Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker
Page 40
‘Best not resist it,’ the old man had said. ‘Sailors are kind enough once they’ve had their fun with you, but if you avoid their jests, the games can turn ugly.’
‘Fine,’ Kellen says at last. No doubt a half-dozen other sailors were waiting to run out and perform some kind of unpleasantly witty prank on him once he fulfilled this bizarre little ritual.
‘Go on then,’ the sailor urges. ‘Call out that which you most desire.’
With a deep breath, making sure to be so loud he’d interrupt the sleep of the off-duty sailors, Kellen shouted, ‘Nephenia!’
‘There!’ the sailor says. ‘Feels better, don’t it?’
‘It’s embarrassing,’ Kellen replies, but the truth is, there is a subtle sensation of catharsis in giving voice to his thoughts of her.
‘Again,’ the sailor says.
This time he doesn’t hesitate. ‘Nephenia!’
‘One more time, for the sea gods love all things in threes.’
Kellen grabs hold of the railing, throws his head back and shouts, ‘NEPHENIA!’
Nothing happens, of course. There’s no such thing as sea gods, and if there were, they wouldn’t be in the business of granting wishes to landlubbers on their first ocean voyage.
He turns and leans his back against the railing for stability, reaching into his pocket for the steel throwing cards he’s keeping there. To the sailor he says, ‘Let’s get on with the rest of it, shall we?’
The burly man shrugs, long beard bobbing against his chest. ‘As you wish.’
Kellen had been keeping watch on the man’s hands, which he reasoned were likely to grab hold of him, and on the shadowy vista of the deck over the sailor’s shoulder in case others came running. That’s why he was utterly unprepared for the real attack when it came.
The sailor kissed him.
‘Ugh. This again,’ Reichis groaned.
The man’s big, hairy face mashed up against Kellen’s, hands reaching around to hold him.
Okay, nobody warned me about this particular sailing tradition.
But something is off. Instead of the sensation of bristles against his mouth and chin, Kellen’s lips feel only the smoothness of soft fabric. Silk.
Suddenly the sailor pulls back, a mildly disappointed expression on his face. ‘That wasn’t very good. No wonder she left without you.’
But Kellen, though occasionally a little slow, remains an Argosi, the student of Ferius Parfax herself, and even if he weren’t, he’d still remember a time not so long ago when another stranger had kissed him in the desert.
‘What surprises me,’ he says at last, ‘is that someone would be so cruel as to make her hyena hide out below deck for three days and nights just so she could play a lousy trick on a poor, heartbroken spellslinger.’
‘Wait – what?’ says Reichis.
The sound of paws scrabbling along the deck precede the arrival of a scruffy hyena who leaps up to put his paws against the railings, muzzle inches from Reichis’s own, and says, in a perfect replica of the squirrel cat’s own words from long ago, ‘A demon!’
With a laugh, the sailor reaches up and tugs at the left side of his own face. At first it looks as if the skin is peeling off, but the instant it comes away, it changes to wide strips of red silk. Over and over the sailor unwinds the silk until it lies in a small pile at his feet and he is now her.
‘Nephenia?’ Kellen asks, still too nervous to really believe it is true.
She grins at him, that fierce, wild charmcaster grin of hers. ‘Told you the sea gods answer all prayers.’
She kisses him again, and this time his lips feel hers, and as they stand there together on the gently swaying deck, arms wrapped around each other even as they sink together in a kiss that is going to last a very long time, all the while ignoring the running commentary of a particularly unhelpful squirrel cat and the yips of a highly entertained hyena, Kellen finds himself an unexpected believer in the benevolence of the sea.
… Maybe.
Maybe it doesn’t happen that way. Maybe he sails clear across the ocean in search of her, only for her to have to rescue him from pirates, or – more likely, if past is prologue – they have to save each other. But I don’t know for sure, because right now that story, that kiss, belongs to you as much as me. So let’s allow, in this moment as the last page turns, for our individual imaginations to take over, and not look for a single, definitive answer to all our questions.
Because the only thing I know for sure is that when Kellen next sees Nephenia, he’ll stare at her in wonder, as he so often has of late, amazed at how different she is from the shy, demure girl she seemed to be when they were younger. Then he’ll remind himself that his own story is unfinished, and for all his flaws, for all his failures, both real and imagined, he, too, is so much more than the sum of his upbringing.
So am I.
So are you.
Sebastien de Castell
August 2019
Vancouver, Canada
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by
HOT KEY BOOKS
80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE
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Copyright © Sebastien de Castell, 2019
Inside illustrations copyright © Sally Taylor, 2019
Map by Farhad Ejaz
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Sebastien de Castell and Sally Taylor to be identified as author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4714-0550-1
Hot Key Books is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
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