“Perhaps we can shift the blame to my father. Sea witches know he was not without sin,” I offered, turning to look at her.She straightened, nodded, and gave me a brisk, tight hug with a hidden peck on the cheek. I hugged her back.
“Aye, shift some of the blame to him, but not all,” she said after releasing me with haste. Not that the crew didn’t know how close we were. Our past was an open book, as the printers say. Well, aside from one pertinent fact that my sire had not wanted exposed. “I’m able to carry my share of the guilt.”
I bobbed my head. “If you wish. Then it is settled. You feared losing the family you had acquired, and he feared…” There I stumbled.
“He feared many things, but mostly that they would come searching for you to either take you back or slay you. Knowing the bastardly nobles as I do, I would wager they would have drowned you in a basin to keep the shame of the princess hidden.”
“Aye, I suspect you’re right.” I breathed out a sigh and squinted into the sun to see where she sat in the sky. Close to midday. The glint of light off the brass glass shared among the crew in the nest to bring things closer. The dragon sat in the yard under the crow’s nest, snout into the wind, wings out as if it were a vulture warming itself. Kilter was in the enclosed platform scouting the shoreline when he shouted down to us. “Land ho! Light’s Keep to the starboard!”
“That is good news,” I replied and then shouted to the crew. “Reef the topsails!” The call was unneeded as my crew was already doing what needed to be done to slow and ready to dock. I let the water that was pushing us fall back into the sea, further slowing the ship. The tip of the tall lighthouse came into view as we sailed past a small inlet. The dragonling took to wing, screeching as it swooped down to try to catch a gull in mid-flight. Feathers exploded. The bird never stood a chance, but gulls were not a dying species. Nature was brutal. The ship slowed as the lighthouse grew larger and larger, the sailsshortening. “Bring her about!” I yelled as I hurried to gather my hair into a long tail. “Strike the colors.” The blood-red flag was brought down, even though the powers that be at Light’s Keep knew the Cadere clan well. Still, there could be a stray Melowynn ship at port, although that was unlikely. The royal fleet had not sailed past the outcropping of the Verboten Woods for hundreds of seasons.
I strolled to the bow, smiling as the large port came into view. There was a small pub here that catered to the privateer who fancied good grog and eager male whores. While I did enjoy the female form from time to time, I enjoyed manly forms even more. The thought of a tight ass and heavy cock in my mouth had me growing hard. The owner of Polly’s Palace, Polly himself, was an older bawd who took only certain clientele to his bed. I was one of the lucky few. The thought of sinking my cock into his arse made me feel randy.
The docks were oddly empty, which struck me as peculiar, but perhaps it was simply the vagaries of sea travel. I glanced down at the water as we slowed even more. A large group of black eels swam past. Two arm spans in length with slimy white strands billowing behind them.
“Fukkate,” I whispered as the rotscale eels darted under the dock. I spun from the rail in time to see Beiro and Asdren scuttling about the upper deck. “Rotscales in the water!” I bellowed as I charged to the other side of the ship. The eels were a sure sign of plague-ridden waters. There in the water, tipped over to lie on its side in the tide, was a large white sign with a crudely painted skull on it. A plague sign. “Hard over! Hard over! Do not drop anchor!” Several people emerged from a shack on the dock, staggering toward the quay, the thick brown growth of the widow’s touch fungus covering their faces, arms, and bare legs. “Bring her around. We shall not be berthing here. They have the widow’s touch!”
Beiro darted to my side, wiggling in on my left to gape at the sickened villagers tumbling to their knees while waving us away.
“That is what the queen had as a child. It killed her entire family,” Beiro whispered, his fingers biting into the rail of the Cloud’s Shame, green eyes wide.
“Aye, it resurges every ten or so seasons, when the ground is wet and the spores thick on the wheat,” Asdren added as he joined me to watch the dock start to recede. “Poor bastards. They won’t last too long. The fungus gets into the mouth and eyes, choking the hosts to death as the scale thickens and fills their airways. That the queen survived is a miracle in itself.”
“Aye, the clerics gather her blood every new season to create the serum to combat the fungus. They say the scars will always remain, but the person who is infused with the tincture will survive. They call the small doses the queen’s gift.”
“Aye, a gift for sure,” I murmured as my sight fell on a child lying dead on the shore. The rotscale eels were wiggling onto the beach to feast. I turned my eyes away from the sight. “We shall have to keep tarring the interior. That is the last port large enough to host a shipwright. Let us all pray to the sea witches that the hull holds until we reach the capital.”
Perhaps sinking would be preferable to being a heady adornment for the gates of Castle Avolire. Better to die in the gullet of a shark than swing from the yardarm of a royal frigate, as my father enjoyed saying. I concurred wholeheartedly.
A journey that should have taken seven passes of the moon sisters took a fortnight.
With the hull in such delicate shape—a dozen or so boards holding against the sea with spit, tar, and rope fiber—I dared not rile the water too briskly to give us added speed. So the tripdragged on as my nerves grew more frayed. The closer we sailed to the port of Celear, the less faith I had in the king’s vow of a peaceful welcome. I paced the deck, drank more wine than a man should, and paid a dragon a copper every damn morning.
Surely this was not the life the sea witches had divined for me. Yet, here we were sailing through the straits of the Silvura, where it lapped against white, sun-warmed rocks and then merged from the channel into the southern waters.
The tension was thick as the bass chowder Pith had cooked up for last night’s meal.
“Captain, the missives from the castle requested we lower the blood flag,” Hyla reminded me for the tenth time as we limped closer and closer to port. Asdren and his boy were whispering to each other by one of the cockboat riggings. Plotting how to get off the ship if the Royal Navy fired upon us? If not, they should be, for I trusted the crown and those who served under it as far as I could lob a drunken sailor. “Several times.”
“I’m aware,” I said while the warm winds lifted my hair from my back. Sweat dotted my brow. We were not accustomed to such heat. I wouldn’t admit that most of the sweat was from the prospect of being attacked by a new regatta that could turn us into slivers. “They wished to bring a privateer into their dock, then a privateer they shall get. I will not lower the red flag. I’m not ashamed of my crew or this ship. Let them gawk and point and call us foul names.”
“Foul,” Prescott mumbled, coming up behind me, his mass blocking out the sun. I glanced over my shoulder at my guardian. His bald head was coated with purple unguent made from ground salvia and fish bladders. Pith claimed it kept the skin from burning, so she smeared it on his big, round head every morn. It smelled bad fresh from the tin, but after a few hours in the sun, the stench was ridiculous.
“Yes, foul,” I replied, returning my sight to the massive port. Hundreds of docks, dozens of ships resting at their berths. And one huge royal frigate easing out of the port on a direct intercept path. “Ah, so they’re sending a greeting party. Take in the topsails and bring her into the wind. Ease the sheets! Ready the gangways for the arrival of whoever the fuck they’ve sent out to greet us.”
“Probably the hangman,” Hyla muttered as she spun to bellow my orders a second time.
“Strong possibility,” I whispered, bracing myself for whatever this initial meeting might bring. The frigate was twice our length, crisp white sheets, planks still smelling of the sawyer, I wagered. Her name, Silverwake, was painted on her side in fine white and gold script. My ship’s name was nowhere to be seen. Made identifying her harder.
Of course, since we were sailing into the largest royal port known to elven kind, keeping her name a secret wasn’t exactly a concern now.
She flew the white and blue flags of Melowynn as well as the crest of the Ivory King. She was a beauty, no doubt, and while I could admire her lines and her brand new brass ship’s bell, I wouldn’t trade the Cloud’s Shame for her. Give me speed and handling or let me sink.
The ship eased closer, the crew who was clad in matching slops—standard issue clothes for non-officers—dark blue canvas breeches, a white checkered shirt, and a cap, scurried about barefoot, just like my crew, for bare feet afforded better grip on wet wooden floors.
“Drop anchor! Allow them to board. Do not pull any weapons!” I barked, moving around Prescott to stand beside the dwarf and the outrider. I was hoping they would not fill me full of arrows if I stood with their envoys. The sides of our ships bumped once or twice, the southern winds playful today,but soon the planks were in place. My sight went to two figures on the sparkling clean decks of the Silverwake. One, a woman in fine linen breeches, a yellow blouse worn under a soft white vest, and soft gray boots. Her thick chestnut hair artfully arranged into a regal knot, the brownish scars of the widow’s touch on her lovely face. So the queen herself had come out to greet us. Bold. But I had heard that of Queen Raewyn. The offspring of a famed sailing family, she had been working hard to rebuild the fleet. Seemed the blood of an adventurer ran through her veins. I respected that. I did not respect the dock fees that were going to triple or the increased number of vessels crawling the seas in hopes of capturing those of us who broke the crippling laws of the crown just to survive.
The man next to her was fine. Truly, perhaps the finest man I had laid eyes upon in many seasons. Older, which was a boon in my eyes, for I did prefer a lover who knew his way around a man’s body. I knew that the elf I was ogling was Le’ral Fylson, for who else but the grand advisor to the king would stand so comfortably at the queen’s side? He oozed self-confidence. And it was known he had once been the beloved of King Mirolar, so he was well familiar with manly love. Wide across the shoulder, lean of waist, with a peppering of silver in his dark brown hair, he smiled at me as if we were old friends as our boats rubbed against each other. Hickory-colored eyes moved over us as if cataloging all he saw to dissect at a later time. The winds ruffled his short hair as well as the soft green half cape he wore. Soft tan breeches hugged strong thighs, a thick belt with a thin scabbard tight about his hips. His shirt was darkest cinnamon, and his vest was detailed with fine gold embroidery.
