by J. M. Frey
For all that I see much of Kintyre in Wyndam’s biological makeup, coming face to face with his mother reveals to me just how much of her is in him, as well. She stands the same way he often does, all of her weight on one leg, hands on her hips, strong and open. Her head is tilted ever so slightly to one side as she studies me in return, her eyes narrowed in a gaze that I have seen Wyndam level on anything that piques his curiosity. In his mannerisms and body language, Wyndam Turn is very much like his mother.
“Madam Captain,” I greet her when I reach the top, and offer a bow.
Isobin bursts into a gale of blowing laughter, hands on her hips as she bends and sways with the joy of it. She is like a willow switch: graceful, supple, and I would lay money on her also holding no small amount of sting.
“Oh, then. I like this one. Well come, Master Forsyth.”
“Thank you,” I say. In the past, I would be hurt with the way she laughed at my manners, but now, I am sure enough of my own self and worth that I allow myself a small grin at her amusement.
Caerdac and Bradri land on the deck, defiant and glaring mulishly at Kintyre and Bevel. Capplederry shoulders on next, bumping me aside in an effort to get at the dragon for a good sniff; the cat is a terribly curious creature. Wyndam steps aboard right behind me. He is not exactly hiding behind me, but he does not step forward to greet his mother. I can’t see his face, but I imagine it too is a mulish glower.
“If we may, Captain, we’d like to be off as soon as possible,” I say, when it’s clear that Wyndam has no desire to step forward.
“Of course.” Isobin nods to a stout woman I assume to be her bo’sun, and a sharp series of whistles split the air. Women sailors, each dressed in trousers and shirts, and high leather boots like male pirates would be, scurry into action. They withdraw the gangway and pull up anchor, untying the ropes from the dock. I do not know much about ships, as this is my first time aboard one, so I watch the process with interest.
Beside me, Kintyre and Bevel are huddling close together, whispering and cutting concerned glances at Wyndam and Isobin. Entertained by my family’s sudden cowardice, I step aside, grab Wyndam’s shoulders, and thrust him toward Isobin.
“Say hello to your mother, lad,” I admonish.
“Hello, Mother,” Wyndam says. And this time, his voice comes out of his own throat.
The gasp of surprise is out of my lips before I realize I was even going to make the noise. Wyndam’s jaw drops wide, and he grabs his throat in shock. Clearly, he expected no sound to emerge from his mouth either. Kintyre and Bevel are at our sides immediately, pawing at Wyndam and talking all over each other, demanding to know what has changed. Demanding to know how this is possible.
“Is it the sea? Some sort of water magic?” Bevel asks. “Because you’re on a ship?”
“Some new development has occurred,” I say. “But I cannot conjecture what.”
“What’s the matter?” Isobin asks, perturbed by our obvious upset.
“Wyndam’s voice!” I gasp.
“It’s slightly lower than when I last saw my son,” Isobin says slowly, as if we are all great dummies, one corner of her mouth curled upward in preparation for the joke she thinks is about to come, “but I do hear that this is what happens to boys when they become men.”
“No, no,” I say. “It is not that it has dropped. It is that it’s back.”
“How? Why?” Kintyre demands of me, before Isobin can ask me to elaborate.
“Either the Deal-Maker is dead,” I say gravely, and everyone goes silent in shocked contemplation. “Or Pip has traded her something.”
None of us want to voice a suggestion as to what that might be.
“I’m sorry, a Deal-Maker?” Isobin asks, and just like that, all of her seductive mirth drops away. Kintyre audibly swallows, and he and his son sport identical looks of scared consternation. “I think you have some explanations to give me, Kintyre Turn,” Isobin says, face darkening in thunderous anger. “Just what have you been doing with my son?”
✍
The captain’s quarters are spacious enough to allow all of us, save Bradri, to sit around the dinner table and talk. Bradri curls up on the deck and sticks her neck through the doorway, her ruff blocking out any eavesdropping. Capplederry has apparently decided that the dragonet is no longer something to spit at and snarl around, and is curled against Bradri’s side outside of the room, purring as the great cat naps.
The horses are tied by leads to the mast to keep them from spooking and taking off overboard. In a terribly stereotypical manner, a few of the women of the crew were instantly besotted with them, and linger by Karl and Dauntless, brushing them out, offering water and grain, and re-braiding their manes. Writer, but Elgar Reed has peculiar ideas of what little girls like.
In the cabin, we shed our damp outer clothes, leaving them to steam near a brazier, and avail ourselves of Isobin’s warming tea, a hot meal sent up from below decks, and the opportunity to rest. Wyndam sits close by his mother’s side, and she pets the nape of his neck as we eat in silence, possessive and delighted to have him back with her.
We are not offered liquor or wine, and none ask for it. We all must be sharp and alert if we’re to succeed in the coming battle. And then, slowly, the tale of how and why we came to require The Salty Queen is spun into the expectant and sometimes horrified air of the room. For the benefit of Caerdac, Bradri, and Isobin, however, we maintain the fiction that Pip and I had been living somewhere away, and not in the Writer’s realm.
Ashmarrow Isle is only a few hours’ journey from Lymecove and Long Pond Harbor, and when the tale has been told, Kintyre takes his scolding from Isobin quite a bit more shamefacedly and manfully than I had thought he would. Then we are all offered hammocks in which to take some sleep before we must hasten into battle once again.
Caerdac demurs, citing a preference for sleeping tucked up on Bradri’s forearm, and Wyndam declares his intent to do the same with Capplederry. Isobin pulls her son aside for a brief private chat first, which ends in a robust chuckle and a pat on the shoulder before she shoves him good-naturedly out the cabin door. The first of his shipboard family descends upon him before he can make it to his target; the bo’sun pulls him into a fierce and sideways hug, startling the boy. As if by magic, there is suddenly a whole gaggle of women around the lad, pinching his cheeks and rubbing his hair affectionately. Wyndam takes the time to kiss each weather-beaten cheek, and lean into every embrace, and firmly shake each offered hand.
As I watch this homecoming, it occurs to me that Wyndam was forced to leave behind more than just his mother when he was sent away. The remainder of his extended family is clearly pleased to see how much he has matured, and to be in his affections once more. I press the back of my hand to my mouth, barring any noises of distress from exiting.
My daughter.
My wife.
I want my family back.
When Wyndam manages to shoo the crew back to their posts, he heads to the nose of the deck, where Bradri and Capplederry have arranged themselves in a large, scaly-fluffy, red-and-gold ball of limbs, wings, and tails. When I turn my attention away from the lads and their creatures, I realize that my brother and brother-in-law have scarpered. Kintyre and Bevel are nowhere in the cabin. They had been engaging in some intense nonverbal discussions around the table, even as we related the history of our quest, and I don’t doubt that they have slunk off to engage in other nonverbal methods of reassurance and the reclamation of each other’s bodies and affection. I have never seen Bevel so insecure of his place with Kintyre, nor have I seen my brother so anxious to convince him.
This leaves only me. The sway of the sea unnerves me, for this is my first time upon a ship, and I do my best to swallow down the mild nausea it evokes, shutting my ears to the whispering rise and fall of waves against the hull. There is so much I wish to speak of with Isobin, so many questions about Wyndam’s childhood, about her decision to abandon him on land, about her reaction to Kintyre an
d Bevel’s trothing, but I am so tired I can barely form a sentence. With the urgency momentarily paused, the adrenaline and excitement that had kept me pressing on has been used up, and I am left a trembling, drained husk of myself.
“Well, if there’s only one of you, no need to commandeer a hammock,” Isobin says, looking me up and down. There is nothing sexual in her gaze, for which I am grateful. She seems, rather, to be concerned in a motherly way. Ah, yes, there is my creator again—the moment women become mothers, they can be nothing else to a man. “You can borrow my bed, if you like.”
She points to a section of the cabin that is separated from the rest of the open, low-ceilinged room by a surprisingly beautiful changing screen. The offer is extremely tempting. I can feel my eyelids sinking, my eyes burning with grit, and I cannot seem to stand upright. I am utterly exhausted.
But that bed is, most likely, where my nephew was conceived, and that does not appeal to me in the least. I must make a face, for Isobin laughs and says, “The daybed then, behind my desk. Go on.” She waves me toward the great wall of windows that form the back wall of her cabin.
I remain awake just long enough to remove my boots and sword belt, and to wonder if Isobin intends to double-cross us all, or murder us in our sleep. And then I decide I am too tired, and too heart-sore, too saturated with worry for my family, to care. She can murder me all she likes.
“You may choose not to believe me, Forsyth Turn,” Isobin murmurs as she douses the lights in the cabin around me. “But trust me when I say that I know how you feel right now. Being without one’s children, even if you have separated yourself voluntarily, is draining. Sleep, now.”
Play
A Deal-Maker Spirit may not deliberately and purposefully kill.
But there is no rule against using an already be-spelled mortal to hold the sword. The Reader stands between Solinde and the small door in the floor of the tower roof, her mewling child whimpering and clutching to her. The Reader is baring a blade that Solinde bid her to pick up and use when the first scholar breached the roof and had been scorched immediately by Varnet’s defensive spell.
The Reader is weeping, silent and angry, her jaw clenched, but she has no choice but to do as she’s bid. Varnet himself is below, reclaiming his Tower from those who had declawed it. Every few moments, there is a scream, and a flash of vibrantly colored light streams from one of the many windows—the burst of a spell. All of the invaders have gone sailing out of those same windows shortly thereafter, their desiccated, smoking, or blood-slick corpses bursting like overripe fruit against the boulders and jagged rocks below; some are even sent in a spiraling arc into the waves, and bashed against the cliffside with the next surge of the sea. Most are even dead when they are defenestrated. Most. But not all.
And now a halo of dead academics litter the ground around the Ivory Tower. Solinde hopes that when Varnet is done, he will summon carrion birds—for she cannot stand the smell of rotting flesh. And once the bones are stripped, they will be useful in spell-working. Solinde fancies that she’d like a bit of a skeleton personal guard. That would be lovely.
As she waits for her son to finish his extermination, Solinde amuses herself by cooing at the babe and trying to entice it to come to her. As much as Varnet was correct in his suggestion that they eradicate the whole of the Turn lineage, it seems a pity to waste Reader blood and power, no matter what it is diluted with. The motherly part of Solinde quails at the thought of exterminating a child who could be raised to know and think better, think correctly. A child who, if taken away from its heathen and savage home and raised properly, taught rightly, could become an integrated and useful member of Solinde and Varnet’s family.
If for no other reason than to fold more Reader blood into the resultant great-grandchild, should Varnet and the Reader’s union produce a male child and they allow him to get offspring on this babe.
It all seems quite tidy, and for now, Solinde is content to cat about with the mouse-child, basking in the warmth of the new day that is dawning over the wild whip of the Mooncall Sea.
Twenty
Wyndam shakes me awake at dawn.
“We’ve gotten as close to the Isle as we can go, Uncle Forsyth,” he says, his voice low, as if he fears the Deal-Maker will hear. I blink, marvel at the joy the sound of his voice brings me, and then realize it was the title that put the smile on my face, though it is still nice to hear my nephew speak.
“Say that again,” I request as I sit up, scuffing a hand through my unruly hair.
“We’ve gotten as—”
“No, the last bit. Please.”
Wyndam smirks at me. “Uncle Forsyth.”
“Hmm,” I hum, reaching for my boots. “Dear me. How pleasant a thing to hear. Pass me my belt please, nephew.”
Wyndam does so, and I use the opportunity to observe him. He looks better. Whether it is that the gash in his abdomen has finally begun to heal, or that the sleep has done him good, or that he is reunited with his mother and back at sea, I cannot pinpoint. Perhaps it is simply because he has regained his voice. Perhaps it is all of it. At any rate, he is holding himself straighter, his shoulders more relaxed, an easy smile lingering around his lips just as it does on Isobin. Even the way he walks looks more natural, more comfortable. I realize suddenly that the slight awkwardness in his gait that I had attributed to puberty or a growth spurt is, in fact, because the lad learned to walk at sea. Here, on the ship, his gait is smooth and rolling, and reminds me very much of the rocking, circular, acrobatic method of his fighting.
I long, suddenly, to watch him at his sword practice while aboard a ship. His technique must use the sway of the deck in a way that I, with my rigidly formal court-fencing education, cannot fathom. The moment I stand, I realize why we have made anchor where we have. The floor is pitching and rolling so much that I am immediately unbalanced and must clutch at Isobin’s desk to remain upright.
Wyndam laughs, the snide little wretch, and waits for me by the door as I stagger my way toward him. Together, we exit onto the deck. I am the last to arrive, I see. Everyone else, even Capplederry, is arrayed along the right side of the rails—is that starboard or port?—staring up at Ashmarrow Isle.
Behind us, the sun crawls above the horizon, painting the soft clouds and thick white mist shrouding the cliff-base a bloody red. Before us, the sky is overcast but not storming, and the waves churn in an unnatural tumble against the broken rock. If I were not sure the Deal-Maker was on that island, I would have proof of it in the perversion of the sea’s natural rhythms.
The Ivory Tower is just visible, a shadowy finger thrust accusingly upward, polished-bone white and dry. We cannot make out anything in the windows, or amid the slope of rocky ground around it. The Tower sits on the highest-most wedge of a triangular spit of gray stone, barren of all life save moss, old seaweed, and the odd, wizened bit of scrub brush. At the narrowest edge of the wedge, it dips down under the water into a natural causeway, and continues on down, I assume, to the seabed.
It is to this point that we paddle our slim, tippy little catboat. Wyndam and Isobin navigate, confident, while Kintyre, Bevel, and I crowd in the middle, feet wet as we attempt to stay still to avoid capsizing us. Capplederry must remain behind, and the cat’s pitiful mewls followed us all the way to the catboat. It had stuck its head over the rail, sniffed and flattened its ears at us, unhappy that we were going away.
I tried to convince Bradri and Caerdac to remain behind as well, but they refused. Whether it was because they were worried deeply about Alis, or because they naively wanted to experience the “glory” of battle, or perhaps because of the strange new way Caerdac can’t seem to keep his eyes off of Wyndam, I am not certain. I did manage, at least, to convince the pair to wait until the second catboat of pirates paddled their way to the isle before they took to the skies to be our backup. They would do well with a dragonet as a lookout, especially since the plan was that they would sail up after we had already made the advance attack, in order
to further scramble and divide whatever defences the Deal-Maker may have had the chance to re-enchant.
I was well surprised when a goodly number of the crew volunteered their swords for this rescue mission, and I think much of their willingness came from the way Wyndam spoke of his Aunt Pip and Cousin Alis, the genuine respect he parlayed in his plea for volunteers, the courage he painted Pip as having, and the intelligence. Here was a whole ship of women used to being overlooked and talked-down to simply because of what was between their legs; of course they were incensed at another like them being held captive against her will.
The scrape of the boat’s bottom against the rock is loud, screechingly loud, in my ears, and I wince. Bevel winces at the volume of the noise as well, but Kintyre is staring ahead, on the lookout to see if our arrival was noticed. We all hold our breath, waiting . . . waiting . . .
“Nothing,” Isobin whispers. “Out.”
We climb out, carefully. She and Wyndam heft the boat between them, and carry it far enough inland that it won’t float away before they set it down again. It is an impressive display of stealth and strength, and Bevel pinches Kintyre’s thigh when he catches his trothed admiring Isobin’s biceps.
Kintyre offers his love an unashamed eyebrow waggle, and Bevel rolls his eyes and shakes his head once. And then they are both focused once more on the business at hand. I do my very best to ignore the lovebites I can see on their necks.
Together, we begin our slow walk to the tower, doing our best to remain in the mist and the shadow of the rock formations. I strain to hear anything over the crash of waves, and catch, briefly, what might be the leathery snap of a dragon-wing against the air. Good, Bradri and Caerdac are aloft. Our support is on its way. It’s time to storm the tower.