“Something momentous happened here,” Valerys said.
“An earthquake,” I suggested.
“Haru says some potent, angry beast planted an unwise foot on the land.”
I blinked. She laughed at my shocked expression.
“Haru’s not a typical man,” she explained. “Don’t laugh. He could be right.”
He was right, but I laughed anyway. “Interesting way of explaining an earthquake,” I said.
She smiled, but I knew I had displeased her with my dismissive manner. The warmth in her eyes fled away. “That island you were on? It was perhaps the only piece of old coastline still above water,” she told me.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it has rounded pebbles on the beach still, and trees that are upright.”
I peeked back at my little bed, and yes, a few trees remained standing. Three of them. “Odd.”
“Very,” she agreed. “The whole thing should have slipped in with the rest of the land. I mean, everywhere else along this coast, there’s a sheer drop and no fishing grounds whatsoever. It all slid into the depths.”
“No fishing grounds? How do you know?”
“Haru went down to look.”
Impossible for any mortal to swim deep enough to find fishing grounds that had sunk into the depths. The woman couldn’t speak fact.
“Why do you give me such a cynical smile?” she said. “You don’t believe me again. How typical of a non-Brellin male, to dismiss something of which you have no understanding.”
Typical! She called me typical? “I am not typical. Why don’t you try explaining to me, then?”
Her arms crossed in front of her bosom, and the set to her features became that much sterner. “Haru went down to check. I don’t care if you don’t believe.”
In other words, she wouldn’t explain anything, now that I’d made her peevish. I twisted cynicism into a plausible grimace of apology.
“Don’t be angry. As you said, I’m not Brellin. Help me understand. Let’s say your Haru can hold his breath for a long time. Tell me how he managed to swim down far enough to find where the shelf slid, and get back up again before he drowned?”
“Little Brother took him.”
I hesitated a moment, then asked, “Little Brother?”
“Breaker sharks.”
I’d understood the term, just wanted to pretend ignorance a bit longer. My surprise had come of her saying this Haru had made use of Vaal’s minions. “Wouldn’t breaker sharks just eat a man?”
“Little Brother won’t eat men when they’re swimming in deeper water. Well, at least not when they’re diving.”
“Oh. And Little Brother took this Haru down to the lost shelf? How?”
“Haru grabbed Little Brother’s tail and hung on. Simple.”
Yes. Simple. Pure nonsense simple.
Uh…wait. She’d mentioned Vaal. If my enemy had in fact left his indelible stench around this mysterious Haru, perhaps the woman didn’t spout nonsense.
“Did you notice how fast the beach dropped away from that island?” she said.
“No. I was looking at you.”
She smiled again, but not because she found this flattering. I had the distinct impression she took me for a fool.
“Look at how black the water goes, just cubits out. I think that island came from the old coast, but somehow it landed on top of a thin spur of rock beneath the water.”
“Landed?”
“No way it could be attached to the bedrock of old. It would be somewhere up there, if so.” She pointed upward.
“Yes, of course. It would be as high up as those cliffs.”
She nodded. “A veritable miracle, but it’s going to tumble into the depths the next big storm.”
“No doubt.”
“You were lucky. Very lucky.” She reached into a small crate beneath her bench, withdrew a flask and handed it to me. “You must be thirsty.”
“I don’t recall much of the last week. I think I was unconscious most of it.” I uncorked the bottle and drank. Water. Plain water, but good. I drank more. “I’m very hungry.”
“I’m sure you are. We’ll fix you up on board. And get you clothes. We had a hired man before you. He shipped on from a nearby city, but he didn’t stay. You can have his clothes. He was tall.”
“If he didn’t stay, why did he leave his clothes?” I asked.
“Vaal ate him,” she answered, and I stared at her from overtop of the flask, which I’d set to my lips again.
She looked away, at the tern schooner looming to starboard. We had come upon the side. The rowers seemed to have raced there while we’d been speaking.
Odd bunch, and strong. They hadn’t broken into a sweat. Good meat. Most definitely good meat.
“Here we are.” Valerys grabbed for a rope that had been tossed down.
“Wait a minute!” I said, lowering the flask and corking it hastily. “What do you mean Vaal ate him?”
“Vaal. Our god,” she repeated. “I wasn’t joking. Vaal is real. He didn’t like the new hand and ate him. So we’re a sailor short. But don’t worry. We’ll put you off at the next port. Just stay away from Haru. We warned the other fool, but he didn’t listen.”
Other fool? “I’m no fool, girl!” I suddenly comprehended the reference to warning the first one. “And I never go near men!”
Something of a lie. The truth was more that I rarely bothered with them.
“Well, good.”
Leaving a short laugh in my ears, she scampered up the side of the ship and grabbed an arm waiting to help her over the rail. Her pretty rump disappeared from view, and I stared into the eyes of a man who could have been her twin, except his skin was darker.
It had to be Haru, cousin and ship’s captain. And someone because of whom my immortal enemy consumed men. I smiled up at him.
Perhaps he’d be the first one I ate.
Chapter Two
I tied the blanket about my waist, climbed up the side, and received the same hand up Valerys had. Flesh on flesh, the truth revealed itself. This Haru’s skin was unusually tingly for a mortal.
Not simply Vaal’s stench on him, then. Boy had his own magic and knew how to veil it from the casual observer. But touch couldn’t lie, not to me. Little magician, this one. Sorcerer, shaman, whatever the Brellin called his type. If I ate him, I’d win back my lost reserves with a single chomp.
The temptation. Almost too much to resist. But I did resist. Curiosity: I have a surfeit of it. I wanted to know more about my victim before I yielded to necessity.
His upper body had been bare earlier, but now he sported a blue vest that matched his trousers. He wore ratty ship sandals, the type with tacky soles.
His feet did not match the ugliness in which he’d set them. Well manicured, no corns or unsightly calloused skin: they were nicely shaped feet, small but suited to his height. Seemed almost pretty, as one might expect to find on a girl. But he was young yet. No doubt his feet, as well as the rest of him, would grow.
I panned back up his legs, and hesitated on an exposed navel within a flat, slender abdomen. Pretty again. Too pretty. Made me want to touch. Provoked the desire to squeeze and rend, but once more, I resisted.
After a second, I dragged my attention higher. Only his left wrist had ornamentation, a leather bracelet with an excess of shark’s teeth dangling thereon. Higher up, golden bands graced his upper arms on both sides. Plain gold loops were hooked in the lobes of his ears.
The eyelashes on him were unbelievable. Valerys didn’t have them so long and thick, or nearly as colourful. They started dark and ended in a fringe of gold to match his jewellery.
That yellow in his hair, which I’d taken for gold ribbon, proved to be streaks of blond running down his head from all sections. The effect was unusually attractive on a man, but atypical for a Brellin. If not for his eyelashes, I’d have suspected him of dyeing the strands to make himself stand out.
Didn’t his people consid
er yellow a bad luck colour? And yet he was ship’s captain, one that had taken his crew halfway around the world. He had to be good to keep their respect. If I had met him on some street somewhere, I would have dismissed him as an unusually beautiful young man, and perhaps eaten him for making me think it.
“My hand back, if you please,” he said.
I jerked free of his touch, surprised I’d kept a grip so long. Damn. Damn! He was definitely dying first.
“Valerys, take our guest to the galley and feed him.”
The woman grabbed my arm and dragged my bemused self over to a hatch. I looked back at the cousin before I descended out of sight, but he didn’t have his attention on me. Along with his men, he’d commenced to haul the dinghy up to the deck. He was shorter than any of them. Stripling.
“How old is your cousin?” I asked Valerys, blinking at her in the gloom below deck.
“How old do you think he is?”
“Twenty or so?” Less, judging from his height and the softness of his features.
“Hmm. That’s good enough.”
I think she smiled. I didn’t catch the reason for her humour, or why she wouldn’t be more definite, but perhaps she wished to protect her captain from open disrespect.
“Is he an important man of Sachoné House?” I asked.
“Yes.” She shoved me into the galley section and down on a bench at a lengthy table. “Haru is the most important man to all Brellin everywhere.”
“Is he?”
She didn’t answer at once, but busied herself serving fish stew from out of a large pot cradled within the protective iron arms of a ship stove. Kitchen implements crowded the galley walls, more than one to a hook. Other than what appeared to be the ingredients for an upcoming meal, and a knife and chopping board with them, the workspace above the cupboards was bare and clean, the cupboard doors all shut, and the panels spotless.
I looked further in the forecastle, at the set of six bunks lining the walls. Along with the scent of stew and bread lofted the rank smell of men. Not unwashed, thank all Creation, but still rank.
I am very sensitive to scents and find the odour of men annoying. When the stench of mortality isn’t making me hungry, it generally incites a desire to leave. But leaving means being solitary again, and so I often put up with the pungent odour of men for the sake of company.
I looked again at Valerys as she removed a loaf of bread from a breadbox. Women, now? I adored the scent of women, and that one smelled fine. If all of Vaal’s tainted mortals had reproduced just to culminate in the begetting of this one female, then the fish bastard had managed to pull off a laudable feat.
“You say he’s important to all Brellin everywhere?” I prodded.
“He’s a prince of our people,” she said, slicing into the loaf. “A holy man, too. Everyone reveres him.”
“And yet he’s so young. What did he do to deserve veneration?”
“Made Vaal love him,” she answered and plunked a bowl down before me. A hunk of bread followed directly. “Eat. We can talk later. I’ll go fetch you those clothes.”
She left before I could stop her. I sat there, my mouth still open and wanting to spill a question, but no one remained to answer it.
“Made Vaal love him,” I murmured. It seemed I had shipped on with Vaal’s paramour. Was it any wonder a massive earthquake surge hadn’t sunk this ship? It didn’t take much sailing experience to survive a disaster when Vaal watched over one’s sweet ass.
I had eaten half the bowl of stew by the time Valerys returned, and when she did, I knew someone had ordered her to be less forthcoming with me. Every question I posed, she answered with the most minimal explanations, and no longer bothered to smile at me at all.
“Is there something the matter?” I said after a few minutes of this.
“No. Why?”
“You seem uncomfortable.”
“I’m not.”
She lied very poorly.
“I’m still hungry,” I said.
She moved off to fetch more stew. Standing, I let slide the blanket from my body and picked up the first garment from the pile she’d set on the table, a shirt in the style of a nearby sea-faring nation. Fashioned of knitted cloth, the garment well suited a sailor: easy to pull on, easy to pull off, and simple to wash.
I drew it over my head and shoved my arms through the sleeves. The fit was somewhat tight. It seemed I’d been larger than the previous owner. Ah, but the length was correct. It was my musculature, then, that stretched the weave.
“At least put the trousers on first,” the woman said. My bowl reappeared on the table, but she shot out the hatch.
“What? I was getting to them!”
Too late to calm her down. She’d escaped, but another shadow dimmed the forecastle and down the steps came the captain, carrying a leather satchel and a pair of boots.
“The rest of the spare clothes,” he said, dumping the satchel and boots on the table. “Aren’t you going to wear the trousers, too?” He continued on to the stove, where he opened the lowest section of the oven and shovelled in more coals from a nearby crate. “I think the boots will fit. They’re a set I picked up for a relative, but you can have them.”
I looked at the boots. Fine workmanship, expensive reptile leather. Dyed a brilliant purple.
Creation. These Brellin were odd about footwear. I glanced at his feet again, once more noting the shabby sandals. The thongs looked as if they would break any minute.
My gaze ran up his crouched figure, along the tight seat of his trousers, on to the gold-decorated arm that prodded coals in the oven. He wasn’t big, but he was properly muscled. Not beefy, but supple.
Why was he smiling?
“Are you going to finish dressing?” he said without looking.
I blinked and realized I had a painful erection, a really painful erection, and because this too pretty man poked a rod into a fire. I grabbed the trousers that had come with the shirt and yanked them up my legs.
Why had he been smiling?
Why hadn’t he looked at me yet? I had a distinct impression he knew full well I’d gotten a stiff watching him.
Little tripe. As soon as I had my answers from him and this crew, down my gullet he’d go.
“You seem to have frightened Valerys out of the forecastle,” he murmured, rising to a stand.
It hadn’t been me. This pretty toy of Vaal’s had warned her off.
He had a soft-spoken manner, his voice a match. There seemed nothing at all sharp about him. He was all smooth lines and smooth actions. Sleek. Sleek enough to please a shark. The sharpness had to be hidden beneath his skin, because he certainly didn’t show his teeth. Even so, he’d effectively nipped any interest Valerys had in me before she’d returned with that set of clothes.
“How could I have frightened her?” I said. “I did nothing but put on my shirt.”
“Perhaps you should have put the trousers on first,” he suggested, now serving himself a bowl of stew. After sawing off a chunk of bread, he sat down at the other side of the table.
I stared at him, wondering if I’d had the stiff before he arrived. I didn’t think so. And Valerys hadn’t been afraid of my shaft before she’d gone to fetch the clothes. She’d been afraid after—of me in general.
“How old are you?” I asked.
He laughed and ate without answering. I continued staring, yet to fasten my trousers properly. Impossible anyhow, until I lost the bone poking between the cloth.
“What was so funny about the question?” I asked.
“Almost everyone asks it, that’s all. Point is…not your business.” He responded sloppily, spooning in food at the same time. If he was a prince, he had a sailor’s manners.
He began smiling again, even as he ate, and I felt he was laughing at me, but very quietly. Damn, but I wanted to kill him. Fuck him first and kill him. I hadn’t fucked a mortal man in centuries, but this one… It would be worth balling him till he bled, just to pull a coup on Vaal.
>
“Tell me about Sachoné House. How did it acquire the ownership of the Verdant Imperial Seal?”
“A man of Sachoné House was instrumental in throwing over the old rule,” he said.
“One of your kin?”
“Hmm.” A somewhat positive reply around food.
My stiff was lapsing at last. I tucked myself in, folded cloth flaps over flesh and did up the buttons. I sat down to eat the second bowl of stew. It tasted good, but hardly satisfied. My human body filled, but my dragon self still hungered—out of sight, but not out of perception, not mine. I craved. I craved so badly. If I could hold off long enough to get answers…
“Intana was freed,” he said, so softly I almost didn’t hear.
“What?”
“Intana, divine son of Omos. He was set free of the burden of his Seal. He departed from Verdant.”
“His last Oradhé? He managed to keep his eyes?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been the fault of your people, stepping in where you weren’t wanted. Where did Intana go?”
“No one knows. Do you want some more bread?”
“Yes.”
He rose and went to the chopping board to cut more. My chunk he tossed me. He kept the bottom crust for himself. “Valerys is the cook,” he said, sitting down again.
“Her stew is good.” I dunked the bread in my soup.
“It’s passable. It’s all old supplies. Salted fish. We haven’t bothered to throw out nets or put into harbour for a while.”
“Why not?”
“Well, first we were crossing the Karakut Gulf, and then I was looking for the reason for that big wave.”
“Seems you found it.”
“Yes. Seems I have.”
I looked hard at him, but he was just eating, his expression passive. “Big earthquake,” I said.
“Very.”
Damn him. He was talking circles around me and laughing silently. I could almost feel his mirth. My skin prickled everywhere. Worse, my dragon scales tingled as well, and I hated that.
“Intana was pale, with silver and blue highlights on his skin,” he said, and I blinked at the sudden switch in topic.
Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether Page 2