Sea and Sand

by Alex Lidell

  Zolan’s lips press together. “With due respect, sir, I’m in command of the Lily just now. Not to mention the fact that it’s been some time since I was a first officer on any sort of vessel.” Zolan pauses and takes in Pyre’s hardening gaze. For a heartbeat, I hang on to the hope that the captain will stand by his protest, but Zolan schools his face and bows in acknowledgment. “Of course. I serve at your pleasure, my lord admiral.”

  I sigh. “Gentlemen.” I pitch my voice over the room. “I must point out that the efficiency of this discussion would increase exponentially if you acknowledged my presence at this table.”

  Silence. Dead heavy silence.

  I raise my chin and meet each stare head-on, even as my heart pounds against my ribs.

  Admiral Pyre is the first to speak, rubbing two fingers over sharp nose. “Forgive my bluntness for the sake of clarity, Princess, but your political station gives you no leave to influence the admiralty’s decisions directly. You may, of course, recommend the removal of either me or Admiral Brice and endeavor to select leaders whose vision is more in line with your own, but that is the extent of your voice. As for your naval station… I hope you will understand me when I say that junior officers follow the orders they are given and that your recent gunnery trials performance raised concerns about your judgment.”

  Domenic’s gaze cuts to me. I told you so.

  “She seized an opportune gale to kick your protégé’s rear end, Pyre.” Admiral Brice’s small eyes twinkle. “Not to detract from Mr. Dana’s performance, of course, but scores are scores.”

  “And orders are orders,” Admiral Pyre snaps back, his lips pressing together as he glares at his opposite number. Plainly, this isn’t the first conversation the two men have had about my war game choices. Pyre’s hand tightens around his coffee mug, his fingers bone from the pressure. “Mr. Dana,” Pyre says in a light tone that has no one fooled, “you’ve had the honor of serving with Ms. Greysik previously, have you not?”

  “Aye, sir.” Domenic gives a half bow to the admiral, though the senior man’s eyes remain on Brice.

  “And in your personal experience, Mr. Dana,” says Pyre, “how would you describe Ms. Greysik’s willingness to follow orders?”

  Domenic shifts, his gaze brushing me for a moment before returning to the waiting admiral. “I have found Ms. Greysik to be a hard worker, sir,” Domenic says in a carefully even tone. “Fully dedicated to her mission.”

  “Let me rephrase my question, Mr. Dana.” Admiral Pyre’s penetrating gaze swings to target Domenic. “If you were to order Ms. Greysik to do one thing, and she thought another option was preferable, would you trust her to carry out your instructions despite her personal objection to them?”

  This time, Domenic doesn’t look toward me before answering. “No, sir. I would not.”

  Chapter 8

  Nile

  Admiral Pyre holds Domenic back after the meeting, and I leave without waiting for him or Tam, who is still exchanging casual conversation. The air outside the inn is too fresh for my racing thoughts, but it’s better than being indoors. My pulse runs quickly, blood whooshing through my veins and setting every tight muscle aflame. Quinn, the ex-Tirik captain turned guard and friend, peels away from the inn’s wall and falls into step beside me while Bear circles my legs.

  “If you grow any bigger, I’ll get a saddle and sell you as a pony,” I murmur to the dog, who uses his head to bully me into an ear rub.

  Quinn gives me a sideways glance. “The admiralty meeting did not go well?”

  “It went fine.” I set course toward the docks, wanting to see the site of the attack firsthand. I’m no expert in explosions, especially on land, but something about this one scratches at me. More to the point, I need something to occupy my mind just now. “We are sailing out to the Diante Empire aboard the Helix, with Mr. Zolan as my first officer.”

  Quinn makes a sound in the back of his throat. Unlike any of my other friends, with the exception of Domenic, Quinn has been in charge of a ship before. “And what is Mr. Zolan’s take on the situation?”

  My jaw tightens. “That he is in charge.” I quicken my pace. If Catsper were here, I’d ask him to spar, but walking is all I have available just now. “Zolan has been at sea longer than I’ve been alive. The only argument against making him my first officer is that he is as overqualified for the post as I am for a scullery maid.”

  “I don’t believe you’d make a very good scullery maid,” Quinn says quietly, keeping pace with me. Dawn breaks around us as we walk, the fishermen families waking up to ruined livelihoods. Port Meade’s perpetual grayness adds to the greyness, and even the occasional brightly painted house looks exhausted. The final sight of the attack will be worse still. Quinn puts his hands behind his back, ignoring the many stares of passersby. Quinn’s combination of tan skin and thick sandy hair, cut short to brush the back of his neck in Tirik fashion instead of grown to hang below the shoulders, already mark him as unusual. Combined with his place by my side and his accent, Quinn turns as many heads as I do. “You might recall that I’ve served on a ship where someone else—a People’s Commissioner, in my case—believed himself in charge. It’s more complicated than you give it credit for.”

  Oh, I think it’s plenty complicated. Made no less so thanks to Domenic’s remarks. Saying as much aloud smells too much like wallowing in undeserved self-pity, though. Zolan is one stripped of a cherished command to play nursemaid to mine, not the other way around. “There is no such thing as a nominal command, Quinn. The crew of the Helix will be my responsibility no matter what Zolan or the admiralty or the gods themselves say.”

  Quinn grunts suddenly, his hand going to his shoulder as a rock the size of a chicken egg clatters to the ground.

  “Die, Tirik dog!”

  “Only good Tirik is a dead Tirik!”

  “Rotting fish, rotting fish, who are you? I’m Tirik, I’m Tirik, that is who.”

  My gaze jerks to a group of boys, their thin frames and tattered clothes speaking of difficult times. Made more so last night.

  Quinn steps toward them, and the boys scatter, all but the smallest lad with large blue eyes and an old, too-large sweater. Holding his ground, the boy trembles, but he faces down Quinn. Quinn isn’t a large man, but after a decade on the quarterdeck, he’s more than mastered the art of making himself formidable. The rock that struck his shoulder moments ago now bounces in his hand.

  The small boy opens his mouth, his high voice quiet and shaking even as his eyes brim with hate. “Rotting fish, rotting fish, who are you?”

  “I’m Quinn,” Quinn answers, gravely holding out the stone on his open palm. “I’m a person, and I’m from the Tirik Republic. Would you like your stone back? I believe you’ve misplaced it.”

  The child kicks Quinn’s shin and runs off.

  Quinn lets the stone fall to the ground and turns about, marking the other boys. None dare to come out and face him.

  My demons in the Felielle admiralty suddenly seem negligible in comparison. I put my hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  He nods. “I heard about the attack. Though…” Quinn’s lips press together. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  I wait for Quinn to say more, but don’t push the subject. The ex-Tirik’s loyalties are…complicated. I’ve given my word never to ask him to raise a weapon against his former countrymen except in self-defense, and that includes the blade that’s his knowledge.

  “Do you recognize the young woman watching us?” Quinn asks, jerking me free of my thoughts.

  I frown, following Quinn’s signal to a dark-haired girl a year or two older than me whose gaze indeed follows my every move from her post beside one of the wooden pillars plastered with newsleafs. She is petite and beautiful, with a dancer’s lithe body, skin tanner than Quinn’s, and large chocolate eyes. Her dress, a yellow and green too lively for Port Mead’s usual leaning toward trout-brown and gray wool, is cut at an angle—shorter in front than back.
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  She holds a small metal bauble in her hands, her fingers absently worrying its shiny surface. Nothing about her looks familiar, however, and I’m about to dismiss her into irrelevance when our gazes meet and the magic in my veins gives a sudden start.

  I draw breath. That sensation, one of my magic reacting to someone else’s Gift, is sharp and familiar—though I’ve not felt it in over half a year. Not since my magic had mixed with my twin’s and changed. Grew. Evolved.

  If the odd girl feels a reciprocal jolt, she gives no sign of it. Instead, she bites her lip and turns away, as if having changed her mind about whatever it was she’d intended.

  “Nile?” Quinn prods.

  “Let’s move out of here,” I say, picking up the pace to put distance between myself and the girl. When Quinn catches up to stride beside me, I lower my voice. “She is Gifted. My magic feels hers, and I little wish to discover whether this sensation goes both ways.”

  “Your magic feels hers?” Quinn echoes. With the out-of-sight-out-of-mind approach to elemental attraction in the Lyron’s six kingdoms, there is no such thing as an expert in Gifted and magic—but Quinn, with his history of transporting Gifted passengers and work in taming and training my own magic, comes as close as anyone in Lyron gets. “That’s impossible.”

  “Yes, well, the list of impossible magical feats that have slapped me in the face over the past eight months is getting tediously long.” I rub my temples. “Have you seen Catsper? Tam says Spardic Command won’t release anyone to come on the cruise with me, but I want to hear it from him. Otherwise, it’s just you and me, Quinn.”

  Not Domenic. He has the Raptor now. Even if he didn’t, the admiralty has already filled my first officer’s billet with Zolan. My chest tightens, two weeks suddenly seeming very, very short, and it’s an effort of will to force air into my lungs.

  “I’ve not seen Catsper, no.” Quinn’s words pull me back to the conversation. Hands still behind his back quarterdeck style, Quinn looks dutifully ahead, ignoring the hate-filled stares that follow his every move. “But I’m willing to lay coin that we’ll find him at the explosion site.”

  Yes. If there is trouble somewhere, it’s safe money to bet Catsper is to be found beside it. And—

  “Nile!” As if having heard the reference to himself in my thoughts, Domenic catches up to us, Tam striding thoughtfully beside him. Bear separates from my side to ram into Domenic’s thigh, howling with soft pleasure as Domenic rubs his ears. I say nothing. Despite the dog’s joy, the air around us thickens with each passing heartbeat of silence. Domenic clears his throat. “You left quickly.”

  Quinn politely strolls a distance away to give Domenic and me privacy.

  “I wanted to see the attack site for myself.” Truth. I start moving again, as if it’s possible to outwalk Domenic’s unspoken question: Are you upset with me?

  I am not. I can’t be. Domenic was asked a question. He answered it. I lost what little credibility I’d built up. Those are the facts, but they are not his fault. Just as Admiral Pyre’s patronage and Raptor’s command billet aren’t Domenic’s fault. The important thing is that I will have a ship and a crew. I will have the sea. I will earn my way toward the rest.

  Yet none of that sounds quite right aloud. So I walk instead, nodding to Tamiath as the prince’s long strides bring him up to our side, skirting around the large dockyard supply warehouse whose gray-green stone walls pierce the long pier like a thorn.

  No. I skirt what used to be a dockyard supply warehouse but is now little more than a wall separating the eastern-side docks from the ravaged world on the western side.

  Despite the ocean, the stench of burnt meat, gunpowder, and rotting death saturates the air. On my left, bodies and body parts are thrown into haphazard piles for victims’ families to sort through. Ahead, the wooden pier is broken with gaps and holes spraying cold water with each wave passing beneath. I take a step, and one of the spitting holes vomits onto my boots, the cold wetness squishing inside the leather. “Storms.”

  Several heads turn to me, eyes vacant and angry. Clothes streaked with blood and soot. I step back, raising my palms, and the heads turn away. To rummage through bodies, to help clear debris, to look for family. Bear presses against my right thigh, and Domenic comes up to stand at my left shoulder, stopping just short of putting a hand on the small of my back.

  The worst of it is still ahead, a gaping hole where the eye of the blast must have flared. What used to be a small wooden shelter is now a bit of charcoaled debris, and the sea is peppered with pieces of broken hulls and nets. The Tirik must have waded right into the center of where the fishermen tied up their boats before setting off the explosion, choosing to destroy many small crafts instead of targeting the bigger military sloop anchored some two hundred yards away.

  True to form, Catsper is crouching beside the blast site, his blond mane of hair shifting in the light breeze. I call his name.

  Lifting his gaze, Catsper uncurls to his full height. A slight jerkiness to his usual feline grace hints at an injury hidden beneath soot-and-blood-stained clothes. Of course Catsper was in the thick of the attack.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “A suicide assault.” The marine’s mouth is set in a grim line. “The Tirik destroyed their one means of retreat before jumping out with swords blazing. They never intended to leave the pier alive. I don’t like it.”

  “They also avoided a military craft to target civilian fishing boats,” I add, my jaw tightening. “A blow to commerce and morale rather than a typical show of force.”

  “We’ve seen the Tirik choose death over surrender before,” Tam says, his gaze like mine, on Catsper’s ribs. “The People’s Party punishes soldiers’ families for ‘cowardice.’”

  The marine shakes his head, the motion tight. “This is different. This bunch wasn’t fighting to the death. They knew they were dead before the slaughter started. When they realized I knew which end of the sword is sharp, they took human shields. But even then, they never planned to walk away from the battlefield. I could see it in their eyes.”

  “Waves and hail.” I rub my face. “And that?” I jerk my chin at Catsper’s ribs.

  He shrugs. “Gunpowder went boom. Swords went clash. The usual. Where is Quinn?”

  “He’s—” I look over my shoulder, expecting to find the man trailing us, but find only the press of strangers.

  Tamiath swears beneath his breath and spins around to retrace our steps back around the broken warehouse, Catsper, Domenic, and I falling in beside him. Rum, the squat, evil beast calling itself Catsper’s dog, separates from his patch of dry dock and trots behind us, teeth bared.

  The muscles between my shoulder blades tense as minutes pass without Quinn’s face becoming visible along the pier. The crowd is thicker than it was earlier, especially around the wooden pillars with posted newsleafs, where I last saw the Gifted girl. I move closer, but the press of bodies is too tight to see through without active elbowing to burrow into their midst. Waves of fury rippling through the gathered men are palpable enough to spur my own pulse.

  “Can you see?” I ask Domenic, but a voice from the mob’s depths rises before Domenic can answer, others picking up the call.

  “Murderer!”

  “Filth.

  “Die, Tirik pig!”

  Chapter 9

  Kyra

  It was madness. Madness and pulsing, mindless rage that spread like infection. One moment, the Tirik man who’d been with Nile was standing by himself, and the next, a trio of vacant-eyed fishermen were cutting off his retreat, herding him toward the newsleaf pillar where Kyra stood. The Tirik was in his mid twenties, with tanned skin almost as dark as Kyra’s own, and intelligent eyes that hid his fear.

  The Tirik didn’t struggle, letting himself be led away from the royals, protecting them from getting swept up into what he knew was coming. Kyra stepped away, only to bump into someone behind her. Many someones. A whole crowd that was gathering with a bitter, s
ingle-minded rage potent enough to make Kyra gag.

  Kyra knew the two fishermen holding the Tirik’s arms. She’d read a newsleaf for them just yesterday, not knowing she was telling them of their sons’ deaths until tears poured down their faces. They refused to pay her, but she wouldn’t have taken their money anyway. They had too little to spare. After the attack last night, likely none at all anymore.

  The third man, a thick-mustached brute who smelled of drink, Kyra hadn’t recognized at first. The last she saw him, days ago, he was a proud, pipe-smoking merchant captain refusing to take her passenger. Today, he was soot and stains and anger. His ship must have been one of the crafts destroyed. And now—now, his arm swung back and punched the defenseless Tirik in the ribs so hard that the man choked on air.

  Kyra gasped, looking toward the gathering crowd to pull the men apart.

  The crowd cheered. It was bigger than before too. People flocking to violence like moths to flame. A shiver raced over Kyra’s skin, the pulsing rage saturating the air about her. She clutched her dress, stumbling as the crowd thickened and jostled behind her. They weren’t evil people. Rowdy and unwelcoming, but not violent. Not mindless. Not like this.

  “Murderer!” someone yelled, cheering as the merchant struck the Tirik again, this time across the face. Blood beaded at the corner of the Tirik’s mouth and ran down his chin.

  “Filth!” A woman’s voice.

  “Die, Tirik pig!”

  The merchant cocked his hand for another blow, though the Tirik was hanging in the fishermen’s grip now, unable to find footing.

  “Stop!” Kyra shouted as loudly as she could. No one heard. Not even the people bumping her back and shoulder. “Stop it!” she shouted again, only to hear a grunt of pain and more cheers as another strike landed. They are going to kill him. The realization widened Kyra’s eyes, spurring her heart into a gallop. People who weren’t murderers were going to beat an innocent man to death.