The Voyages of Trueblood Cay

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Do you know what that was?” he asked in a quiet, dangerous voice. His fiery topaz eyes turned Trueblood inside-out. His grip around Trueblood’s upper arm immutable.

  Trueblood opened his mouth and shut it, not understanding.

  “That was lazy,” True said. “And it was showing off. You didn’t finish the job properly. You let your emotions finish, you took an unnecessary risk and that’s when things go wrong. That’s how people get hurt or even killed at sea.”

  He let go his son and crossed his arms over his broad chest. Unable to bear that reproachful stare, Trueblood looked down at his feet, which were blurred by tears. His skin burned under the benign gaze of the crew members and shuddered beneath the weight of his father’s disappointment.

  A horrible moment passed.

  “Look at me, Pelippé.”

  Chin wobbling, throat tight, Trueblood looked up.

  “I’ve seen too many sailors achieve excellence on the open sea then grow careless once land is in sight. I and you don’t have the luxury of assumptions. We do not strut as the end of a task is near. And when the job is done well and completed properly, no strutting is required. Excellence needs no announcement. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Da.”

  True’s head tilted slightly. “Answer your commander.”

  “Aye, Kep,” Trueblood said.

  The next day, he climbed the main mast again. He remembered everything his father taught him and finished the job properly, staying on the rigging until the very last step onto the deck.

  “Well done,” Kepten True said. He hugged the boy tight to his side a moment, then let go and headed toward the gangplank. Trueblood followed, not strutting. The accomplishment didn’t laugh or crow this time. It sat dignified and pleased in his heart, knowing it was a far better thing he’d done today than yesterday.

  Once on the wharf, Trueblood slid his hand into his father’s. The strong, warm fingers folded around his and squeezed. The twinkling golden eyes smiled down at him and whispered, Excellent.

  Pelippé Trueblood did not remember many things from his childhood.

  When he was seven-almost-eight, his mother was killed and his brain simply decided to forget nearly everything and start over. When people told him stories of his tender years, he believed them, but the faith was disconnected and detached. These things surely happened, but he doubted his role in them. The doubt made him ask the same questions over and over.

  Ikharus-Lippé True was a patient father, and treated every repeated inquiry as if it were the first.

  Trueblood asked, “Who killed my mother?”

  He knew the historical answer, the account put into books and taught in lessons. The radical Cult of the Bull had secretly organized into an army and shocked Nyland with a surprise attack on Alondra. They came up through the sewers, leaving a sunpowder trail in their wake that blew the ancient city apart. The minotaurs looted, sacked, raped and pillaged their way to the palace, their red eyes on the prize of Alondra’s Nye vault. The lock of the vault’s main door had one and only one key. It hung at the belt of Noë Treeblood and the minotaurs killed her to get it.

  The Vicreĝo of Arbaro died at the hands of the minotaurs, the history books read. But Kepten True understood his son wanted a name. Who had struck the death blow?

  “I couldn’t tell you exactly who,” True said. “I wasn’t in the palace that day.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Here on the ship. We were anchored beyond the harbor. You know Alondra’s port wasn’t deep enough for us.”

  Few port cities in the world could accommodate the Cay’s vast hull. Everywhere else, including Alondra, she had to anchor at sea and the crew rowed in by longboat.

  Trueblood often imagined his childhood was a ship anchored far beyond his conscious memory, and his father’s stories the dinghies that rowed in the information he wanted.

  He asked, “Where did they find me that day?”

  “In your mother’s bedroom,” Kepten True said. “Do you remember at all?”

  “No.”

  Whenever he tried rowing himself out to that distant, anchored ship, he found it permeated with the acrid scent of smoke, the coppery stench of blood, and something even worse. Something foul and violent, something done to his mother, something terrible and not to be remembered.

  “They found you curled up next to her,” True said. “You had a piece of her torn skirt in your hands.”

  This was a detail Trueblood had full faith in. The piece of his mother’s skirt was still in his possession, a remnant of green velvet with an embroidered tree dripping gold and red leaves. The Cay’s sail makers sponged away the bloodstains and lovingly tacked the torn fabric to a piece of soft wool, binding the edges with strong, expert stitches. Trueblood clutched it for the better part of a year, dragging it around the ship until the sail makers had to replace the wool backing. Gradually he let go the need, or the need let go of him. Now he kept it smoothed on top of his pillow during the day, then folded it carefully and put it under the pillow when he went to sleep.

  Sometimes, when sleep eluded him, his hand slid beneath to caress the softness and finger the beaded leaves, but that wasn’t anything anyone needed to know.

  “What happened after they found me?” he asked his father.

  “Sevri il-Kheir scooped you up and flew you out to the Cay.” Kepten True’s voice always tightened at this part of the story, the words making themselves tiny so as to emerge with as little pain as possible. “He brought you back to me.”

  Trueblood wished he remembered this. Sevri il-Kheir was the Horselord, king of the kheirons. Trueblood sketched picture after picture of the heroic rescue in his notebook, drawing himself wrapped in green and clutched in il-Kheir’s human arms. He took great pains with every feather of the Horselord’s spectacular wingspan. He held the tip of his tongue tight in his teeth as he struggled with the equine body, trying to get the legs just right. Abrakam often helped him by posing, holding a leg or hoof still for Trueblood’s anxious pencil.

  From the Most Private Journal of Pelippé Trueblood

  Abrakam is someone I love. He has sailed with my father for many years and they are good friends. Abrakam teaches me all the things Da can’t, like music and archery and languages and stars. His cabin has lots of books with pictures, which are the books I like best. He is wise and good with problems. If I am worried and Da is busy, I talk to Abrakam and I feel better.

  Abrakam is the smartest person I know, even though he isn’t exactly a person. He is a centaur. That means he is one half of a horse and one half of a human. The bottom part of him is horse, which is good. He says it wouldn’t be as nice a life if he were a horse head on two legs.

  “Do kheirons live forever?” Trueblood asked. After stories about himself, he liked tales of horsefolk best, especially ones about the kheirons.

  “Not forever,” Abrakam said. “But still much longer than humans and they age much slower.”

  “How old is the Horselord?”

  Abrakam had to close his eyes to think. “I believe Sevri il-Kheir is one hundred and forty-two. But he doesn’t look much older than your father.”

  “Are he and Da friends?”

  The centaur took a long time to answer. “It’s difficult to be il-Kheir’s friend,” he finally said. “The Horselord is a complicated creature.”

  “But he saved me,” Trueblood said. “When my mother died and the palace was on fire, il-Kheir brought me back to Da. He must have cared about him to do that.”

  “Yes. But also, once upon a time, il-Kheir lost something precious and your father brought it back to him.”

  “So they are friends,” the boy said, crossing his arms in the way he did when he decided something was settled.

  The centaur laughed and rumpled Trueblood’s head. “Well-argued, lad.”

 
“Can I look at the book?”

  “Certainly.”

  Abrakam had a beautiful book about horsefolk in his cabin. It had more pictures than words, which meant Trueblood only had to turn pages and ask questions, and Abrakam made it come alive.

  “See how the kheiron’s hooves are silver?” he said. “It comes from the stars and it’s what empowers their wings.”

  The kheiron in the illustration had a blue-black horse body and a human torso packed with muscle. Trueblood couldn’t stop seeing him.

  Abrakam turned the page. “When a kheiron shifts into humos, or human form, those silver hooves become rings. See his hands?”

  “He only has nine fingers,” Trueblood said, letting go the book to stretch his ten digits long.

  “Because each ring symbolizes the nine branches of Nydirsil.”

  Trueblood thought about his best friends, Raj and Lejo. They were twins and they both had six fingers on one hand. It seemed significant to Trueblood. His friends having eleven fingers and kheirons having nine ought to mean something. But no matter how he overlapped the manual peculiarities and did the math, he never got a satisfying answer.

  “What if a kheiron loses a ring?” he asked.

  “Ah. That’s a serious matter. A kheiron can’t fly unless he has all his silver with him.”

  Trueblood’s brows knitted. “So if you took one of his rings you could capture him?”

  “Well, no, not capture him. He just wouldn’t be able to fly. He could still turn his lower body into a horse and run you down, though.”

  “Oh.”

  “Whether on four legs or two, a kheiron is a formidable warrior, Troubled. They’re the best archers and swordsmen in the world. Stealing or taking one of their rings would be next to impossible. If you managed it, you’d be sorry.”

  Trueblood chewed on his bottom lip. “What if a kheiron gave you his ring?”

  Abrakam lifted his head and blinked at the boy. “Well, that would…” His mouth curved in an upside-down smile and his head tilted to one side. “That would be a great honor indeed. It would mean he trusted you.” The tilted head nodded now. “Or even loved you.”

  Trueblood turned a page. “If the silver controls the wings, what controls the horse part? I mean, can a kheiron get stuck as a full man and not be able to change back?”

  “The power to shift lies in the moonstone. Every kheiron is born with one and wears it somewhere on his body. See, this one has it hanging around his neck. And this one has it on his wrist.”

  “And if you take it away or he loses it, he’ll be stuck?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Stuck as a horse or stuck as a man?”

  “As a man.”

  Trueblood’s fingertip traced the feathers of the kheiron’s stretched wings. “If a kheiron lost a ring and lost his moonstone, he’d really be in the shit.”

  His glance up at the centaur was naughty, but no frown or raised eyebrow looked back at him. “Aye, he would,” Abrakam said, staring off into some immeasurable distance or memory, his head faintly nodding again. “Your father can tell you a story about it.”

  “He can?”

  “Ask him one day. Say, ‘Da, tell me the tale called The Kepten and the Kheiron.’”

  It’s always best to hear a story from the ones who were there. So come with me, legantos. Let’s sail back twelve years in time, when a slightly younger Kepten True navigates the Cay on her last voyage of winter. He’s impatient to get home to Alondra, for he’s soon to be married and has a child on the way.

  Listen to learn it. Learn it to tell it. Tell it to teach it.

  Twelve years earlier

  A man can crave adventure and change yet still cling to his little rituals. After story time, Abrakam Centauros always uncorked a bottle of wine and poured out two glasses for the kepten and himself. Other crew stuck to ale, cider or rum, but Ikharus-Lippé True favored a thick port Abrakam called “Altynian plonk.”

  “Look at the shoulders on that,” True said, swirling the goblet.

  He laughed when Abrakam made a sour face. The centaur hated the wine but he loved the kepten, and the hour they spent alone after stories was True’s favorite time of day.

  They hadn’t taken more than a few sips when they heard voices raised outside the aftercastle doors and a sailor burst into the sitting room. “Kep, a falcon just came in.”

  “At this hour?” True said.

  “It’s a caracaros.”

  The kepten unfolded his body from the chair, both wary and curious. Caracaros were only found in Altynai, a land closed tighter than a fist.

  “Did you invite the headman to your wedding?” Abrakam asked.

  “Of course,” True said. “And he declined with regret.”

  “Of course.”

  “Maybe he’s sending a gift.”

  A glance between the two friends, followed by laughter. Altyns did not give gifts of any kind.

  The quartermaster came in, his burly forearm covered with a leather glove. On it perched a light brown falcon with a head of shimmering purple feathers and an extremely haughty expression. She snapped at the quartermaster when he tried to untie the red leather pouch on her leg, then held the claw out to Kepten True, dainty and patient.

  “You’re out late tonight, my beauty,” True said, his heart soft with love for these majestic couriers.

  Abrakam’s expression was harder. “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” he said. The bird glared at him with yellow eyes that replied, Don’t shoot the messenger.

  The kepten unfurled the scrap of paper, took a cursory glance and handed it to Abrakam. After a lifetime at sea, Ikharus-Lippé True spoke three tongues fluently and could trade in a half-dozen others, but the pictographic language of Altynai was beyond him.

  “Come quickly,” the centaur said slowly, brow furrowed in concentration. “We found something.”

  True blinked, waiting for more.

  Abrakam looked up. “That’s all it says.”

  “Are you sure?”

  They’d been friends too long for Abrakam to take offense. “Come quickly, we found something.”

  Kepten True pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d already squeezed the Cay past Skhylla and Kharbidis into the angry, chopped waters of The Gullet. They were moving at an excellent clip along the coast of Hokosia and True didn’t relish turning around and letting the bay vomit him back out again. He was in a bit of a hurry. He had a wedding to get to—his own. After months of disciplining the howling needs of his body, he was just starting to allow thoughts of his bride to loiter around the edges of his daily business. To thumb through memories of Noë’s sound and scent and taste, imagine her in his bed and want her to distraction.

  “Godsdammit it all.” He stomped into his study, muttering his choicest words at the Altyns, who aggressively kept the world at a distance, or sent out passive messages that couldn’t be ignored.

  “We found something,” he said. “I suppose it would kill them to say what.”

  “Then again, it might,” Abrakam said.

  Their eyes met. Unspoken words shimmered between them. The Altyns were obscenely wealthy from gold and gemstones they mined from the mountains. The range of impossible peaks separating their land from the desert was pockmarked with caverns and caves. What the Altyns discovered in those caves would’ve been the stuff of pure legend, if they hadn’t allowed just enough of it to make its way across the world. They achieved the perfect balance of sensational rumor and documented credibility. Three casual words from the tribes—we found something—could make even the most cynical of men think of one, and only one thing: Nye.

  Which was enough to make Ikharus-Lippé True turn his ship around.

  On the open seas, the mariner trusted the wheel to a half-dozen of his best men. But he alone brought the Cay toward a coastline and aw
ay again, which was when things had the most potential to go wrong. If they did, the responsibility was his.

  It was his father’s way.

  The True Way.

  Sailors referred to the channel between Altynai and Hokosia as The Teeth, with good reason. Many a ship had been chewed up and spit out by her treacherous waters. Within the jagged rock fangs of Altynai’s coast was a single, accessible inlet. One sea chart for this harbor existed in the entire world and it was owned by Kepten True. The Cay had an exclusive invitation to Altynai. Everyone else had to sneak in.

  “The Teeth are aching this morning,” Rafil said.

  “No shit,” True said, white-knuckled at the helm. His nerves were shredded but he kept his face composed and his commands smooth as he wrestled the ship into the inlet. He and Rafil took one longboat to shore with a second following. They might need it for whatever something the tribes found.

  His discomfort increased when he saw a group of tribesmen waiting for him on the shore. At their feet was a makeshift litter, two long poles with a canvas sling. Whatever they carried on it, it wasn’t Nye.

  This can’t end well, he thought. In all his voyages to Altynai, the tribesmen never met his ship. He always made his way up the mountain trail to them.

  “Zornin, is that you?” he called through the ring of his hands.

  “It’s I,” Zornin yelled back. “You and your man come with us. Send the other boat back, you’ll need your crew. And rope.”

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Looks like they have a body,” Rafil said.

  “Hurry, Ikharus,” Zornin bellowed.

  True hopped over the side and splashed to shore. Two Altyns went out to help Rafil beach the longboat.