Kingdom at Sea

by Jill Williamson

  Mielle squeezed Trevn’s arm, and an instant of despair flashed through him. “The lady is not mine to gamble, Master Shinn. And I’ll thank you to watch your manners where she is—”

  “If she’s not yours, I claim her,” Shinn said, leering at Mielle.

  She stood, hands on her hips and glaring at the man, which only made his grin broaden. “No one lays claim to me, Master Shinn. To the rest of you, good night. I have had enough of such company. Until tomorrow, Sâr Trevn.” She stamped through the center of their circle and left.

  “Cadoc,” Trevn said, nodding toward Mielle. “See that she makes it safely to her cabin.”

  “I should not leave you here alone,” Cadoc said.

  “I’ll be fine. Quickly, now. Miss Mielle is more important at present.”

  His shield growled but trudged after Mielle.

  Trevn went back to the negotiations. “The lady is gone, Master Shinn, thanks to your rudeness. But I’m in.” He pushed his hands into his pockets and withdrew his grow lens, a charcoal pencil, and a square of folded blank parchment. He leaned forward and dropped his items into the center pile.

  Bonds snatched up the grow lens and held it to his eye. “This is a fine piece.”

  “It’s all right,” Trevn said. “I have another one.”

  “Princey has plenty to share,” Shinn said. “So let’s play.”

  “New man throws first,” said Nietz, passing Trevn the dice.

  “Pick your main number, Princey,” Shinn said.

  “Seven,” Trevn said, knowing it was the most common. He rolled, and the dice clattered on the wood deck. Two threes. “Six,” he said.

  “That’s your chance number,” Nietz said. “Now roll again.”

  Rzasa caught up the dice and passed them to Trevn, who this time rolled a nine.

  “Roll till you get your chance number and win,” Nietz said, “or till you get your main number and lose.”

  One lost on the main? Trevn shouldn’t have chosen a seven, then. Despite that fact, three more rolls produced an eight, ten, and finally a six.

  “You win,” Rzasa said. “Take something back from the pot. It don’t have to be yours.”

  Trevn reached out to Bonds, who was still holding his grow lens. “I’ll take that, thanks.”

  Bonds handed it over, and the roll passed to Nietz.

  Trying to purposely lose a game of chance might prove difficult. Since Trevn had chosen poorly with a seven as his main and won, he feigned a gullible superstition and stuck with the number each round. Eventually he began to lose. Whenever someone lost, Shinn, as “the house,” claimed one of the loser’s items from the pot. When the dice next came to Trevn, Shinn had claimed all his things.

  “So I’m out, yes?” Trevn asked, looking from face to face.

  “Can be,” said Nietz. “Or if you want to keep playing, you can put in something else or take a loan from the house.”

  Trevn noted Shinn’s crooked grin. He would be a fool to put himself in this man’s debt. “But you don’t take pay-you-laters.”

  “A loan is different,” Shinn said. “You borrow from me, and I give you the goods to pay in now. Then you owe me interest.”

  “Which is what?” Trevn asked.

  He nodded to Trevn’s right hand. “That’s a fine ring.”

  Trevn scoffed. “I will not gamble my signet ring.”

  “Your clothes, then,” the man said. “We’re about the same size.”

  “The sâr is two hands taller than you,” Nietz said.

  “I can hem sleeves and trousers,” Shinn said. “It’s the width that matters, and there we’re akin.”

  “If I put my clothes in the pot, I’ll have nothing to wear,” Trevn said. “I see no other players here wearing only a smile.”

  The men chuckled.

  “Keep your clothes for now,” Shinn said. “If you win back your belongings twice, you can give them to me as interest and keep your clothes. But if you lose, it’s all mine.”

  “You don’t have to,” Rzasa whispered, with a furtive glance at Shinn.

  “I know.” But Shinn had irritated him from the start with his rudeness to Mielle. Trevn wanted to make the man regret it. “I’ll take your loan, Master Shinn.”

  And this time Trevn played to win, choosing mains that were less probable. He won four passes in a row, then lost two. Won three, lost three. Every time the dice came his way, the eagerness grew. Anxious to beat Shinn, Trevn craved the chance to get ahead again and again, to win six rounds.

  Until he lost six.

  Zaki chortled and put his arm around his brother, hugging him to his side.

  “I’ll take my interest now,” Shinn said.

  Trevn’s face tingled. It had happened so fast. He couldn’t believe how quickly he’d gone from being ahead to losing it all, but he made an effort to stand and keep his posture strait, his chin high, and compose an expression of manly dignity.

  He undressed as fast as he could without trying to look like he was hurrying. He removed his belt, tunic, and undershirt, tossing them into the pile, then kicked off his boots.

  Shinn rushed forward and began picking up his discarded clothes. The moment he lifted a boot, Trevn stopped him.

  “Not my boots. Our agreement was for my clothes.”

  Shinn’s evil eye fixed upon Trevn. “I meant your boots too.”

  “You did not mention them in your initial request.”

  “That’s true, Shinn,” Nietz said.

  Shinn glared, his gaze sweeping over the circle of men. He finally shrugged. “Keep your boots, then, Princey, but I’ll take the rest.”

  Of course he would. Trevn took off his trousers, and while he was crouched, pulled back on his boots. Then he stood and pitched the wadded trousers at Shinn, who scrambled to catch them.

  “This was fun,” Trevn said cheerily as he walked out of the circle toward the stern bulkhead. “But I think it’s time for me to go. Ottee, find Sir Cadoc and tell him I retired to my cabin for the night.”

  “Gambling away your clothing, Trevn?” Wilek said the next morning. “I am not your mother, but I am tempted to scold you soundly for such foolishness.”

  “I as well,” Cadoc said.

  “Scold me if you must. But I tell you I suffered enough on the walk to my cabin.”

  At this Wilek cracked a smile, inducing one from Cadoc.

  “It was incredible!” Ottee said from Trevn’s side. “He stripped down like he cared naught what anyone saw of him and marched off as if we’d all bored him to tears.”

  Trevn glanced down at his onesent. “I am glad you found the situation entertaining, boy, but I was humiliated. I heard them laughing.”

  “Sounds like you deserved it,” Wilek said.

  “Oh, it was funny, to be sure,” Ottee told Wilek, “but it was ever more grand to see him treat Shinn’s great triumph over him as if it was nothing.” He turned his eager expression on Trevn. “He’ll hate you forever, I suspect, but the men will think it the greatest joke.”

  Distant ringing sent Trevn to the door. “That’s the change of the watch, Wil. We’ve got to go.”

  “You’ve yet to tell me anything you’ve learned!” Wilek said.

  “Very well. Most of the sailors don’t believe Bakurah Island is real. They think we’re sailing into the unknown. That rumor, Mielle tells me, has spread among the commoners, as has word of the pirates. The people are afraid.”

  “The island is real, but so are the pirates,” Wilek said. “We’ve received word of two more stolen fishing vessels with witnesses left behind to implicate a ship called the Taradok. The Duke of Highcliff believes she belongs to Zahara Khal.”

  “Any relation to Randmuir Khal of the Omatta?” Trevn asked.

  Wilek grimaced. “His daughter.”

  Thoughts spun in Trevn’s mind as he sought out a connection. “Perhaps she got word of what happened to her grandmother?” Ottee peeked in the doorway, reminding Trevn of the hour. “That is all the
talk I’ve heard, brother. Now I really must go.”

  “Do try and behave yourself,” Wilek said. “Your reputation has no place to go but up.”

  Trevn and Ottee made their way to the quarterdeck as quickly as possible and found Nietz waiting. And grinning.

  “Perfect timing, Ottee!” Nietz said. “Someone got sick on the main deck. You and Boots go clean it up.”

  The nickname drew Trevn’s gaze to Nietz, who was smirking at him. “Get to it, then!”

  “Told you,” Ottee said to Trevn as they fetched empty buckets. “Good nicknames only come to sailors who are liked.”

  Trevn couldn’t argue with that.

  Over the next week Trevn became Boots as he worked as a sailor. He much preferred tasks on deck, especially in the rigging, though when Shinn was around—always wearing the clothes he’d won off Trevn—the man seemed determined to keep Trevn below deck.

  As Ottee’s shadow Trevn learned to clean the massive stew pots in the sailors’ galley, empty the privy buckets in the officers’ cabins, scrub the decks, feed the chickens and pigs kept in pens on the quarterdeck, splice line, pick oakum, sew canvas, tie a host of knots, ring the bell at the watch change, trap and kill rats, and fetch things for the sailors.

  Some of the chores overlapped in Rzasa’s position as apprentice, but here Trevn got to climb in the rigging and work the sails. His favorite role was acting as lookout. He’d always loved climbing, and the top of the mainmast had supplanted the red-and-brown striped roof of Thalassa’s Temple as Trevn’s favorite place to think. The word carved atop it was Wansea, the name of Captain Livina’s first wife.

  In both roles Trevn learned to call his superiors sir, which might have been the most difficult lesson of all.

  One dawn watch Trevn sat on the quarterdeck with Rzasa and Ottee, picking oakum. This involved meticulously pulling apart fragments of old, discarded rope. The oakum would eventually be mixed with tar and used to seal planks in the ship. The work was so monotonous Trevn’s eyes had started to cross. The sharp fibers of hemp sliced, pricked, and slivered into his hands, which were dry already from so much salt water.

  “Hey, Boots,” Nietz called. “Get aloft to the main topgallant yard and check the reef lines. All the pull is going straight back when it should aim up diagonally into the body of the sail.”

  “Yes, sir!” Trevn tossed his chunk of rope back into the pile, eager to climb.

  The sun had risen by now, and the sky was bright and clear. He scurried up the windward side of the ratlines to the maintop, through the lubber’s hole in the platform, and up even higher to the main topgallant yard. There he saw that someone had tied the clew reef line wrong. He fixed it, then continued up to the lookout, staring out across the wide expanse of blue. A bird, white as snow, soared overhead, and as he turned to follow its flight his gaze caught a crest of green and brown in the distance.

  “Land.” It really was. “Land!” he yelled down. “Land to port beam!” He wasn’t the only one to have seen it. Signal flags were waving high on three of the nearest ships.

  They had reached Bakurah Island. A few days before schedule, as the admiral had predicted. Trevn pulled out his grow lens and studied the shoreline. It didn’t seem to have much more than a sloping elevation. There were no cliffs or cracks that he could see, no river holes, no distant mountains. The strangeness of that and the multitude of trees set him on guard. From what he knew of land, this didn’t look large enough to support the passengers of some six hundred boats. Trevn squinted into the distance but saw no other islands from this vantage point. Beneath the ship, the water was so clear that he could see a massive coral reef with colorful fish darting about.

  No reason to stay up here now. He shimmied back down the lines, wanting to find Mielle and tell her the news, eager to find a way to shore and explore.

  Wilek

  Wilek sat at the desk in his father’s office, the Book of Arman before him. Kal and Harton were the only other people in the room. Harton stood beside the door, Kal beside the desk. Wilek pushed the tome to the end of the desk and tapped the stack of pages with his finger. “According to the words of this book, I, my brothers, our father . . . we should not be surprised that the Five Realms fell apart. We poisoned it with our blasphemy of He Who Made the World.”

  Kal glared down on the stack of parchment as if it might bite him. “How can you be certain anything written by men is true?”

  “This book was written by prophets of Arman,” Wilek said.

  Kal scoffed. “So they claimed to be. Are their accounts backed by witnesses?”

  Wilek didn’t know or care. “The words feel true, Kal.” He nudged the pages closer to his shield. “Read it for yourself.”

  Kal folded his arms. “Is that an order, Your Highness?”

  The man’s hostile reluctance surprised Wilek. “Of course not.”

  “Then I have no desire for deeper knowledge about any of the gods. They have forsaken me time and again.”

  Kal had experienced great losses. “You must wonder over the point of life.”

  “I wonder more over the point of death and suffering. What answers did this tome have in regard to that?”

  Wilek knew, but he doubted the answer would appease Kal. “Rurek turned his back on Arman’s protection when he left the Father’s realm to see for himself what the world held. In doing so, he entered Gâzar’s realm, where death and suffering abound.”

  “Rurek had good reason to leave,” Kal said. “If Arman would have given him more answers, his son would have known what dangers lay outside his realm. By keeping his secrets, he forced his son to become a killer.”

  “The god of war didn’t do too badly for himself,” Harton said, closing in from the door. “Became a deity and got a whole realm named after him.”

  “So the story says,” Kal said. “It’s only a story. You both know that, right?”

  “Rurek is one of my five,” Harton said, referring to the five gods a Rôb believer chose to worship. The young man was Rurekan, so his allegiance wasn’t surprising.

  Wilek, however . . . his entire belief system had been shaken. “I used to think so, Kal, but now I’m not so certain.”

  Kal growled in frustration. “You killed Barthos. You know the gods are false.”

  “I know Barthos is false,” Wilek said. “Arman has proved otherwise to me.”

  “Coincidences,” Kal said, turning away to look out the window. “So will you worship Rurek too? And what of his brother Sarik and their mother Tenma? Why not the whole family?”

  Wilek shook his head. “This book says nothing of the others being deities. Only Arman. We humans have twisted the truth of this book into wild stories.”

  Kal merely scowled, and his scars made him look much older than his thirty-one years.

  Wilek wanted to talk to Kal alone. “Harton, run and ask Captain Veralla if he has received any new reports on the pirates this morning. Also ask if he has located Teaka’s newt. That Teaka’s killer could use the creature to find even more evenroot disturbs me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Harton shuffled to the door. “I wouldn’t believe that account of Rurek, Your Highness. He is a powerful god.”

  Not according to the Book of Arman, but Wilek had no desire to debate his backman at present. He bound the book with twine and waited until the door shut behind Harton, then asked Kal, “Does Miss Onika know of this book, I wonder?”

  The man still stood looking out the window. “I know not.”

  “Well, you must ask her. Perhaps she can shine greater meaning on the words of this text.” He laid his hand on the pages, smiling at Trevn’s squarish handwriting, amazed that his brother had copied this entire tome.

  “When word spreads that Miss Onika is a true prophet, people will try to use her,” Kal said.

  “I didn’t mean to use her,” Wilek said. “I simply respect her wisdom in regards to Arman’s teachings.”

  Kal turned around and fixed his dark eyes on Wilek. “I k
now that, Your Highness. It’s others who will not respect her. They will see her as a tool, if not a toy.”

  Wilek could read Kal too well. “Others like my father, you mean?”

  Kal’s expression remained passive. “Your words, not mine.”

  The man was entirely too overprotective of the prophetess. It occurred to Wilek then that his shield might have feelings for this woman that stretched beyond that of a guardsman. They had spent many weeks together in their journey to Everton. A simple test should reveal all.

  “She is an unusually beautiful woman,” Wilek said, staring at the Book of Arman as if deep in thought. “My father thinks I should marry her.” He glanced at Kal and saw the man’s jaw clench. Oh yes. His shield admired more than Miss Onika’s prophetic ability. “Have you any objections to such an idea?”

  Kal would not meet Wilek’s eyes. “It would be cruel to reject Lady Zeroah after all this time.”

  “True.” Wilek paused as if carefully weighing Kal’s comment. “But why couldn’t I marry both?”

  Kal looked away, his face wrenched in agony, brow pinched, eyes fierce.

  Perhaps Wilek had taken his game too far. “Kal,” he said, voice low. “You know me better than this. I have never wanted more than one wife. Besides, Arman’s book forbids it.”

  Kal fixed hopeful eyes on Wilek. “It does?”

  “Yes. I was only teasing you. I know you dote on Miss Onika.”

  Kal stepped back as if he’d been struck. “Why would you say that?”

  How could a High Shield be so naïve? “Because I have eyes. Whenever she is in the room, you are watching her. One might think you are her shield rather than mine.”

  Kal shook his head. “Jhorn asked me to keep an eye on her.”

  “One eye, Kal, not both.”

  Kal squirmed then, like a boy tired of sitting still for his portrait to be painted. Wilek couldn’t help it, and he laughed out loud.

  Kal started for the door.

  “You are leaving me now?” Wilek asked. “Who will protect me?”