But he hadn’t…not really. He’d merely remembered what it was like, what he was like, once. He felt the weight of that realization pressing down. The guilt, ever present, grew stronger now, triggered in ways that it hadn’t been when she was sitting astride him with her dagger, a temptation too surreal to take seriously.
He let his hand drop, flicking his gaze down the length of her, trying to focus his attention where it should be. “Are you alright?”
“Alright?”
“Hurt?”
“No.”
He nodded, breathing easier. “Thank you…for driving them off.”
She wet her lips, seeming unsure of what he expected her to say in return. “They were attracted by your machine, by the sounds.”
“So it might happen again.”
“You must be careful.”
He nodded again, watching her for longer than he should have, waiting for the tremble in her shoulders to ease. She grew calm after a moment, regaining that proud inner balance as the chemicals of threat and response thinned out of her system. The beads in her hair, which he’d taken for black, now seemed to glint in shades of blue and green.
“Why did you follow me?” she asked.
“What?”
“You followed me outside the machine.”
“Yes.”
“Because you thought I was in danger.”
“You were in danger.”
Her eyes widened, a sudden realization taking hold. “You killed one of them, to protect me.”
He’d almost forgotten that. “Yes.”
“But you are a war maker.”
“A what?”
“A man, a creator of war. Lives mean nothing to you, especially not the life of a woman.”
He felt himself grow cold, the words suspended and hollow inside his chest. “What?”
“Your women have no power, no freedom.”
“This is more of the Oracle’s wisdom, I take it.”
“It is the truth. Men fight wars, and the women they own bear their children and sit behind glass windows, tied up in cloth and big skirts, waiting for someone to bring them their food.”
He shook his head. “That’s a distortion. A dramatic one.”
“A dish-dortion?”
“We have our petty roles and rituals, and we do have wars, but none of the women I know would allow themselves to be described that way.”
“What does it matter, a description? Do you have a woman? What does she do?”
“I don’t…have anyone.”
She winced, pained by whatever her damned intuition allowed her to sense. “You are alone. You are…grieving.”
He looked away from her, unwilling to reply to that.
“But you are—”
“A war maker?” he offered coldly. “A murderer, a tyrant and an enslaver of women?”
She frowned, apparently having nothing further to add to the list.
“Take me to the Oracle.”
“That would not be wise.”
“I don’t really give a damn.”
That confused her, her delicate brows furrowing.
“Take me to the Oracle, or I’ll find her myself.”
“You are angry.”
“Yes.”
“You must not threaten the Oracle.”
“Because you’re one of her protectors, I know. Protect her now, Jia. Take me to see her. I’ll come alone. If you refuse and I have to go myself, there will more men, more guns searching around in these caves.”
She didn’t like that, her gaze cutting to the team on ledge below, the pitch of their voices and the thrush and clang of their tools echoing over the water. “I will take you.”
“I thought you might.”
“But it will be difficult, and once you are in the presence of the Oracle, you must do as she commands. If you do not, you will die.”
“Ah. So, if I’m disobedient, the Oracle will kill me?”
“No.” She looked at him. “She will insist that I do that.”
The Journey
Tristan buckled the high collar of his jacket and slung a heavy coil of rope over his shoulder. The rock around him danced with the shadows of men laboring at their tasks, silhouettes looming in the glow of copper headlamps and gas torches as they seared bent valves, rockers arms and push rods deformed by a loose sprocket in the submersible’s valve train.
Muttered words slipped between the spitting hiss of gas and the clanging of hammers, short curses or jokes to fill the surrounding darkness with familiar human noise, an attempt, perhaps, to push out the memory of writhing talons and tails.
He checked his pistol, a .44 caliber six shot percussion revolver with a long barrel and a shining black cylinder. Its weight was solid and familiar, the press of a trusted friend against his palm. Stroking his thumb over the hammer, he slid the pistol into the leather combat holster along his thigh, leaving it half-cocked.
“You look like a soldier.” Arthur emerged from the direction of the water, his expression owlish in the dim cast of light.
“This is a dangerous place.”
The old man frowned, then grasped onto Tristan’s leather sleeve, leading him away from the others and lowering his voice to keep their conversation private. “Perhaps, but it’s entirely the wrong message. You should be bringing great gifts, dressed in your finest attire.”
“This is my finest attire. Did you find your research maps?”
“Yes, but you know, most are incomplete and scale is so difficult. I had no idea the passages were so deep, because the illustrations are, well, hazy, at best. I’m not sure how useful the maps will be.”
“More useful than no maps at all.”
“I suppose.”
“And the mini sub is ready to go.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And you know how long to wait.”
“Yes, very clear on all that. Now, about your visit to the Oracle, it should really be a great procession, like the ones of old.”
“Arthur—”
“You rejected her. And now you show up dressed for combat. It’s going to look, well…bad.”
Tristan released a tired breath. “I didn’t reject her.”
“In the eyes of the Oracle, you did.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“The Oracle? Brilliant. And what do you plan to say?”
“I can be diplomatic.”
“You’re wearing a six-shooter.”
“Diplomacy has many facets.”
“Don’t be belligerent. You aren’t showing the proper respect and it will get you into trouble. These women have developed their own legitimate culture on this island.”
“Based on illegitimate children.”
“They aren’t viewed that way here. And who are you, to impose such strict ideology?”
“One of the intended fathers.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “Oh c’mon, man. This is their custom and it exists for a reason. You can’t take it personally.”
Tristan resisted the urge to shoot him. “Has it occurred to you that these women are being lied to? Manipulated by the Oracle into spending their entire lives in a toxic cave, filled with murderous reptiles, so that one day, they can achieve the greatest honor possible through a quick rutting with a blurry sailor manning an outpost on the cusp of nowhere. Has it occurred to you that the rules might need to change just a bit for this legitimate culture to evolve into something slightly more civilized?”
“It’s not your job to decide that. This isn’t about you.”
“They made it about me. About this woman I’m supposed to bed and this daughter I’m supposed to provide.”
“Good Lord. Are you going to start a war? Jia isn’t asking for your protection. She isn’t some damaged refugee. Her world makes sense to her. Why do you want to destroy it?”
Tristan didn’t reply, his gaze sliding to the woman standing at the far end of the rock ledge. Her hair fell over her shoulders, glossy and black, as she leaned over a l
ong canoe and adjusted the nets draped over its prow.
Like its owner, the craft was sleek and light, a graceful slip of nothing positioned next to the ponderous shine and glare of the submersible.
She was waiting for him, her attention focused warily on the caves, watching for any threat to appear from the shadows.
“Tristan, I think—” Arthur paused, afraid to say it, but coming out with it anyway. “I think you’re going through something else here, some feelings which, perhaps, don’t actually belong in this context—”
Tristan cursed under his breath.
“Now, wait, just hear me out.” The old man held up his hands in emphatic appeal. “You lost a wife and a daughter, in a terrible way, years ago. And now this woman comes to you, offering intimacy, a desire for a daughter, in some ways, another chance, only they would live in denial of you. It would be another family lost, don’t you see?”
“Nothing happened.”
“I know that. And you know that, but these things tend to have a complicating factor of their own, with connections that take place in the heart, not that mind, not in the real world.”
“Arthur—”
“You’ve never let them go. There it is. I’ve said it. You see Lauren in every woman you meet, your own daughter in every little girl. You’ve tortured yourself like this for years.”
“I don’t see Lauren in Jia. I don’t see…my own history here.”
“Don’t you? You’ve imagined both a woman in need of rescue and a daughter in grave danger. And this time, you’re in a position to act, to set things right, aren’t you? Look at me and tell me that you’re not desperate, even after all these years, to set things right, to save what you lost.”
“Save what I lost?” Tristan narrowed his gaze. “Are you insane?”
“You honestly see no truth in what I’ve said?”
“I didn’t create this situation. I didn’t command Jia to sacrifice herself to some primitive sexual rite. I also didn’t appoint her to be the guardian of a world on the brink of destruction. This culture, with these women here…it’s a secret that can’t be kept, you know that. How many first contact scenarios can you think of? I can think of many that won’t offer the sanity or protection I’m prepared to give.”
Arthur waved his hands in frustration. “I didn’t mean it to be insulting. Of course, you’re quite fair. Everyone knows—”
“The Oracle has already demonstrated her unwillingness to make celebratory introductions. She’s already sent one of her agents, already ‘divined’ my role in the ongoing folklore of this group. The time for bringing gifts can come later, after we establish mutual respect.”
Arthur looked dismayed. “Yes, of course, your point is very well made. I just hope that, despite this provocation on the part of the Oracle, you can somehow. . .”
“Somehow what?”
The old man frowned, cutting his gaze to Jia’s outline against the glow of the water. “I hope that you can somehow separate yourself from this. There is magic in this culture, Tristan, deep and mysterious magic that the ancients prized during the time it was available to them. Sometimes, such magic does not always take an attractive form, does not always present itself in a way that is agreeable to us. There is light and dark in everything. I hope you can find a way to appreciate that, because if you don’t, we’ll all suffer—that woman most of all.”
Jia tried not to look at him too much. He sat facing her in the narrow bow of her canoe, crouched down between the nets, floats and spearheads, his hands holding onto the carved wooden sides of the boat. His gaze was focused past her, lingering on his thrumming metal ship, with its guards and its lights, as the canoe gently floated away from it.
She sensed a moment of hesitation, the sliver of anxiety he suppressed as the passage turned and the water rushed faster against the rock, no longer luminous and teeming, but black and cold. Her fishing lantern glowed at his back, its light warbled and streaked through primitive green glass.
Positioning the paddle, she dipped its edge in the current and leaned forward, pushing from one side of the canoe, then the other, directing the small craft with long, clean strokes. It was a rhythm that had become innate over the years, a deep and lulling exertion, the movement in her arms and shoulders playing to the laughter of water slipping from the edge of the paddle.
There was also a silence to it, something that waited as the wind moaned through the rocks, thick with the voices of the dead, something that thickened in lonely caverns that had lost their echo. The canoe was a traveler in dark places and frothing ocean storms, a vessel that flowed with the elements, but also harbored the power to challenge them.
She knew every groove, every splinter and chip that had scarred it, every kill that had defied or stained it. She knew how it felt in cold water as opposed to warm, how it tilted at the crest of a wave or cut through the spinning eddies at the mouth of the caves when the moon was full, but she had never felt it bear the weight of a man.
He sat before her, a stark and unwilling companion, his skin colored by the emerald light of the lantern and the dancing patterns of the water. The wind whispered at his back and he looked her, his eyes a reflection of the darkness itself, his beauty no less haunted.
“Why do you grieve?” she asked.
He held her gaze for a moment then looked away.
“I can feel it in you, like a fire.”
“It comes and goes.”
“Something happened to your woman.”
“Something happens to everyone.”
It was warning, a quick remark to dissuade her from asking anything further. He was afraid to answer her questions, or perhaps simply afraid. Either way, he controlled it, exuding strength, even annoyance, with a certain grace she had begun to think of as male.
The cave passage tightened, providing only a narrow channel with a low, rolling ceiling of gray rock. The light from the lantern cast its emerald glow over the stone, glittering through stripes of glossy black crystal.
Tristan kept his gaze on the passage as it swept them deeper, his hands resting on either side of the canoe, his large body held tense and alert. She tilted her head slightly, as if she could see him as he was, without the stiff jacket, the laces and the ropes, but warm under her hands, the muscle of his chest smooth, save for the crisp, dark hair that tickled her fingers.
“You are beautiful,” she said.
He looked at her, surprised. “For a war maker and a slave master?”
“That is your world. You are what you have to be.”
“It’s not my world at all. I wish you had the freedom to see my world as it is, without the lies and propaganda.”
She sunk the paddle under the surface, dragging it in the current until the canoe’s prow swung around and the small boat drifted into another winding passage. “And what do you think I would see?”
He considered their change in direction, answering without looking at her. “An empire that reaches across continents, that facilitates trade and provides stable ground for human progress. A place where life and thought has value, home to elegant old cities, with their carriages and their businessmen, and great palaces surrounded by high parapets and golden towers. New Europa is a thing to behold.”
“It sounds…like a dream.”
His eyes met hers. “It is.”
“So why do you fight wars, if you have such a place?”
“To protect it.”
“Because other men want to destroy it? Why?”
He cast his gaze across the water. “There are lesser empires, those who believe they have a claim to what we hold, and others who believe we have wronged them in our expansion.”
“And you do not believe any of this?”
“It was never my place to believe or not believe. Those kinds of convictions are for politicians, for grand debates in great halls. My career in war was limited to defending the empire in the Northern seas. My belief was limited to my ability to do that.”
She
nodded, sensing the deep weariness in him as he spoke, more shadows cast over an expression that simply seemed to absorb them. He frowned, lost in his own thoughts, focused on the movement of jewel colored light across the rock.
“The ancients fought many wars, like you, on the sea.”
He looked at her without reply.
“In the Temple, there are forbidden scrolls, accounts of great battles and heroes favored by the Gods.”
“Forbidden scrolls?”
Jia felt the heat rise under her skin. She looked away. “The Oracle does not approve of them being read. They glorify men and their violence.”
“But you’ve read them anyway.”
“Only once.”
The vaguest hint of a smile played on his lips. “And what forbidden things did they say?”
“They described fierce battles on the sea. There was terrible fighting, with weapons that smashed open ships and threw fire.” She glanced at his pistol, then down at the paddle as it dipped into the water. “The boats of enemies crashed into each other, tearing apart the wood with their armor. Men attacked over the sides, with arrows and spears and swords, desperate to kill, and many were lost.”
“Ah.”
“But your battles are different.”
“Yes.”
“Your ships are metal.”
“They still tear apart.”
“I’ve heard that, but I didn’t believe it. Have you ever been on a ship that was torn apart?”
His eyes narrowed, a strange glitter in their darkness. “Only once.”
She watched him for a moment then shook her head. “You have too many stories in you.”
“Do I?”
“A hunter cannot have so many stories.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because she must be quiet.”
His half-smile returned. “Quiet?”
“A loud hunter hears nothing, catches nothing.”
“You think I’m too loud?”
“Your heart speaks loudly, too many stories. It is all you hear. And you smell strange, that spice on your skin, like—”
“Soap?”
“I keep no stories in my heart, because nothing can be kept or lost. I am a shadow on the tide. I smell like the ocean, like the sun. I move without ropes, hunt without guns. I am quiet and I hear everything. I am connected to everything.”
The Admiral Page 4