Aghast, I said, “They really would just take me away?”
He shrugged. “You’re human, Master Locke. You have no status in their society.” He looked at Almond. “If you want to convey him safely to whomever wanted him, you’ll give him a name.”
Her ears flattened. “He is his own, sir. But even if he were to take such a name for protection, there is no one to write out the name and brand him.”
“Brand me!” I exclaimed, horrified.
“Eh,” Gant said. “I suppose we could paint it on.”
She considered. “If we must.”
“I think it necessary.”
“Brand me?” I interrupted. “Do you mean to say that the elves mark their property like...” I trailed to a halt, remembering his original words.
“Like cattle,” Gant finished. “Didn’t I say?”
“Do you have one of these?” I asked.
He lifted his arm, unlaced his cuff and pulled it down. His wrist had been tattooed with an encircling band of round glyphs like the ones on my pendant.
“You let them do that to you?” I asked, incredulous.
“Small price to pay to keep their wars from spilling onto my ship and crew,” he said. “A little time, a little ink, and I can do business in one of the most lucrative and secretive ports on the sea under the protection of a powerful elf. It was a good trade.”
I looked down at Almond. “And who will protect me?”
“As I said to Captain Gant,” Almond said, “you are your own blood-flag, Master.”
“And if no one believes me, as I am currently masquerading as human?” I said dryly.
She licked her nose, ears drooping. “Then you will have to go under Lady Amoret’s name.”
“Fine,” I said. “As long as I have a name to give.”
“Write it on your wrist before you disembark,” Gant said. “Just to be safe.”
I glanced at Almond, who pointed at the tag hanging from her collar. “This is her mark.”
“All right,” I said. I found I had finished the whisky without realizing I’d been drinking and set the glass aside.
“You’ll have a cabin to yourself and the fluffs,” he said. “You’re our only paying passenger this round out. Your luggage will be put there.”
“Ah, yes,” I said. “Would that I had luggage to put there.”
He glanced at Almond, who said, “We ran into grave misfortune on our journey, sir. Not only did we lose the master’s trunk, but his medicine as well.”
“Medicine,” he said, looking at me now.
“Kelu has arranged for the purchase of more,” Almond said. “You will be repaid by the Lady on arrival.”
“I trust so,” Gant said. “As medicine is not cheap.” He stood and offered his hand. “Welcome aboard, then, Master Locke.”
“Thank you, Captain,” I said. And then because I could not resist, “I have never been aboard a ship before... and to be on such a beautiful one... I am looking forward to the trip.”
He smiled, and perhaps there was approval there; hard to tell on such a face. I could tell he was accustomed to keeping his own counsel.
We found ourselves outside the cabin on the deck, and there I drew in a long draught of the heavy, salt-brightened air. I couldn’t help a grin. “Ah, Almond. So invigorating!”
She beamed at me. I ruffled her hair and together we went to investigate the room we’d been assigned.
Thus began the most pleasant month in my recent memory; in perhaps my entire memory, for I was hard-pressed to recall any finer. What nausea afflicted me was only my habitual illness, not any sea-inspired ailment, and so daily I walked the length of the ship, staring at the waters, at the sky, at the horizon where they met in endless variations. The weather grew softer and warmer the longer we were at sea, and between that, the genets, and the laudanum I found relief from some of the worst of my pains. At times I would sit in quiet contemplation of the waves, entranced by the patterns formed by current, scent and sound... and when the hypersensitivity rose and succeeded in piercing the poppy fog, I wept silent tears for the beauty of the sea.
My language lessons continued unabated in our chambers with the genets; in addition, I discovered the captain had a broad mastery of Angel’s Gift and begged his aid, finding in him a delightful depth and complexity of vocabulary. Over our dinners in his cabin I began to understand and marvel at the subtlety of the tongue, and what strange things it chose to differentiate: for instance, the elves had not one single word for light, but multiples, the light of the sun, of the stars, of the moon... light cast by a torch, light changed by the seasons, light caused by reflection, even light that came from within.
“Such a fascination with it,” I mentioned to Gant, who said only, “Yes,” and commented on the matter no more.
Outside these private sessions I found that many of the sailors spoke the elven tongue with varying levels of fluency, a fact that surprised me until the captain shrugged and said it was the only language spoken at the eastern port; to them it was just another foreign tongue. When conversation proved inadequate to the subtleties Kelu wanted me to learn, I resorted to translating some of the folk and historical tales I’d been studying at Leigh and these stories brought me audiences. I became the Steadfast Dreamer’s folklorist, the cripple who loved the sea, and they made allowances for me I never noticed or understood until much, much later.
Of all the stories in my arsenal, the most requested were those of the Red Prince and the King. My repertoire of elven words did not suffice to explain the ancient roots of these characters and how they’d been twisted to suit the recent war for independence, but I did my small best. My scholarly interpretations of the connection between these ancient tales and recent history proved of far less interest to my listeners anyway. They wanted the gore, the epic battles, and the perverse subtexts of the originals.
“Was the Red Prince the King’s son? Or a stranger?” Kelu finally asked, exasperated.
“Or his brother?” one of the sailors said, picking his teeth. “I heard brother.”
“Cousins,” someone else said. “Them’s cousins.”
“No one knows,” I said.
“That’s an important detail to leave out,” Kelu said.
“It wasn’t left out,” I said, laughing. I could laugh—the sea made everything better, made it bearable. “It changed. In the beginning they weren’t even related. They were from different families. Then as the stories were retold, people changed them to suit their tastes.”
“But which is the truth?” Kelu asked, tail bristling.
“I don’t know,” I said. “There might not have even been a Red Prince and his King.”
“Aw, no,” said my third listener. “There’s a Red Prince and King, sure as storms.”
“How do you know?” Kelu asked him.
“Because there had to be,” he said.
I grinned and pushed my spectacles up my nose. When Kelu looked at me, ears flattened against her hair, I said, “Stories have to be told.”
“So the Red Prince is bad—” Almond said.
“Sometimes,” I interrupted.
“And his King is good?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Well,” Almond asked, “which story do you prefer, Master?”
What an impossible question. I loved the Red Prince and King stories in all their permutations... I had to, for I’d studied them at length. And their most recent incarnations as masks for the evil of the monarchists... well, I’d been weaned on those versions, and it was hard to escape their power.
Then I remembered one scrap of a tale that I’d seen written only once, in the margin of a manuscript so old I’d had to turn it with metal tongs to keep the oils on my fingers from destroying it.
“Hist,” I said, grinning. “I’ll tell you a secret story about the Red Prince and his King.”
I swore they leaned toward me as if I had something delicate to divulge. And perhaps I did. “Once in time,�
� I began as tradition dictated, “there was a bleak glade, a bare copse of a place lit only by wan moonlight, seared by war and harrowed into silence by the guardianship of wights and crueler things. The shadows there were so dark and wet they clung to anyone traveling through them. It was a place of sorrow and peril. And it was there that the King found the Red Prince in a moment of repose.
“The King lifted his gory sword, but found himself too exhausted to swing it. So instead he bit the earth with its tip and leaned on its hilt and gazed upon the face of his foe.
“As if sensing his regard, the Red Prince woke. He did not reach for his weapon. He did not rise. He met the eyes of the King and said nothing, nothing at all.
“At last, the bloodied King knelt beside the Prince and asked, ‘Will you not cease to prosecute your war against me?’“
I paused, gathering in the eyes of my enrapt listeners. I lowered my voice and said, “And the Prince said, ‘I will not.’ And then... he wept.”
I leaned back.
“Then what happened?” one of the sailors asked.
“The words ended there,” I said.
“Ah, that’s a short tale,” the second said.
“He cried?” Kelu said. “What good is that?”
I laughed. “All right, all right. More stories about the violence.”
That won me cheers and I went back to it. I gathered a few more sailors, lost a few, and eventually the dark came and I was left to recoup my strength and listen to the waves slap the hull. Almond remained at my side, head leaning against my thigh. I found myself idly stroking the edge of one of her ears. She was so easy to caress; I thought I should be appalled, but she seemed to enjoy it. Surely it did her no harm... and the softness of her fur soothed me.
“Why that story, Master?” she asked.
Even hours later, I knew what she meant. “Because it was the only time I’d ever seen that there was some... hint... that both the Red Prince and the King knew they were characters in a story they were not writing. That they were there to be used for some purpose they could not understand, and it grieved them. That... if they could only win free of the constraints of fate, they would have chosen otherwise.”
She nodded beneath my hand. And offered shyly, “I was not surprised at your choice, Master.”
I smiled down at her. “Why is that?”
“Because,” she said, “you are so gentle at heart. And of all the stories full of violence, you chose the one of peace.”
My fingers faltered. “How predictable of me.”
“You do not think it a virtue, to love peace?” she asked me.
“Sometimes war is needed,” I said, thinking of the Revolution... wondering if I would have been brave enough to take part in it, if I had been alive then and healthy enough to lift a sword or man a cannon.
“Where we are from,” she said, her voice sad, “there is nothing but war.”
“War between people who cannot die must be terrible,” I said.
“You will see soon enough.” She sighed. “I do not think our masters would see the beauty of your story.”
It was the closest I’d ever heard from her to an indictment of the elves. I was so shocked I stopped petting her.
“Was that the end?” Almond asked, looking up at me.
Perhaps it was that state of shock that brought the words from me, the ones I’d been hiding, keeping for myself. “No. There was a drawing beneath it. Of the Red Prince and the King in one another’s arms, kissing.”
She nodded. “Love drives away demons,” she said only, and put her cheek back against my thigh.
Startled, I returned to stroking her hair. “Is that it?” I asked. “You accept that so easily?”
“Love?” she said. “What is there to deny, Master? Love is always good.”
It was hard to argue such a platitude, even with practicalities. Two men loving the same woman usually ended in disaster, after all, and that was only the first of the many ways that love could destroy. “It’s not a story of the Red Prince and his Queen,” I said.
“Does that matter?” she asked.
“Ah...” I trailed off. “Almond. It is... perverse, what they were doing in that drawing.”
She glanced up at me. “Were they doing it wrong?”
That startled a laugh from my mouth. “By nature, well, yes, yes indeed.”
Almond squinted. “This is a human habit, Master?”
“A human habit for men to love women, and women to love men?” I asked, bemused. “I took that to be a natural habit. A man does not get heirs on another man.”
“Among the elves,” Almond said, “children are so rarely gotten at all that no one cares who lies with whom. The few women who can conceive are cherished and have great status and influence.”
I said, “How... few... is ‘few’?”
Almond considered, leaning against me. “I have only known one, the Lady Amoret.”
“One... woman?” I asked, stunned. “Only one who could bear children?”
“There have been others,” Almond said. “Not many. Ten? Eleven? They are very famous.”
“But... but why?” I asked, horrified. “How can a race maintain itself without children—ah. They don’t die. I forget.” For a moment I could grasp it, the utter strangeness of these people, and it cut like broken glass. Wars without death. Lying with one another without children. To be barren, but never to die. I felt it like thirst, a lack of... of variation. Of newness. The same people persisting forever. Complete stasis. “My God.”
And then: “My God. I might be one of them.”
“You are the prince,” Almond said, slipping her arms around my knee and cuddling against my leg. “You are not just one of them, Master. You are one of the greatest among them.”
“I don’t want to li—” I stopped. Could I honestly say that I didn’t want to live forever? But the thought was exhausting merely to contemplate. I had no desire to die, but what would I do with eternity? “My God,” I said at last, drifting to a halt, all my thoughts in disarray.
“I wonder if they will tell stories about you as the Red Prince?” Almond asked, tracing my knee cap.
I stared down at her, my horror complete.
On the morning of the sixth week, Gant stood with me at the prow and nodded toward the horizon. By now the lilt of the elven tongue was familiar; I understood far more than I could easily speak thanks to the captain’s lessons, but weeks spent with no other language had increased my comfort with both listening and speaking. “There’s your stop, Locke.”
I squinted past the sea spray on my glasses, saw only a smudge of gray and brown against steel blue and storm-dense sky. A warm, wet wind stroked the hair from my face. “The furthest island?”
“Of the Archipelago, yes,” Gant said. “The natives call their kingdom Serala, and the mainland Aravalís. That rock in specific is Dolí.”
I gripped the rail with fingers that remembered their aches. So many uncertainties. Out of courtesy I would have to meet with Kelu and Almond’s mistress, let her see that I was not what she sought. And then...? How would I find someone to help me? If even I could be helped? I was not only edging toward being completely disabled; unless I missed my guess, I was also a poppy addict. I had to find a way out of this spiral before it sucked me into the dark. I had to believe that I could return to Evertrue, to the university, to my classes, my family, my friends... Ivy. Even the thought of the sea could not repel me from my need to see them again as a man free of illness. I had to believe in a cure. Surely if I was healthy, I would have no more problems.
“How long?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning you’ll be on the dock,” Gant said. “Go get your fluffs to paint on your blood-flag mark. It’ll need to set.”
“Right.”
So that evening by the yellow light of a lamp I sat on my narrow bunk across from Kelu, my wrist palm-up on her knee. Almond kneeled beside us, chin lifted and chest out-thrust so as to display the medallion hangi
ng from her collar.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Kelu said while tracing the shape onto my skin with the pen sent by the captain. “You’re not Amoret’s to claim.”
“The captain felt strongly about it,” I said, constructing the sentence carefully. With enough time I could say quite complex things in the language now, but with the genets I concentrated on speed, which forced me to simplify my thoughts considerably.
“Well, he’s human,” Kelu said. “You only look human.”
“My shirt will... cover? Cover it,” I said.
“Until we dress you properly, anyway,” Kelu said.
“Pardon?”
She squinted at me. “Did you not understand that, or are you being shocked?”
“I understood you,” I said and switched to Lit. “I just didn’t quite believe what I heard.”
“Speak the right language,” Kelu said, bending over my wrist.
“How am I wearing too much?” I asked in the Angel’s Gift, irritated. “I am wearing just enough.”
“Serala is very hot, Master,” Almond said. “You will be uncomfortable if you wear all those layers.”
“Am I supposed to walk around naked?” I asked.
“Not naked,” Kelu said. “A pair of very light pants. Maybe a stole.”
“A what?”
“A stole,” she repeated, then looked at Almond, who shook her head. “I don’t know how to say that. A decorative strip of fabric over your shoulders.”
“They go bare-chested?” I exclaimed in Lit. At Kelu’s narrow-eyed glare, I switched languages and said, “That’s naked!”
An Heir to Thorns and Steel Page 15