“You’re here to take me back to Nalitzva,” Ilyr accused. He was speaking his own language now, at least. “I’m your prince. You should treat me with respect.”
Respect. This naked drunk, who smelled like he’d been pickled in wai and a few worse things besides, leaning on Nes’s arm because he couldn’t stand up on his own, wanted more respect. For what? For some accident of birth? Ilyr’s parents happened to be the King and Queen of Nalitzva. Nes’s parents happened to be a Nalitzvan merchant and a wai trader from Hoi. For this, Ilyr got bowed to everywhere he went and Nes got spit on.
Nes wasn’t planning to spit on Ilyr, but he wasn’t planning to bow, either. He stared at the prince in stony silence.
“I know, I know,” Ilyr said, flapping his free hand. He imitated Nes’s low growl and said, “Get in the boat.”
Ilyr got in the boat before the guard shoved him in. His first few attempts at punching Murder Eyes No Name—the guard, obviously his parents’ emissary—hadn’t gone well, so even at this hazy stage between drunk and hungover, Ilyr knew he didn’t have a chance of winning that fight. The man wasn’t as tall as him, but Ilyr might as well have taken his fists to a brick wall. A brick wall with thick arms that could fight back and grab hold of him.
It wasn’t a good metaphor. Ilyr wasn’t in a state to come up with a better one.
He had to give credit to his parents, though. They’d gone to the trouble of digging up a Nalitzvan-speaking islander—there couldn’t be many—who could go to Hoi in search of their missing son. A nice little bit of politics, that. The Hoi were less likely to shoot one of their own on sight, and sending this man also showed deference to their laws.
If his parents had been trying to tempt him with a man who looked like Thiyo, they’d failed. This man shared Thiyo’s golden skin and black hair, but where Thiyo had been all quick, slender elegance, flirtatious and dashing, this man was grim and silent. He was broad and solid, with black scars tracking up his arms. Had he ever smiled? Did he know how? He probably hated fashion and poetry, just for good measure.
But all of that was irrelevant. Ilyr’s parents would never try to tempt him with a man, because they still didn’t know him. They never would.
Murder Eyes began to row back toward Loyalty. It was slow going, and the motion didn’t agree with Ilyr. He clutched at his belly and leaned over the side of the boat, his eyes squeezed shut and his face only inches from the water.
He moaned. “I wish I were dead.”
“You’re not the only one,” Murder Eyes muttered.
There was really no response to that except to vomit into the ocean.
Emptying his stomach—although there was almost nothing in it except wai—did make Ilyr feel marginally better. His head cleared enough to reflect on his circumstances: naked, hungover, ill, unarmed, in a tiny boat, under the high sun.
In grave need of another drink of wai.
Trapped with an intimidating stranger who wished he were dead.
Those were all bad things, but none of them compared to the worst thing: going home to Nalitzva to live out the rest of his lie of a life, with a woman he could never love, and without the one man he did.
Ilyr missed Thiyo in the aching, sweating, desperate way he missed drinking wai. And Thiyo didn’t want him. It was never going to work between them. They were done.
Ilyr was done. He should’ve drunk himself to death. He would’ve, if only stupid Murder Eyes hadn’t come along and forced him into this boat.
“You could go ahead and get it done with, in that case,” Ilyr said.
“What?” said Murder Eyes, who was apparently having trouble following the very simple conversation they were having.
“I could do it myself, of course. I could throw myself overboard,” Ilyr explained. “Eventually I’d drown, or maybe a giant medusa would come along—that would be more direct than drinking myself to death. Just hurl myself into its tentacles and skip the usual steps of having someone catch it, harvest its venom, and make liquor out of it.”
Murder Eyes didn’t dignify this very logical suggestion with a response, but he also didn’t move to end Ilyr’s miserable existence. He was no use at all.
The thought of wai made Ilyr lick his lips. He wanted a drink more than he wanted to die. And if he died, he’d never see Thiyo again. Not even once. So for now, he’d stay in the boat.
Quite a long time passed before Murder Eyes said, low and gruff, “Not you.”
“Pardon?”
“I don’t wish you were dead.”
Ah. Ilyr had said I wish I were dead and Murder Eyes had, according to his own version of events, responded with solidarity in death wishes. A likely story. Ilyr might be drunk, but he knew what he’d heard.
“Anyway, I need you alive,” Murder Eyes said—low and gruff again. Ilyr doubted he had any other way of speaking.
And that was the end of their conversation until they reached the ship.
Acknowledgments
My deepest gratitude, as always, to my live-in science consultant, who puts up with requests to block fight scenes in our living room, in addition to answering questions about geology and the mechanics of locks, and remains miraculously enthusiastic about me.
Thank you to Lis and Kristin, fellow writers and first readers, who endured a longer wait for this book than anyone else had to, and whose cheering and commentary made it better.
Thank you to all my friends and family, to whom the writing process must seem primarily composed of despairing sighs, for listening. I love you very much.
And thank you to you, reader, for navigating the beautiful machinery of your brain along the itinerary I laid out. Let’s do it again some time.
About the Author
Felicia Davin is the author of Thornfruit, Nightvine, and Shadebloom. Her short fiction has been featured in Lightspeed, Nature, and Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction.
She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and their cat. When not writing and reading fiction, she teaches and translates French. She loves linguistics, singing, and baking. She is bisexual, but not ambidextrous.
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Find her at feliciadavin.com or on Twitter @FeliciaDavin.
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