Blood of Gods

by Scarlett Dawn

  The king looked over at his brother. “He didn’t tell you that?”

  “He doesn’t tell me much,” I answered over the shush of the boat through the water and the whisper of the wind through the sails.

  “Why do you stay?”

  I stared out to where Dorian stood on the bowsprit. “For a while, he was a challenge. The only person I knew who could keep up with my sword work. And then for a while I really enjoyed… his other sword work. Now… he’s just being an asshole. Or reverted to it.”

  After another quiet moment as the xebec cut through the water, Aiko spoke softly. “It’s the vampire in him, isn’t it?” He glanced at Belshazzar. “Even though you are vampire and he is druid, you still have parts of the other. He’s being possessive and cruel because of me, because I am here.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “We share a bed with Rilen and Roran.”

  “But we were there before you,” Rilen said, quietly. He appeared between Aiko and me at that moment. “He shares us with you. That’s the way he looks at it. You are his to keep or share. And now, Aiko would be intruding, and that’s the part that Dorian gets jumbled up.”

  “He’s a selfish prick,” Belshazzar said. He smirked. “I am, too. Family trait.”

  “Are you all done talking about me?” Dorian called from the bow.

  “Fuck off, brother,” Belshazzar called back.

  “And no, we’re not!” Rilen yelled. He glanced at Aiko and me. “How long do we think this trip is going to be?”

  “Four days because we’re in a pretty large ship that can really cut through the water,” I answered.

  “Four long days of that miserable shit brooding on the bow of the ship.” Rilen shook his head slowly. “This is going to be fun.”

  Dorian turned around and stared at us. “You can all swim.”

  “You can’t pilot a boat,” I snapped back.

  “I can figure it out,” he barked.

  “No, you can’t, not one this big!”

  “If I recall,” he said, walking along the deck toward us, “you have never complained about my being able to handle large things before.”

  “Sex jokes, Dorian?” Rilen asked, rolling his eyes.

  “You can handle one large one,” I answered, “but I can handle three at the same time.”

  Rilen, Aiko, and Belshazzar all dropped their jaws. Once again, the king started laughing and had to walk away. Rilen grabbed Aiko and spirited him toward the galley. “Time to start dinner!”

  Dorian stood next to me, watching me. I stared out at the water, ignoring him. He watched as I stood at the wheel to hold us steady.

  This was a big ship, and someone had to stay at the wheel the whole time. It could hold a complement of thirty people, or a battle complement of nearly three hundred, and could be made an oared ship.

  There wasn’t much more than the slap of water on the hull and wind in the sails. The sound of the twins and Aiko in the galley drifted up to us occasionally, and Belshazzar’s chuckle floated on the air still.

  A very long, quiet moment passed on the deck.

  “What do you want, Dorian?”

  “You, back in my bed.”

  I snorted.

  “You’re mine.”

  “You’re infuriating.”

  “You belong in my bed.”

  I took a deep breath. “I am not a possession or a prize, Dorian. I thought you got that. I am Kimber Raven. I am a distinct and separate person that everyone, everyone in S’Kir knows. Except you. You seem to think that I can’t be someone without you.”

  The ocean was quiet again as the sun sank toward the horizon.

  “You belong to me, Kimber.”

  I turned and stared at him. “Back. The. Fuck. Off. Master Dorian. Back off. Whether I belong to you or not, you cannot consume all of me like a whale swallowing prey. Your brother can manage to let his woman make her own mistakes, why can’t you?”

  His countenance flinched. “Make your mistakes…”

  “You’re old, Dorian. You’re ancient, in fact, even older than the twins who admit they’re old. For all your wisdom and intelligence, you cannot dictate my life. You cannot lord over me. I am not a prize, and I’m not some puppet.”

  “I don’t control—”

  “Oh, horseshit,” I barked. “You have tried to control me since I first walked into the temple at age thirty. You never liked me. You tried to push me away, keep me back. You wanted me strictly controlled and nearly shit a full-grown iruki when I moved off the temple campus. You have always tried to control me.”

  He walked away. He headed down the deck and down below, into the sleeping quarters.

  I turned back to the bow, and I wanted to cry. I was tired of being an accessory for him. The twins were allowed to be their own persons, and he couldn’t seem to do that for me.

  I broke the mountains of solid granite that stood so high no single person had ever climbed and lived, the mountains so tall with air so rarified and thin that birds could not fly over. Mountains that so completely cut our world in half that we didn’t even know what secrets the other side held.

  My magic was that of S’Kir itself. I could feel the pulse of the rocks and the dirt and the water if I stilled my mind. I could hear them asking if I was in need of their help or their magic as I fell to sleep each night.

  I could hear the ocean below as we slipped quietly through the small, unthreatening waves. No single person should have been able to pilot this ship, but there I was, hand on the wheel because I was a part of the magic of S’Kir.

  My swordwork was unparalleled. I had been taught by a man who loved me and loved his swords and skill with metal. The only people I had ever come up against who came close to giving me a challenge were my father and Dorian. And with more precise practice, I would have bested both.

  And Dorian treated me like a toy.

  I wanted to love him. I certainly enjoyed being with him and the twins. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined having three men—maybe four—who would share my bed.

  Without jealousy until recently.

  And Dorian was the one being jealous.

  I sighed.

  I wanted to love him. I wanted to love all four of them. It should have been wrong, I supposed. Maybe some moral code from when I was a kid, maybe the terrible stories Cely told me about how rare love—real love, heartbreaking love—was.

  But I had the very pulse of S’Kir in my veins. The power of the whole world, the power of two disparate people who lived and loved and died there. Maybe I needed those four to love me, and me to love them back because there was so much inside me. To try to give that all to just one man, just one person might kill them. Smother them the way Dorian was me.

  One man for each season. One man for each way the winds blew across S’Kir. One for each ocean, and one for each horizon. In return, all of S’Kir for them. All of what I held inside, held by the four of them. A full measure of who I was and full measure of them for me.

  The Healer of the Scar, drawing the four corners of our world together in a single locus.

  This was everything I was. I needed them, and I wanted to need them.

  I needed to love Dorian, but he had to let me be who destiny, fate, or the Gods, needed me to be.

  I could love them. If they would let me.

  13

  KIMBER

  The square sail ripped from the arm at the top and was flung into the wind, threatening to snap against the rigging ropes.

  “Get that cloth down!” I screamed over the waves and whipping wind. “Get them all down!”

  I had run to the top deck to find Roran desperately hanging on to the wheel, trying to keep the ship from keeling over.

  “Where did this come from?” I yelled over the howling wind, bringing up a ball of light so no one would trip or fall in the dark.

  “I have no idea!” Roran yelled back. “It was clear, and then it wasn’t! Rolled up on us from the east in a moment. I would h
ave gotten you, but the first wave nearly keeled us over.”

  “I’ve got the wheel,” I said. “I need you to get the sheet down and stowed, quickly.”

  Aiko scrambled up the mainmast, reaching the top arm in no time. Desperately holding on to the wheel to keep the ship steady, I watched him pull a dagger from his belt and methodically cut each rope at the bottom arm. He crawled out slowly, and finally the last rope was cut.

  The massive sheet was torn away from the ship and pulled up into the wind, dancing away from us and lost in the grays and whites of the violent sea.

  Aiko crawled back just a little and dropped to the deck as the ship bowed up through a dangerously tall wave. It caught him and dropped him hard onto his knees, and quickly bottomed out sending him flying forward.

  “Gotcha!” Roran yelled, holding desperately to the foremast and Aiko’s collar. “Help me get this damn lateen furled!”

  Roran and Aiko turned their attention to the massive sail as I was still desperately holding the ship as steady as I could between crests and troughs as the from-nowhere storm tried to take us to the bottom.

  “Lash it!” I heard Rilen scream.

  Sparing a quick look behind me, I saw Belshazzar tossing the rope around the folded mizzen lateen. He was half using his vampire speed—he’d learned earlier that moving that fast on a wet deck was flat out stupid. Rilen had barely caught him by the shirt.

  He stared down at the wet planks, accusingly. “I haven’t run on a non-skid deck in…”

  “Non-skid? How does that work?” I asked. “Never mind, we have to get the sails stowed.”

  Each of the men on the ship had almost gone overboard at least once. I had even been pulled to the edge while I was trying to make Dorian understand what I wanted him to do.

  Aiko finally grabbed him and put him on the mainmast to try to get the lines untangled and secured.

  “Are we screwed without that sail?” Rilen called.

  “We were screwed with it!” I yelled back.

  The ocean wasn’t calming at all. I didn’t understand where this had come from—all I knew of the weather never gave a hint that this kind of wind and rain would kick up.

  Belshazzar grabbed the other side of the wheel and let me shake out my tired arms. The sky was lighter, but the lightning still sliced down to the water.

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?” Belshazzar asked.

  “No,” I answered. “Just hold on. The sails are all stowed, so now we’re at the mercy of the water and the wind.”

  “God, I wish I had my yacht. Are we at least heading east?”

  As the ship crested up a swell, I pointed ahead of us. “The light came from that horizon as it got brighter out. We can assume we’re still headed to the east.” I looked at him. “If the tides change, or the current is angry, we could be pulled far off course.”

  The king looked to the northeast of the ship.

  I put a hand on his arm. “We aren’t going to be pulled that far. I’m very good at navigation, and once the waves calm, we can make sure we’re on course.”

  Except the storm raged on, all day and into the night. We all took turns at the wheel, holding the course. I was pleased to see the sun set mostly behind us. But the water tossed us. There was no hope for fresh foods—everything was cold and preserved, eaten at the suspended table on the chairs that swung with the boat. We all had to give up our beds and use the hammocks, and there was no real sleep for me. I could only take a spell of about two hours before I had to climb the stairs and check the direction and the storm and the winds.

  We also all took time bailing. Rilen came up with an ingenious way to get the water out, but it had to be done with precise timing. Open the cannon ports at the front of the ship as we rocketed down another massive thirty or forty-foot wave and pull them shut before we hit the trough. It kept the below decks mostly clear of heavy water.

  I had to have a small crash course on vampire speed—it was the only way to open and close the doors fast enough to keep more water out.

  As the sun came up the next day, the storm was still beating on us. I took the wheel from the completely exhausted Roran and sent him below. I looked at Dorian, who was staring out at the water.

  Watching the water ahead of us, I realized we weren’t heading due east anymore. I was starting to doubt that we were going to be able to keep on course.

  “I checked the hulls below,” I said. “I don’t know how much longer they are going to hold together if we keep getting battered like this.”

  Dorian turned and stared at me. “What?”

  “It’s a double hull, meant to ride out the fiercest of storms,” I said of our ship. “But this storm is ridiculous. There’s no sign of it letting up. The hull is being beaten and twisted and drenched. Wood takes on water, and wet wood doesn’t float or hold together. We’ll be at the bottom in another day if this keeps up.”

  “I thought you were a master of the seas.”

  “I am,” I stated, “but the sea has its own ideas right now, including halving our ship and sending us to the bottom.”

  I pointed to the brightest part of the clouds that were churning horribly above us. “The sun has moved this morning, and we’re not on course for the Spit anymore.”

  “Can we do anything?”

  “We’re doing all we can to stay afloat,” I said.

  Rilen was next to us a moment later, helping me hold the wheel steady. “I don’t see or feel an end to this storm.” He glanced at me. “Do we know what’s south and east of S’Kir over the water?”

  “There are a few islands,” Dorian said. “Just a few. There’s another fairly large landmass almost directly opposite, and an archipelago thousands of miles long with islands and lagoons. That’s it. We are a world of water.”

  “We need this storm to stop,” I stated. “I can hold our course fairly well, but I cannot stop the water from leaking in and soaking the wood and twisting the planks. We are all exhausted, and we are all soaked to our very bones. We can’t keep going on hardtack and fruit.”

  “I got tossed out of the hammock this morning,” Rilen volunteered.

  “I got slammed against the bulkhead when I was bailing,” Belshazzar said.

  I glanced around at the group of men surrounding me. “Can’t any of you divine how much longer this storm will go? Anyone? Hazard a guess?”

  They passed a look around, and finally, Belshazzar shrugged. “Tried,” he said. “It seems like we are in perpetual storms right now.”

  “Really couldn’t see an end to it.” Rilen let out a breath as the boat rolled again through the peaks and troughs that we were being tossed around on.

  The creaking planks were starting to get too loud too often. The boat had maybe a day left in the storm-tossed waters before it broke apart and took us down.

  Dorian stared at me, then quirked an eyebrow.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Break it,” he answered.

  A gasp escaped me. “What?”

  “Break it. Break the storm. That is your name, isn’t it? I’m sure my brother told you about your great-grandfather. It’s a bit ironic, don’t you think?”

  “I can’t break a storm,” I snapped.

  “Why not?”

  “I have no idea how to, to begin with.”

  “And you knew how to break the Spine?”

  “It told me how to do that,” I said. “It explained it step by step. This is a storm. A random weather event. I can’t break a storm just because I broke the Spine.”

  “It’s the same principle, I’m sure,” Dorian said.

  “Do you break many storms and mountains?”

  Rilen grabbed my arm. “Kimber, he’s right. We need something, anything, that will give us an iota of a chance. We can all hear the ship groaning and protesting against this constant battering. We’re not seafarers. When it sounds like wood is ripping, that’s generally not a good sound.”

  “So you want me just to break the storm
,” I snapped my fingers, “like that.”

  “Did pretty good with the Spine, Mistress Breaker.” Rilen smiled. “Try, at least, ilati? We’re all here for you if you need us.”

  “I don’t want to be unconscious for three weeks,” I mumbled. “You idiots will sail us to the southern pole.”

  “I’m not that bad of a navigator,” Rilen said.

  “I didn’t say it would be you, or a mistake, Master Wolf.”

  Aiko chuckled from his spot at the rail where he was desperately hanging on. “The water will be easier than the rock, Kimber,” he said. “Break it.”

  I stared at Aiko for a moment. I’d only shared blood with him in the past days between S’Kir and Summer Landing. But I didn’t feel like I was losing my power, not like in the days I spent with Elex.

  “Your Highness, can you hold the wheel while I try this?”

  Belshazzar’s eyes were wide with shock. He was studying me, and glancing at his brother and then back to studying me. He stepped up and grabbed the wheel, motioning Aiko to join him.

  I walked the length of the ship to the bowsprit and looked out at the dangerous waves, lashing winds and the next bout of rain falling ahead of us—so heavy it looked more like a fog on the water.

  “How the hell do I do this?” I asked no one. I glanced at Rilen. “The last time, there were walls, and they spoke to me.”

  “Think of the water the same way,” he said.

  The ship pitched hard and nearly tossed me overboard. Dorian grabbed my right arm, and Rilen grabbed my left.

  It was a shock to feel their power there, but it bolstered me. I closed my eyes and reached down into the water to sense the magic.

  It was there. Bubbling and boiling in the water, tossing waves and currents and eddies around us, flinging fingers of moisture up to the clouds. Following the clouds, I could feel the churning mists.

  “It’s magic,” I whispered.

  “What?” Dorian gasped.

  “The storm is magic!” I ran my own power across it and delved deep into the currents. With a flick and a whip of my wrist, I pulled the magic up, reordered the strands, and shoved them all back into place. I grabbed the disorganized wild magic that was disturbing the weather and led it back to the places where it had been pulled from, showing it how to be comfortable where it was, and leaving it in the currents to find its way home.