks were looking into the graffiti, which Kustro didn’t really care about. After all, nobody could see him!

  He cared a bit more when two Cloaks knocked on his door.

  For a brief moment, he considered pretending not to be home, but no. The Cloaks wouldn’t just give up, they’d come back again. Best to seem completely cooperative. Besides, the scroll had completely disintegrated after the final use, so there was no evidence that he used it, and he’d sold the remaining paint to a boatswain whose captain was looking for some to touch up the coloring on his figurehead. That vessel had set sail for the south the previous morning.

  He opened the door to see two human males, one dark-skinned with very little hair, one light-skinned with a mop of blond hair, both wearing Castle Guard armor with the gryphon medallion on their chests and the brown cloak indicating that they were detectives.

  “Are you Kustro Marzi?” the dark-skinned one asked.

  Kustro nodded.

  “I’m Lieutenant Manfred, this is my partner, Lieutenant Arn Kellan. We have a few questions about Sir Louff’s yacht.”

  “What about it?”

  “We understand that you were recently fired from that yacht’s cleaning detail.”

  “Yeah.” Kustro decided to be completely honest about this part. “Sir Louff didn’t like the way I was looking at his son.” He shrugged. “Ghandurha worshipper.”

  “We got that, yeah,” Manfred said with a chuckle. “According to Sir Louff, you were the one who was able to get Emmagen paint off his prow a month ago.”

  “That’s right. I’ve got a friend who has a line on Jiro ointment—that’s the only thing that gets it out, but it’s rare as hell.”

  Manfred nodded. “We’re investigating someone who painted ‘Ghandurha is a louse!’ on several places on the docks, including Sir Louff’s yacht.”

  “I heard about that,” Kustro said. “You think it was me?”

  Kellan finally spoke. “We think it was someone who has a grudge against Sir Louff.”

  “I worked for Sir Louff for half a year, that’s a long list.” Kustro grinned.

  “And you’re on it.” Kellan wasn’t grinning.

  “Well, sure, but I—”

  Manfred interrupted. “We need to search your dwelling, Mr. Marzi.”

  Kustro shrugged, trying to be as casual as he could be. “I guess, if you want to, sure.”

  He let the two Cloaks in. They checked the entire space, and the closet. Kustro didn’t have that much—he’d never had many possessions, and he’d sold what few he’d had over the years.

  “All right,” Manfred said, “thank you. Hey, has anybody asked your friend for Jiro ointment?”

  “Not that I know of, but I haven’t spoken to him in over a month.”

  “Okay. We may be back with more questions. Let’s go, Arn.”

  The two Cloaks departed. As soon as he closed the door on them, Kustro put his ear to the door to try to overhear what they were talking about.

  “Dead end number thirteen,” he could hear Manfred say.

  “If the damn peel-back had given us something, but without it, we’re never gonna find anything.”

  “We’ve still got to talk to Evero. The streak isn’t dead yet.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  The rest of Kellan’s sentence was inaudible, and Kustro couldn’t hear anything else.

  He grinned. Evero was a malcontent, but also dirty as hell, even by Mermaid Precinct’s high standards. Those two Cloaks would be digging into him for days.

  Kustro smiled. He was pretty sure he was home free. He made Sir Louff’s life miserable, he’d gotten a month’s pay for no work, and it looked like he was going to get away with it.

  All he’d wanted was to kiss the boy. He didn’t get to do that, but at least he got his revenge.

  FOURTEEN

  “Say that again,” Danthres said to Voran, “slowly.”

  “The Pirate Queen’s real name is Lillyana, sister of Queen Marta. More to the point, she’s her older sister. She is the rightful ruler of the human lands, and someone has killed her in order to stymie our efforts to put her on the Silver Thrones where she belongs.”

  Torin stared at the ship’s cook for several seconds, then sat down next to Danthres. “Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? You said you’re part of a cabal?”

  Voran nodded. “Of course. The Cabal for a Better Flingaria. I’m actually a part of a noble family back home in Iaron, but I was sent along to Rising Jewel because I can cook.”

  “That makes you unusual among noble folk I’ve know,” Torin said.

  “Here in Cliff’s End, perhaps, but in Iaron we value actual skill, not just the ability to hire someb
ody to do things for you. My parents made sure I had basic survival skills in case something happened, and we found ourselves destitute.”

  “Very forward-thinking of them,” Danthres said.

  “Backward-thinking, really.” Voran smiled sheepishly. “We lived through the crash. In fact, the crash is pretty much what got the Cabal started.”

  “The crash was almost ten years ago,” Danthres said. “We’ve recovered.”

  “Cliff’s End has recovered because you’re the busiest port in Flingaria, and because Lady Meerka was able to start several reinvestment and infrastructure programs that got the city-state back on its feet. And Velessa recovered because the king and queen put their own personal fortunes into the economic recovery, a consideration they didn’t bother with for any other locale under their rule. Iaron, Barlin, and Treemark were left to suffer on our own. It took years to recover, and then we had that avalanche in Iaron and then fire in Barlin...” Voran sighed.

  Torin rubbed his chin—an action that still felt strange with so little hair there now. He’d had no idea that the other human city-states had suffered worse burdens following the crash than Cliff’s End had.

  “That action in particular made it clear that King Marcus and Queen Marta only care about Velessa. They take our taxes but do nothing to improve our lives. Here in Cliff’s End, you’ve been able to take matters into your own hands, but the other human lands are less fortunate. So we gathered—there are about two dozen of us, nobles from Iaron, Barlin, Treemark, Velessa, and here in Cliff’s End. We are bound and determined to put someone on the Silver Thrones who will be a ruler for all humans, not just the ones who live in Velessa.”

  “This is all very fascinating,” Danthres said in a tone that made it clear that she truly felt the opposite, “but what does this have to do with why you were on the Rising Jewel pretending to be a cook?”

  “Well, I am a cook, as I said—but,” he added quickly, no doubt noticing the look on Danthres’s face, “that’s not what’s important. You see, one of the Cabal members is Sir Urchan, and he’s in charge of genealogical affairs for the city-state.”