It had been eight years, and Deyvid had still never so much as set foot on that boat. He’d assumed doing so had been forbidden by the queen, and so it was with a great deal of surprise that he followed as Petur led him out onto the twenty footer and began to ready the sail.
“What is this?” Deyvid asked, eyes wide in astonishment.
“What do you think it is?” Petur said. “We’re going out.”
“We don’t—that’s—” The words got jumbled behind his teeth. “We don’t have time,” Deyvid finally managed.
“Oh?” Petur raised an eyebrow. “Do you have something other than educating my nieces and nephew to do right now?”
“There’s always something else to do,” Deyvid said.
“Not right now, there isn’t. It’s all been delegated.”
“But the merchant caravan that we were going to track down—”
“Done.”
“What about the riders that we were going to send toward the—”
“Also done.”
“But we don’t have permission,” Deyvid finally said. “Do we?”
“We don’t have alackof permission,” Petur said as he began to untie the rope that held the boat to the mooring post. “My sister didn’t outright say no, and when I told Jemal what I had planned, he only said to be back before she’s home again. I think he’s going to be happy to have both of us away from his malleable young minds for a while. He wants some quality time with the children to himself.”
That made sense. Jemal had been polite with Deyvid but never warm. It was probably the best he could expect, so Deyvid accepted it, but …
“You’re finally taking me out on a boat,” he said, a slow smile starting to spread across his face. “I presume we’re going to need something to eat out there.”
“All packed. And clothes as well. I’m planning to have you out of yours for most of the time,” Petur added with a grin. “But our needs are covered. There’s a place to sleep, there’s plenty to drink, and the weather promises to be beautiful. Darling.” He reached out and covered Deyvid’s hand with his own. “Trust me.”
And Deyvid, of course, did. “All right,” he said, sitting back against the wall of the boat. “Impress me.”
“I will,” Petur replied smoothly. “But not from there. You’re sitting in my seat.”
“Oh.” Deyvid got up and moved a little bit forward.
“Watch the boom,” Petur said as he pushed them off from the dock. Deyvid had plenty of warning as the long wooden spar at the base of the sail slowly swung around to catch the breeze. He could see how that would be problematic if you weren’t paying attention, but … “Thanks for the warning,” he said and then stared out into the blue as Petur steered them away from land for the first time in Deyvid’s life.
Being out on the boat was a curious thing for Deyvid and not an entirely comfortable one either. Far from it, in fact. There was something about the roll of the water beneath him, the bump-bump of the boat as the front of it lifted and settled, lifted and settled, over and over again that made him feel the slightest bit queasy. He listened to Petur chatter to take his mind off it, let his beloved tell him all about when he had learned to sail as a child, how he hadn’t liked it at first, and how it had been Tania who had finally talked him around to enjoying it.
His sister, he said, loved the sea, anyway she could get it. It was the reason she had chosen a dolphin for her first shifted form. She had spent an entire summer in the water once. It was what she and Jemal had most in common, their love for the water.
“She was a member of a pod of wild dolphins for a time,” Petur recalled as he gently steered them into the wind. They never went far enough out to lose sight of land, which Deyvid was thankful for, but he knew that if the boat were to capsize, he’d tire out before being able to swim all that way. Not that he didn’t have faith in Petur’s abilities, but …
“I’ve never seen her happier,” Petur went on. “She was just wild then, absolutely free. Every time she came back, she was beaming with excitement. I think if she could have chosen tostay, she would have. But of course”—he shrugged—“duty came first.”
“Does that happen much?” Deyvid asked, forcing his lips to move through the tension he carried in them.
“What?” Petur asked, with a sidelong glance. “Duties? All the time.”
“No, a shifter deciding to stay wild,” he said.
“Ah. Not as often as you’d think,” Petur said upon a moment’s reflection. “The thing is,” he added slowly, thoughtfully, “we’re not really animals when we shift. Not in the way that you’re thinking. We don’tbecomethem. We’re still ourselves, just in the shape of something we’re close to understanding. It’s incredibly rare to be adopted by a wild population. It’s too hard to get the cues right.
“Shifters who choose solitary beasts, mountain lions and the like, I’ve heard of it happening with them. But for the social animals, the wolves, the dolphins, the birds, otters”—he smirked for a moment—“no. The wild ones know that we’re a little bit wrong. Here.” He patted the seat beside him. “Come hold the tiller for a moment, I need to get something.”
“The tiller?”
