by E. S. Bell
He muttered a word of thanks and sat with Selena and Ilior. The dragonman’s skin was its usual gray color as opposed to the sickly pale white it had been these last days of the voyage. He scrutinized Selena from under heavy, scaled brow ridges, then nodded at Sebastian, curtly, in approval. His crew was gathered together at a nearby table and greeted Selena with their silent smiles and raised mugs.
“Did you find anything of use?” Ilior asked. The dragonman had to raise his voice above the tumult.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “There was one thing…”
“What is it?”
Selena smiled and patted his hand. “Nothing. Today was a good day.”
Sebastian hid his scowl in the warm, wet cloths Hilka had brought for them to wipe the windpaint from their faces and wondered at his foul mood. Eat and then drink yourself stupid, he told himself, but stop wasting your thoughts and energies on Selena. She is nothing to you but a pile of gold and a channel to freedom. Your last job…
After their faces were clear of paint, Hilka stuffed them to brimming with plate after plate of food: boiled lobster and steamed crab on beds of greens and drizzled with a sweet pink sauce. Fish stews and whale kabobs, scallops, clams and eel, and a lobscouse stew that Sebastian’s crew devoured bowl by bowl. Sebastian saw Whistle, his chin running with brown juice, grinning at Selena and waving at her with a biscuit in his hand.
Sebastian ate everything that was set before him. He hadn’t realized how hungry he’d been, and after his plate was clean and a mug of gold mead washed it all down, his stormy mood abated. Boris descended upon Selena now and then to make sure his promise that she want for nothing was kept. Hilka hovered as well, and her visits always included some reason to touch Sebastian. Despite a having a small army of barmaids and serving boys, she always cleared away mugs and plates on their table herself, necessitating that she bend over so that Sebastian had a clear view of her breasts that strained at her white blouse.
“She is very…attentive, isn’t she?” Selena said, biting back a smile.
“Like a pox,” Sebastian agreed.
Selena laughed but then shook her head. “I shouldn’t laugh. She’s been nothing but gracious to me and I like her.”
“I’ll tell her that,” Sebastian said. “Maybe next time she passes ‘round she’ll rest her rack on your shoulder.”
This made Selena laugh again. Her sky blue eyes seemed even more striking when she smiled. Sebastian quaffed the rest of his mead and hailed a barmaid—not Hilka—for another.
Soon after, Sebastian realized that Niven was turned away, intent in conversation with a young man at the next table, and that Ilior was talking with several locals about the Zak’reth war. He and Selena were alone, or as alone as was possible in a noisy, crowded room. Dozens of conversations; loud, booming laughter; a bard singing and strumming a lute…the tavern was full of sound, but the silence between them grew thick.
“Your men are a good, loyal crew. How long have they been with you?” Selena piped up, and he guessed she had felt the silence as well.
Sebastian hesitated over how much to tell her. He’d had jobs in the past where he’d had to befriend the mark, but never had he taken one aboard his ship. That was akin to inviting her into his life and he didn’t like it.
“I’ve had other crewmen come and go but these have been with me pretty steady. Grunt the longest,” Sebastian replied. “We picked up Cur about four years ago and it’s taken about that long to calm him down.” He gestured to the man of middle years and unkempt beard who was drinking rum as if it were water. “I almost thought he was too much of a madman, but then I found Whistle on a tiny little shit-hole on Isle Sabacor. Cur was protective of the boy, and still is. Whistle seems to have straightened him out.”
“He’s very sweet,” Selena said. “Whistle, I mean.”
“He likes you. They all do, but him especially,” Sebastian said. “He’s spent most of his shore-leave allowance on a gift for you. Try not to laugh when you get it.”
Selena looked down at her mug of cider. “I would never do that.”
“Sorry. I should have known better. Of course, you wouldn’t laugh at him.” He took a long pull from his own mug and saw her watching him. “What?”
She crossed her arms. “I’m trying to decide if you meant to insult me or to pay me a compliment.”
“Neither. Just making an observation.”
“You think being kind is a weakness?” she asked.
“No. I think making yourself weak in order to be kind is foolish.”
Selena smiled tightly. “It takes more strength and will to be kind than it does to indulge in anger or hate.”
Sebastian snorted. “Is that what they teach you in your pretty Temple? Try taking that out in to the world, onto the seas full of cutthroat bastards and see how far the strength of your kindness gets you.”
“I take that out into the world every day, Captain,” Selena said. “That is my duty as an Aluren. To wade into seas full of ‘cutthroat bastards’ and staunch the blood of their violence with healing.”
“That’s all very well and good, but sometimes you have no choice but to spill blood yourself. Sometimes, it’s either you or them, so what do you do then? You don’t wear that sword for nothing.”
“And I use it when I have to. As I did on Uago, where we met.”
“Where you hacked off a pirate’s arm and then turned around and healed him?”
“I had a chance to take a bad situation and make it better. I was weakened in body for a time, but that passed. What doesn’t pass is the memory of violence and bloodshed wrought at my hand. The fewer of those I carry, the better.”
You don’t carry them, Paladin, he thought, you bury them.
Sebastian glanced over to where Whistle sat with the rest of the crew. The boy grinned his crooked-tooth grin at them both.
“People laugh at him,” he muttered. “I’ve heard them, on shore-leave or at the market on other isles. They think he’s slow or stupid. He’s not. He’s a good kid trying to survive in this bloody shit-stinking world without a voice. And he does it with a loopy grin on his face.”
“Ah, so Cur is not the only one who is protective of him,” Selena said with a smile.
He shrugged. “I’m the captain. He’s part of my crew. It’s my job to look out for him if I want to keep my ship sailing the way it ought. Doesn’t matter anyway. People will be cruel to him no matter what I do or don’t do. That’s just Lunos for you.”
“There is much that is ugly and cruel in this world,” Selena agreed, “but there is much that is beautiful too. Surely you’ve seen beauty in your voyages?”
My atoll, he thought. And you. The thought slipped into his mind like a cat through an open door.
Selena was waiting for a reply. “No, not much,” Sebastian said.
She glanced about the room, gesturing to the people in it. “For every cutthroat pirate there are dozens—hundreds— of good people who would treat Whistle with kindness were they to meet him. It’s only the bad who draw the attention, or demand it. It is what the Bazira rely on to swell their ranks and why the Aluren struggle to fill theirs.”
“What do the Bazira rely on?” Sebastian asked, his voice low.
“The impression that the bad and ugly outnumber that which is good and honest, and that it’s simply easier to succumb,” Selena said. “Hopelessness. It is the Bazira’s greatest weapon.”
“Is that why you became a Paladin? To bring hope to people?”
“Yes,” she said, answering his sarcasm head-on. “It has been my sincerest endeavor since childhood, when the Two-Faced God Heard my desire to ease pain and suffering.” She gestured to the other side of the room. “Look at Boris. His face is scarred and some might think him ugly. But he is alive and he can still provide for his family. Is that not a beautiful gift the god has given me?”
Sebastian set down his mug with a clank. “How you can sit here, wearing some cold ugly hole in your ch
est, and still feel like you are blessed, is a bloody mystery.”
He thought Selena might grow angry or upset at his words but she sighed.
“I have wrestled with that for long years,” she said. “I still do but—”
“Wrestled with it?” Sebastian asked, incredulous. “Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want to…I don’t know—”
“Make others suffer as I have?” she finished. “In the beginning, when the wound was new, I was…unwell. I did things that would shock you, I’m sure, to imagine me doing. Not murder. No, most of the damage I did was to myself.” Her eyes grew cloudy with memories and then she threw them off. “Healing and Ilior. Those things saved me.”
“You seem too calm. I wouldn’t be.”
“I have to be. The wound is terrible. More terrible than I can describe or that you can imagine. Your worst idea of it will not come close to meeting its reality.” She set her mug down. “I can’t afford to be angry, Julian. Or weep when it strikes me to. Or draw my blade when I feel I’ve suffered enough…” She took a shaking breath and he watched her hands tremble before she hugged herself to still them. “If I do any of those things, I am lost. I will fly into a rage from which there is no end, or weep to rival the oceans, or simply succumb.” She shook her head. “No, there is a better end and I must find it.”
I have wept. I have killed enough to drown in the blood, and still my rage knows no end. Sebastian’s thoughts tried to coil backwards, to that day long ago, during the war. The day he found his father and Mina…He pushed the memories away—buried them— before they could see the light of day.
The Paladin had cast her gaze to the fire. “So here I am, on a quest of Skye’s devising to murder two people I have never met. Because of hope. I am loath to do it, no matter they are Bazira. But there’s no other way and I can’t…I can’t wear the wound much longer.”
Sebastian held up his hands. “So in the end, it’s either them or you. Just like I said. Right?”
“I’ll do my best, when the time comes,” she said. “What else can I do?”
Sebastian thought he could hear Mina laughing at him from whatever corner of his mind she haunted. His mead’s sweetness had been pleasing before. It was cloying now, and he set it down. The bard played a softer melody on his lute and sang a song of a sailor’s tragic love for a mermaid who could never be his.
“Don’t listen to me,” Sebastian muttered. “It’s none of my business.”
“My business concerning the Bazira is your business,” Selena said, “since you agreed to sail me to Isle Saliz.” When he couldn’t find a reply, she shifted in her chair and said lightly, “What about you, Captain Tergus? What will you do when your commission is finished? Do you have a family somewhere?”
“I have no family,” he heard himself say. “I lost them in the war.” He had never said those words aloud, he realized. Not in ten years. Memories swam up at him again and were dispelled with a jolt when he felt Selena’s hand on his.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she told him in a low voice. She gave his hand a squeeze and then withdrew. “I have made you upset. That was not my intention.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I know that pain. I lost mine too—”
Boris appeared and pulled Selena from her seat before she could say more. The bard had begun a jig and tables had been cleared aside to make room for dancing.
I lost mine too.
Sebastian felt a strange calm settle over him like a warm cloak. All the mead he had drunk made him pleasantly heavy; he sat back in his chair and watched the merriment as other couples took up the jig. Boris led Selena in the dance with surprising agility for one in his advanced state of inebriation, and then other men took turns swinging her about, making her laugh, making her forget her wound. Sebastian found the memory of his atoll rising up from the golden depths of his mug.
Hilka buzzed in his ear, tried to pull him into the jig, but he shooed her away and just watched as Whistle, his face red to his ears, tapped Selena’s shoulder to ask for a dance. The smile that spread over the boy’s face when she agreed made Sebastian’s heart ache with an unfamiliar pain.
The bard’s jig ended and the patrons applauded and cheered, while the dancers resumed their seats. Selena returned to her seat beside Sebastian, breathless and laughing, her eyes sparkling.
She wiped her hand over her dry brow. “Too bad. I was hoping to sweat a bit. I haven’t sweat in ten years.”
Sebastian had no idea what possessed him to do what he did next. The strange contentment, perhaps. Or more likely the mead. Someone, Hilka he was sure, kept spiriting away his empty mugs and replacing them with full.
He dipped his fingers in the mug then gently touched them to Selena’s temple. She gasped a little—a sound he shouldn’t have been able to hear under the noise of the commonroom, but he did. Her eyes—atoll blue and just as clear—were locked on his. Her skin was soft under his touch and warm, even if she couldn’t feel it.
Two small drops of mead ran in small rivulets down her temple.
“See? You are sweating,” Sebastian said, his smile and his soft tone seeming to come from far away. From someone else. Not him. Not the assassin. But for one moment, time stood still and nothing moved but those two drops that trailed down the smooth curve of Selena’s cheek, and Sebastian wasn’t Bloody Bastian on a mission to end a life, but a man sitting with a beautiful woman and making her feel good and safe.
“Julian…” Selena said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
He withdrew his kerchief from the inside pocket of his long black coat and offered it to her.
“I think I see a drop or two.”
Selena took it wordlessly, and dabbed her skin.
“You are kind, Julian. Kinder than I think even you realize.”
Kind. The word had never been attributed to him. Ever. The spell—the soft quiet—between them cracked but didn’t break.
“I’m not…”
Selena pressed the kerchief into his hands and held them for a moment. “Thank you.”
The silence that fell between them then was not uncomfortable, and they listened to the bard strum his lute and sing and tell stories of Ages past. There was more dancing but this time Selena refused, remaining instead beside Sebastian. He waved off all proposals that came his way as well and the hour grew late.
Finally, the bard sang a bawdy drinking shanty that all the locals knew. The song ended in a great thumping of mugs on tables and sloshed drink. He stood up and swept the jaunty little cap he wore off his head in a bow. He straightened with a grave expression on his face and the room grew quiet.
“I’ve been singing at the White Sail every summer for three years and I know well the Nanokari custom of paying respect to both aspects of the Two-Faced God. You, my friends, face numerous dangers in this harsh climate, and so no good luck should ever be taken for granted. Therefore, the time has come to honor the Shadow face in song or rhyme, to preserve and honor your traditions, to ensure that the god continues to favor you and bring you good fortune.”
Selena leaned over the table. “What does he mean?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Maybe the Bazira witch is here after all and she’ll come prancing out to dance for us.”
Selena smothered her laugh. The patrons were solemn; all eyes were on the bard.
“The moon is full; the Shining face smiles upon you—” he indicated Selena, who waved his attentions away—”so I feel we need one shanty to acknowledge the Shadow face. What say you, Nanokar? Shall that suffice?”
The crowd raised their mugs and the men bellowed their assent with an “Ayah!”
The bard clapped his hands together. “Then what shall it be? Something good and dark, as it’s to be our lone homage.”
The patrons began calling out the names of sad ballads, or tales of ships lost at sea, or of ghost ships crewed by the damned. The bard scoffed at them all until some bearded bear of a man who lingered close to the ale sp
igots, called out, “Oi! Sing the Ballad o’ Bloody Bastian!”
The crowd cheered and the bard wagged his finger. “Aye, now that’s the right proper stuff. The Ballad of Bloody Bastian it is.” He returned to his stool and settled his lute across his lap, tuning and fiddling with the strings.
Selena leaned close. “Who is Bloody Bastian?”
Sebastian didn’t trust his voice to speak. He didn’t think he could if he tried; he felt like those people in trapped in the dragon ice—frozen in place while the world spun without him.
A man at the next table leaned in. “Bloody Bastian is Sebastian Vaas,” he told Selena. “The Black Star, some call him. An assassin. One o’ the worst, most depraved assassins Lunos has e’er seen.”
Sebastian watched Selena’s reaction through lowered lids. She pursed her lips. “I’ve never heard of him. When did he live? During the Age of Sedition? Those were dark times.”
“No, he lives still,” Niven spoke up from behind them. “We lived in fear of him during my time on the Eastern Edge. He’s been terrorizing those islands the last ten years.”
Six years. Not ten, Sebastian thought, and reached for his mug. The movement shattered him from the strange paralysis and panic coursed through his veins instead of blood. He downed the entire mug, trying to drown his thoughts, but they scampered around his head like wild hares catching the scent of danger on the wind. He took inventory of his weapons, regretting he’d left his sword belt in his room; he eyed the front door, judging the distance should he need to run; he thought of how easy the inn—nay, the entire township—would burn with all the oil that was stowed here…
Bloody gods, calm yourself, man! Just get up and walk away.
Then the song began. The common room had grown uncommonly still. To leave now would invite unwanted attention. He sat, pinned to his chair by the words the bard sang, feeling each syllable like a dagger in his gut.
It had been a long time since he’d heard his song.
A shade in the night
Silent and sleek
To still your true heart as it beats