by Jen Williams
In unison, the two women stepped forward and dropped the sun-lizards into the pit where they landed with a splash. The blue lizard, Icefang, immediately scurried to the far side, pressing itself to the wall. The other, Sourcrest, thrashed for a while, snapping its jaws at the air in confusion. There was a cheer from the spectators, shouts of encouragement and derision.
‘I’m not doing it,’ murmured Sebastian to himself. His hand went to his beard, tugging on the bristles there. ‘I will just watch. No more than that.’
The blue lizard scampered along the bottom of the wall, sending waves across the water. The pink lizard was still confused, shaking its head back and forth, when the other one came for it, shooting across the pool and sinking its teeth into the animal’s scaly flank. There was a roar of disgust from the crowd – so easy! – and the pink lizard scrambled away, its blood tainting the water.
‘What’s the point of this?’ yelled a woman standing to Sebastian’s right. She had pale blond hair falling in a braid over one shoulder, and she was shaking a fist at the gaffer on the other side of the pit. ‘We’ve come to watch a fight, not feeding time!’
Sebastian looked back down. The pink lizard was limping badly now, while the other was openly stalking it. They moved in tight circles, the water filling with blood.
‘I won’t,’ said Sebastian again, and this time it was loud enough that the blonde woman heard him. She looked up, her face creasing with confusion. ‘I won’t do it again.’
But it was no use. Already he was reaching out to the pink lizard, his mind touching its own, a sliver of silver, so cold and yet frantic. He felt the shape of it clearly in his mind and very carefully he surrounded it. Listen to me, he said, uncertain that the lizard would understand but trusting his tone to convey the meaning. Listen to me, do as I say.
With the barest push, the lizard’s mind was encompassed. In the pool it went rigid, and for a few seconds the blue lizard was confused. The prey wasn’t retreating as it expected.
‘Go on, then!’ screamed the woman next to Sebastian. ‘Finish the bastard!’
Sebastian peeled apart the lizard’s mind, splitting the silvery threads until he found the part he wanted. As ever, it was easy, as easy as it had been with the wyverns – this part of them was always close to the surface. The need to fight, the urge to taste blood. He felt his own pulse quicken in response.
Kill.
The pink lizard leapt at its rival, jaws suddenly wide and lethal. It landed on the other and rolled with it through the water, sending up a splash high enough to soak some of the spectators. There was a cheer at this, but as the lizards fought and the water churned, it became difficult to see exactly what was going on.
Sebastian tugged at his beard. He didn’t need to see. He could feel it.
In a few moments it was all over. The pink lizard stalked away, leaving the shredded carcass of its enemy in the water. The blue lizard lay on its back, its guts open and ragged, and all around coin changed hands as they prepared for the next fight. One of the blonde sisters produced a long stick with a hook on the end, and attempted to retrieve the body.
Sebastian turned away, breaking the link with the victorious lizard. He could feel its disorientation now the fight was over, and that somehow was the worst part. He took another gulp of toka from his pouch, trying to wash the taste of blood from his mouth, when a hand landed heavily on his shoulder.
‘Hey, Seb. Still betting on the scale pits?’
He looked down into Wydrin’s open face. She sounded cheery enough, but he could tell from the creases on her brow that this was not where she had hoped to find him. It was still the first place she’d looked though; he could tell that from her frown too.
‘I am,’ he said shortly. Frith was standing just behind her, scanning the crowd with his usual expression of caution. ‘What is it? A job? Just tell me where.’
Wydrin sighed. ‘It’s a little more complicated than that. Come on, let’s go get some food. You look like you need something hot inside you.’
‘Your mother is back in Crosshaven?’
Wydrin nodded as she took a bite from her steaming slab of lamb. It was wrapped in thin brown bread, already soaked through with grease, and the butter was burning her fingers. ‘She asked after you,’ she said. They stood off to one side of the meat vendor, letting the crowd part around them. Sebastian had refused her offer of food at first, but she had insisted. He was too pale these days, his cheeks too hollow. Frith had accepted a small portion of the meat, holding the bread carefully with gloved hands. ‘I didn’t tell her you look like shit, but she’ll see that for herself.’
Sebastian took a slow breath, looking around at the press of people as though he wanted to be elsewhere. ‘And?’
Wydrin shrugged. ‘My dearest mother wants us to travel with her to Euriale. She has a map of the interior of the island, something long thought not to have existed at all, and there are some tall tales about what might be hidden there.’
Sebastian frowned. ‘Euriale? I know the name.’
‘The notorious pirate port of Two-Birds is situated there,’ said Frith.
‘Yeah, Two-Birds,’ Wydrin continued. ‘Devinia would take me there when I was small sometimes. Full of pirates, taverns, pissing contests. The island itself is largely unknown and unexplored though—’
‘– because it is considered to be incredibly dangerous,’ finished Frith.
Sebastian looked down at his food, considering.
‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘But why would Devinia want us along on this little venture? From what I remember, Wydrin, she is more than formidable, and travels with a crew who would swim across the nine seas and back for her.’
‘Apparently, we have special skills.’ Wydrin winked at Frith, who wore his staff slung across his back. ‘Experience in the field, extreme quick-wittedness, good looks. And she needs Frith’s magic to get there.’
‘I have no special skills,’ said Sebastian flatly. He still hadn’t eaten any of the food.
Wydrin rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, her levity vanished; this was something they’d been dancing around for months. ‘Seb, whatever happened with Ephemeral and the brood sisters –’ she paused, uncertain of what her next words might provoke. ‘Whatever happened with Dallen, you are still one of us. One of the Black Feather Three.’
Sebastian looked away from her. There were a few beats of silence between the three of them, filled by the general din of the Marrow Market. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Frith looking solemn. After a moment, Sebastian threw the wrapped meat parcel down onto the ground – not in an angry movement, but in a gesture of defeat.
‘As far as I can see, Wydrin, the only skills I have are to alienate those I love, and to fail in my responsibilities.’ When she opened her mouth to protest, Sebastian held his hands up. ‘I will still come with you, if that is what you wish. I can still wield a sword well enough, after all.’
‘We leave two days from now,’ said Frith softly. ‘From the Fair Winds dock. Sunrise.’
Sebastian nodded once, before turning and heading away into the crowd. Wydrin sighed and rubbed her greasy fingers across her leather vest.
‘It will do him good to be away from here,’ said Frith.
‘I don’t like it.’ Wydrin shook her head. ‘Sebastian has never shown any interest in these things before.’ She gestured vaguely in the direction of the fighting pits. ‘But now it’s all he does, in between drinking toka and brooding. The Sebastian I knew would have found the scale fights barbaric, but now he watches them like he’s hungry for something. Our good prince broke his heart, and now it’s like he’s not really here. As though he left part of himself in Skaldshollow.’
Frith looked away, his expression darkening. ‘Skaldshollow was a cursed place. There is much I wish I could have left there.’
Wydrin threw away the last of her lamb. She no longer had much of an appetite. ‘And now we head off to another cursed place. Let�
�s hope this one has rather more treasure and fewer disasters.’
4
The Poison Chalice was, Frith reflected, rather like Wydrin in one sense: it took an awful lot to get it moving in the morning.
Eventually, they sailed from Crosshaven at midday, with the sun a bright coin in the sky, and a busy sea channel to negotiate. Frith leaned against the guardrail as they moved, watching the bustling city port grow smaller as the ship sailed away from the island and into the larger archipelago. He could see other islands dotted around, brown blurs distorted with heat haze and smoke.
The Poison Chalice was easily the largest ship he’d ever been aboard. She was, Wydrin had told him, a galleon, and he had to admit the grandness of the name seemed appropriate. She was a tall, sturdy ship built of shining dark wood, with raised, boxy-looking hindquarters and three great masts hung with enormous cream-coloured sails. Above the crow’s nest flew a red flag with a black border and a silver cup at its centre. The figurehead that clung on the prow of the ship depicted a fierce-faced woman with pale-blue skin; her long white hair was strewn with delicately carved shells and crabs and she wore a silvery shift that appeared to be made of scales. Wydrin had told him the figure was supposed to represent one of the Graces. One arm reached out, fingers clutching a long silver chain that glittered in the bright sunshine. She looked, in his opinion, formidable. All in all, he thought the ship suited Wydrin’s mother down to her salt-stained boots.
Having grown up in the middle of the Blackwood, Frith’s only experience of boats had been the occasional summer’s day at the lake, punting around in an elaborate rowboat his father had had made for his wife. Thinking of it, he smiled slightly. Those memories were now so distant they almost seemed to have happened to another person. Had he truly once lived in a castle, with a mother and father and two brothers? His hair had been brown then, and he’d had only the one scar; a small oval depression on his upper arm, a souvenir from the afternoon he and Leon had pretended to be the leaders of the Steadfast Seven with daggers stolen from the armoury. Leon had laughed hysterically, until he had seen the blood soaking into his brother’s shirt.
Everything was so different now. Absently, he pressed a hand to his chest, where the Edenier no longer boiled inside him. The mage magic he had taken from beneath the Citadel had once leapt at his command, but now it was gone; all erased by the Edenier trap, a device that stripped magic from men and women like a practised hand skinning a rabbit. It had been worth it to stop Joah Demonsworn, who had been a mad man and a mass murderer, but all he had left now was the knowledge, a maelstrom of images inherited from the lunatic when they had shared their memories.
There was nothing left but the knowledge of magic, and the fear that to use it would take him down the path Joah had followed.
Frith took a deep, slow breath, tasting the salt in the air. ‘I barely recognise myself these days,’ he murmured.
A shadow fell over him. He looked up to see Sebastian, a faint smile on the knight’s gaunt face.
‘You and me both, my lord.’
‘I am glad you chose to join us, Sir Sebastian.’
Sebastian grunted. ‘It’s not like I had anything pressing to deal with.’
Frith looked back out to sea. There were seagulls high above them, a promise of white against the blue. It was a fine day.
‘Wydrin worries about you,’ he said eventually. ‘She shows it by trying to annoy you more than usual, of course. But she is worried.’
‘Lord Frith, you forget that I have known Wydrin for many years.’ Sebastian turned towards him slightly. ‘I have no doubt you have a greater knowledge of her underclothes than I could ever need or want, but don’t presume to think you know her better than I do.’
The anger was a sudden thing, clogging Frith’s throat. ‘You dare to speak to me so?’ He was thinking of his staff, wrapped within a length of oilcloth, locked in a long wooden box in their cabin. If he had it now … ‘I am sure I do not need to remind you what we have all been through together.’
The tense expression on Sebastian’s face faltered, and he shook his head. ‘I am sorry, Frith. Truly.’ He tugged at his thick beard, glaring at the horizon as if the answers to his troubles lay somewhere along that bright edge. ‘What you said about not recognising yourself. That cuts closer to the quick than I would like to admit.’
Frith cleared his throat. He was reminded of his childhood again, of a quiet castle with very few people of his own age. It had been difficult to make friends. ‘You can talk to me. If it would help.’
Sebastian smiled faintly, and for a brief moment he looked very much like the smooth-faced knight Frith had met for the first time in the Hands of Fate tavern. ‘Thank you. I shall bear that in mind.’
Before Frith could reply, they both turned at the sound of footsteps behind them. The ship’s first mate, Kellan, a tall bearded man with hair greased back into a tail and vanbraces wrapped in multicoloured scraps of cloth, was approaching with an elderly woman at his arm. She was short and wiry, with grey hair and deeply tanned skin, and there was a wine-coloured birthmark on her right cheek, faded and creased with age. She wore a long-sleeved green shirt, and at her waist there was a thick leather belt, glittering with a variety of knives.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Kellan, ‘I thought I should bring Augusta Grint to meet you. She is the ship’s medic, although of course, I very much hope you won’t be in need of her services on this voyage.’
The old woman glared up at the two of them, her eyes as bright and beady as a jackdaw’s. ‘Well,’ she said, addressing Sebastian, ‘you’re a biggun.’
Sebastian paused for a moment, before nodding shortly. ‘You are not the first to have said so, Mistress Grint. It is my pleasure—’
‘You, though – I don’t like the look of you.’ The old woman reached out and grabbed hold of Frith’s forearm. It took all of his self-possession not to gasp – her grip was incredibly strong. ‘Been ill, have you? I won’t have anyone bringing illness onto the Poison Chalice. I’ve got enough to bloody deal with.’
Frith wrenched his arm away. ‘I was injured, but it was some time ago and I am quite recovered, thank you. You are the ship’s medic?’ He glanced at Kellan, who was grinning with every sign of enjoyment.
‘Ship’s medic? Nursemaid to a bunch of ninnies, mostly. General dogsbody, more like.’ Augusta grimaced, deepening her considerable wrinkles. ‘You’re thinking, the baggage is too old. Too weak. How can she treat the sick? I’d be surprised if she could lift a spoon, let alone a bone saw.’ She stepped up and poked Frith firmly in the midriff with one bony finger. ‘Let me tell you, you long streak of piss, I could have your leg off in seconds.’
‘Augusta has been with Devinia all of the captain’s life,’ added Kellan with an expression of innocent helpfulness.
‘Oh, she was a bleedin’ nightmare!’ cried Augusta, apparently glad to have a crack at her favourite subject. ‘All knees and freckles and that ridiculous hair of hers.’
‘You knew Devinia when she was a child?’ asked Sebastian.
‘Of course I did. I was on the ship that picked her up. Merchant vessel, taken badly, blood in the water. Nowt left alive on board but rats and one scruffy little kid hiding under the bunk.’ She paused. Frith sensed that she’d said too much. ‘Anyhow, we took her on, and here we are. I’ve never questioned that girl’s orders, not once, and she gets some bloody foolish ideas in her head, let me tell you. But this, messing about with Euriale …’ She trailed off, then glared up at Kellan. ‘You know better, laughing boy. Why haven’t you said anything to her?’
Kellan shrugged. ‘I merely do as my lady instructs.’
Augusta snorted. ‘I would suspect you’d lost your balls, boy, except we’ve all heard the evidence of those, night after bleedin’ night.’
‘You do not approve of the journey to Euriale, I take it?’ put in Frith, desperately trying to steer the conversation into less horrifying territory.
The old woman seemed to
shrink somehow then, and some of her bluster ebbed away. ‘Course I don’t. It’s a bad place. Unnatural. Cursed. No one with any bloody sense would sail into those waters. If I had my way we’d never set foot on the island, and that goes for bloody Two-Birds too.’ She patted absently at the knives on the belt. ‘What’s there is best left alone.’
‘And what is there?’ asked Sebastian. Frith was surprised to see that he looked angry again, as though the old woman were lying to them.
‘Ghosts,’ said Augusta. ‘Ghosts and wolves.’
It wasn’t the cabin Wydrin remembered from her childhood, of course, but she recognised many of her mother’s possessions: the big black iron teapot, stained with tea and age, the blue crystal sugar pot with its silver spoon. The giant sword with the curving blade, much too large for Devinia to actually wield, but kept in her cabin because it was beautiful, emeralds shining in the hilt like frozen pieces of summer. And the great map of Ede pinned to one wall of the cabin, painted onto parchment and filled in at the edges with various outlandish monsters. It had been her favourite when she’d been small, she remembered now. Her father would point to the places with the strangest names, and tell her wild stories about his adventures there; it had been one of his favourite games. Pete Threefellows had always been the most outrageous liar.