Whom the Gods Hate (Of Gods & Mortals Book 2)

by M. M. Perry

  Gunnarr gave the young man a hefty pat on the back.

  “I did not just happen across him. No suspiciously fortuitous meeting at a bar where he just happened to overhear I needed a guide to Xenor and could pay well. No. I told Callan we planned to go to Xenor next and it was he who suggested I meet this man. The palace chef buys from this fishmonger on a regular basis, it seems. I then proceeded to discreetly ply the fisherman over a tankard of ale. He is either a very good liar, or he really does fish off of the coast of Xenor. Either way, he’ll be on my ship,” Gunnarr said ominously as he stretched to his full height, “and he knows it.”

  Nat thought it over for a minute then nodded his head.

  “Well, okay. But I hope you won’t take it as an insult to your powers of perception if I sleep with one eye open.”

  Gunnarr laughed.

  “I’m sure Viola can help us keep an eye on him.”

  “Viola’s coming?”

  Nat’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Viola had been doing most of the research into Oshia; where the god lived, was seen, and legends about his habits. She didn’t often travel with them since her magic had begun failing her shortly after they lost Cass. Their work was dangerous, and she was no fighter. Gunnarr often called her a warrior, but Viola knew it was as a kindness.

  “She has been studying up on these Djinn for a while now and she is adamant that she come along this time, since it would take too long to teach us all about them,” Gunnarr said.

  “Besides,” a female voice drifted up to Nat from the dock below, “I have to feel useful sometimes.”

  Nat turned to see a short, pale, lovely young red-headed woman. Her green eyes twinkled as she grinned up at her old friend. Nat noticed she had kept her hair cropped as short as always, giving her a slightly pixie-ish look, though he knew she was anything but.

  Nat rushed down the plank to give Viola a big hug. She kissed him on the cheek as they parted. Nat divested her of her bags of personal belongings and Viola thanked him. She followed Nat up the plank to the deck and maneuvered around him when he stopped to stow her gear. As she approached Gunnarr she held out a large wooden rod, ornately carved and highly polished. It glistened with a deep red, courtesy of a thick coating of lacquer.

  “Callan told me to give this to you,” Viola said. “He wanted to… now let me get this right, extend his sincerest apologies that he shant be accompanying you on this trip. He is a father now, you know. That last bit is from me, not Callan.”

  Gunnarr rolled his eyes in mock irritation, but the smile on his face and the chuckle he shared with Viola gave away his true feelings on the matter. He’d once thought the king a pompous ass. But since Cass had vanished, King Callan had never failed to aid them in their quest to find her, at great expense to himself and his kingdom. The aid was often key to finding the next step, be it guides he sent along, bribes paid out to key individuals for information or equipment he provided for their small group. The king had spared no expense in helping Gunnarr, and it was much appreciated.

  “He did send this, however. It’s the King’s Mark. With it you can issue invoices, I guess, for any amount to be paid out to whoever comes with a paper bearing its seal. He told me to tell you to be very careful with it. It’s one of only three like it. It’s been enchanted so the wax seals it creates cannot be faked. He wanted me to be sure you knew how annoying it would be if he had to make all new seals if this one got, ‘misplaced’ as he put it,” Viola said.

  Gunnarr snorted at the very idea as he took the seal and tucked it into the pouch at his belt for the time being.

  “Is it just the three of us then?” Viola asked as Nat joined them on deck.

  “No,” Gunnarr said, “we’re just waiting for…”

  He was interrupted by the sound of a large trunk hitting the deck. An older man stood next to it, his worn clothes bearing that sun bleached look of too many days spent on deck. What could be seen of his hair was salt and pepper, the bulk of it having been tucked snugly up under a cap that shaded his watery brown eyes. Nat had trouble pinpointing his exact age. Life at sea was hard even on the sturdiest of men. The man’s leathered skin could be caused as much by constant exposure to the sun as by the passage of time. There was something about the glint in the man’s eyes that lead Nat to guess he was younger than he might first appear.

  “I’m here,” he said shortly, “though I have no idea why. When a king offers you that much money to do something, you know there must be a heap of trouble involved, and I ain’t interested in trouble. I prefer my life as a fisherman. No big payouts, but steady work, and it’s very unlikely to cost you life or limb, unless your incautious, unlucky, or just too plain stupid for words. But you don’t say no to a king who is your biggest customer.”

  “If you don’t want to be here,” Gunnarr began.

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me, big fella. If I don’t do this thing, I’m likely to lose the King as a customer. I’m not a fool. And I don’t appreciate being tricked, neither. I recognize you from the pub. I should have known you were suspicious from the get go. No one just up and wanders over to an old fisherman and offers him a cup of the best ale in the house. For that matter, no one buys an old fisherman anything,” the man said grumpily.

  Gunnarr looked away guiltily. He was never particularly comfortable with this kind of confrontation. He longed for the day when he could go back to solving all his disagreements with a cold shoulder or a sharp sword. Nat recognized the large man’s discomfort and spoke up.

  “We had to be sure you were trustworthy is all. Lots of people out here falsely claim to have been to Xenor. It makes them seem exotic and adventurous. We wanted to hire the real deal. Surely you’ve had to deal with these scoundrels yourself. Imposters trying to pass off their seafood as legitimately from the Desert Sea.”

  Nat watched the old fisherman hopeful that his words might wring some feeling of camaraderie from the man.

  “Well,” the fisherman said mulling over Nat’s words, “that is true.”

  But he offered no more than that, choosing to keep whatever else he was thinking to himself.

  “What’s your name, sir?” Viola asked helpfully.

  “Certainly not sir!” the fisherman said. “Sam. Sam Seawise, they call me.”

  “Seawise not your family name then, I take it?” Viola asked curiously.

  “No idea but it ain’t too likely, ridiculous name like that,” Sam said eyeing her from under his hat. “Been called that since I was a lad just sprouted his nether locks. I’ve always had a gift for knowin my way about on the seas. Was a scut lad. Cleaning fish and the lot. Bad storm blew the navigator and all his gear overboard. As if that weren’t bad enough, then the cap’n and his crew became ill. Laid up real bad. I took the wheel and got us home with no trouble. They gave me the name Seawise then and there. Been called that ever since.”

  “Sounds like it has the makings of an amazing story,” Viola said.

  “It was trouble, plain and simple. Like this has the sound of. Didn’t like it then when I was young and all full of vim and vigor, I’m sure not to like it now, all full of piss and vinegar. A man doesn’t appreciate being forced into labor he never asked for. Not even for as noble a cause as the King proclaimed yours to be. No thought to me or mine,” Sam said.

  He looked as if he wanted to say more, but thought better of it.

  “Just show me where I’ll be staying on this monstrosity of a ship. I’ve said my piece. Now let’s get this over with.”

  Nat hopped down to the main deck and made to pick up Sam’s trunk. Sam abruptly stood between Nat and the trunk and pointedly picked up the huge cargo by himself. Nat shrugged then gestured for Sam to follow him below deck to the sleeping quarters. Viola squinted up at Gunnarr, the sun creating a halo of light around his head.

  “I realize we need a guide. I just wish Callan could have been a little more gentle with his persuasion. It sounds as if he bullied the man,” Viola said.

  Gunnarr cros
sed his great big arms and stared down toward the huge hatch that led below decks.

  “Callan told me he knew of no other who had experience navigating those waters this time of year. We’d have more options if we waited a few months for the storm season to pass, but I…” Gunnarr stopped mid-sentence.

  Gunnarr didn’t need to finish. Viola knew what he was thinking. It had been more than two years already. Every day that went by it felt as if their chances of finding Cass became ever slimmer. She put her hand on his arm.

  “Well, hopefully we don’t run into too much trouble.”

  The woman woke up shivering. Her fire had died down to just tiny embers in the night. She had been unable to find enough dry scrap wood to adequately replenish her supply after she had used so much warming herself while she washed. The sky was still dark so she assumed it was very late, and not yet on the cusp of becoming very early. She silently cursed. She was sure that last bit she’d fed into the fire before drifting off to sleep would last until just before daybreak, when the stars would begin to disappear from the sky. But this was clearly still the dead of the night. She began to worry she would freeze to death without a fire and wondered if it was safer to just risk the exposure to the cold or to risk foraging in the dark and exposing herself to the cold and the wind. The image of the huge beast she had encountered before kept returning to her mind, and kept her there beside her dying fire for several minutes before her very real fear of dying of hypothermia trumped her hopefully only imaginary fear of being eaten. Just as she was about to leave the cave she heard a noise that stopped her in her tracks.

  It sounded like what a twig snapping under the weight of someone’s foot should sound like, but there was something strange about it. It hadn’t sounded accidental, but rather like someone had purposefully snapped a twig, hoping to emulate the sound of a clumsily placed footfall. She decided it was a sound meant to seem accidental to make her feel superior, but it was deliberately planned. For a split second, the woman wondered how she knew this, how it was possible at all to discern such a thing. But that thought fled from her mind when she realized that if it was a purposeful sound, someone wanted her to know they were there.

  “Who’s there,” she called out softly.

  She didn’t bother to pick up the stone she kept by her side. It was a perfect stone, shaped just right for either grasping or smashing with or for hurling. If this person was announcing their presence, then they either meant her no harm or felt they could overpower her easily, so she ignored the stone.

  “I saw you,” a soft voice said from the darkness.

  It was a smooth voice, soothing. The woman could sense power in it. She felt it brush past her like a breeze. Her skin prickled into goose pimples as she felt something in those words grasp at her, trying to find a way to poke inside of her. She knew there was magic here, and it was being used against her, just as instinctually as she could feel that something inside of her that she had no control over was keeping that power from affecting her. Another realization the woman filed away for later contemplation.

  “Who are you,” the woman demanded.

  “I saw you. You don’t often see a naked woman running through the woods and avoiding all contact with civilization. Are you a nymph? I’ve not seen nymphs in so many…”

  The woman cut off the voice, demanding once again, this time more forcefully, “Who are you.”

  “Yes,” the voice said placidly, “I have been rude.”

  A light sprung up suddenly, temporarily blinding the woman. She almost grabbed up her rock in response, but resisted the urge. She did not want to alarm whoever this was with the threat of violence. So far, there had been no malice in the voice, just the magical probing that had accompanied it. When her eyes adjusted, she saw a young man squatting across from her. Her fire pit had been relit. Blazing as it was now, she could see that the logs in it looked as if they would burn another couple of hours at least, which meant she hadn’t miscalculated before. She’d put in enough fuel to last until morning, it was that something had put the fire out somehow. She wiped all trace of the thoughts running through her head from her face as she met the stranger’s eyes.

  “I can see you now, for which I am grateful, but that does little to inform me as to who you are,” she said again.

  The young man smiled and tucked a stray strand of his auburn hair behind an ear. His skin was ruddy, his brown eyes clear and strong as he stared across the fire at the woman.

  “I am called Patch. I will not harm you. You do not look like a nymph.”

  “Then I am probably not a nymph,” the woman said. “Why have you come here?”

  Patch looked the woman over carefully. He was squatting with his arms wrapped around his legs, his chin resting on his knee. He had long elegant fingers that tapped out a complicated, unfamiliar rhythm on his leg.

  “I was curious. I thought you might be a nymph. A nymph would be... I was… hopeful, you could say.”

  The woman stared at Patch, waiting for him to volunteer more. The enigmatic man did not. She could sense something off about him, something not entirely truthful. There was honesty in the words he spoke, but she knew he was trying to obfuscate something with them. She spoke up.

  “I don’t know who I am,” she said, daring to tell the truth.

  A part of her felt this was dangerous. This Patch had some power in him, something she hadn’t felt in any of the people she had seen and heard from afar since her awakening. And his appearance had also helped her realize she had some measure of power herself, as well. She began to wonder if she was more like Patch than the people she had seen in the village. It was this small thing that made her trust Patch momentarily, even if she suspected he wasn’t telling her something important.

  “Ah,” Patch said, rocking a bit on his feet. “I sensed… something. A god curse perhaps. The flavor, it’s been so long since I’ve tasted that power. Could be Oshia, I suppose. But he’s been away for a while. Thought he’d had enough of humans.”

  The words Patch was saying only served to confuse the woman. She frowned. Patch watched her face intently. He was looking for something he did not find. Satisfied, he continued.

  “You ought to have a name,” he said simply in response to her unhappiness.

  “Well I am fairly sure I have one. I just can’t seem to recall it at the moment. I’m sure I’d like to know what it is even more than you do,” the woman said crossing her arms.

  “Surely. But I can’t help you with that. The power is too much for me. Could maybe help you find a way to cleanse yourself of it. But, I still need a name to call you. If you want my help, that is,” Patch said.

  He resumed tapping the complex pattern on his legs again as he stared at the woman. She simply stared back, not really understanding what this—creature, and not man, she had decided—wanted from her. Finally Patch sighed and scratched his head.

  “Okay, how about Kalypso,” Patch said with a smirk.

  She stared at him for a moment before shrugging noncommittally. The name was as good as any other since, at the moment, nothing rang any bells of recognition for her.

  “Right. Kali for short. Now, Kali, what would you like to do next?”

  Chapter 2

  The seas had remained calm since they’d left port, contributing to a largely uneventful voyage thus far. Nat whiled away most of the empty hours reacquainting himself with Viola, whom he found much changed since he last parted with her. The elfin look his memory conjured her up with had all but vanished. She no longer wore the costumes of the enchanters of her village, instead choosing to garb herself in styles he recognized as Faylendarian. More striking than her change in appearance was the change in her attitude. She struck Nat as a great deal more confident, if that was even possible. Though she’d certainly never come across as demure before, she had always had an abundance of confidence when Nat compared her to himself, her attitude now seemed more bold than brash.

  As interesting as he found this new, e
mboldened Viola, he was even more invested in prying into the life of their newest recruit, likely because of how reticent the old salt was. So far, Nat had been stymied at every turn. Sam kept mostly to himself, fishing in the early morning and just before dusk and snoozing away most of the day. When he did finally stir in the evenings, he spent them alone, reading from one of an apparently endless stack of books he would periodically pull out of his huge trunk. Nat had once tried to edge close enough to Sam to sneak a peek at the spine of one tome, only to look up and catch Sam glaring at him over the tops of the pages. Even then he hadn’t uttered a word to Nat, instead letting his glare speak volumes that so far as Nat could tell largely consisted of equal helpings of “my secrets are my own” and “bugger off.”

  “You gotten him to talk at all?” Nat asked, jutting his chin in Sam’s direction as he selected a card from his hand and laid it on the table between himself and Viola.

  Viola missed the gesture, absorbed by her own hand as she pondered her next move, so her look was puzzled for a moment before she realized whom he was talking about.

  “No. He’s kept to himself. Can’t say I blame him for coming off a bit surly. Callan does have a tendency to rub people a bit wrong,” she said with a smirk. “Just a few weeks before we left port, he called me to court to deal with a dire emergency, as he put it. He wanted my help tracking down some doctor. The way he put it made it sound like this fellow was the sole source for some lifesaving medication and that he’d vanished without a trace under highly suspicious conditions. After nearly a week of searching I found the guy and you know what? He wasn’t even a doctor. He was just one of Callan’s many royal apothecaries. Turns out the only medicine this fellow concocted for the king was skin creams for his royal highness. And he hadn’t been abducted at all. He was on vacation and just forgotten to tell Callan that he’d left the creams with his apprentice to dispense during his absence.”