“Until now?” he asked with amusement.
“I hardly call this ‘defeat.’ We weren’t being serious, were we?” she asked. “This was just an invigorating morning joust.”
He released her with a smile. “I must say, it has been rather invigorating. Next time could you try to refrain from breaking my nose?” he asked.
“I apologize,” she said, flipping over and sitting up. She extended her hand to him. “I am Colonel Visola Ramaris.”
“Vachlan Suchos, at your service,” he responded, shaking her hand firmly.
“Vachlan,” she repeated, with a self-deprecating smile. “Not Falcon—Vachlan.”
“Please forgive me for the indecency of our meeting. I had an extremely long day yesterday running errands for King Kyrosed, and I had not slept in two days. I was sent to retrieve you and the princess in the wee hours of the morning, and I fear…”
“Is Aazuria safe?” Visola asked with dismay. “I usually guard her so closely, but last night…”
“Her father is upset with her for disobeying his orders. She could have been seriously injured. He has locked her up as punishment.”
Visola sighed. “He’s always locking her up. I hate to speak ill of your new employer since it’s your first day on the job, but you do know that King Kyrosed is a very disturbed man, don’t you?
“We all are,” Vachlan answered. “People in positions of power are usually just more disturbed.”
Visola studied the stranger and could not help feeling relaxed by his calm manner. He seemed intelligent and composed in addition to being very physically skilled. She hated to admit it, but he probably would be an excellent asset to Adlivun. She reminded herself that he was taking her uncle’s job, and she should be predisposed to disliking him.
“I must have said and done some embarrassing things last night,” Visola said quietly. “Please don’t consider that as your true first impression of me.”
“On the contrary, good lady—I found you fascinating!” Vachlan said. “I could not stop listening, and I would have liked to grab a pen and paper to scribble down notes about the tales you were telling. You held me spellbound, illustrating your every word with gestures and expressions—it was quite theatrical. You were passionate and warm. I wished I could have continued listening, but I was exhausted from travel. Overall, your birds rather reminded me of the story of Philomela.”
Visola’s eyebrows knitted together. “You are a strange man, Vachlan Suchos.” She rose to her feet and walked over to her bed, sitting on the corner of it comfortably. “Tell me about yourself.”
“Yes, Colonel,” he said, rising to his feet. “Would you like the whole story or the abridged version?”
“Tell me everything important.”
“Everything is important,” he said quietly. He began to pace back and forth across the small room as he considered how best to tell his story, and whether he should tell anything at all. Visola observed him vigilantly, analyzing every nuance of his posture, gestures, and expressions. She was searching for one little error, one minute mistake to cling to so that she could nurture a healthy hatred towards the foreigner. She felt a strange combination of disbelief and déjà vu—she was incredulous that this seemingly perfect man had been dumped directly into her bed, and yet she was certain that this had happened before. The collision of these opposing feelings resulted in a frustration-headache, and Visola hoped that she was still just dreaming.
Maybe the man was actually just a bird sitting on her windowsill.
“It was disconcerting when you called me Falcon. My mother used to call me that.”
“Is that how this works?” she asked. “Are you going to try to ply me with some tortured-childhood story to get into bed with me again?”
He smiled at her, approaching and placing his hands on the bed on either side of her. He leaned forward, putting his face very close to hers. She felt slightly intimidated, and wanted to lean back, but she held her ground. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that she had morning-breath. When she had been wrestling with him earlier, she had not noticed, but something had quickly changed in her impression of him. It might have happened when he was able to pin her down, although she hoped she was not that shallow.
“Will it work?” he asked. “If I tell you a stirring story, will you take pity on a tired traveler?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard the story yet.”
“Good point. Now I’m thinking of how to embellish it to make it more dramatic.”
“You’re stalling,” she said, as she observed his dark grey eyes. “You feel uncomfortable facing your past and you’re making sex jokes to delay having to speak about it. You intend to distract me altogether.”
He pulled away from her abruptly. “That is correct.”
“King Kyrosed mentioned that you two had some kind of shared vision. Why did you come here?” Visola asked.
“Do you want me to be candidly honest, or do you prefer the dazzling-seduction version?”
“Both,” she answered. “Start with the honest, end with the seduction.”
The birdman nodded, taking a moment before he began speaking. “I was born in 1585, to a rather respectable family. I was well-educated, and my mother was a great lady of leisure and wealth. I had dreams of being a playwright, and my skill was praised by many, but how could I compete with that lucky bastard, Shakespeare? It was surely timing that made him so successful. I always said to my friends and family that if I had been born a few years earlier…”
“Are you joking?” Visola asked, with her red eyebrows lifted cynically.
“No. Anyway, I decided that if I could not make it as a writer, I would be a man of action. I would be the man of the most action. So when I was sixteen I joined a crew and set sail for the new world, and I spent many years exploring exotic lands. Colonel Ramaris, are you listening to me?”
“No. I fell asleep when you said you wanted to be a writer. Dear Sedna, you’re boring.”
“I immediately followed that by saying I decided to become a man of action instead.”
“You couldn’t even hold my attention for that long,” she said with a yawn. “No wonder you didn’t make it as a playwright—although I do think you could have a promising career writing lullabies to make troublesome children fall asleep.”
“Please, allow me to continue. Your attention span is dreadful. Where was I? Ah, the Caribbean. I grew very wealthy from exploiting innocent natives—it was the popular thing to do—and soon I owned a merchant ship of my own which I used to transport exotic goods back to Europe. One fateful day, in 1605…”
“One fateful day?” Visola asked mockingly.
“Please stop interrupting me, Colonel,” Vachlan said a bit sharply. “As I was saying, one fateful day, I was sailing near Bermuda when my ship was caught in a massive storm; a hurricane, in fact. We were wrecked. Everyone drowned. I drowned too.” Vachlan paused for dramatic effect. “I was only twenty years old, and I thought my life had come to an end…”
“Goodness. I really hope that you survived. I can’t imagine what happens next.” As Visola said this in as monotonous a voice as she could muster, her entertainer grew weary. He sat down on the bed beside her and sent her a discouraged look.
“You are extremely difficult to please,” Vachlan said with vexation. “This is the true story of my life, as you requested. Although I may not tell a tale as eloquently as you do, please try to imagine yourself in my situation. Drowning is not an agreeable thing—I held my breath until I thought I had died, and I was terrified.”
The story reminded Visola of something she had once known. She squinted, searching her mind and trying to grasp the memory. A fleeting image came to mind of an older, grey-haired man, but she could not recognize him. The memory was gone as soon as it came, and she returned to listening.
“I woke up in chains, inside a walled undersea fortress. I was kept as a slave for years in the kingdom of Bimini until they freed me and gave me
a job. I couldn’t communicate with them at first, but they taught me sign language and how to fight. It was an amazing time for me.”
“Do get on with it. I hope something interesting will happen soon.” Visola tried her best to act tough and aloof, but the truth was that she wanted to know every single detail about this man. The mere fact that she was so curious spurred her to act even more apathetic and rude. The best way to stop an unwanted attraction was to become repulsive.
“Yes, well…” Vachlan shrugged. “In short, I earned the respect of the royalty of Bimini, and I was permitted to return to England to find my mother. When she saw that I had not aged at all in over a decade, she knew that I had been underwater. This almost disturbed her more than if I had drowned. She was inconsolable as she told me her story. My mother had been the princess of Ker-ys, an underwater city near France, until her own siblings had tried to murder her for the throne. She fled to live with friends on land, and was too scared to ever return. She feared that they would try to kill her again.” He turned to look at Visola with a wild, yet focused wrath in his eyes. “So I went. I hunted down and killed every last member of my family who had ever threatened my mother, and then I invited her to return to Ker-ys and live there with me. I preferred the underwater life, you see.” Just as quickly as his eyes had begun to show dark emotion, it dissolved back into light confidence. “Careful, Colonel, you’re beginning to look interested.”
Visola inwardly cursed. It was as though he knew that she had been trying to repel him with her callousness. “I admit that it’s surprising that a pretty boy like you has any balls.”
“But I do, good lady. I have been told that I have the testicles of dragons.”
She did not know why this phrase made her feel a little flushed around her neck. She hoped that it was not visible. Visola glanced down at his pants skeptically, almost expecting to see coconut-sized spheres in his trousers.
“Figuratively,” Vachlan explained, clearing his throat to indicate that she should stop examining his groin.
“What happened then?” Visola asked, without averting her gaze.
“Ah. Not much more. My mother reined as the queen of Ker-ys after I paved the way for her.”
“So Father Kyrosed hired you because you’re a spoiled little prince?” she asked.
“He hired me because I was a spoiled little prince who made a grave mistake. I missed only one of my mother’s enemies, and that person murdered my mother. I grew upset. I could have taken the throne of Ker-ys myself, but instead I traveled to Bimini. I begged the Emperor to let me command a small force of men, and I led them to destroy and enslave all of Ker-ys. That was the first kingdom I thoroughly devastated. Of course, that was in the mid-seventeenth century, and my resume has only grown since then. That is why Kyrosed hired me.”
“Oh.” Visola did not realize she had been holding her breath. The flush must surely have spread to her cheeks by now. The story was riveting. “So,” she said, swallowing. “You had the opportunity to rein over the city of your birth as King, but because of injustice you chose to be a lawless avenger?”
“Now you’re romanticizing me,” he said.
“The rumors are all about you,” Visola said softly. “Everyone gossips about a ‘Destroyer of Kingdoms’ who ruins everything he touches and leaves carnage in his wake everywhere he goes. It is you.”
“Hm, I don’t like being called that very much,” Vachlan said with a frown. “I was just angry, you see. All the destruction? It was rather therapeutic. You can’t keep these kinds of things pent up.”
“You’re considerably more interesting than you look,” Visola remarked.
“I also appreciate irony,” Vachlan said. “It gave me a strange kind of pleasure to know that while terrestrial Europe was conquering the Caribbean, the aquatic Caribbean was gaining complete control over almost every undersea settlement in Europe and Africa. I unified the different states of Bimini—I absorbed their Mayan neighbors, and pretty much every undersea tribe in South America. I made them untouchable in only a hundred years.”
“Then why did you leave?” she asked. “Weren’t you happy with your success?”
“My living arrangement was acceptable. I just didn’t feel appreciated, you know? I had a small disagreement with the Emperor one day, and I quit. I decided to seek employment elsewhere. I went back to England, and did a bit of studying. I considered pursuing my writing again—I tried re-releasing some of the works that had not been received well before—maybe I had just been too progressive for the Elizabethan era.”
“Really?” Visola asked, her face contorted in amazement at the size of his ego. “You conquered half the globe to expand the reach of the Bimini Empire, and then you decided to go back to being a writer?”
“You are not artistically inclined, are you? You wouldn’t understand. Sometimes—hardly ever, but in extremely rare moments—the point of everything is not establishing power, or amassing roomfuls of gold doubloons, or even instigating gratuitous bloodshed. Sometimes, a man just needs to stop—and smell the flowers. He needs to cultivate a garden of flowers, and think deep thoughts about who he really is underneath the façade created by the pressures of the world. I just needed to take some time to relax, and reconnect with myself. To rejuvenate my soul, and read a little.”
“Cultivate a garden of flowers?” Visola asked slowly and incredulously. “Who are you?”
“That is precisely what I needed to find out! Who was I, indeed?” Vachlan asked, holding up his finger as if giving a lecture on the greatest philosophical question. “But as I searched for myself in the libraries, and in the quiet spaces, I began to feel impatient. I began to feel the familiar thirst gnawing at me. I could not pause. I had to keep moving to remain sane; I had to keep fighting. I needed to seek out the loud chaos, tame the wild beasts and wild landscapes. I tried tricking my body by writing on moving vehicles so that I still felt like I was moving somewhere, but it did not work. I could not focus.”
Visola could not help feeling drawn to him—she understood this thirst for chaos very well.
“Besides,” Vachlan continued, “I saw some of Shakespeare’s plays, and I just became consumed with my old jealousy and anger. He had only become more famous since I had left! Death couldn’t even kill the bastard. I wrote a sprinkling of plays, but no one wanted to perform them. Damn them all! One play was about a crocodile who loved the scent of jasmine so much that he…”
“No,” Visola said, holding up her hand. “Don’t get into that now. I’m sure I’ll read them later.”
“Yes, well, I grew annoyed with England, and I fought against them in the American Revolution. I was somewhat fond of America, and considered starting a new life there, but I missed life underwater. I began to work as a hired mercenary for influential undersea employers—I didn’t really need the money, but again, I had to keep moving. I briefly stayed with the Rusalka people in Russia, and that is where I met King Kyrosed Vellamo. He was on a diplomatic visit with his allies, and I had never even heard of Adlivun. He spoke of a close alliance with the Japanese, and plans to conquer a sizeable settlement here in New Holland. I had never been to this part of the world, so it seemed like great fun to me. After making a stopover in India for a quick assassination, here I am! At your service, my lady.”
“Oh, please. You’re not here to serve me—I am not a wimp like King Kyrosed, and I can do everything which needs to be done myself.” Visola crossed her arms and glared at Vachlan. “So, Kyrosed Vellamo hired the ‘Destroyer of Kingdoms’ to be our very own bedfellow.” She glanced down at his bottom which was still planted audaciously on her bed. “Literally. It seems to me he’s taking a great risk. You have turned your back on every place you ever called home, and fought against them. What makes Kyrosed think that you will show any semblance of loyalty to us?”
“I have never turned my back on a kingdom or destroyed one without very good reason.”
“Fighting against England because you had a bone to pi
ck with Shakespeare?”
“They were going to lose anyway. I needed the exercise.”
“The little squabble with the emperor of Bimini?”
“You don’t know what the little squabble was about. It was a matter of principle.”
Visola considered this for a moment before shaking her head. “Well, I must say this, Vachlan Suchos: you are the most interesting man I have ever had the horror and honor of waking up beside. After hearing about your life, and your personality, I am convinced that this only happened because I was drugged out of my mind. This is never going to happen again—whatever happened. You are a drifter, and you will likely be here today and gone tomorrow: as your Colonel, my first command will be that you keep your personal life out of your business life. You will stay away from Princess Aazuria, and her sisters in Adlivun. You must also stay away from me and my sister. You are our employee. You are not our friend. Do not give anyone the illusion that you are their friend, as you are evidently incapable of making and maintaining any bonds.”
“Understood, Colonel.”
“Great. Now, I need to get some armor on, and we will meet with Kyrosed to discuss the plan regarding the Yawkyawk.”
“You don’t need to get dressed, Colonel. You can stay in bed today.”
“Excuse me? How dare you! You intend to discuss the matter without me?”
“The matter is resolved, Colonel. Take a look outside your porthole.”
Visola turned and kneeled on her bed as she threw aside the curtain covering the circular window. She could not believe what she saw. She stared for several seconds with her face completely expressionless. The Yawkyawk people were lining up for miles to climb aboard the other ships in the harbor. Visola realized that she was staring in open-mouthed astonishment, and she quickly composed herself before turning to Vachlan.
“How did you do this?” she asked him.
“It is essential to know the way your victim thinks.”
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