B008P7JX7Q EBOK

by Ijaz, Usman

  “What do you mean, Captain?” Joni asked.

  Lavos didn’t hear him; he stared at the guns in silent wonder. Before him, Joni shifted his feet, and then when it was apparent he was forgotten, he turned and left.

  Lavos set the guns down again and breathed a deep sigh. When he looked up he saw that Joni was no longer there. He reached beneath his shirt, and drew out a small key on a long chain around his neck. He stood and went to the wall, where he pulled open the cleverly constructed hatch to his small private safe. Inside were a few pouches of money, and copies of the forms designating him the ownership of the Sea Spirit. He put the guns in the safe, marveling at their beauty, and closed it and locked it.

  He returned to his desk certain that there was more to the three strangers that had found their way aboard his ship than he had at first thought.

  4

  Adrian leaned on the starboard railing and watched the white water break away as the ship raced its way downriver. The earlier revitalizing breeze had given way to chill winds, but he didn’t mind. The sky overhead was cast gold from the setting sun. He found it hard to believe that the same sun shone on Port Hope and the Golden Lilly. It all seemed to be in another world now.

  Behind him the crew went about their jobs, shouting orders and tasks to one another, rigging the masts, keeping the ship on course, and one man in the crow’s nest keeping a watch on what lay ahead. Smoke billowed from one of the two smokestacks. Captain Lavos was somewhere below decks, and Connor was still sleeping.

  He had gone to check on Alexis before coming up here, but there had been no change in the Legionnaire, aside from the lack of an arrowhead sticking from his shoulder.

  Adrian watched the river bellow, and thought of all the time he had spent watching the ships back in Port Hope, fantasizing about what it might be like to sail on them. Now he was traveling on one, a steamboat to boot, and yet didn’t feel any of the joy he would have expected.

  But he found that there was still something to be glad about in their current run of misfortune; the nightmares were fading. He didn’t know how he knew this, or if it was simply wishful thinking, but they had not troubled him since leaving Milen and Rebecca. He hoped they would never bother him again.

  He remained there, leaning on the railing and staring into the waters below, until Connor came up and stood beside him.

  “Have you eaten yet?” His cousin asked.

  “Yes. What about you?”

  “No,” Connor said. “I don’t know where to go.”

  Adrian smiled at him. “Come on, I‘ll show you.”

  As Connor filled himself on ship’s biscuits and fish soup, the two reminisced of Port Hope and what everyone might be doing, and though the talk invoked painful nostalgia in them both, it was comforting to talk of the old times. For that was what the memories seemed like, Adrian realized. Old times.

  5

  They went above again. The air below decks was simply too nauseating, the space too confining, and the light nearly non-existent.

  “It’s hard to believe that only this morning we were running for our lives,” Connor remarked as they stood looking at the passing woods.

  “A lot has happened since this morning,” Adrian said.

  “Yes,” Connor agreed, remembering the fear that had pulsed through his veins. He had never before felt anything like that before, and hoped to never feel it again.

  One of the crewmen walked over to them. He wore a faded scarf around his head. “You lads want to see the view from the top?”

  Connor and Adrian followed his gaze to the tallest mast. At the top there was a round construction just big enough for a man to move around in. Their jaws dropped.

  “You mean that?” Adrian asked.

  “Aye,” said the man. “I know. Looks like a daunting height, but believe me, it’s quite worth it. You lads want to come along?”

  Adrian shook his head. Connor looked at the sheer height of the mast and wondered what someone would look like if they fell from such a height. But he imagined a person could look for miles around from atop there. He looked at Adrian, and then at the man with the faded scarf. “All right ....”

  The man clapped him on the back, grinning, and nearly sent him crashing to the deck. “‘Al right’ he says! Lad’s certainly got courage!”

  “Connor, are you sure?” Adrian asked him.

  “I think so,” Connor said as he followed the man.

  Running up both sides of the main mast were long stretches of rope nets. Some of the crew watched as Connor and the man began climbing. Connor found the climb to be fairly simple, but after he got about halfway up his arms began to ache and his palms began to sweat. He was suddenly worried he would lose his grip. He glanced down once and saw some of the crewmen and Adrian watching them make their way up.

  “Not too far now!” the man shouted down.

  He closed his eyes and continued to climb, fearing that his every next step would send him flying off into thin air. I should have never done this! I’m a bloody fool! And then strong hands were grabbing at him. Connor opened his eyes, and in his surprise nearly let go of the net. He was right bellow the crow’s nest, and helping him up and onto it was the man with the faded scarf.

  “Don’t look down now, lad” the man advised.

  He was pulled onto the lookout, an oversized wooden pale hanging around the top of the mast, and dropped to his knees.

  “Don’t you want to see the view?” the man asked.

  Connor shook his head and breathed deeply. At last he stood up, realizing that he hadn’t come so high to simply sit on the floor. The rim of the nest came to his chest, and when he leaned over it to look below he felt the entire world begin to shift. Again he was grabbed by strong hands and pulled back.

  “Easy there,” said the man. “You don’t want to go falling off of here. Wouldn‘t be much left of you.”

  Connor sunk to a sitting position. “What’s your name?”

  “Jasper,” said the man, grinning.

  “You’re crazy, Jasper, you know that, don’t you?”

  “As crazy as they come,” Jasper admitted.

  Connor at last forced himself to stand up again. The view, he had to admit, really was breathtaking. To either side of them spanned the green forest under the fading daylight, and before them and behind them the river snaked away into the distance.

  “Do you like it?” Jasper asked.

  “Yes, I suppo--” and that was when he threw up.

  Later in the evening, the boys checked on Alexis before retiring to their own rooms. There appeared to be no visible change in the Legionnaire.

  Chapter 17

  On the Spirit

  1

  “It’s poison.”

  “Poison?” Adrian repeated dumbly, staring at Nemoy.

  “Aye, the arrowhead must have been coated with it,” Nemoy said, frowning. “It’s attacking his heart.” He had removed the bandages from Alexis’s wound, and they could all see the purple-red veins that traveled down the left side of his chest. The wound seemed to be healing slowly. The puckered flesh seeped yellow puss at times, filling the room with a rotten stench.

  “Can you help him, Nemoy?” Lavos asked. He stood with his arms crossed over his large chest, watching it all with a quiet worry.

  Adrian looked from the captain to the ship doctor, hoping for an assenting answer. Lavos glanced towards him, and in his eyes Adrian caught something he had seen much these past two days. He could only place it as wary mistrust. He has a right to be suspicious; we haven't told him the truth.

  “I don’t know, captain. I can’t say I’m familiar with the type of poison, but I’ll try whatever poison remedies I know, in the hopes that one will work. In the end he may live, but ....” He didn’t need to say anymore. The look he directed towards Connor and him told Adrian everything he dreaded and feared.

  Before them lay Alexis on what was likely his deathbed, sweat glistening across his body and running down the sides of h
is face. His eyes flickered behind the lids, and his chest rose and fell with every slow pained breath he took. A few times he moaned aloud through a face contorted in anguish.

  “All right, do for him what you can, Nemoy,” Lavos said and left the room.

  Nemoy began to construct a poultice. Adrian and Connor left the room as well. They found the captain waiting for them. They looked at one another for a few moments in which the rest of the world ceased to exist.

  “All right, lads,” said Lavos in a grave voice. “I don’t know exactly what is going on here, but I do know that something is being kept from me. And I don’t like having secrets aboard my own ship. So out with whatever it is you’re hiding.”

  “Captain, I --” Adrian began, and was cut off.

  “I want the truth, lad. I found the guns of the fellow lying in there, and those are no ordinary guns.”

  Adrian looked from the captain to the closed door to Connor, and sighed. “Can we go to our room and talk there, then?” Connor looked at him in surprise.

  Lavos agreed, and they all headed down the corridor and into the room the two boys shared. Adrian and Connor sat on their cots while the captain stood waiting.

  “Our sick friend is a Legionnaire.” He looked up from his knotted hands and saw Lavos’s stunned face.

  “A Legionnaire?” the captain stammered. “Aboard my ship?”

  “Yes.” Adrian watched the captain closely to see how he took the news.

  “I saw the guns, but I suspected that maybe he’d stolen them, but that he could be a .... Are you sure, lad?”

  “Yes. You can check the back of his hand if you don’t believe me.”

  “But he looks too young.”

  Connor, who had been quiet until now, said, “I don’t know about his age, but he is a Legionnaire.”

  Lavos breathed heavily and placed a hand against the wall to keep himself upright. “I still cannot believe it, lads. A Legionnaire on my ship.”

  “We have told you what you wanted to know, captain,” Adrian said, “but I don’t think we can tell you much more.”

  Lavos remained quiet, lost in an elated daze, then he looked at them. “Tell me one thing, though; is this a mission?”

  Adrian looked at Connor and then back at the captain. “I suppose so.”

  Lavos grinned, and in that moment he looked like a child who’s gotten the most exquisite present for the Jubilee Feast. When he managed to regain his composure he looked at them in earnest. “I hope he makes it through his sickness, lads. For I myself am from the Capital, and nothing would please me more than to see a native Legionnaire walking around my ship.”

  “I hope he pulls through as well,” Adrian told the man simply.

  2

  In his fevered dreams Alexis ran through the dark forest, chased by unseen forms with malicious yellow eyes. The dreams and nightmares came persistently, blending in and out of one another so that it all felt a jumble of emotions and experiences. He dreamt that he was back in the Forest of Trials, surrounded by harsh noises in the dark that he knew did not belong there, and his token had been stolen and he failed to attain his guns. He dreamt of a conversation with his father, where he was renounced and labeled a failure. Other times Allyse turned away from him, and it was as though he had never known her. But worse were the dreams where he watched Adrian and Connor die before his own eyes, and could do nothing.

  And then came to him the dream of the woman. She came to him through the dark, surrounded by a brilliant white glow. She wore a scenic white dress and her golden hair cascaded around her shoulders in beautiful waves. Her bright gray eyes stared into his, studying him, weighing him, judging him. He looked at her, and thought that she must be the Lady of Shadows, come to guide him to the netherworld to be judged. Then she spoke in a soft whisper, and all thought evaporated from his mind like dew under the high-noon sun.

  “You cannot not die. Not yet. You must live.”

  9

  When Connor went to check on Alexis the next morning, he found the Legionnaire sleeping peacefully. His body was dry of sweat, and his chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm. On his left shoulder was Nemoy’s poultice held in place by bandages.

  He stood in between the door and looked at Alexis’s sleeping form with a small smile. Alexis was getting better, and that meant that he and Adrian wouldn’t be left by themselves.

  “Connor ...?” The Legionnaire croaked suddenly.

  Connor jerked out of his thoughts and looked into Alexis’s unblinking eyes. He went and knelt by the bed.

  “Connor ... where are ... we?”

  “We’re on a ship.”

  “The ... woods .... the .... beasts?”

  “Behind us,” Connor said. “We outran them.”

  “Adrian ...?” Alexis asked, and his voice was suddenly filled with an urgent need to know.

  “Adrian is fine, he’s sleeping right now. How are you feeling?”

  “Dead ...,” Alexis said, and tried to smile.

  “I’ll go fetch Nemoy, stay here,” Connor said, and left the room.

  When he returned accompanied by a sleepy and tired Nemoy, Alexis had fallen asleep, he saw.

  The doctor began to check his patient over, lifting the bandages and the poultice to look at the wound beneath, feeling his forehead and his ears as well.

  “He seems to be making a good recovery,” marveled Nemoy.

  “How long before he returns to good health?” Connor asked.

  “It depends on his body and how quickly it wants to heal itself,” Nemoy said and yawned. “I’m going to go back to sleep, he seems well enough.”

  Connor remained for a few moments, unable to stop smiling.

  He headed above deck and made his way to the ship’s stern, where he sat with his back to the railing and ate breakfast. He lay his head back and closed his eyes, the early morning breeze cool on his skin.

  On the ‘Spirit, most of the crew was already up and about, shouting orders to one another as they checked the sails, keeping the ship sailing on course. The smokestacks were dead he noticed.

  “What are you smiling about?” Adrian asked as he came over and took a seat beside him.

  Connor opened his eyes. “Simply thinking about home.”

  “Have you seen Alexis this morning?”

  “Yes. It looks as though he’ll be all right.”

  “Yes,” Adrian agreed. “It really is quite marvelous.”

  They sat and talked for the next little while. Adrian left to get breakfast. Connor watched him go, and felt a deep shame at how he could have hated his cousin so. They didn’t speak of it, simply treated it as something that had never happened, and Connor was thankful for that. He watched the crew for a bit, and then decided to lend a hand.

  3

  It wasn’t the greatest food he had ever eaten, not even close, but Alexis found it tasted wonderful nonetheless. His appetite had returned in full force upon waking, and he now sat devouring an entire platter of food, consisting mostly of salted beef, dried bread, and cheese. He was aware of the faces watching with something close to alarm, those of the boys and the captain.

  “How do you feel, Alexis?” Adrian asked, mystified.

  “A little tired, but certainly better than before.”

  The captain stepped forward then. “Do you mind showing me the mark on your hand, lad?”

  Alexis’s gaze lingered on the man. He knows, he thought as he glanced at the boys.

  “We had to tell him, Alexis,” Adrian said apologetically.

  Lavos looked from the boys to Alexis. “Don’t blame the boys, lad, it really was my forcing that made them tell me.”

  “How many know of this, captain?” Alexis asked, his tone serious and the food forgotten.

  “None, I think, none besides me that is,” Lavos said. “Joni found the guns but I don’t think he’s actually ever been up close to a Legionnaire to tell whom they belonged to.”

  Alexis sighed. “That’s good, then.” He watch
ed the captain for long moments. “I take it you realize the importance of it remaining that way?”

  The captain shook his head. “Lad, I wouldn’t betray you. I’m from Grandal myself, and I know what the Legion stands for.”

  Alexis studied the captain’s face closely. Then he removed his left glove, and showed Lavos the crimson sun flare with the eagle in flight in the center. For a long time the captain simply stared at the tattoo. Then he blinked and nodded.

  “It does my heart good to see the mark,” he whispered.

  Alexis drew on his glove. “I trust you have my guns in a safe place?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then there is no need to worry,” Alexis said, and resumed eating, at a slower pace. “When do you expect to reach port, captain?”

  “Tomorrow's eve should bring us to Sune, good enough,” said the captain. His eyes drifted to the covered mark.

  “Will you leave us alone for a few moments?” Alexis asked. “We must talk.”

  “Aye, of course,” Lavos said, and turned to leave. He halted and turned around. “Would you fellows like to join me for dinner tonight?”

  “We would be happy to join you, captain,” Alexis told the man.

  Lavos’s face lit up, and he blabbered his gratitude as he closed the door once again.

  Adrian moved up besides Alexis. “We had to tell him, Alexis, there was no other way.”

  “It’s all right, Adrian. I don’t think much harm will come out of the captain knowing; he seems like a man loyal to his country.”

  “What happens when we get off in Sune?” Connor asked.

  Alexis mused over it. “Sune isn’t too far off our path. It will take us longer to reach Gale, but it can be done. Now, no one onboard knows what we’re about, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Adrian said. “At least we don’t know that anyone knows.”

  Alexis thought it over, frowning in thought. “We’ll have to hope that no one knows,” he muttered.

  “Alexis?” Connor said when they had all fallen silent. “What were those creatures in the woods?”