“What?” shouted Zak. “I spotted them. The finder’s fee is mine, by right.”
“Let it go, Zak,” muttered Hachia. “I’ll split it with you.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said Demetro. “I want you to have it for yourself, Hachia.”
And this is how it begins. Or rather ends, for me and Hachia.
Demetro flashed a perfect smile and leaned back against the wall of the middeck cabin. Zak gritted his teeth and tried to contain his scorn, still hanging from the top edge of the ladder. Demetro’s royal blood was only worth enough to grant him rights to the Sand Angel and one of the uninhabited outer Arkaian Isles that the rest of his brothers had left unclaimed.
Even Lord Richtor, the Under King of the Arkaian Isles, was a man of limited authority. The Arkaians had been vassals to the Malnians for almost a century. Many of the nobles of the Emperor’s court and even some of the more influential songstresses held more political power than the entirety of the province.
“Let it go, Zak,” said Bartrand. “We’ll all eat well tonight, and five percent is nothing to be splitting the sinking mood over.”
“Oh, blood and thunder, Bartrand,” said Zak. “I’d sink more than the mood if that’s what it takes to get my—”
Hachia was behind him on the ladder and announced her presence by giving him a hard slap on the butt.
“Knock off the language,” she said. “You’re in the presence of a lady.”
“You’re about as much a lady as I am a qyss,” said Zak. Hachia made a face at him, and he made one back.
He pulled himself over the railing, and then with Bartrand’s help and Hachia lifting from below, began to pull up the bundle of prism fish. Demetro watched them, stepping in to take Hachia’s hand and help her up the last few ladder rungs.
“She is a lady, and a beautiful one at that,” he said, smiling.
He’s clueless. And I’m an oceanfoot, with as much say and sway as one of these fish.
Under Prince Demetro had taken command of the Sand Angel three months ago, after the death of their last captain, old man Dagon. Zak still had fond memories of him, even if he’d been drunk most of the time, and had finished himself off on a batch of bad ale.
“Thank you, Demetro,” said Hachia. “It’s nice to know that someone still understands what it means to have good manners.”
Zak groaned, splitting off from the group instead of speaking his mind and saying something he would probably regret. He made his way up the main mast, climbing the old hardwood slats up to where the flag hung high above the deck. He switched out Demetro’s family banner for the fresh catch flag, which would alert any nearby and interested ships to their haul.
Bartrand whistled, drawing Zak’s attention while he still stood in the crow’s nest. He looked down at the deck to see the big man waving up at him, a mischievous grin splayed across his face.
“Give us your best dive, Zak!” he shouted. “Show us the one that won you the diving contest at the First Season Festival!”
Zak leaned his head to the side and smiled. He remembered the festival well enough. He’d spent a bit of time each day during the lead up practicing different flips on land, and different diving angles off the Palmian cliffs while they were in dock.
Hachia said something to Demetro that Zak couldn’t hear from his perch. Demetro made a boisterous gesture and immediately began taking his shirt off. He’d been there for the diving contest, too. A twisted ankle had kept him from participating, but Zak had seen his form before, and it wasn’t half bad.
“I’ll throw a dive,” Zak shouted, grinning down at Bartrand. “Under the condition that I get my finder’s fee.”
“You throw a better dive than me, and it’s a deal,” shouted Demetro. “Hachia will judge.”
“Hachia and Bartrand,” said Zak.
Demetro shook his head.
“Just Hachia.” He smiled at her, and Zak felt a sudden intense urge to vomit down onto deck.
The diving path from the crow’s nest of the Sand Angel down to the water was at a far less than ideal angle. Zak had thrown plenty of dives from the top of the mast before, and while it was doable, the forward momentum required to avoid slamming into the edge of the deck limited his acrobatic potential.
Demetro was already on his way up the mast by the time Zak had stripped his shirt off. He tossed it down to the deck below, and felt oddly pleased to see Hachia reaching out to catch it for him.
“Don’t get it dirty,” said Zak. “It’s the only clean one I have left.”
Hachia stuck her tongue out at him and waved the shirt around her head, as though considering whether or not to throw it into the ocean. Zak cracked one of his knuckles in her direction, a gesture which by Malnian standards would have merited a prayer to the Worldmaker on behalf of anyone unlucky enough to be watching.
He stepped up onto the crow’s nest outer railing. The wood was thin and ill-suited to bearing the weight of a person. Zak only needed a single step, however, and he began prepping for it while plotting his path into the cerulean waters below.
Hesitation had never been a hurdle for Zak when it came to diving. He felt the fear in his chest, even only twentyish feet up, but it was the same fear he felt at the top of the highest Arkaian diving cliffs, with a hundred feet of open air beneath him. It was nothing he couldn’t handle.
Diving, like many things in life, was all about that first step. Once over the edge, all of the potential outcomes and possibilities narrowed down into a single strand, a single thread to hold onto and follow to the end.
Zak launched into a confident, twisting dive. His knees pulled up toward his chest, committing his entire body into several flips. He saw blurs of the sun, Krexellious, and Methrakia as he twisted upside down, and then the water as he came around.
One, two rotations, and then he untucked for the final stretch. The edge of the ship’s hull was only a few feet away from him as he sped by toward the water. There was good reason for why so few island divers ever attempted complicated tricks from the crow’s nest.
Zak hit the water smoothly, sinking down a dozen feet and taking a moment before doing anything to feel the last of the adrenaline pumping through his veins. The rush of a high level dive, at least to him, was better than being drunk off ale, or spirits. It was better than sex.
He took his time surfacing, even though his lungs ached for oxygen, his fast-beating heart running through the supply in double the normal time. When he finally took that first breath, the air tasted salty and sweet, and the sun felt good on his face.
Zak slicked back his hair and saw Demetro motioning for him to swim to the side and clear space for his landing. He did, not seeing any sense in being a poor sport. Demetro went through the same motions that Zak had, his eyes scanning the water and the air intensely. There was a certain pride in his posture that transcended ego, and Zak couldn’t help but smile at it, even as competitive as he was.
Demetro set his foot and launched forward. His foot slipped as he entered the air, but he was a little taller than Zak, and apparently much more effective at leveraging his body into a jump. He flipped once, twice, three times, and landed feet first after clearing the edge of the boat by more than twice the margin of Zak.
He’s good. At least as good as me. Maybe even better…
“Not bad,” said Zak, addressing the empty patch of ocean where Demetro had entered the water. “Not bad at all.”
Demetro surfaced a moment later. He locked eyes with Zak, raising his head into a nod that was neither friendly nor aggressive.
“Yours was a little short,” said Demetro.
“You landed feet first,” said Zak.
He couldn’t hold back a smile, feeling an unwanted fondness for his crewmate and captain. Despite everything, he’d come to know Demetro as a friend and a deck brother over the past few months. He wasn’t a bad person, just a little spoiled by his upbringing. The two of them looked up at Hachia, who was standing at the railing’s edge, arms crossed.
“Tie,” she announced.
“Sink it,” said Zak. “You say that knowing that I’m the clear-cut winner, Hachia!”
“She’s trying to save your pride, Zakarias,” said Demetro. “You should let her.”
Zak brought his hands in close to Demetro’s ear, and cracked his knuckles.
CHAPTER 3
History reads in such a way to make it seem inevitable that Lord Emperor Altreis the First conquered the outer islands. Tis a shame that there is almost nothing on the official record of the desperation precipitating those events. – Cadwin the Historian, Founding of an Empire
ZAK
The Sand Angel was on the far side of the Arkaian Isles, and while it was prime territory for harvesting the sea, it wasn’t nearly as trafficked as the trade corridors around the central island of Malnia. The only thing near them, other than the coast of the island of Palmia, was the Stormy Sea, an uncharted, dangerous expanse of water.
More than anything, that was what caused Zak to do a double take when he finished climbing back onto the deck and saw the familiar blurred image of a ship approaching on the horizon so soon after the catch flag had been strung up. He raised an eyebrow and made his way over to the ship’s bow.
“We’ve got a buyer,” he said, calling to the rest of the crew. “And an early one, at that.”
Demetro was still on the ladder, and Hachia was sitting on the starboard railing, braiding her hair. It took the two of them a second to make out what Zak had seen.
“That’s not a ship…” said Hachia. “What in the stones?”
Zak frowned, staring more closely at the shape in the distance. It didn’t look like any ship he’d seen before. The hull was long and rounded, and a deep, natural shade of textured brown. It had multiple sails, dozens of them at least, hanging from strange, diagonally angled masts with odd, jointed vertices. Stranger still was the shape in the water at the front of it, massive and grey skinned and spurting up regular jets of water.
Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? This… is impossible.
“It’s a treeship…” said Demetro. “By the Worldmaker… It’s the Luxians!”
Heavy footsteps sounded from the middeck cabin as Bartrand’s huge frame thundered onto deck. His eyes were wide, and that gave Zak pause.
Technically, Lux was still at war with Malnia. It had been over two decades since the last Malnian raid on their jungle peninsula, and the Luxians were by no means at naval parity with the Malnian Empire. The treeship was close enough for Zak to make out the details of the men on deck: at least a dozen of them, outnumbering the crew of the Sand Angel four to one.
“Well,” he said, uneasily. “I guess we should trade with them?”
“Are you out of your sinking mind?” snapped Demetro. “These people… They’re killers, and necromancers! I’ve heard stories of the kinds of things they do.”
“I’ve seen what they do,” said Bartrand, who was older than anyone else on the ship by at least a score of years. “But it doesn’t seem like we have much of a choice, Captain.”
Demetro frowned. Zak scanned his face, and then Hachia’s, feeling comforted by the fact that he wasn’t the only one wearing their uneasiness openly.
“We’ll be fine,” said Zak. “They’re here because of our catch. We have fish to sell. Let’s just do what we do, and not overthink it!”
More details came into view as the treeship neared the Sand Angel. The shape in the front was a full grown donphar, a massive, warm-blooded, intelligent sea beast, attached to the ship by some sort of vine harness. Zak almost couldn’t believe it, and began running over the hundreds of scenarios in which such an arrangement could go horribly wrong.
The men and women on the treeship looked even stranger than what Zak had been expecting. Much of the information about the culture of the Luxians he’d assumed to be exaggerated, either by the Malnians for effect, or from being passed from one mouth to another for so long.
Their shirts and jackets were deep green, and appeared to be made of thick leaves, each one wide enough to cover a person’s face, and glossy, as though some type of preservative had been layered over it. Their trousers were made of wool, and each pair was dyed a different color.
The women wore low-cut blouses, revealing scandalous amounts of cleavage and almost dipping low enough to show more than just that. Zak tried not gape as he stared at him and failed miserably, the task compounded by how fit and lean all of their bodies were.
The legends spoke of Luxians as jungle savages and necromancers, too wild and unfit to be a part of civilized society. They’d been at the periphery of the world for over a hundred years, since the dawn of the current era; since before Founding Emperor Altreis the First put an end to the Dynasty War and brought peace to the islands.
The war between Malnia and Lux was not something born from intention. During the reign of Lord Emperor Altreis II, hundreds of expeditions were sent out to the old continent, most of them only rediscovering the Forsaken Lands and bringing back little of worth.
The ships that followed the coast to the south eventually found Lux, the peninsula at the bottom of the world. It was the only remaining fertile land outside of the northern and southern islands to ever to be discovered in recent memory, and it was populated not by the scholars and statesmen of the old world, but by a very different kind of people.
“They’re waiting for something,” muttered Demetro. Zak blinked, pulling his attention back into focus. The Luxian ship had somehow cut loose the donphar and set down anchorstone next to them. The men on it, their skin tanned deeper than that of any Arkaian, were watching them.
“Well, we have to put the ship bridge down,” said Zak.
“Are you out of your mind?” hissed Demetro. “They’ll think we’re attacking!”
“There are four of us,” said Zak. “And around fourteen of them. I sincerely doubt they’ll think we’re attacking.”
He started walking over to where the ship bridge, a sliding wooden slab used to connect one ship to another, was resting. Bartrand glanced nervously over at Demetro and then moved to help him. The Luxians were watching, sharing almost none of the nervous anxiety of the crew of the Sand Angel. One of them let out a deep, guttural laugh at something.
“Alright.” Zak paused before beginning to tip the ship bridge over, and turned to the Luxians. “We’re just trying to connect,” he made a gesture with both hands, “the two ships together.”
One of the Luxians laughed again. Zak couldn’t help but notice that all of them were either carrying a sword, or another weapon that he didn’t know the name of that looked a bit like a flail, except made of vines and rocks.
He and Bartrand carefully leaned the ship bridge down. It let out a loud clunk as it struck the hull of the Luxian ship on the other side. Zak worried for a moment that it would slide, and they’d be stuck fishing it out of the ocean as they had many times in the past, but it caught against the rough bark of the treeship and stuck in place.
“Great,” said Zak. “Now let’s just… calmly go get the fish.”
Zak and Bartrand hurried around to the other side of the middeck cabin, where the prism fish had been stowed away in the catch bin. Having the Luxians out of sight, even for just a minute, was far more terrifying than seeing them in person had been. Zak thought of Hachia, and of what little Demetro could do on his own to protect her if something happened. He walked a little faster as he and Bartrand carried the bundle, and noticed the bigger man’s expression darken slightly.
One of the Luxians was testing the integrity of the ship bridge out with a sandal-clad foot, speaking in his strange language to the rest of his crew as he did. When he saw Zak and Bartrand carrying the fish he clapped his hands together and leaned forward into a slight bow.
“Alright,” said Demetro. “This is good. Yes. We want… to trade… with you.”
He spoke in slow intervals, making wide, patronizing movements with his hands as he did. The Luxians watched
him for a moment, and then several of them burst out into laughter. The man who’d been testing the bridge waved to his crew and then slowly began to walk across.
Zak was there to meet him once he’d made it to the other side. He saw the man’s face in detail and froze. Savage, tribal patterned artwork crisscrossed the man’s cheeks, forehead, and neck. Zak could pick up on the subtle hint of blue Methrakian celestial stone, crushed and powdered into fine glitter, within the intricate lines of the tattoos.
That’s evil. True, unadulterated evil.
Celestial stones were as rare as anything could be in Malnian society, and far more valuable than silver, gold, or any inert substance. They were beautiful to look at, but their true value came from the magic contained with their very essence. They were power itself.
A few slivers of celestial stone, powdered and mixed into a potion, could give a person abilities far outside of anything natural. A pure enough celestial stone, bound into jewelry and kept in direct contact with the skin was a more practical, though far more expensive way of achieving the same effects.
There was a third method for harnessing the power within the celestial stones, and in Malnia, it was an absolute taboo, punishable by death, or exile. Though why anyone would choose to go through with the process of receiving a tattoo to begin with, excruciating as it was rumored to be, was a mystery to Zak. He stared at the Luxian’s tattoos, each one a curiosity to behold; a statement of otherness scarred into skin. The Luxian didn’t notice, or was at least good at acting like he didn’t.
Methrakian stone, fallen from the moon of reflection, was relatively rare in Malnia, and even rarer in Arkaia. Zak had heard the stories of people binding objects to their will at a touch, and lifting them free of hand, as though carried by invisible fingers. The stone seers called it telekinesis, magic of empty space and air.
The Luxian was watching Zak, waiting for something. He looked over at Bartrand and Hachia, and bowed slightly.
“Shevat Natoyus,” said the Luxian.
The crew of the Sand Angel was silent for a several seconds, an eternity in the context of the situation. Zak took a slow breath, and then reached over to the bundle, patting it with one hand.
Former Champion (Vanderbrook Champions Book 5) Page 18