“The piece of wood in my hand,” Petur said, with a hint of exasperation. “Come on now. You’re the most competent person I know. Don’t tell me you don’t think you can sail this boat.”
“I do not think I can sail this boat,” Deyvid said immediately. “Certainly not without you.”
“You won’t do it without me,” Petur promised him. “I just have to grab something out of the stores. I’ll be right back. Just sit here.” Deyvid sat. “Good. Put your hand up here, toward the front.” Deyvid let Petur move his hand to the top of the tiller. “Now feel the tension here. Keep an eye on the wind in the sail. If it starts to luff, turn us a bit more firmly away from the wind sothat the sail catches it better. If we’re going too quickly, or things get a little too rough, tighten the angle.”
“You should be the one teaching your nieces and nephew about angles,” Deyvid said.
“Oh, I plan to,” Petur promised him. “I have with Arven already; he’s just prone to complaining. Come on. Hold this. I’ll be right back.” With a final pat, Petur left him and headed down into the hold. Then it was just Deyvid, at the back of the boat on the top of the ocean, drifting along to the sound of the waves and the wind.
The tension he’d been carrying, so stiff and heavy in his body, began to melt away as he got a feel for the play between sail and breeze. It was a little bit like riding a horse, in fact. You just had to know how to treat the animal beneath you, how to read them. He misjudged a few times and had to correct, and in one case, overcorrect, but for the most part, it was just as easy as Petur had promised it would be.
“You seem better,” Petur said as he came up out of the hold a few minutes later, a small package in his hands. “You were starting to look a little green about the gills. I thought you might be getting seasick.”
“Seasick?”
“Motion sickness,” Petur explained as he sat down in front of Deyvid and began to unwrap the little paper package. “It can happen to almost anyone, even those of us born by the ocean. Here.” He held out a small, stiff stick of something that looked unappetizing. “Chew on this.”
A bit dubious, Deyvid stuck it between his teeth and began to chew. It was spicy, slightly sweet, and oddly resinous. “What is it?” he asked.
“Candied ginger,” Petur said. “It settles the stomach.”
Oh, well, that was thoughtful of Petur. Then again, Deyvid had learned long ago that Petur was probably the most thoughtfulperson he had ever met. It wasn’t always apalatablekind of thoughtfulness. Too often it was him overthinking things. But this was a kindness. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” Petur beamed for a moment, then stuck a piece of the candy in his own mouth. “Now,” he said, around the sound of his chewing. “Let’s work on changing direction, hmm?”
The rest of the day passed in simple lessons. Deyvid learned the names for the parts of a boat, how to turn into the wind, how to sail away from it, and even what to do if the boat capsized.
“Not,” Petur said firmly, “that it’s going to, but it’s important to be able to stand it back up again. Between the two of us, we’d be able to manage with something this small.”
“Your confidence is heartening,” Deyvid said, and he wasn’t even being sarcastic.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Petur leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “It’s all right. You can give in to your love of competence, darling. I know how much you appreciate it.”
“I do,” Deyvid confessed. “I like all of this. Thank you for bringing me here.”
Petur leaned in and kissed him very gently. “You can thank me,” he whispered, “by doing that really great thing with your tongue that I—ow!” Deyvid whapped him on the arm, but Petur’s crudeness didn’t stop him from, in fact, doing that particular thing with his tongue that evening.
They made love on the deck of the boat, in time with the rocking of the water and the waves, Deyvid spread out beneath Petur as his lover looked at him like he was a feast and fucked him like he was worshipping a god. They didn’t speak. Not out there. It was so quiet, so peaceful. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. All they had to do was look at each other and know every thought that was in the other’s head, every feeling that was in each other’s heart.
Deyvid gave himself over completely to his lover, and for the first time in what felt like ages, he truly let himself relax. That sense of relaxation carried over into the next day. They fished for a while, which at least was something Deyvid was able to do with reasonable competency, and then Petur splashed around in his otter form, enticing Deyvid to come into the water with him.
He was more than a little reluctant to do so—“There could be anything in there, Petur”—but he gave in in the end, sure that Petur would warn them if they were about to be set upon by sharks, or whales, or … Did whales eat people?
Deyvid at least was a decent swimmer, and the water was more buoyant than anything he’d ever felt before. They ended up spending hours just stroking back and forth beside the boat, playing and splashing, pausing every now and then to eat, drink fresh water, or in Deyvid’s case, cover his bare shoulders and back in a salve to keep him from burning. It had been quite a while since he’d treated his skin with marlroot, and he was starting to look bleached.
They made love again that day, once when the sun was at its peak and there was nothing to do but lounge in the shade of the sail and leisurely suck each other off. They did it again that evening, Petur full of hunger, guiding Deyvid onto all fours and eating him out, thrusting so deep with his tongue that Deyvid felt completely owned before Petur’s cock slid home inside of him, hard and yet soft. There was a tenderness to their lovemaking here that he had never experienced before, something free and delicious, and as he curled his hand around himself and began to stroke his cock to completion, a part of Deyvid wished that they didn’t have to go back, that they could just stay out there on the sea, wrapped in each other forever. It was beautiful, and naturally, that beauty came at a cost.
The harsh squawking of a seabird woke both of them up early the next morning, before the sun had even risen over thehorizon. Petur was awake faster than Deyvid. “Spit it out,” he snapped at the seagull sitting at the bow of the boat. The gull transformed, quickly becoming a narrow-eyed, naked man that Deyvid identified as one of Tania and Jemal’s personal guards and just as viciously critical of Deyvid as the rest of them were. Brannan was in good company among them.
“Get back to shore,” he said brusquely.
“Why?” Petur replied, just as brusque. “Tania’s not back yet, and I was given leave for three days.”
“Order of the consort,” the messenger responded. “There’s been an assassination attempt against Prince Arven.”
Deyvid’s blood ran cold, and he immediately began to scramble back into his clothes.
“How close was it? How is he?” Petur demanded.
