A Respite From Storms

by Robert J. Crane

  But the man could not answer them, falling once more into unconsciousness.

  Scourgey was peculiar with the armored man. She, too, watched, her head bowed.

  Once, she pawed at his hand, like a dog might its sleeping master.

  “She knows you’re worried about him,” Alixa murmured.

  The night’s sleep was poor. But there were no storms, no violent waves crashing against the Lady Vizola, so Jasen’s slumber was only interrupted by the hardness of the floor, and his constant checking on the armored man’s status.

  Sometime in the early morning, the man’s teeth started chattering again.

  Jasen told Kuura so when he arrived in the morning to see to them. He bit off something that might’ve been a curse in his native language and disappeared without a word. When he came back a few minutes later, it was with Medleigh.

  They lumbered him back out of the room, to the washroom where he’d been bathed yesterday. A metal tub sat in a groove in the floor, the water in it cool and dirty. Medleigh hollered for someone, who came to clear it, and then they dumped the armored man inside.

  Jasen hovered by the door. He and Alixa had followed, Scourgey in tow.

  “Make yourselves useful if you’re going to loiter,” said Kuura gruffly.

  Alixa asked, “By doing what?”

  Another of those plosive sounds that Jasen took to be a curse, or at the very least something not particularly polite. “Bring pails of water.” And off he went, pushing past them without an instruction to follow.

  Hadn’t thawed today then either.

  The water was heated via a metal furnace, by which pails of water stood. The furnace was almost utterly black. It belched smoke out toward the ceiling, where a very small vent had been cut. The heat seemed to be dissipated enough by the vent so as to prevent the Lady Vizola from catching fire, but if an appreciable amount of smoke was permitted clear, Jasen couldn’t see it: much of the ceiling above the furnace was stained with soot.

  The round trip, going back and forth, reminded Jasen of the last time he’d run a loop with buckets of water—trying to save his home from going up in smoke.

  He tried not to think of it—though it was hard to ignore one thought:

  Even if he had been able to save it, all of the effort would’ve been for naught anyway.

  But then, would that have been better for Adem, dying in a place where his loved ones had lived with him? Surely it would have, if his father could have chosen. Not the Weltan home, if he were still there … or some unoccupied, unused new building on the outskirts of Terreas, which did not feel or smell like home.

  Stop it, he told himself. You said you were going to stop thinking of it, not keep on.

  When the bath was full to the armored man’s midriff—he’d been stripped by then, and Alixa refused to step any closer than just inside the doorway for fear she might “see anything improper”—Kuura and Medleigh deemed it to be enough. The armored man was lolled back by then. His skin, though it appeared naturally swarthy, was pale, still covered in a layer of gooseflesh.

  “Will this help him?” Jasen asked.

  “Might,” said Kuura.

  “It didn’t last time.”

  Kuura shrugged. “Medleigh knows what he’s doing.”

  Jasen wasn’t entirely convinced, but stifled his questions. Loony Kuura was hard to deal with at times, but he would take that over gruff Kuura any day.

  Medleigh kept an eye on the armored man for all of two minutes. Then he shuffled off to busy himself elsewhere. Kuura waited maybe thirty seconds longer, watching with his arms folded and a stern look on his face. Then he announced, “I’m off. Find me if there’s a change.”

  He paused at the door before exiting, scowling at Scourgey. She had perched herself alongside the tub. Resting her muzzle upon her forearms, she looked at the armored man longingly.

  “Stupid thing,” he muttered, then went.

  Alixa harrumphed.

  “Don’t follow,” Jasen warned. “Please, no arguments.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” She stuck out her bottom lip.

  Jasen and Alixa watched—or, rather, Jasen watched. She grew restless as the minutes ticked by.

  But then, gradually, so did the armored man. At first it was a few twitches here and there. At some point, though, Jasen was aware that he was definitely moving more, a lot more than he had been—and color was gradually coming back to his face.

  His heart began to race.

  “He’s waking up,” he said breathlessly.

  Alixa frowned. “I don’t think … okay, Jasen.”

  He waited, five minutes becoming ten, becoming fifteen. The armored man was moving maybe once or twice a minute now. He’d slumped sideways after one particularly violent jerk, and now his face was twitching too, the way a cat’s did when something disturbed its whiskers or it caught a particularly interesting scent.

  “He’s definitely waking up,” said Jasen.

  Alixa couldn’t deny it this time. “Should I go get Kuura?”

  Jasen was about to answer—though if he meant to say yes or no, he did not know—when the armored man’s eyelids shot open.

  He stared, face a mask of confusion. Blinked, blearily—

  Then his pupils moved, drifting as if they had not been working until this moment. They found Jasen, Alixa.

  Jasen’s heart threatened to pound a hole right through his chest.

  The armored man’s mouth fell open. It worked, up and down, like he was finding words, or perhaps simply testing that the muscles controlling it still worked.

  “You’re awake,” Jasen whispered.

  “Who …” the man began. His vocal cords weren’t entirely up to the task though, and so his voice had a stretched sound to it, like worn leather. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Jasen,” he answered. “And this is Alixa.”

  She raised a hand very slightly.

  The armored man frowned, shook his head. “Where—are you from?”

  “Luukessia.”

  His frown deepened. He stared off into the distance, past the walls of the ship. His forehead was lined, his expression twisted, as if he were trying to recall something from the darkest recesses of his mind.

  He opened his mouth for a new question—

  And then he saw Scourgey, propped by the side of the metal tub.

  “MONSTER!” he roared, standing up in a rush.

  Water flew—

  Scourgey whined at the spray that landed over her, but otherwise did not move. Alixa gasped and threw up her hands in front of her eyes, her modesty offended.

  “GET IT OUT OF HERE!”

  His vocal cords were working perfectly now.

  Jasen stepped forward, arm out. “What’s—”

  “BEAST—BY MY SIDE—!”

  The armored man stepped backward. He had forgotten he was in a tub, though—or perhaps was unaware of it completely—for he tripped over the rim. Staggering backward, he fell heavily onto his feet, barely keeping his footing. His arms wheeled around to help retain balance.

  “WHERE IS MY LANCE?” he demanded. His head turned frantically in all directions, searching the small washroom. Yet he was also determined to keep Scourgey in line of sight; he snapped back and forth, staring at her with wild eyes.

  “She’s not—” Jasen began.

  “VIOLENT BEASTS! IN THIS—THIS PLACE I AM IN, AND—” He hit the rear wall. Panicked look at it, then more desperate searching. “I WANT MY LANCE! WHAT’VE YOU DONE WITH IT?”

  “Me?” Jasen asked. “I haven’t done anything!” He took a step forward. “If you just calm—”

  “STAY AWAY FROM THAT MONSTER!” the armored man roared, jabbing a finger at Scourgey—who still sat with her front legs resting upon the edge of the tub, regarding the shouting man with blank indifference.

  From behind her improvised shield, Alixa shouted back, “Scourgey is not a monster!”

  At the same moment, Kuura and Medleigh burst in.

/>   “Just what is this—” Kuura began—

  His gaze met the armored man’s.

  “CAPTORS! WHAT’VE YOU DONE WITH MY LANCE?”

  “Why didn’t you find me to tell me he’s awake?” Kuura shouted.

  “He just woke up a moment ago!” Jasen answered.

  Medleigh approached the armored man—

  He thrust hands out, fingers clawed into curls. “STAY BACK! FRIENDS WITH A SCOURGE—WELL, IF I’VE NO LANCE, I’LL FIGHT YOU MYSELF!”

  Medleigh understood none of this. Only the gesture meant anything to him. Rather than pay it full heed, though, he held up his own hands, as if surrendering, and came nearer—

  “BACK!”

  Closer—

  The crazed look on the armored man’s face became only more wild. “SO BE IT!” he roared—and stepped forward, and punched Medleigh hard in the mouth.

  Kuura surged in, barking off something in his native tongue.

  The armored man wheeled about to hit him, too—

  Kuura ducked the swipe, then latched onto his shoulders.

  He shouted an instruction to Medleigh, who came in from the other side.

  “UNHAND ME!” His voice was teetering on the edge of a scream now. He clawed, desperately—and still shot looks at Scourgey as if she might launch at him and tear his throat out, though she hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d woken. “I SAID UNHAND—NO, KEEP ME AWAY FROM THAT MONSTER! GET—OFF! WHERE—IS—MY—LANCE?”

  Jasen watched the struggle from the door in horrified fascination.

  The man was eventually subdued. Kuura and Medleigh tried to force him back into the tub. But with Scourgey there, he would not go.

  “Order your pet away,” Kuura told Alixa.

  Jasen expected a sardonic, “Please,” in reply. But Alixa came to Scourgey, still shielding her eyes—

  “Careful!”

  —and placed a hand just above her shoulder. “Come on. Let him be.”

  Scourgey lowered herself from the tub and let herself be led back to the wall by the door. There, she sat behind Alixa’s legs. Her mouth hung open. Her tongue lapped at the air.

  “There we are,” said Kuura. “Now get back in this bath, would you? Medleigh says you’ve hypothermia. The warmth will do you good.”

  “Hypothermia,” the armored man repeated. He allowed himself to be walked into the tub again, and then sat.

  When the soft splosh announced he had sat down again, Alixa dropped her hand. “Finally.” The man and Scourgey were at an impasse. She stared at him, and he stared back at her. Scourgey, at least, seemed relaxed about it. He was all coiled tension, ready to bounce into action like a spring.

  It was impressive, Jasen thought, considering he’d been unconscious barely five minutes ago.

  “Why’d you let that—that thing upon your ship?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “She’s safe,” said Alixa before Kuura could answer.

  “They’re violent—”

  “She’s not.”

  “—all of them.”

  “She’s not,” said Alixa.

  The armored man shook his head. “A scourge, here. They bring death.”

  “Stink of it too,” Kuura muttered.

  “She saved us,” said Alixa, “more than once.” She patted Scourgey’s head. The scourge didn’t move; just panted, watching the armored man. “The rest of them might be violent, but this one is different.”

  “All scourge are the same! Murdering, corpse-defiling—”

  “Excellent,” Alixa grumbled. “A male Shilara.”

  Jasen winced. The image of her falling to the army of scourge on Luukessia’s beach filled his mind for a moment starkly, her arm thrust up to the sky before they crushed her down—

  “They kill at any and every opportunity,” the man was saying.

  “She doesn’t,” Alixa said harshly.

  Medleigh said something.

  “Maybe you should—” Kuura began.

  But Alixa just cut across him. “She has been in with you the whole time you’ve been in here—and all of yesterday, and last night too.”

  That caused a hesitation. But the armored man recovered: “Left unsupervised—”

  “You’re bunking with us,” Alixa said, “as is she. She was unsupervised plenty while you slept on our bed and we were relegated to the floor.”

  Another hesitation, longer. For the first time, the armored man glanced away from Scourgey, to Alixa, Jasen, and then Kuura and Medleigh. “Is—is it so?”

  “It’s true,” said Alixa. To Kuura: “Tell him.”

  Kuura’s scowl came back, though not as intense as before. “It is true,” he conceded. “You have been in a room with that thing for a day now.”

  “See?”

  “Though if it was left unsupervised,” he added quickly, shooting Jasen and Alixa a pointed look, “I could not say. The children might have slept in shifts.”

  No thaw in the forecast then, by the look of it.

  “We were both asleep,” Alixa said. “Scourgey was unsupervised. So if you think they kill at every opportunity—think again. Because you are still here.”

  A thoughtful expression crossed the armored man’s face. He frowned again. His was a particularly hard frown. Every muscle in his face seemed to throw themselves fully into it.

  After a few long seconds, he said, “Perhaps this one … knows better.”

  “She’s different,” said Alixa. “She’s our friend.”

  Tense quiet.

  Kuura broke it, nudging the armored man’s shoulder. “It’ll be yours too, the way it’s staring at you. Think the thing’s in love or something.” And he cracked a smile, the first Jasen had seen in nearly two days. Too wide, too many teeth—but he was smiling. Medleigh laughed along with him, a low guffaw between the two crewmen that seemed to set the pale man slightly more at ease.

  “What’s your name?” Jasen asked.

  The armored man looked at him, frowning again. “Excuse me?”

  “Your name. We told you ours. What is yours?”

  “My name,” he said, slow, like he was trying to comprehend the words as he repeated them, to parse them. Then: “Yes,” he said. He took a deep breath, steadying himself.

  “My name,” he said, with all the dignity he could muster in his half-chilled, naked, sorry state—

  “… is Samwen Longwell.”

  8

  Shipmaster Burund likely had a hundred questions for Samwen Longwell, when he was capable of answering them.

  Jasen had only one: How did this man know of Baraghosa?

  But between his waning hypothermia, the effort of fighting off Scourgey’s non-existent advances, and the energy it took for him to rise up and set his shoulders back as he introduced himself, he looked immediately worn out. So, when Jasen opened his mouth to ask—

  Kuura would not permit him. “Out,” he said, “the both of you. He needs time to recuperate.”

  “But—” Jasen protested.

  Kuura shooed him away with a mighty wave. “Go on, get out of here. Let Medleigh tend to his patient.”

  “I just wanted to know—”

  “Come on,” Alixa said, pre-empting Kuura. She tugged gently on Jasen’s sleeve and patted Scourgey, gesturing her forward with the other hand. “You can ask him more later.”

  Jasen begrudgingly followed. Though not before frowning at Kuura and Medleigh. He had questions, damn it, burning ones—that he would’ve had answered by now if Longwell hadn’t had such a violent reaction to Scourgey’s presence. And seeing as how the past twenty-four hours had been so agonizing, the thought of even a moment more was almost unbearable.

  Still, he had to wait—and so he would.

  The best place to wait was beside the washroom. Maybe by Medleigh’s improvised doctor’s station, a converted cabin Jasen hadn’t yet been into but which he had stalked past yesterday as Medleigh and Kuura spoke. It was a squashed little room, with barely the space for two people to sit. A lo
cked crate in one corner was dented, presumably by the waves’ assault on the Lady Vizola the other night. Jasen didn’t know what it contained—remedies of some sort, he supposed.

  The problem was Kuura’s mood. If he saw Jasen waiting—loitering, as he called it—then Jasen thought him likely to turn grouchy with them all over again, biting off—whatever unpleasant things he’d been muttering in his native language since Scourgey’s scratch.

  Best to leave them to it until Longwell was deemed satisfactorily well, then.

  With nothing to do, Alixa suggested they spend some time on the upper deck. So they did, sitting upon it with Scourgey down below the foremast, where they were suitably out of the way of sailors milling about, performing whatever shiply duties Burund had entrusted to them.

  A cluster of islands was in view today. But they could not be the Aiger Cliffs—they were much too small.

  The past days—in Luukessia, and here on the Lady Vizola, butting against storms as it had been—Jasen had forgotten that summer approached. He remembered now though: as the sun drew higher, and the shadows shorter, he broke out in a sweat. The too-large clothes he wore didn’t greatly ease things.

  The heat wasn’t doing great things for Scourgey, either. She stank to high heaven—a new reason for the sailors to skirt her a wide berth now their suspicion had faded.

  Burund strode onto the deck sometime after noon. Jasen and Alixa had eaten by then—biltong and hardtack respectively—and returned, now sitting in the small strip of shade afforded by the forecastle’s slight overhang.

  He smiled at them, nodded.

  “Shipmaster,” Jasen greeted.

  “You are looking hot,” Burund said.

  “It’s sweltering out here,” said Alixa. She’d cast an arm over her head to improvise shade, as well as to keep sweat from dripping past her eyebrows and into her eyes.

  “It is cooler inside.”

  Was it? It hadn’t seemed much better indoors.

  Or maybe it was that being indoors reminded him of what he was waiting for, and his impatience grew while they lingered below deck.

  “You are waiting to speak with Samwen,” said Burund knowingly.

  Jasen nodded. “Is he any better?”

  “Medleigh says he is improving. You will be permitted to speak with him later.”