“It’s not much,” the man began placating immediately.
“It’s exactly what we need,” I said cheerfully, striding confidently into the room and putting my trunk on the bottom bunk.
“Ah, so glad to hear it,” he said, his neck jerking in a kind of partial bow. “So glad. Well, I’ll give you some time to settle in. You’re welcome to walk the upper decks at your leisure and I’ll have your dinners served in your cabin for you.”
“I’m not worried about that,” I said. “We don’t need any special treatment.”
“It’s our pleasure, I assure you,” he said. “I must ask, however, for everyone’s safety, that you avoid the lower decks, the uh…”
“We don’t care about your cargo,” said Risk bluntly. “We just want to get to Nyuesi in one piece. Manage that and you’ll never have to worry about us again.”
“That wasn’t very polite,” I said, once the man had taken his leave. “He’s doing everything he can to make us comfortable in the circumstances.”
“They’re smugglers,” said Risk. “Probably pirates as well. Please tell me you realise that, at least?” He made a frustrated sound while running a hand through his fringe. “Gods, the stupid ones are the hardest to keep safe.”
“I’m not stupid,” I snapped. “I know what we’re dealing with.”
“You seemed pretty smiley to rat face over there.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m a society lady. Two-faced flattery is my bread and butter.” You could never tell someone’s intentions based on words alone. Especially not at society gatherings where everyone was out for themselves while having to maintain a civilised smile. If you wanted to survive in that world, you had to learn how to read people, and fake a convincing level of interest while keeping your real thoughts to yourself. Over the years I’d like to think I’d gotten pretty good at it. “You, on the other hand, could work on your poker face.”
“These aren’t the kinds of people you can pussy-foot around,” snapped Risk. “They don’t play your high-society games. If you appear weak, they’ll walk all over you. If you want any respect on this ship, you need to demand it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
After stowing my trunk under the bed, I went back up on deck. There was only deep blue open ocean in every direction now, no hint of land anywhere. The sun was shining overhead, the breeze relaxingly cool. Around me, the ship’s crew were unwinding, now that the hard part of leaving port was behind them. A row of deck chairs had been set up, and Risk took one immediately. He stretched out and folded his arms behind his head after tilting his hat down to shield his face from the midday sun.
I walked the deck, my long sundress swirling around my ankles in the ocean breeze. I walked with one hand on the back of my hat, its wide brim catching the wind and flapping about. As I walked, I could feel eyes on me and they weren’t just Risk’s. It seemed a number of the minotaur crew were as curious about the passengers on their ship as we were about them.
A black-haired one was lazing on the boat’s side, sitting up on the edge, with one hooved foot up and the other hanging down the other side. He had one arm braced behind him and the other resting on his raised knee. The bull watched me as I walked, his orange eyes darting down every time a gust of wind bared a decent length of leg. I caught his roaming gaze and he sent me a smirk, which I nervously returned with a shy smile.
“Like what you see?” he asked in a low rumbling voice, a roar of laughter rising amongst the other crewmembers.
I averted my eyes, a deep blush rising to my cheeks. I supposed I should have expected that kind of attention. I was probably the only woman on board after all. Even so it wasn’t the kind of attention I was looking for. Especially not from a complete stranger.
I turned to leave, thinking maybe it might be best if I did stick close to Risk after all, but was stopped by the sound of a pair of heavy hooves hitting the deck.
“Don’t be like that,” said the minotaur.
He towered over me, my head only reaching his chest as he cast a dark shadow onto the deck. He gripped my waist with surprisingly soft hands and gently turned me back around.
“I see you looking, so how about you and I go below deck?”
“I’d really rather not,” I said, trying to extricate myself from his grip.
“Let go of her.”
Risk was out of his deck chair and walking towards us, hand hovering over the grip of his gun. The deck went silent.
The minotaur sized Risk up for a long, tense moment, before laughing and letting me go. Risk immediately grabbed me by the hand and led me below deck, and back to our cabin.
“You’re staying here for the rest of the trip,” he said, closing the door.
“I’m not hiding myself away because one guy took a smile too far.”
“It’s not just some guy,” snapped Risk. “It’s a minotaur!”
“Look, you can’t just tar an entire species with the same brush.”
Even if one of them had shown himself to be an asshole.
“Yeah?” he said. “Watch me. Minotaurs are the scum at the bottom of the world’s barrel okay? They’re brutes and thugs, and they take whatever they want, however they want it. It’s no surprise there are so many of them on this kind of ship.”
“It sounds like you’ve encountered some before.”
“Yeah, I have,” he said. “So take my advice and stay away from them.”
“You have to give me more than just that.”
“I don’t have to give you anything.”
“Then don’t expect me to just blindly follow your instructions!” I shot back. “It wasn’t my idea for you to be here. I don’t need a chaperone everywhere I go and I definitely don’t need someone who’s going to interfere with my job by insisting I never go anywhere.”
I could get some great research data by talking to some of the crew. Obviously not that one in particular, but the possibility was still there.
“Fine,” snapped Risk. “You go ahead and run around, and get yourself killed by something you don’t understand. No skin off my nose, princess, I’ll just get another job.”
With that, he crawled into his bunk and buried himself beneath the covers, intent that the conversation was over.
Later that night, the man in the headscarf showed up at our cabin, a tray laden with dinner in his hands. Soup, bread and smoked meats, enough for two servings.
“You’re welcome to have your meals in the galley of course,” he said, setting the tray on the little table. “But if you’d prefer, I can continue to bring it here for you.”
“You doing anything about that thug who threatened us?” Risk spoke up from the top bunk.
“Ah yes,” he said. “Most indecent of him. I can assure you the gentleman in question has been appropriately reprimanded. Your lady friend should feel more comfortable walking the ship in future, with or without your good self. Please enjoy your supper.”
“It looks pretty good,” I said, once the man had left.
“For ship food, you mean,” said Risk, dropping from the bunk and moving to sit across from me.
“Be nice. This isn’t a buffet cruise. They didn’t have to bring us anything.”
We ate in silence, Risk finishing quickly before returning to his bunk. I took my time. There was nothing wrong with the food, a bit bland perhaps, at least compared to the fair offered at a private boarding academy, or from my family’s personal chef, but I was going to enjoy it regardless. The weather was cool on the open ocean, as I’d come to discover and the hot soup was doing wonders.
“You still want to know about those cows?” asked Risk out of the blue.
“Only if you want to tell me.”
He didn’t immediately reply and seemed to be mulling a few things over in his mind, before choosing to continue.
While I waited I finished my dinner and stacked the empty bowls back on the tray, before changing into my pyjamas.
“A cou
ple years back, when I was with another guild,” said Risk as I slipped into the bottom bunk. “We did a courier job on the west coast. Pretty straight-forward. About half a dozen of us to accompany this trading caravan from the human town in the valley, to the minotaur clan in the mountains.
“It was supposed to be an up-and-back kind of thing, but the rains came early and washed out the road, so we had to stay for a while. That’s when I learnt what the caravan was trading in.”
He trailed off, but I didn’t need it spelled out for me to know what he was talking about.
“People?” I ventured.
“Yeah,” he said. “Young girls from the village. Most of them from poor families. Taken up the mountain to be sold as brood mares to a bunch of monsters. In exchange, I guess the cows promised not to just come down to the village and take what they wanted by force.
“By the time the river was low enough for us to leave again, some of the ones we’d come up with were already, you know.”
“Pregnant?” He nodded. “How?”[5]
“You know the legends, right?” asked Risk. “How the cows were created? Why they’re different than the rest of the otherkin?” I shook my head. “In the Mystic Age, which tells you how long ago it was, a group of religious zealots came up with the bright idea to build a tower so tall it would pierce the barrier between Alvis and the Celestial Plane. They called it the Heaven’s Spear and supposedly the first minotaur was born there.
“See, the higher gods didn’t take too kindly to us lowly mortals encroaching on their territory. Once the tower got too tall for their comfort, they blasted it to smithereens, wiping it off the face of Alvis and showering the surrounding lands for miles with fragments of rock. Of course over time, all these crazy rumours started to come out about the tower. Like where the remains were, how to find them and how the original builders had filled it with treasure to fund the construction, and priceless gifts for the gods once they’d reached the Celestial Plane. Those kinds of rumours attract treasure hunters by the barrel-full.”
“And the first minotaur was one of them?”
“Yeah, some bigshot bandit, thought it would be his ticket to everlasting riches,” he said. “And they say he managed to find it somehow, going into the tower a man… and coming out a monster. Though it’s debatable whether or not he was ever a man in the first place, all the stories agree that somewhere inside the ruins, he ran into the Shield Maiden. But either he didn’t know she was partially divine, or else he thought he was just that much of a badass ‘cause he tried to force himself on her.
“So, she cursed him. But he didn’t learn anything from it. He loved what he became and spent the rest of his miserable life forcefully siring monster bastards all across the continents. Every single one of those cows is a descendant of that original rapist bandit. And even if the legends were bollocks, from what I’ve experienced, the apples don’t fall far from the rotten tree.”
He lapsed into silence and I let myself think over all that had been said. I knew better than to take every detail of a legend, especially an old one, as gospel. But legends on Alvis were rarely just stories. Not when there were beings old enough to confirm them. My textbooks, brief as they were, had not had any nice things to say about minotaurs.[6]
Chapter 5:
The Monster in
the Deep
By the time my thoughts had run their course, I could hear soft snoring coming from the top bunk. It was late, and I knew I should probably get some sleep as well, but I just couldn’t will tiredness to come. I was fidgety from being in the cabin for almost the whole day.
I glanced out the porthole at the dark ocean. Perhaps I could go for a walk. It was late enough most of the crew would be in bed themselves. I got out of bed and put my slippers on, moving slowly, so as not to wake Risk. I figured if I was going out, I might as well return the dishes from dinner while I was at it. No sense leaving them to sit there until morning.
I tiptoed out of the cabin and down the hall, tray in-hand. The corridor was almost pitch black, but for a few bracketed candles and the moonslight streaming in from the portholes at either end. As a result, I had to navigate mostly from memory. The galley wasn’t that hard to find, fortunately, being one of the largest rooms on the deck next to the crew common room and quarters.
Long tables filled the room, with benches on either side. Though the tables had been cleared after dinner, the haphazard placement of chairs and benches throughout the room suggested the furniture had been pushed away at the end of the meal, and left as was once everyone had filed out.
The galley counter was empty and the kitchen clean. I worried about just leaving our things out for someone else to do. I briefly considered letting myself into the kitchen and washing the plates myself, but when I tried the doorhandle and found it locked, I left the plates on the counter and turned to go. Halfway across the room, I stopped short. A large figure had appeared in the doorway. Dark orange eyes swept the room, no doubt looking for the source of the sound of footsteps and clattering dishes. I stifled a gasp as the light from one of the wall candles illuminated his face.
It was the black-haired minotaur.
Even though half the ship’s crew seemed to be made up of the bulls, it was obvious the vessel had not been built with them in mind. As wide as the doorway, his up-turned horns nearly scraped the ceiling. I felt suddenly claustrophobic sharing the space with him. If something happened, if I screamed, how long would it take Risk to get to me? Would he even be able to hear me from here, asleep in the cabin?
“So,” he said after a moment of silence, his voice kept low. “What’s got our girly guest sneaking around the ship’s halls at night?”
He moved further into the room, creating a wall of muscle between me and the exit. I backed up, putting myself practically in the corner, but he didn’t immediately follow.
“Got to admit,” he said, his eyes roaming over my nightgown-clad body. “You’ve got me intrigued. Pretty young human girl, on a ship full of bulls, going around givin’ us the eye.”
“I didn’t mean to mislead you. I’ve never seen, uh, met a minotaur before. I was just curious.”
“That so?” he said. “Well I’ve got your up-close-and-personal interaction right here.”
He stepped closer to me, practically cornering me against one of the mess tables. He leaned in to kiss me, but stopped when I pulled away. “Worried your boyfriend will be jealous?”
“He’s not…” I objected automatically, but immediately regretted it, when the bull grinned.
“So you and him are traveling together, but you aren’t together? What is he then? Brother?”
“He’s my bodyguard.”
“Bodyguard?” repeated the bull, raising an eyebrow. “Guess he’s got no reason to be jealous then.”
He leaned in again and my pulse quickened. He was all around me, his heat, his scent. My heart was racing, thudding painfully in my chest, part fear, part a dark excitement. Was the danger of his presence really causing my blood to rush? This was the opposite of the kinds of adventures I’d dreamt of having on my travels. I shook my head violently.
“Come on, you know what they say about human women and minotaurs. Once you ride a bull—”
“No!” I cut him off, my breath quickening.
He slowly pulled away, giving me space and moving to sit on one of the other tables, his feet up on the bench. He watched me as I watched him, still wary even as I calmed down.
“What are you doing here?” he asked suddenly.
“What?” I asked, my thoughts still scattered. “I was returning—”
“No, I mean why are you here? On this ship?”
“I work for the Pherasian Museum of Natural History. I’m doing field research.”
“On smuggling vessels?” the minotaur asked, then laughed at the surprised expression on my face. “Oh come on, I know you aren’t stupid. You know exactly where you are. Truth is I was expecting you to take me up on my offer?”
“You can get a lot of information from someone in bed,” he said with a grin.
“So you were trying to seduce me, to what, get information yourself?”
“Was going to let you seduce me actually,” he said. “See if you’d jump at the chance to get someone alone for questions. Seems like that wasn’t your play though. So what are you researching?”
“My team is working on a cultural encyclopaedia,” I said, my breathing under control again. “We’re unsatisfied with the current social studies text books.”
“Human-written books on otherkin are garbage,” said the bull without any hint of apology.
“Yes, well we’re aiming to change that,” I said. “We’re compiling the new data from personal observations and interviews. I’m starting my field research in Nyuesi.”
“And we just so happened to be going there.”
That was just a coincidence. What else would it be?
The minotaur made a noncommittal sound, but eventually shrugged. “Well, you and your bodyguard will be gone in a couple of days, so I suppose it doesn’t matter either way.” He stepped off the table. “Try not to go wandering at night too much. Skeever already thinks you and your boy are up to something, and the captain won’t take infiltrators lightly. If you want to get to Nyuesi safely, then keep your nose clean.”
“Says the smuggler.” I said bravely.
“I’m just the muscle,” said the bull, with a shrug. His expression darkened. “I’m serious. I’d rather not have to hurt you.”
I swallowed nervously. I believed him. “Warning noted.”
“Good, so if you ever change your mind about that personal encounter.” He winked.
“Really?” I asked. “You’re serious?”
“Of course,” said the bull, as though it should be obvious. “But I won’t push. You don’t want to give it, then I’m not gonna take it.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a smirk as he turned to leave. “You’ll come to my bed sooner or later. All the women do.”
The Island of Wolves Page 5