“Yes.” She hoped her face didn’t betray her sadness. “At least, that’s what he claimed.”
“Then we’ve all been flimflammed by the same rotten scoundrel. What be yer name, love?”
“Sora,” she said, then added, “and this is Aquira.”
The wyvern growled.
“And that,” she pointed to the still-unconscious dwarf, “is Tum Tum.”
“Aye, he’ll be fine,” Gold Grin said. “Throw a bucket on him, Nevin!”
A hunched over, well-fed pirate Sora assumed was Nevin grabbed one of the buckets Tum Tum had been using to swab the deck and tossed it on the dwarf.
Tum Tum awoke in a startle, scrambling to his feet, and readying his fists.
“Where they be? I’ll kill em all,” he muttered as he stumbled around the deck.
“It’s okay, Tum Tum,” Sora said over the laughter of the pirate crew. “They know Whitney.”
Tum Tum grumbled something, but Sora couldn’t make it out. He plopped down on the deck, clearly exhausted.
“What are ye doing on here all on yer own?” Gold Grin asked. “Gods. Whitney didn’t drive ye to kill him and toss him overboard did he?”
“It’d be about time!” one of his men hollered.
“We were sailing for Yaolin City before getting lost,” Sora said. “I’m… I’m a trader.”
“I’m all for liars girl, but usually traders be… well… having something to trade!”
More laughter came.
Sora didn’t overthink. Whitney taught her not to when spinning a lie. She reached into the folds of her clothing and removed the sealed writ she and Whitney had taken from Tayvada Bokeo in Winde Port after he died. The one that indicated him a member of the Winde Trader’s Guild. Sora had used it on Afhem Muskigo to trick him into helping her, and now the poor, murdered man would ensure her life again.
Gold Grin took the sopping wet papers and shook them off. “Winde Trader’s Guild, eh?”
“Yes, with my… uh. My husband. He died in the Shesaitju attack on Winde Port. Gave his life so that I could escape alive. I need to reach Panping as soon as I can to settle his affairs.” A tear rolled from her eyes even though she wasn’t trying to cry. Pieces of truth. That was how Whitney had taught her to lie, and now she realized that she’d partly been talking about him.
“You hear that, Gold Grin?” the grungy, wiry pirate beside him said, missing an eye and more than a few teeth. “She’s available.”
Gold Grin’s slapped him in the back of the head.
“Ye can see all the wonders in the world, but you can’t teach a scoundrel manners,” Gold Grin said, “My condolences, me lady.”
Sora sauntered toward him. She knew she couldn’t hide the grief and fear wracking her face, but she let her figure do the talking. Out to sea for Iam knows how long, with only disgusting men for company, Gold Grin was easy prey. She lay her hand gently upon his forearm.
“Please,” she said meekly. “All me and my friend want is to sail to Yaolin City unharmed, and bring some closure to Tayvada’s family.” As the words left her lips, she vowed that if she made it, she’d do just that. Let them know he died a hero to his people, and that he’d saved her life twice now.
“You plan on heading through them waters?” Gold Grin asked, pointing to the east. “Not likely this little ship will take ye through unscathed with only two of ye. Plus, there be pirates about!”
The man he’d just hit chuckled.
“I’ll tell ye what,” he said. “Give me this here crown, and we’ll take ye where ye be going, right boys?”
“Aye!” they all shouted.
Sora bit her lip. She knew Whitney would freak out if he knew she’d bartered the crown, but what choice did she have? Neither she nor Tum Tum had a clue what they were doing out on the open seas. And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, Whitney was gone, maybe not dead, but somewhere else. The only people who might know where were through the torrent.
A tear welled at the corner of Sora’s eye. The crown was all she had left to remember him by. But it wouldn’t do her any good at the bottom of the ocean. She lowered her head, closing her eyes against the thought. He wouldn’t want me to die out here all alone, or give up on finding him.
She stuck out her hand. “Deal.”
Gold Grin grabbed hers and shook. She tried to avoid staring at his stained fingernails. “I don’t suppose them papers can get me and me boys into Yaolin without the guards taken shots at us. Haven’t been to a proper city since I sunk my first Glass galleon.”
“I… I’m not sure.”
He leaned in and flashed his golden teeth once more. “Well, it won’t hurt to try… us at least.” He laughed, then snapped his fingers to his men. “Prepare a bed for our new guests and strip this vessel for all she’s worth.”
“Aye!” his men echoed.
He placed his hand on Sora’s back and led her to the plank so she could look upon his galleon. “Welcome to the Reba!” he said, spreading his arms wide. “There be one rule and one rule only; None of that fire magic on me ship and we’ll get along just fine. Wood and flame don’t exactly make the best of friends.”
Sora swallowed the lump forming in her throat. Riding with pirates wasn’t the way she expected to reach Yaolin City, but it was too late to turn back now. She couldn’t help but think that Whitney would approve.
“No fire?” she said. “I think I can manage that.”
III
THE THIEF
“There’s a very simple explanation for all of this,” Whitney said. “It’s a dream. It’s a yigging dream. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up, and I’ll be in some inn on the shog side of Yarrington. Or better yet, a brothel in Latiapur.”
Whitney looked over at the pale, terrifying man beside him. They were in the boat that beached ashore when they arrived in what he’d been told was Elsewhere, courtesy of one of Sora’s unpredictable spells.
Well, he looked over at the apparition of a pale man because he still believed he had to be asleep.
Kazimir, the white-haired upyr, hadn’t said more than two words together since they boarded the rickety boat. Whitney kept an eye on him the entire time, waiting for when the man would try to throw him overboard and finally succeed in killing him.
“No, really,” Whitney continued to himself, “you don’t understand how much sense this makes. I think I must be in some sort of extensive sleep. Maybe I’ve been poisoned—I’ve never been poisoned. Huh, I’d always thought it would hurt more.”
The boat creaked as the dark, robed figure who stood upon the bow paddled through the endless sea with a long, knotted oar. He answered only to the name the Ferryman, but he too hadn’t spoken since they set off. The silence drove Whitney mad.
“There’s no way I was rescued from a jail cell by the Wearer of White after stealing the King’s crown, just coincidentally ran into my childhood friend Sora, slew a yigging goddess in a gods-forsaken forest, and then ended up in Elsewhere next to a gods-damned upyr,” Whitney decided. “I’m asleep. It’s the only reasonable answer.”
A foot connected hard against Whitney’s arm. He yelped.
“Can’t feel pain when you’re asleep,” Kazimir said.
“I doubt that’s true,” Whitney said.
“Just be silent,” Kazimir growled. “Your tongue is the only thing that could make Elsewhere worse.”
“You’re not too great a companion either, Kazimir,” Whitney grumbled under his breath as he laid back. “Kazimir. What kind of name is that anyway?”
The upyr ignored him, as he had for the last how many hours. So, Whitney stared up at the night sky. It wasn’t any sky he’d ever seen. No stars twinkled. If Celeste and Loutis were present, they were hiding well.
“It’s kind of a reddish-purple,” Whitney said. He looked at Kazimir again, who was pointedly looking away, off toward the horizon. “The sky,” Whitney continued. “Makes sense. The water is dark and bloody, why wouldn’t the sky be the same?”
“I remember someone telling me the ocean wasn’t really blue,” Whitney said after a brief silence. “The real ocean that is. Can you believe that? They said it’s just a reflection of the sky.”
Whitney didn’t care if anyone listened. He loved to hear his own voice.
“But this, I can’t believe its real. Do you know how long I’ve been ignoring priests' words about the punishments of Elsewhere? My whole life—yet, here it is. The Sea of Souls. That is, of course, assuming I’m not asleep.”
“Where are we going, old man?” Kazimir finally questioned the wizened old Ferryman.
When he didn’t respond, Kazimir launched himself to his feet and stepped over Whitney. The little boat rocked furiously, and Whitney had to grab the sides to steady himself.
“Hey, watch it!” Whitney complained.
“Will you answer me, Ferryman?” Kazimir barked. “I’ve already been through this gauntlet. I refuse to play these games again. Do you hear me!”
He reached out to grab the Ferryman by his robe. As if he were one of the lost souls beneath the surface, Kazimir’s hand went right through him. He let out a cry of frustration that barely sounded human. It occurred to Whitney it was likely because the man wasn’t human.
“Just settle down,” Whitney said. “It’ll all be over soon when I wake up.”
“You think this a game, thief?” Kazimir spat. “You have no idea what kind of torment awaits you on the other side of this sea.”
“And you do?” Whitney asked with a smile.
“Explicitly.”
A sudden movement beneath the waters stole Whitney’s breath and sent the boat into a spin. Kazimir stumbled, nearly flailing over the edge and into the deep, his otherworldly grace and agility gone. Whitney scrambled again to grab hold of the vessel. The Ferryman didn’t respond in the least.
“What was that?” Whitney asked.
“You’re about to get a taste of Elsewhere, boy,” Kazimir replied.
Water, red as wine, rose up on both sides of the boat and showered over them. If the blue Torrential Sea was a mere reflection of the sky, this was nothing like it. The thick liquid stuck to Whitney like blood, making him hope it wasn’t. Something whipped across the waters and slapped down, causing another spray and a swelling wave that threatened to overturn their vessel.
Whitney swore.
Again, the thing rose up and slapped the surface of the deep. One end of the boat sailed into the air and slammed back down. When the onslaught of sea spray ended, Whitney shuddered and stumbled backward. The creature had pulled up alongside them and leveled the gaze of one giant, black eye upon Kazimir. Whitney couldn’t see any more of it through the thick water, but that was enough to know how enormous it was.
A shadow cast over them and Whitney looked up to see another tentacle the size of a church steeple rising. Right before it crushed them, a bright light burned from the top of the ferryman’s oar. Whitney shielded his eyes—then, just as quickly as it all started, it stopped. The creature was gone.
Heart pounding, Whitney said, “Shogging exile, what was that?”
He turned to Kazimir, who looked paler than before, now a sickly white, like the haggard moon Loutis. Whitney imagined he looked similar, but if a ruthless upyr was frightened, then he couldn’t even imagine what else would come. Whitney turned to the Ferryman.
He was gone, only his oar left where he once stood. Whitney swore again as he crawled toward the edge of the boat to peer down into the dark water.
“Hello!” he shouted. The only reply was his echo and a pair of spectral hands reaching up toward him which sent him stumbling back into the boat.
“Gone,” Whitney whispered. “He’s yigging gone. Just like that? He yigging left me alone with you?”
“Yes,” Kazimir sighed, still refusing to look at Whitney. “He tends to do that and, in this case, we’re lucky.”
“All right, that’s it.” Whitney stomped his foot. The boat swayed, and he thought better of doing it again. “Who in Elsewhere are you really and how do you know about… Elsewhere?”
“Just row the boat,” Kazimir said.
“What, so you can shove me off and fulfill your blood pact?”
Whitney promptly found his throat closed off by a powerful hand. Kazimir was close enough for him to have smelled his breath if the overwhelming stench of the Sea of Souls wasn’t vying for the award for worst smell ever.
“If I wanted you dead, you never would have stepped foot on this boat,” Kazimir said. “Best not to be alone in Elsewhere.”
Whitney spent the whole trip so far trying to get under Kazimir’s skin—hours, maybe an entire day, it was impossible to tell—now, he’d welcome the neglect. The upyr’s dark eyes bore into him as if piercing his very soul. Only when he turned his head away did Kazimir release him.
Whitney crumpled in a heap. Kazimir kicked the oar into his gut.
“Why do I have to row?” Whitney murmured, more to himself than his dreadful companion.
“Because someone has to.” He returned to his seat and went back to staring at the vast nothingness.
Whitney absentmindedly started rowing. Nagging the upyr was all fun, but seeing that rage again reminded him how near he’d come to having his body drained of blood while he was still alive. Or Sora’s. He shuddered.
Wherever they were, dream or not, at least here, in the middle of nowhere, he couldn’t hurt her. But if all of this was a figment of his imagination, he had to think that their reunion was as well. Which would mean that the only woman in the world he cared about still harbored years-old hatred toward him for leaving Troborough without so much as a goodbye.
He focused on rowing to take his mind off all of it, but it just brought new concerns. The feeling of the oar against the water was unsettling. He could sense the wood smacking against the bodies of all the lost spirits teeming beneath the surface, which was odd since they couldn’t touch him.
“Are we even going the right way?” Whitney asked. “You know we got all turned around when that thing hit us?”
“The right way for what?” Kazimir asked. “Who knows where that wretch was bringing us this time. Any direction is as good as another.”
“Okay, Mr. Deadman with all of the answers, what was that thing that attacked us then?”
Kazimir exhaled sharply and said, “It is a wianu. We call him Dakel un Ghastrin.”
“And that is?”
“Roughly translated. ‘Guardian of the Dead.’”
“A friend of yours?” Whitney asked.
“Hardly,” Kazimir said. “He’s hunted, trying to kill me for a thousand years.”
“Why didn’t it?”
“Apparently, the Ferryman wants you to see the other side.”
“Iam's light you are cryptic.” Whitney sighed. “So, is the old man dead?”
“Has been for longer than Pantego has existed.”
Whitney gave up expecting answers from the upyr, rolled his eyes and turned back to the sea.
He wasn’t sure when he’d resolved himself to the idea of talking to an upyr in the middle of Elsewhere, but here he was. Somehow, in the grand scheme of things—Kazimir trying to murder him, kidnapping Sora, working for Darkings—things on Pantego seemed unimportant.
It wasn’t that Whitney wanted to make friends—the man was a monster unlike any he’d known before—it was just that, surrounded by the bloody ocean, any company seemed preferable to being alone.
“What about food?” Whitney said. “What if we get stranded at sea?”
“Hunger is an illusion here for mortals like you. You will ache and crave because that is what you were used to,
but here, you will never eat your fill, and you will never starve.”
“Dreaming,” Whitney muttered to himself as he paddled. “I’m dreaming.”
“You’re not dreaming, thief. I promise you this, we are here, and we aren’t leaving anytime soon.”
“If you can’t feel anything in Elsewhere, then we aren’t in Elsewhere,” Whitney said after a long spell of silence.”Kazimir let his head fall back as he exhaled. “I didn’t say you feel nothing. Trust me; you will long for the days where you felt less.”
“Well, that makes sense because I feel terrified. I’m pretty sure I just urinated in my pa—where the yig are my pants?” Whitney glanced down and realized he wasn’t wearing any clothing. “There’s no way. We’ve been naked this whole time?”
How in shogging exile did I not realize?
He shifted his frame, suddenly acutely aware of his shame. His cheeks went red. He covered his nethers with one hand, and then his eyes went wide. “We can’t be in Elsewhere.”
“And why is that?”
“Now I feel shame.”
“That’s all up here.” Kazimir pointed to his head. “It is the affairs of the body that have no bearing here. The need to shog or piss. To eat or drink. Even the air you breath is your mind working out of reflex. There is no air here, only the void.”
“What about you and your…” Whitney swallowed. “Hunger.”
“Gone.”
“I was wondering how you’ve been resisting this handsome, bare neck.”
“Just because the need is gone doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take pleasure in draining you, thief. You’re just lucky Elsewhere seems to have a purpose for you.”
“If I can’t feel, why did I feel you kick me?”
“Oh, the pain of violence remains very, very real.”
Whitney felt his heart racing but figured that was a trick of his mind as well. He tried to let the repetitive motion of rowing soothe him. It wasn’t working, but it kept him occupied if not distracted.
“You’ve been here before?” he asked.
“Every time I close my eyes,” Kazimir responded.
The Redstar Rising Trilogy Page 72