“Found this washed up on the southern end of the beach. Stuck on some rocks.”
She inspected it. Torn, but nothing burned, none of it chewed.
“Anything else with it?”
“Nothing, My Light,” he replied.
Yemaya sighed, disappointed, and looked off toward the south as if answers were waving there, waiting to be noticed. “Right. Let’s get divers out before we lose the light. Look for wreckage. And, Hurand, collect this one for a proper send-off.”
Commander Hurand flinched. He was likely just fine leaving the body where it was.
“My Light, forgive me. Shouldn’t we take this… person back home?” the young soldier asked.
“He’s chum,” she replied. She didn’t mean to seem heartless, but it was a health hazard no one would have wanted to bear any distance in the first place. “No one’s making an identification off this, so no point traumatizing a family or more trying to figure it out. We’ll honor him all the same. Just get him to my ship. We’ll have Brother Lain do the rite.”
Her soldiers bowed and she left them to their tasks, heading down the grassy hill and back to the beach. Less than a week ago, legacy gunship theClodionhad disappeared at sea, and Yemi had been asked by her mother and the superstitious priests of the order known as the Kept to look out for it.
A small flotilla of her ships bobbed in the bay. She paused on the hill to sketch the scene quickly in her worn leather notebook. They’d been returning from a routine naval exercise in the southern seas when she’d spotted this island. And out of either curiosity or want of a reason not to go home just yet, she’d decided it was worth exploring. The body had been a surprise.
Her personal guard, Nova, waited on the beach, spear twirling inher hand. She was a lighter shade of brown, a warm sand to Yemaya’s cool clay, and her pompadour of white curls bobbed carelessly in the breeze.
“Lot of help you were protecting me from whatever maniac could be roaming the island, chopping people up and chewing on them,” Yemaya called.
Nova turned to her. “Nah, you were good.”
“What kind of guardian gets squeamish about dead bodies?”
“What kind of Qorrea are you to be so taken with them?”
“I’m royalty. I get to be eccentric,” Yemaya replied, tugging irritably at the royal collare of gold rings stacked around her neck. “Halfyourjob’s hypothetically the killing part.”
“WhenIget to them, they’re still alive and probably pissed me off. I don’t like when they’re… in pieces already.” Nova made a show of scraping the taste of the idea from her tongue with her top teeth. “You make an ID?”
“Too far gone. Divers are headed out to look for wreckage. I think he’s from theClodion.”
“Six ships missing this year,” Nova pondered aloud. “All Ixian, none of them found. Somebody’s fucking with you.”
“Hurand thinks it’s Mer.”
Nova raised an eyebrow. “He said that?”
“You know he didn’t. He did the wink-nudge thing.”
“I was about to say, bold of him.”
“I swear, first soldier to not treat my lineage like some dirty secretliterally everyone knowsgets a commendation,” Yemaya said, squinting into the soon-setting sun.
“They’re probably trying to forget as part of the Reconstruction,” Nova offered. “Hell, if it turns out you’re half what’s-eating-sailors, you’llwantthem to forget.”
“You think it’s Mer?” Yemaya asked her.
“Doyouthink it’s Mer?”
She thought a moment. “Wouldn’t be unheard of. I mean, they used to, right? It was a whole thing.”
“Might be time to get Cerro to triple up on those tributes.”
“Ugh. Only if I have nothing to do with them,” Yemaya groaned. If one more of the Kept’s droning, pollen-drenched ceremonies was added to her schedule, she’d run screaming into the sea her damn self.
