by Rosie Scott
We didn't want to give Alea a timeline, but we planned on letting her go after fending off Cale's upcoming attack and making sure she did nothing to aid it.
“That's the plan,” Koby agreed vaguely. “But before that, I'm going to give you some parchment and you're going to write down every name and location you can think of that is important to Vruyk and Cale, its significance, and how or where we can find it.”
“We're especially interested in any information you have about a slave owner named Yasir Saab based in T'ahal,” I said. “Or any locations where the pirates practice blood science to create shapeshifters in Nahara.”
Alea raised an eyebrow at my specific requests. “If you already know about their connections to both, what do you need me for?”
“We didn't know,” I corrected. “We assumed. But thanks to your answer, those assumptions are confirmed.”
Alea exhaled heavily like we asked a lot of her, but she only agreed, “Very well. Bring me some supplies and I'll write down everything I know. Some of it may be outdated or vague because I've lost so many memories from when I was high, but I'll try my best.”
Koby and I left Alea alone with parchment and a quill after untying her wrists, locking the door of the shack behind us in the case the ex-pirate wasn't completely trustworthy. Hearing inside information about Vruyk and Cale's gang fascinated me, as did finding out just how horrific rempka addiction could be. Cale had ruined his body, his relationships, his memory, and his ambitions all for drugs. If it weren't for Koby's support years ago in Silvi, that could've been me.
Vallen chopped wood from a stack of lumber in the long grasses near the eastern island's incline. Gleaming sweat rolled down his bare torso in streaks, catching in the waistband of his loose slacks. As Koby and I approached, he took a break and blotted at his forehead with his loose shirt.
“Find out anything interesting?” he asked, his tone light and without wear from his labor.
“More than I ever wanted to know about Vruyk's filthy habits and Cale's downfall,” I replied.
“Yeah, that was...” Koby trailed off and raised his eyebrows “...enlightening.”
“She knows about the pirate hideouts in Nahara, too,” Vallen added.
“I have her writing down as much as she knows right now,” Koby replied. “And you trust that she's telling the truth?”
“About as much as I can trust a pirate,” Vallen admitted. “Believe me, I wanted to kill her. She fought in the raid against the paddy workers and I witnessed her kill at least one defender here before we backed her into a literal corner. We'll see how she does once she's over rempka and Cale's dead.”
“Speaking of the paddies...” I glanced over at the flooded lands, where evidence remained of Cale's attempts to sloppily tame the earth. “I'm assuming the ferris plants are missing because you sent them back.”
“Oh, that's right,” Vallen commented, tossing his chopping ax to the ground. “You weren't here for that conversation last night. How are you feeling?”
Internally, I cringed at the reminder of my outburst. I appreciated Vallen's concern, but I wanted to move past it. “Better,” I replied shortly.
Vallen didn't take offense at my curt response. “Glad to hear it. Well, to answer your question, I sent the ferris plants back using that carrack we stole.”
“You didn't know how to sail it,” I pointed out.
“No, but plenty of mercenaries did,” Vallen said with a laugh. “Once they got here from Silvi I sent them south to the mainland with the surviving paddy workers. That wasn't long after the attack, so I figured we were safe for at least a year considering the pirates would need time to realize we sabotaged the route before sending a crew to investigate.”
“Are the paddies protected?” I asked. “Because we know Cale's coming back, but I don't know whether he'd come here or the mainland.”
“They're as well-protected as they can be,” Vallen reassured me. “All the mercenaries I sent out there are staying there to guard them until further notice. Plus, Jayce is dealing with sending bird-kin messengers back and forth between here, the paddies, and Tenesea. We have scouts in the air all over the western coast, my friend. If they spot pirates on sea or land, word will travel quickly.”
“Did Koby helpfully inform you that all of this is my fault?” I questioned.
Both Vallen and Koby chuckled at my random interjection. “No,” Vallen replied. “How do you figure? Here you are, with your crew as you said you would be, ready to help us defend our home.”
“When we faced Cale in the last battle, I had no doubts I would kill him,” I admitted. “So I bragged about knowing what he'd been up to. If I'd held my tongue, Cale wouldn't know enough to come back here, and this battle wouldn't have to be fought at all.”
Vallen snorted an amused laugh. “Do you honestly think he would've been kept in the dark forever? Nah, this would've happened regardless. I'd expect you to brag. That was a damn good battle we had here and you should be proud of being a part of it.”
“It wasn't just bragging,” Koby told him with a smile. “The two went back and forth insulting each other.”
Vallen grinned. “Must've been entertaining.”
“That it was,” Koby agreed. “It ended with Calder telling Cale to overdose and save us the effort of killing him.”
Vallen chortled. “If life was a book, that's how I'd write it.”
I stared back and forth between them, baffled. “Well, I was admitting to a fault, but you two can laugh at me if you want.”
“How is it that you can find humor in everything but yourself?” Vallen asked light-heartedly, patting me on the back.
“When I fuck up, I take it seriously,” I defended myself.
“Pssh, you didn't fuck up,” Vallen retorted lightly. “You merely did what anyone would do and quickened the arrival of this battle. If anything, I should thank you. Cale was gonna show up here either way, but at least now we don't have to wait as long. Koby mentioned we should expect him in a matter of weeks. Thank the gods for that, because I'm tiring of living out here with no ale and no comfortable bed.”
Perhaps it was impossible to disappoint Vallen. While I downplayed victories and dwelled in mistakes and losses, he did the exact opposite. The reasons optimists annoyed me were evidently the same reasons I needed them so desperately in my life. After expecting yet another falling out to happen with my admittance of guilt, Vallen's nonchalance relaxed me. Then, a flash of bronze skin caught my eye as Jayce strode toward us purposefully from the swamps, and anxiety encapsulated me once more. I shoved a hand in my pocket for a cigarette.
“Remember,” Vallen murmured under his breath, “nothing happened.”
Jayce abruptly halted before her brother, paying Koby and me little attention. “Paint,” she blurted. “Where the hell is it?”
Vallen cocked his head with confusion. “What paint, sister? You'll have to be more specific.”
“War paint. In...” Jayce trailed off, pursed her lips to the side, and looked up in thought. “Blue, I think. Yeah.”
“We're out of blue paint,” Vallen replied. “We ran out of the dye. I put petuni petals on the list for the last group of foragers I sent to the rainforest.”
“What do we need war paint for?” Koby inquired as I puffed away, avoiding eye contact with Jayce at all costs.
“The beastmen wear it,” Jayce said like it was obvious. “We need to be able to tell the difference between shapeshifter pirates and natives in battle. We didn't wear it when you guys battled here with us last time because we launched a surprise attack, but if all our foes transformed correctly, everyone would have been at risk of killing friendlies. A lot of blood-kins look alike.”
It was unbelievably difficult to hold my tongue at the irony in her statement after she'd attempted to attack me the day before.
“Well,” Vallen began, bringing his sister's attention back to him, “until the foragers come back, we can use the other colors in case of an at
tack.”
“But blue stands out,” Jayce protested.
Vallen shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”
Jayce sighed, but didn't answer. In my peripheral vision, I saw her glare at me and expected the worst. She lashed out a fist, playfully punching my arm. Despite its light impact, I still flinched back from her in a split-second defensive maneuver.
Jayce smiled as I finally met her gaze. “Loosen up, Calder,” she teased. “You're tighter than a bull's asshole in fly season.”
Promptly, she strode away with just as much energy and purpose as she'd come to us with. Koby audibly breathed a sigh of relief as I rubbed my arm and stared after her in bafflement.
“She doesn't even care,” I blurted like a question in desperate need of an answer.
“Oh, she cares,” Vallen murmured. “Her eyes were bloodshot and she never made it to bed last night, so I have no idea where she went. She's in mourning. She might be for a while. But it's best if we don't acknowledge it.”
“Hassan has some of Kali's belongings,” I informed him. “He was going to offer some things to Jayce, but after what happened yesterday I don't know if that's best.”
“Hassan, you said?” Vallen asked.
“Yes. He and Kali were the best of friends since we hired her over four years ago. Kali had no living family or will, so I told him to split her things with Jayce.”
“All right. I'll talk to him and handle it,” Vallen offered. “He shouldn't have to suffer my sister's wrath for being thoughtful. Neither should you. I'm sorry she hit you again.”
“I think she was teasing me.”
“I don't care if she was teasing you or not, hitting someone who's gone through the abuse you have rubs me the wrong way,” Vallen argued adamantly. “I'll be talking to her about that, too.”
I appreciated the protective tilt of his voice. “You're a good man, you know that?”
Vallen chuckled and teased, “Sure, but if I said the same thing about you, you wouldn't believe me.”
Thirty
Weeks passed. With each day that ended with no signs of pirates, the foreboding air grew. Having more time with which to prepare the island's defenses and attract more mercenaries was ideal, but what if that meant Cale instead traveled to the mainland or followed a different strategy entirely?
Two small groups of volunteers wandered to the Forks from Silvi, adding to our numbers. Another large group came from Tenesea after traveling quite a distance. Vallen's foresight in spreading the word had allowed us to build a small army of mercenaries. Not all of them were shapeshifters, of course; though alteration magic was a lesser magic and therefore far easier to learn than the elements, not everyone was magically literate. Additionally, there were plenty of alteration mages who chose to wield the magic without utilizing its most powerful spell of transformation. This was actually helpful, for it allowed us variety in our defense. While beastmen went berserk on the frontlines, warriors, archers, and mages could provide support from the flanks.
Of course, this assumed our ragtag army had a leader and a solid strategy when it had neither. Vallen, Cyrene, Koby, and I were the closest things to leaders on the island, but none of us had ever led an army, and we wouldn't start with this one. I could barely keep track of my own mind in battle and couldn't imagine trying to lead others. Koby did a phenomenal job leading our crew on the seas in my absence in battle and otherwise, but he could not lead hundreds of men on his own, much less beastmen who fell into temporary insanity as they fought.
Vallen's strategy relied solely on preparing the Forks for every possibility now so we had the advantage later. Not only did he order the building and placement of the barricades, but he also oversaw the clearing out of nearby swamp brush. The wetlands here were wild and overgrown; until recently, natives of Silvi and Tenesea had only visited the Forks for well-equipped hunting or foraging missions, so the land was completely untamed. Though the last crew of pirates had disembarked on the northern shore, we had to anticipate various strategies Cale could use to attack us. Clearing the thickest brush allowed for higher visibility into the swamps if the pirates tried to ambush our camp from the west.
Cyrene was immensely helpful in preparations as well. She kept track of most our supplies for battle and camping and managed the teams of mercenaries that crafted or foraged for more. She also supervised hunting parties that kept our camp well-stocked with fresh meats.
Our crew helped Vallen erect more lodges and barricades. Sage was by far our best woodsman; he cut down trees, chopped up their wood, and sanded the resulting lumber with such strength and finesse that Vallen allowed him to take over. Sage explained that woodworking was a highly lauded hobby and career in Celendar that all Celdic children were taught to do from an early age. He claimed Celendar had no buildings, for the ancient trees of its forest were similar to Tenesea's giant plant and were hollowed out to create domiciles or businesses spanning dozens of levels. The ancient trees were also unique on Arrayis; nowhere else in the world could one find natural pearl-white lumber. Sage told us that the exceptional wood was such a source of pride for the native Celds that they crafted thousands of things with it, even jewelry, and it fetched a high price from non-Celds throughout the world. It was talk like this that excited the merchant in me, for I suddenly had the urge to meet the demand for the special white wood by trading it and making a fortune. Given Celendar's isolation and its location far away from the seas in deep southeastern Chairel, however, that urge was unlikely to come to fruition. So many things important to my life were illegal in Chairel: ferris, practicing magic without their pretentious license, and shapeshifting. I'd be a criminal there the moment I stepped across the border, so I had no plans to visit.
In early-Dark Star, the camp settled down into an ominously calm pattern. We either expected Cale to show up for an assault or to receive news from Jayce's flying beastmen messengers that they had spotted his ships in the south. All preparations for battle here were complete, and scouts—shapeshifters and otherwise—were posted around the Forks every hour of the day and night. The only work left was to refill our every day supply reserves regularly. Otherwise, we could only wait for the inevitable.
One night, I came back to our crew's section of the camp after successfully wooing a human mercenary. My libido had been through the roof recently, likely heightened by my anxiousness for battle. Gratefully, out of hundreds of volunteers here, there were more than a few willing to be casual lovers to satiate the Alderi's never-ending trysts. Koby, Hassan, and I had plenty of interested women to pursue. Since the hardest labor had died down, we'd rarely seen Jaecar; given his attraction to men and women, he was having so much sex I was both jealous and worried he would get dehydrated all at once.
When I approached my crew, then, it didn't surprise me that Jaecar was missing. Sage and Neliah drank tea together and had a quiet conversation just far enough away from the campfire that they sat in shadow. Hassan and Hilly ate a meal of local ocean fish on a bed of leafy greens, drizzled with oil and seasoned with a few herbs and spices. Other sailors from our crew ate, talked, or napped. Vallen and Jayce bickered over ferris; Vallen argued she didn't need it for pain and we were low on reserves, so she should save it for others. Cyrene half-heartedly listened to their argument while preparing a potion. Based on her hunched back and grimace, she was in pain from transforming for the day's hunting expedition. I noticed her developing potion was the same muted green color as the one she drank on the mainland the time we talked and played cards deep into the night. I still could not imagine relying on potions over ferris; alchemical concoctions could dull my pain, but not as effectively, and they did nothing to calm my thoughts.
I stopped just feet away from the campfire, the strings of my untied boots snapping against the cleared earth. A few friends and acquaintances glanced up at the noise.
“Some poor lonely soul must have fallen for your advances,” Cyrene teased me, raising one eyebrow as she stirred her potion. “You look pl
eased with yourself.”
“Poor and lonely?” I huffed facetiously. “That woman could have had any man she wanted on this cursed island, and she chose me. What does that tell you?”
“She's blind,” Cyrene answered immediately, unable to hide her grin.
I chuckled, impressed by her jest. “It sure didn't feel like she was blind.”
“Are ya callin' Captain Handsome ugly, love?” Hilly piped up in mid-chew, bits of leafy greens sticking out between her teeth. “'Cause I will defend his honor to the death. Just lookin' at that broody face drenches me britches.”
Hilly's humor was lost to me as my mind tumbled helplessly into naughty territory from hearing the overt attraction in her voice. I wiggled my eyebrows at Hilly and purred, “Well, the night is young yet, love.”
Cyrene chortled, finding Hilly's crude statement and my distracted response to it hilarious. Wiping the excess moisture from her eyes, she replied, “Calder knows I'm teasing him. I'm not blind. I'll admit he is a beautiful man.”
The compliment forced my attention to zip over to Cyrene. “The night is real young,” I flirted.
Cyrene noticed my reaction and laughed again.
“Are you flirting with me?” I prodded with hope.
“No.” Cyrene tried to calm her laughter and nodded toward Hilly. “Just trying to protect myself from the defender of your honor, is all.”
“Damn it.”
Cyrene flashed me a playful smile and drank her potion. Afterward, she commented, “Seems to me like you walked over here with a purpose but our teasing distracted you.”
I gazed over the scene again, trying to remember why I stood here without joining them for a meal. Jaecar and Koby were the only ones missing from our usual group. “Yes,” I said with realization. “Where's Koby?”
Though Cyrene frowned and prepared to say she didn't know, Sage waved an arm in the background and informed me, “That last shack we built, Calder.” He pointed off toward the swamps, where the most recent buildings hovered over the standing water on pilings. “It is empty, so Koby went there to work.”