by J. C. Hendee
15. Site of Sorrow
Karras reached the side a few steps before his father, though his head was still filled with events from moments before. Half the upper rail wall was gone with only shattered shards left behind. Pieces of it were scattered across the deck, and more floated away as the ship drifted on beyond the point and into the great bay. At least the collision had not pulled down any sails or rigging.
“Heg, Kuch’dif… get a line over the side,” his father commanded. “Anôffäk, drop down and see if we are breached.”
Karras tried to focus on what was necessary and looked about for Ionlak. The family’s longstanding retainer was up on the aftcastle with Olinfath, the pilot.
“Anyone lost?” he called out.
Ionlak stepped to the aftcastle’s forward rail, shaking his head. “No, all counted.”
That was something, for any of their own who fell off a ship this far from shore would be lost without hope of rescue. It was too deep out here and too far a walk to shore for them to survive. If they had had a full crew, the odds might have been different in losing someone, though they also might have gotten the sails under control more quickly.
“A couple of bad gashes,” Anôffäk called from down the ship’s side. “Nothing close enough to the waterline, if we go slow at half sail.”
Now that they had rounded the point, the gale began lessening, and Karras looked to his father. Uinseil hung his head with a breathy sigh.
Damage to the hull was not the only damage done. Yes, they could deliver the cargo aboard, but repairs would delay further trade. It was not only the family that mattered but also those they employed who would suffer the loss. By their people's traditions, payment was made in shares in the trade rather than wages.
Uinseil turned from the shattered rail wall, his features hardened in anger. He barely glanced at his son, Karras. All of that restrained fury focused instead on the old thänæ leaning wearily against the main mast.
Karras eyed Fiáh’our as well.
His father seemed about to shout something at the blusterer, though all he did was pant deeply in ire. No, they could not blame the insane thänæ for this mishap, but it was only one such in a long night. And everything had churned up around Fiáh’our like a growing maelstrom.
Uinseil looked up and about, as if inspecting the rigging. In the dark, that was not possible, so only one other reason occured to Karras.
“What daft churvâdìné throws herself between colliding ships?” Uinseil half-shouted.
Karras cringed at that old word his father uttered. Many of his kind no longer even knew it, versus dené for humans, Numan or otherwise. “The mixed-up, confused ones” was a polite translation, but the old thänæ obviously knew that ugly word.
Fiáh’our straightened with a glower, his nose twitching as if he sniffed something foul.
“She is the… the man’s wife, you barnacle!” he shouted at Uinseil.
Karras’s father neither liked nor disliked humans. It had been a slip of the tongue in ire, though perhaps a telling one. Maybe it was misdirected irritation for a son who too often seemed to prefer human ways.
Uinseil fell silent, looked away from the old blusterer, and Karras turned his gaze toward the aftcastle. There stood Gän’gehtin before the open cabin door and staring into that place beyond sight. The shirvêsh’s broad face appeared awash with concern.
There was much to do in order to bring the ship safely to port, and soon enough the royal vessel would follow. But Karras could not help himself and strode across the deck, pausing only to peer from the open door to the shirvêsh.
Gän’gehtin place a finger over his lips for silence, and Karras peeked around the doorframe.
By the light of a lantern placed just inside on the floor, he took in the small passenger birth with its two sets of stacked bunks made from stout oak. In the bottom one, at the cabin’s far corner, lay the prince beneath a clean and dry wool blanket. And the woman who had flown or rather fallen through the dark sat collapsed upon the floor, half-leaning against the bunk’s edge.
She was a strange sight unto herself, so much shorter than the prince. Unlike him, her hair was dark and hung wind-tangled down to her small shoulders and over her aquamarine cloak. The tip of a slightly curved sword sheath peeked out from beneath her splayed cloak, its end embellished with some silvery metal, though Karras could make out its engravings. What fixed him most of all were one small sight and a sound.
Her head was turned toward her husband but hung forward, hiding her face from sight, but one of her hands was on the prince’s wrist. It was slightly darker than his, as if she had lived a life under a bright sun while he had not. Though his eyes were closed and did not open, she gripped his wrist so tightly that his wet sleeve crinkled in under her fingers.
And that one disturbing in that room, heard barely above the wind, was the labored and quick panting that made her shake.
At a light touch upon Karras’s shoulder, he looked away as Gän’gehtin reached in to quietly pull the door closed.
“We leave them for now,” the shirvêsh whispered. “The prince seems… better… and she needs time to relinquish fear for him.”
Karras nodded and, as Gän’gehtin settled there to stand vigil, he turned away to help attend to his family’s ship. In that time, he too often glanced toward the cabin door.
Once, as the sky began to lighten and the port was near enough to see the docks, Karras spotted the other vessel a ways off behind his family's ship. It was making for port as well, and he turned with the intention of perhaps informing Gän’gehtin to tell their passengers. But the shirvêsh was no longer at the cabin door.
A short ways off at the rail that was still whole, Fiáh’our stood speaking quietly with Gän’gehtin. Karras slipped away from his duties to approach, but before he reached them, the cabin door cracked open.
The woman, the one they called “princess” or “duchess,” slipped out and quietly closed the door. She did not head off toward anyone. Instead, she side-stepped along the aftcastle’s wall, one hand always upon it. The way she looked about—narrow-eyed, fearful, suspicious—fixed Karras’s attention.
The little duchess reached the wall’s midpoint, flattened her back against it, and slid down to settle on the deck. When she stared toward the breached rail, a hard wince made her eyes shut tight as she cradled one arm against her chest.
Karras winced as well. Under the aftercastle lanterns above her, for he saw the darkening bruise that had spread to her wrist just beyond her pullover’s cuff.
“Do not stare. It is rude.”
Karras jumped slightly in turning and found Fiáh’our beside him.
“She will heal soon enough,” Gän’gehtin added. “The injury is not severe, and you did right in catching her before she hit the far rail.”
Karras frowned and could not help glancing at the woman once more. She was still eyeing the breached rail with a mix of fear and perhaps wariness.
“Someone should assure her that we are whole and the ship is in no danger,” Karras muttered, but before he took a step, Gän’gehtin restrained him with a light touch on the shoulder.
“She is not looking at the breach but the water,” said the shirvêsh.
At Karras’s puzzled glance, Fiáh’our added, “She is Faunier, of the horse people. They live upon—”
“The inland wooded plains and steppes,” Karras finished. “I know who they are, but… what does that have to do with anything?”
“Among the Numan peoples, they dislike the open waters,” Gän’gehtin answered.
And Fiáh’our grumbled, “Almost as much as sensible rughìr.”
Gän’gehtin frowned, though he did not argue. “Perhaps her fear is greater than even her kind. When the royal family visits the seatt, her relief at leaving the ship is only matched by her husband’s reluctance to do so.”
With that, the shirvêsh went to drop on one knee beside the princess, obviously arguing until she let him inspe
ct her injured arm. Fortunately for Karras, Fiáh’our sternly watched them and not him in the silence.
So many frightening, startling, and preposterous things had happened this night, all far more weighty than this moment. But to Karras, that a Faunier duchess of the horse people had married a royal of the reskynna, the supposed “kin of the ocean waves,” was too strange all by itself. And in remembering the cabin’s interior in the past night, that place where sorrow and fear amid relief had surrounded a rescued prince, one other moment hung most of all in his thoughts.
A small horsewoman had flown through the dark over gale-whipped waters, an insane leap over her worst terror to reach the one whom she loved.
Karras did not envy the princess a marriage to a madman, but he did envy a mad prince such devotion. The thought of Skirra came as well and left him all the more forlorn.
16. Hopefully Hopeless
After a long morning at the royal castle in Calm Seatt, Fiáh’our strolled slowly up the dock toward that cursed, broken ship. He wished there was some other quick way home, but at least there would be good news for Uinseil concerning repairs.
Gän’gehtin yawned audibly beside him, and somewhere behind them followed the young one. But Fiáh’our grinned slyly as his temple-bound friend rubbed his tired eyes.
“Oh, wipe your face, for modesty’s sake,” Fiáh’our grumbled too dramatically. “You look like a fool struck down by a maiden’s favor.”
For an instant, the shirvêsh just stared at him.
Gän’gehtin flushed red in an instant, especially notable on a rughir’s granite complexion. He frantically rubbed and wiped at his right cheek.
Fiáh’our snorted and tried to stifle a laugh, for when Gän’gehtin looked at his hand, there was nothing on it. The shirvêsh’s glared though he was nonetheless reddened.
“You… you clown! There is nothing there,” Gän’gehtin whispered as if afraid someone else might overhear him. And he smacked the thänæ across the back of the head.
“Ow!” Fiáh’our feigned, though he was too busy laughing. As to what that jest was about…
When Karras’s family ship had moored in the early dawn, the Weardas—“Sentinels”—for the reskynna had already cleared and secured the dock. More than a handful had taken stations along that way, all wary and alert in their long crimson tabards over sparkling chain vestments. And each of their helms glistened in the rising sun.
It was not long before the royal vessel arrived. There had been much shock among Uinseil’s crew when Captain Tristan of the Weardas and two of his men ushered aboard Princess thelthryth.
The first heir to the throne of Malourné was as startlingly tall as her sister-in-law, the duchess, was short. One of pale wheat colored hair and the other of dark chestnut, they instantly rushed upon each other. The latter hurriedly dragged the other off, who had to duck to get through the door into the cabin that held that man they sought.
As to where the other brother and elder prince was, Fiáh’our did not ask. Even at the ardent, sharp questions of Captain Tristan, the man’s tuft of beard quivering on his block jaw, Fiáh’our kept mostly silent.
There were secrets here that he did not understand and would not hint at by mistake in ignorance. Prince Freädherich was most certainly not a common Numan, and perhaps not a normal human at that. There was no telling how much the royal guard knew, and Fiáh’our would not unwittingly add to this.
The captain finally relented and went off at Uinseil, who knew even less. Numans, if not all humans, had a very old saying that curiosity could take the last life of a cat. And Fiáh’our eyed Karras.
The young one busily kept the crew at their work rather than gawking at royalty amid the spectacle. But occasionally he stopped to glance at the closed cabin door. Some of his sour sullenness had returned, but the longer he stared, the more it faded.
One could only guess what the young one contemplated from the past night, as he appeared to turn almost melancholy.
Even Fiáh’our was a bit astounded at the events that had turned his way, likely by a nudge of the Bäynæ’s wisdom. Perhaps it would not take as much as he had first thought to turn Karras to a better way with Skirra. The suffering, the services, and the sacrifices of others surely had not passed unnoticed by the young one.
Karras, himself, had not done too badly, though he had had to be pushed to it.
It was not long before Princess thelthryth reappeared at the cabin door to call for Captain Tristan. Much as her appearance hinted at a fragile, beautiful and narrow, quartz crystal, Fiáh’our read in her the hint of an inner iron. All was handled quickly in getting the younger prince off the ship, but in the last of it, the tall heir to throne hesitated at the ramp’s top and looked to Fiáh’our.
“Please, thänæ, would you come and bring your two companions?”
It was a polite and formal request, though her disturbingly austere expression was marked with fading panic amid exhaustion. Gän’gehtin was already close behind her, waiting expectantly.
Fiáh’our returned a sharp bow of his head and called out, “Karras!”
The young one started, hesitated, and looked to his father. Uinseil frowned in studying Fiáh’our for an instant and then nodded. Karras approached cautiously as Fiáh’our made to follow the pair of princesses off the ship.
Passage to the castle was a rush aboard waiting wagons with the Weardas all around them. Once inside the grounds, a stretcher came with running attendants to bear the younger prince, and everyone was hustled inside. All along the way, Karras remained silent, lost in peering about at all the commotion. Questions were asked of all three of them, and though Gän’gehtin answered what he could, most often it was the even but firm commands of Princess thelthryth that kept all to a minimum.
And the other princess, the “duchess,” never relinquished her grip upon her husband’s arm, even as he was born away through the corridors of the third and most grand castle of the line of the reskynna.
Fiáh’our, along with Karras and Gän’gehtin, was ushered into a lavish sitting room. The door was left ajar amid the chaos of people hurrying up and down the corridor outside, though two Weardas took up silent vigil at each side of the doorway.
The room was far too squishy and plush for Fiáh’our’s taste. The young one as well looked completely lost, perhaps afraid to even sit upon a velvet divan in his seafarer’s clothes. And Gän’gehtin paced idly, a worried frown on his face. It was not long before they were interrupted.
An elderly man entered, but what caught Fiáh’our’s eyes first was the attendant that followed.
Obviously a Lhoin’na, this one looked as elderly as the other, meaning he was even older as what humans called an “elf.” But that one wore the robe of a sage that was white, and Fiáh’our knew of no order among human “scribblers,” let alone elven ones, for that color.
“I know of you,” the elderly man said, “though we have never met.”
Fiáh’our turned his attention to this Numan dressed in a long robe of aquamarine that made his like-colored irises appear brighter. His lightly lined face was covered in exhaustion, likely in the wake of fading worry amid a sleepless night.
“Give me your hand, thänæ,” the man said in a breathy voice.
Fiáh’our held out one hand, but the man clasped his wrist instead. So he did likewise for the greeting of allies.
“Thank you, Hammer-Stag, for my son’s life,” the man whispered, and then, in looking to the others present, “My thanks to all of you.”
Fiáh’our briefly bowed his head, Gän’gehtin did so with a soft smile, and a bewildered Karras quickly copied them. The elderly man turned away, hurrying out, though the tall old Lhoin’na in white lingered long enough for a brief smile and nod of his own.
“Was… was that…” Karras stuttered in a whisper.
“Yes,” Gän’gehtin confirmed. “King Leofwin reskynna of Malourné.”
Karras swallowed audibly, and Fiáh’our could not help but c
huckle. There they lingered longer, until the next visitor entered.
Princess thelthryth glided in, now fully composed. At a guess, she was nearly as tall as her father, the king, or perhaps just as tall. Slender as she was, even in motion, she reminded Fiáh’our of any of the brightly lit and looming stone pylons of his people’s mountain settlements: tall and unbreakable. She had the wheat-gold hair of her bloodline, aside from their strange ocean eyes and narrow features. Something about her filled the room with an air of settled but all-encompassing watchfulness.
“I wanted to assure you,” she began, even and firm, “that any loss to you and yours will be rectified with all haste.”
Fiáh’our cocked his head toward Karras, and with brief puzzlement, the princess turned.
“The ship we hit is yours?” she asked.
“My… my father’s, High… Highness,” Karras awkwardly corrected.
The princess nodded with a soft smile. “Then tell him that even now arrangements are being made for its immediate repair. We apologize for any delays this will cause, and, if…”
Before she could finished, someone else entered.
Duchess—Princess—Reine Faunier-reskynna rushed straight at Fiáh’our as her sister-in-law turned. She had not changed clothes since leaving the ship, though now her left arm was in a sling and bound to a slat of wood with wraps of cotton cloth. She lingered in staring at him, as if not knowing what to say.
“Do not worry so,” Fiáh’our assured, laughing and trying to make light of all. “The prince was only a bit doused and chilled. He’s stout enough if he can be this much trouble. And he is back where he belongs, with you.”
Princess Reine glowered at him with a heavy exhale for such a tiny woman, but she put a small hand on his thick arm. Her gripped closed tightly, as if she needed that hold to remain on her feet. Her sister-in-law drifted over, and she looked up once before turning her attention to the others in the room.
Fiáh’our glanced aside in time to see Karras cringe and lower his eyes. Before the young one could utter another faltering word, the smaller princess closed on him.
