Sureblood

by Susan Grant

  While Val hadn’t yet managed to sleep an entire night, what rest she was able to get eased her exhaustion. She’d been eating better, too, and fates knew, loving better since Dake’s return, and it had all made her stronger in the face of an uncertain future.

  She crouched down to rub her finger over a repair on the inner leading edge of one stubby wing. The peace Dake had promised Frank Johnson would open the door to winning their fair share of the profit generated by Nezerihm’s mines.

  Nezerihm must know by now they didn’t intend to cooperate with him. Rumor had it that he’d put out the call for Dake’s capture as well as hers, with huge bounties on their heads. She responded with a round-the-clock patrol circling Artoom. No one got on or off her world without her knowing.

  First through the blockade were the Surebloods. As she rose to her feet she sniffed the air and grinned. The scent of the meat they’d brought with them being roasted over a fire drifted up from the beach. Music and laughter, too, as the rocky relationship between the two largest of the pirate clans took a new turn. Torchlight flickered in the strengthening breeze. The feast between the Blues and the Surebloods would formalize their clan leaders’ intent to marry. Most raiders saw it as the celebration of an alliance between the people of the rains and the people of the plains. Sashya of course called it “my daughter’s engagement party.”

  Val smiled, smoothing a hand over the lush green fabric of her best dress, the one she never got to wear for Dake the first time, and swished the skirt, testing its swirl for slango.

  “Hoy, Val!”

  The shout caught her mid-spin. Blushing, she threw her focus to Ayl entering the docks. He was dressed in raider gear for his shift on planetary patrol. Instinctively she tensed, but his handsome face was as calm as she’d seen it in a while. It hadn’t been that way when she’d first taken him aside to break the news she and Dake would marry.

  “You sure look pretty tonight, Val,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she replied warily.

  “I got something to say to you.” He wedged his fingers into his pockets. She braced herself for a tantrum or a salvo of words designed to make her feel guilty. “My reaction the other day when you told me you were getting married was wrong. I want to say sorry for that.”

  She blinked, wondering if she’d heard him right.

  His eyes were shadowed and dark, genuinely remorseful if she could believe it. “You got no choice marrying him the way I see it. You got a son. Dake’s the father. Marrying him is the right thing to do, just like you said the other day. No, I’m still not happy about it, but I wish you well all the same. You gotta do what you think is best for the clan’s future.” He paused, clearing his throat. “We all do. Right?”

  “Aye. We all do.” She offered him a smile. “I’m glad you wanted to talk. I don’t want you as an enemy, Ayl.”

  “I know that. Have fun at the party. I gotta finish some maintenance on my junk heap of a ship before my patrol starts.”

  As he walked away, she pondered him. Had they really had that conversation? Could it be they were both finally maturing, forged by their hardships instead of being hobbled by them?

  Laughter alerted her to Dake approaching with Jaym on his shoulders. The faithful puppy bounded along behind them. Every time she saw the pup she thought of Dake’s first moments back on the windswept plains of Parramanta. She wasn’t one for crying, but how could anyone have kept a dry eye that day seeing Dake reunite with Yarmouth, the first mate he’d thought for sure was dead, or watching an aged Merkury’s hesitant first steps accelerate into a full-bore run, and Dake’s expression of sheer joy as dog and master collided in a storm of barking and laughter.

  It had taken Yarmouth and the dog over a year to find their way back home in the little escape pod. By then the two clans were at war. When Yarmouth did finally convince the Surebloods to contact the Blues with the news that Dake Sureblood had been captured and suspected Nezerihm was behind it, the Blues were in no mood to listen. Val remembered that day. Ayl was manning the comm. He never gave details, only that “those Sureblood bastards are trying to feed us more lies.” If only she’d been there to hear the call that day. Would knowing Dake was in Drakken hands have made the long years without him easier or harder? No amount of soul searching would ever give her that answer, she imagined.

  “Mama, look!” Slung over Jaym’s neck was a decorated cup on a string: his Sureblood “drink cup” that he never took off, even for sleeping. His arms were flung out to the sides as if he was flying as Dake lifted him over his head.

  “Watch out—he’s coming in for a landing! It’s going to be a rough one…turbulence. Hold on!” Gripping the boy by the belt, Dake swung him around, while Jaym pretended to be a skiff. His giggles and “hard landing” had Val laughing.

  Jaym picked himself up, dusted off and ran to her for a hug. “Bye, Mama.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Spying.”

  She propped her hands on her hips. “Spying on whom?”

  “All the grown-ups at the party!” Jaym launched himself at Dake next and wrapped his skinny legs around his father’s waist. Val paused to soak in the sight of the look of tenderness and gratitude in Dake’s face, and her precious son held fast in his father’s strong arms.

  Then Dake crouched down to attach a knife to the boy’s pretend weapons belt.

  Val balked. “That’s a real blade.”

  Dake was unapologetic. “The sooner he learns and respects real weapons the better. You can’t win a war with sticks.”

  “I’ll be responsible,” Jaym assured her, firmly, as if he were ten years older. “And if I need protection, I know I’ve got it.” He ran off with the puppy in trail, leaving Val disconcerted.

  “Only five and he already knows he might have to fight for his life,” she said.

  Dake snatched her hand and pulled her into a resounding kiss. Stroking her hair, he kept her close. “He’s got to understand what he is, and what it means.”

  “I want him to have a childhood.” She thought of her own carefree years being stolen and didn’t want the same for Jaym.

  “He will, Val. I promise you that. But leaving him free to play doesn’t mean leaving him naive. He knows that already, I think.”

  Jaym was going to be the leader of their people. “King of the pirates,” some were already calling him. Jaym took it all with his usual aplomb. As big as his personality was, he was innately humble.

  “He’s got the best of both of us in him,” Dake mused as if guessing her thoughts.

  “Aye, he does.” Knowing the uncertainty of the future, she hoped it was enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE FEASTING WENT ON until the wee hours. Moonshine flowed, and there were always new platters of food being left out. They couldn’t quite afford the splurge, but Sashya insisted, telling them that there was a time for belt-tightening, but an engagement party wasn’t one of them.

  “You’ll eat bread tomorrow,” she said with a sniff, looping her arm through Grizz’s. The couple had stayed close all evening. “We’ll eat Triad bread tomorrow,” Val boasted. To raucous whoops of approval, she raised a glass of moonshine. They’d take whatever the Triad was willing to give them. Not charity, Val pointed out, working hard to convince the skeptics in the clan, but booty of a different sort, reaped through a form of hatch busting they’d not yet tried: diplomatic hatch busting.

  It wasn’t the pirate way to kowtow to outsiders, but times were different now and they needed to adapt to them or die. In the end what mattered was survival with pride. It always would. They’d never be the Triad’s pets, but they’d keep the ore flowing, so long as their new outsider allies kept their word they’d let them stay.

  Val downed the tiny cup of moonshine. Dake’s cup was empty, and he seemed a bit tipsy as he hooked an arm around her waist. His stepmother and stepsisters had already gone to sleep, and Despa was teaching his handsome half brother how to dance slango. The healer and A
yl didn’t seem to be on speaking terms any longer.

  “Come here, Blue girl.” Dake pulled Val into a shadowed corner and kissed her. He tasted like salt and moonshine. “Mmm. I’ve been waiting to do that all night.”

  “We have been doing that all night. No waiting about it.” She kissed her way across his mouth. “Now what I’m waiting to do can’t be done but at home in the bedroom.”

  He cupped her bottom with his hand and chuckled, his breath hot on her throat, his jaw rough but his lips tender. “What’s stopping us from going there?”

  Impulsively she hugged him and held him. “My heart is full,” she said softly.

  “My heart is yours, Blue girl.”

  Happiness, she thought. It had taken them under its blissful wing. After so much pain, they were both ready to rejoice in their new state. Gripping each other’s hands, they returned to the revelers and said their goodbyes. Eventually they found their way up the path, picking their way home in the moonlight, carefully, being under the influence of the moonshine. Merkury padded ahead of them, but the old dog’s eyesight wasn’t what it used to be.

  A few lights were on in Hervor’s house where Jaym was sleeping with Yanney. Hervor and his wife, Julen, were relaxing on the porch. Dake indulged Val’s need to make sure Jaym was all right.

  Her former skiff mate put down a book at their approach. Val grinned. “If it’s not a bother, we came to kiss our boy goodnight.”

  Hervor shook his head. “He’s not here. I thought he was staying with Sashya.”

  Val’s heart skipped a beat. “Sashya’s at the feast.” In the village it wasn’t unusual for children to come and go, for it had always been safe. But she more than anyone should know that was no longer the case. She cast her gaze about in the darkness.

  Dake gave her hand a squeeze. “Jaym’s fine. He wanted to stay in his own house is all. He’s fast asleep in our bed with his trusty guard pup.”

  They hurried home. The pup’s barking didn’t greet them at the front steps. Val swallowed a leaden ball of unease. Merkury sniffed around, tail wagging, but his little friend wasn’t there.

  Neither was their son. “Jaym!” she called. They tore through the house seeing only empty beds.

  Dake cupped his hands around his mouth to yell out the back door. “Jaym!” No enthusiastic “Papa” answered the calls.

  The old feelings of not being where she needed surfaced, of being reckless, of taking pleasure over duty. Dake took her by the shoulders, turning her to look her in the eye. “We’ll go out and find him. Don’t worry.”

  But there were plenty of hazards for a child, or anyone, out wandering after dark. “I’m going to teach that boy something about accountability,” she grumbled. “Just in case he takes after his uncle Sethen.”

  Their calls alerted the others in the village and soon more joined the search.

  “He said he was spying.” Dake peered toward the beach. “He might still be down there, probably sound asleep under a tree.”

  That made sense. She clung to it. Word had already spread to the revelers on the beach. Grizz shoved his dozer in his holster. “I’ll have a look around down by the cove.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Sashya said.

  Ferren headed off in the direction of the lake as Malta bellowed to several nearby apprentices. “They’re looking for Jaym. If you see him, send him to his folks.”

  The apprentices fanned out. At least two of them were drunk. Val winced, wishing she hadn’t drunk moonshine, wishing the clan was sober. “Why wasn’t I paying more attention?”

  “There was no reason to. We thought he was with Hervor.”

  “I should have made sure. I should have—”

  “We’ll find him. It’s not the first time a little boy’s gone lost, and it won’t be the last.”

  The camp dogs known to be good trackers had their muzzles rubbed in a piece of Jaym’s clothing and were sent off to search. Merkury took off in a determined path, nose to the ground, jerking this way and that as he followed a scent trail Val hoped was Jaym’s. Ferren dived in the lake tirelessly. With her bare hands she stirred up layers of muck on the bottom all while Val hoped with everything she had that the girl wouldn’t be successful.

  Where was he? Beyond the torchlight the night loomed. Jaym would be everywhere in any given day, never sitting still for long, and that got Val’s stomach churning. It was difficult to figure out where he might have gone.

  While you were drinking moonshine and dancing slango instead of making sure your son was safe.

  Dake took her chin between his fingers. She could tell he was fighting letting his own alarm show. It would only resonate with hers and grow larger. They were pirates, but they were parents. It required a whole new method of operation. “You got me, Blue girl. You’re not alone anymore.”

  She squeezed his arm. “I know.”

  The entire village plus Surebloods were engaged in the search now. All through the night they looked for Jaym. Then, finally relenting the feverish hunt at daybreak, Val sat down with Dake, leaning against him, utterly drained. She was offered hot soup, accepting only after Dake forced her, but she had no appetite for it. His family and hers stayed close while the drumbeat of dread boomed louder.

  “Hoy!”

  Val flew upright at an approaching raider. Ayl strode over to them, carrying an exhausted puppy. Val’s heart sank at the sight of the dog that never parted from his master, and the terrible look in Ayl’s eyes. She’d never seen him looking this bereft, not Ayl, and it drove home the reality she might have lost her baby. Inside, she started shaking. “Where did you find him? We called and called.” She took the pup from Ayl. “Why didn’t you come?” she murmured in its fur, burying her hands in the warmth to hide her trembling.

  Dake rested a hand at the base of her neck to steady her and let her know he was there.

  “I found him cowering in deep brush over by the docks,” Ayl was saying. “He wouldn’t come to me. I had to coax him out.” He pulled something from his pocket next. “I found this, too.”

  Jaym’s lanyard with the drink cup dangling.

  Val’s throat seemed to swell shut, the drumbeat of dread reaching a crescendo. She pushed to her feet; swaying, she pressed her hand to her forehead and scanned the woods around her as if she could somehow rip away the shadows of which she swore held the secret to finding Jaym. Let him not be dead. Please. It was impossible to imagine life without her boy.

  “I’m sorry, Val.” Ayl actually did appear sorry, his eyes dark and anxious.

  Dake took the lanyard and gave it to her. “See? There’s the pup and the drink cup. It means we’re getting close.”

  Close to what—finding him dead or alive? She didn’t ask; she couldn’t bear to hear the answer. Jaym never left the pup, or vice versa. He never went to bed without his Sureblood drink cup either, since decorating it as Dake had taught him. She was mama-proud of Jaym’s handiwork. In the torchlight she could see the tiny, primitive figures he’d etched: a boy, a dog, flowers and trees. Child’s art.

  Jaym was so self-assured for his age that it was easy to forget he was still just a baby. She couldn’t bear the thought of him badly hurt. Or worse. She clutched it to her breasts, the noise of the clan swirling around her, her husband-to-be organizing the next steps in the search. The decision was made to scour the docks for the lost boy. It was crowded with ships. Jaym may have sneaked aboard one, and now he was either hiding or asleep. But an all-out search of every ship yielded no boy.

  “Funny how the boy went missing when they’re here,” Warrybrook sneered, glowering at Yarmouth and the other Sureblood clansmen helping in the search. “Can you really ever trust a Sureblood?”

  Dake stopped in his tracks, turning to the Blue raider as the clansmen started to grumble at the insinuation that the Surebloods were somehow responsible. Ayl’s group was taking advantage of raw emotions. “What are you saying?” he demanded.

  Warrybrook exchanged glances with Ayl. “I’m sa
yin’ that we’ve got too many outsiders here for my liking. Now a missing boy.”

  “My son,” Dake said hoarsely, white-hot anger bursting behind his eyes. Yarmouth lunged at the man. Dake’s half brother caught him, pulling him back, as Grizz fought Warrybrook backward, too.

  “We’ve got a boy to search for,” Dake said, disgusted at them all. “This is no time for fightin’.”

  “Since when did you take over as my clan captain, telling us what to do?” Ayl snarled back.

  It took everything Dake had in him not to swing his fist and level the raider right then and there. Keeping the fury and his dislike for the man out of his voice was almost as hard. To Warrybrook and to Ayl, he said, “I want to keep the focus on finding our son. If you haven’t figured out how much that boy means to your clan captain, then you’re to be pitied.”

  Ayl stiffened, setting his jaw. Dake wasn’t sure if the intensity of his disappointment had rendered Ayl silent or only the despair behind his words, but the raider said nothing more.

  Yet as the hours passed, rumors of the Sureblood’s involvement continued to spring up. Insulted, Dake’s clansmen just as vigorously denied them, blamed it all on the Blues’ lack of security, and more fights broke out. There were heartening signs of teamwork, too. Grizz reminded him that many more clansmen got along than didn’t.

  Their unity was still fragile. Anything that stressed the bonds, like Jaym’s disappearance, threatened to destroy it. His people would not run this time. They’d stay until things were set right.

  Dake fought off a vision of Drakken hunter ships waiting to haul his entire clan away, should they decide to leave, then he scoured his hand over his face. No more Drakken. No more Coalition. Peace had come. Although there was little of it to be found in his own life, he thought bleakly. His son was missing, there was renewed friction and suspicion between the clans and now he and Val were officially no-shows for the historic meeting with Captain Johnson on the Unity, putting their one possible chance at a future in these Channels in jeopardy.