“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Bel said from behind us.
We all spun and found him standing there, holding Suri in a cradle carry. He knelt and put her down on the ground and looked up at Aiko.
“Your father was already dead when I found her,” he said. “I heard the house start to give up, and I had to leave him to save her.”
Aiko dropped to his knees and pulled his mother into his arms, crying. She was breathing, I could see her chest rising and falling, and her pregnant stomach moved visibly with the baby inside.
I glanced at Belshazzar, who was dusting ash and dirt off of his shoulder. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“Don’t make this shit a habit. I have my hands full.” He walked away, still dusting his sleeves.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kimber
Aiko hugged his auntand uncle as I waited at the top of the gangway.
His Uncle Daiki stared up at me, but I held my place. He wanted to threaten me with bodily harm if something happened to Aiko, but nothing would.
His aunt touched his cheek as he backed up and smiled at him. Ikue was his mother’s sister, and they had agreed to watch Suri while we were gone.
“Go,” she said. “Help find his woman. He saved our Suri and little Raiden. Go.”
He rushed up the gangplank, and with the help of the dock workers, we cast off.
Back on the water again, but this time, supposedly for only a day and a night, to the Barren Bay and the Short River Gorge.
Elkthorne was grateful to us for helping them with the fires. I was sure they would blame us for the attack, but they didn’t. They blamed Niniane alone.
Once Aoi and Yuuto spoke, they gave us a fast sloop to get us up the coast to where their intelligence said the mad queen was hiding.
The sloop had only two sails: a foresail and gaff-rigged mainsail. Easy, and with six of us we could take turns sleeping. We desperately needed it.
I steered us out into the water, but not far. The wind was a strong northerly, so we wouldn’t have much work aside from steering. Rilen and Roran were getting good at swinging the rope, gaff, and rigging to get the boat moving the way we needed. Rilen retreated down below with Belshazzar and Dorian for sleep. He was the most spent of all of us. Roran stood at the bow, just watching the water.
Aiko sat on the bench behind the wheel with me.
“Are you all right?” I asked quietly.
He looked at me. “Did you know that my real name isn’t Aiko?”
That was a surprise. “It isn’t?”
He shook his head. “I was named Akio. It was a strong name. My grandfather was Akio. My great-great-uncle was Akio. Then, when I was in my teen years, and my father became disappointed in me, that I wasn’t what he’d hoped for, he started to call me Aiko. He would introduce me as his disappointment. His little flower, his darling Aiko.
“I don’t even know what he was looking for in me. I did everything he wanted. I was an eager student in everything, including sciences and fighting techniques. Nothing made that man happy.”
Aiko blinked a few times, staring up at Roran standing at the bow. “I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
Belshazzar, who I had thought was sleeping, walked up the few steps between the main deck and the pilot deck. “He died badly,Akio. There was a wooden beam through his chest, his head half pulled off, and a look of terror on his face. He was a dozen feet from your mother when the beam came down. I watched him push his way ahead of her to get through the only visible passage.” Belshazzar shook his head. “He’s not worth a single thought. Coward.”
Aiko nodded. “Thank you. I’m glad he died badly.”
Bel looked at me quickly and smirked. “I could come to like him.”
“Please don’t,” I said.
“I’ll steer for a while. Get sleep. We’re going to need your amazing breaking abilities at peak form just in case I need them.”
