The Wildest Woods

by S. K Munt

  He then turned and asked my father for my hand, but thankfully, Bastien had quickly put him in his place by explaining that his daughter was never going to be for sale- as a prostitute or a wife- again, and even if we did believe in things like asking a father’s permission and accepting dowries (which Cairo also offered) who I ended up with would always be my choice and his opinion on the matter would never be more than an opinion.

  That conversation didn’t go as Cairo had planned and was uncomfortable for all of us in general, but it had been enlightening, because it helped me understand the fact that people outside of God’s so-called paradises lived very differently to the way we did, and instead of outlawing all religions as we had, it seemed as though most of the Godless embraced different aspects of different religions from throughout history and across the globe, forming a melting pot that was kind of leaking everywhere. I’d seen evidence of that within the people of The Sequestered, but I’d yet to see two wives fight over the ownership of one husband, or be compensated for un-mutated children with gifts of fish, and I secretly hoped that I’d never have to.

  For instance, after I’d shot down the marriage proposal, Cairo offered to be hand-fasted and then conjoined, one a medieval practice that I had read about in some outdated love story, and another that was observed by the nomadic islanders near Asiana that hadn’t evolved since the second century, AA. Naturally I’d turned down both offers and that had caused Cairo to grow incredibly vexed (he’d never met a woman that he couldn’t have before that didn’t have being attracted to other women as an excuse) and he stared at me like I was a strange alien creature after, even though I was fairly certain that he was the one that had a lot of evolving to do… or perhaps less.

  On the surface, the way he quoted expressions, rituals and customs that the pirates practiced along with most of the Godless sounded romantic and exotic, (especially when explained in THAT accent) but it was clear that most of the codes of conduct that they lived by overlapped one another and caused issues. For example, a pirate could have as many lovers abroad as he wished so long as he remained faithful to his wife when he was at home with her, but a conjoined pirate could have multiple wives in multiple locations so long as he was never unfaithful to them with someone that he wasn’t conjoined with. Also, murder was okay if you had a score to settle with someone, but only if you accepted the fact the family of whomever you murdered was well within their rights to murder you back should they be so inclined.

  Those were both pirate laws that Cairo quoted, but apparently most of the world’s ‘free’ population adhered to them because most of them had descended from seafarers, so people from one island in the Mediterranean Sea were likely to acknowledge the same practices as those off the coast of Janiel. But on the other side of the coin, no two colonies were likely to adhere to all of the same ones, or to even get along, so the result was chaos, and the pirates only functioned so well because the hard and fast rule was that once you were on the ship or in their secret, permanent harbour, Kingslater’s word was the only law that mattered.

  That was what they called the place that they settled: Colonies. Some colonies has a dozen residents, some had over one hundred and it seemed like the larger they were, the more unstable and unsafe they became, so it was easy to see how even some of the roughest members of The Sequestered had been talked into the idea of forming an actual civilisation again, even if that meant following me. I was young, small and potentially evil yes, but I didn’t beat people into submission like the self-appointed ‘leaders’ of most of the colonies did, which stabbed one white feather into my otherwise blackened cap.

  I even started to thank my lucky stars that I’d been raised as a prostitute in Eden, and not a princess by the rest of the world’s standards. Living under God’s finite laws in Arcadia had been limiting, yes, and especially unfair for those that had been born at the wrong place at the wrong time or to the wrong people, but living in a system that made up rules as they seemed doomed to failure, and Sam silently told me that it was even worse than it sounded. Godless people (as much as he hated to admit it because he was one by birthright) tended to be loose, barbaric and irresponsible, which was exactly why they hadn’t managed to form a concrete nation of their own.

  Cairo didn’t come off as barbaric (loose, certainly, he’d asked me how I enjoyed making love best as though he was asking if I preferred spring or summer) and I was curious to know why he spoke so well and moved so gracefully for someone that had apparently been raised by the scruff of his neck, but Sam raided those thoughts too and told me that it seemed like Cairo had had a very unique upbringing.

  After his mother had died in childbirth, Cairo Kingslater had apparently been hidden inside a noble family in Janiel (Paris’s sister had been smuggled in but had been unable to have children so she’d passed her nephew off as her own) where he’d been given an advanced, early-childhood education amidst Calliel’s nobility. That was shocking to me but Sam assured me that pirates did that all the time- snuck people in and out of the civilised nations so that they could keep tabs on them, just as they had with Martya.

  Then around the age of seven, Janiel had been beleaguered by a few independent pirate bands (including the McIntyre’s, although Sam had only been about four then and barely recollected anything) so Cairo’s father had stolen him back for his safe-keeping, but had neglected to publicly claim him as his own son. In fact, he’d treated young Cairo like a slave that he’d passed around from port to port, so by the time the boy had turned ten, Cairo had lived with six different families, in six different parts of the world, and Paris had acted more like a mentor to the boy between visits than a father. He’d even been out and out cruel towards him in front of other pirates, feigning a lack of attachment so that no one would ever learn that the abominable Captain Kingslater’s had an Achilles after all- a son that he loved.

  I began to fret that the things that Sam was telling me were too private for me to learn without Cairo’s permission, but Sam was only a little bit into the story before Cairo started opening up about it all himself, quite matter-of-factly. On his tenth birthday, Paris Kingslater had told Cairo the truth in private- that his mother had died in childbirth and that he hadn’t wanted him to be raised without one, so he’d done all that he could to ensure that the boy was raised by people that would care for him, while moving him around so much that he’d be ensured not just one solid education but several: the sort of education that his father would have been too busy to provide him with. He then told Cairo that he’d be coming on board as a cabin boy: a young apprentice pirate that would likely be treated like a slave, and although he’d warned his son that he would be treated poorly and be subjected to a lot of hard work, Cairo was not to complain or reveal his ancestry to anyone, or Paris would have to ship him away again.

  Cairo had been fascinated by his father’s might and life and so he had agreed to the terms, and for three years, he had suffered exactly how his father had predicted he would. He’d been beaten by drunks, accused of theft, sworn at, tossed overboard and forced to do the most awful jobs while his father rarely intervened if ever. Cairo had missed most of the old aspects of his former life terribly, but he had learned to sail, and fight, and hold his own amongst the wildest kind of men, and he had also been taken under the wing of Paris’s first mate and best friend, Sandy DeBrincat, who had come on-board not long before Cairo had. In fact, Sandy had been the one that had pushed Paris to involve his son in his life, and had promised to watch over him when Captain Kingslater could not.

  Cairo had idolised Sandy, and Captain Kingslater had trusted him more than he’d trusted anyone- a fact that had proven to be the famous Captain’s undoing because late one night, Cairo had awoken from his slumber due to turbulent seas and had witnessed Sandy holding his glowing red palm up to the sleeping captain’s face and demanding to know when he would be moving their fleet through Arcadian waters next: a migratory secret that Paris had never revealed to anyone ahead of time, for fear
of being betrayed to an enemy. In a sleep-like trance, Captain Kingslater had given his confidante the answer, and that was when Cairo had cried out, waking his father, and bringing the fact that he was being duped by his Nephilim ‘friend’ to his attention.

  Captain Kingslater had tried to jump up and protect himself, but Sandy had slit his master’s throat with his very own scimitar in one fell swoop- the same one that Cairo now carried everywhere- and had whispered to the hysterical Cairo: ‘I am sorry, dear boy, but I am an assassin and your father is my target! I do this for my God and my king, Elijah Barachiel, but I beg forgiveness from you- my friend! Have I not been a father to you, as much as he? Won’t you flee these bloodless, Godless ruffians now with me and return to Arcadian, where I might pass you off as my own?’

  Cairo had responded by picking up the bloody scimitar and ripping it through the assassin- from testicle to belly button, and as he relayed this, his handsome face did not betray even a hint of remorse and I couldn’t blame him for that. By the time other crew members had come in in response to all of the yelling and screaming, poor Cairo had been hugging his dead father and soaked in blood of both men, and once they all realised what had happened and who Cairo was (and how bravely he’d acted!) they’d promoted the thirteen year-old cabin boy to the rank of Captain, but had provided him with an elected sub-captain to help Cairo learn the things that he did not yet know about holding such a title. In one second he went from being their whipping boy to their God.

  For four years, the people on-board The Glass Maiden had kept the news of Captain Kingslater’s death a secret from all of the other ships in their fleet, and had not revealed the truth until Cairo’s eighteenth birthday, when he was presented to every sailor under the Kingslater banner, and re-elected- unanimously- as their ‘new’ Captain Kingslater, based on the fact that he had become the strongest, most respected captain in the fleet and not just because of his lineage. He’d received his own boat as an eighteenth birthday gift, and he had named it after his childhood best friend from Janiel, The Iana.

  The fact that Cairo had accomplished so much (he hinted that there were closer to twenty ships in his Armada than seven) was astonishing to me, but the fact that the pirates that had served him had kept the demise of the first Captain Kingslater a secret from everyone outside of their sect for years was actually rather moving, and Martya and I both had tears in our eyes by the end of Cairo’s story. Even Sam’s snarky thoughts began to fade after awhile and though they weren’t substituted with respectful ones, he stopped glowering at the narrator so much.

  Once we’d processed it all, I asked Cairo to tell me the story behind his love, Iana, but the mention of her (not the boat, the person) caused his handsome face to harden and his eyes to avert from mine, and he gruffly informed me that it wasn’t a story he could often get all the way through, but perhaps once I was his wife, he’d find a way to relay it all. Sam had looked at me as if to say: ‘Want me to…?’ but I’d shaken my head firmly. I didn’t mind getting information out of people via his gift if it meant saving lives, but I wouldn’t pry into someone’s most private thoughts just to sate my own curiosity.

  But as hesitant as Cairo was to discuss his old flame, he wasn’t easily deterred from trying to rope me in to be his new one, and eventually Bastien, Martya and Sam grew so tired of hearing him try to talk me into adoring him that they made polite excuses to fall back so that they could catch up with or check on other people. I tolerated his enthusiastic, streamlined style of wooing with a smile because he was a fascinating conversationalist (honestly he had a rebuttal for everything), and because Satan had basically ordered me to keep him interested, but as much as I wished as I could fall for a man like him, I knew that I never would and I could not allow him to go on believing that I was his true love, if that meant taking something away from the girl that he was destined to be with. I just hoped like hell that Satan wasn’t lying about that because if she was leading this astonishing man by the heart with the intent of shattering it later, I would cut off my feet before I took another step in her name again.

  ‘You cannot swear off love,’ Cairo insisted, actually stopping me to turn me, forcing me to look into those bright grey eyes after I’d plead celibacy, ‘what reason is there to live without it?’

  ‘I’m swearing off romantic love, not turning my back on the concept of love entirely,’ I’d insisted, looking nervously back to the crowd of people trudging along the snow-line behind us. We’d only been walking for about thirty-five minutes along the embankment, and although the falls that he had indicated to being nearby were a lot further away than I’d expected them to be, I was intrigued by just how large that bay was, and scared that we were going to run out of light soon, though I honestly didn’t know if it was four in the afternoon, or lunch. What time had we headed off again? ‘I’m still endeavouring to make room in my heart for family, friends and with any luck- stray wolves, and I think that kind of love will suffice. Hell, it’s more than most people get, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Cairo had bitten his succulent bluish-red lip and looked down at my own with a misted, wanting gaze. ‘Humans feel awful when they are sad and frustrated and hungry or lonely, and elated when they are in love or excited or content… and that is the barometer that we should all live by. Of course some take it too far, but that is why our bellies ache when we have eaten too much, and why we feel dreadful notes being played on our heartstrings when we wrong another: the positive physical manifestations of joy are God’s way of letting us know whether we are living life the way he meant us to, and the negative ones are there to warn us when we are veering off course. Only by acting on the good, and avoiding the bad, can we be said to be living at all, and by ruling sex and love and pleasure out of your life, you are discounting so much of what makes it worth living.’

  ‘But I don’t feel any positive manifestations at the thought of sex, love and physical pleasure that they inevitable lead to anymore… I feel sick,’ I reminded him. ‘So is that not God’s way of telling me to avoid them too?’

  ‘No. That is your way of protecting yourself against what you believe to be worse emotions: hurt, loss and loneliness. You think you will be happier by avoiding making yourself vulnerable to anyone ever again, but I’m afraid that all you will feel is empty. Safe, perhaps, but empty.’ He lifted his hand when he saw me open my mouth to protest. ‘I know that right now you’d rather feel empty than vulnerable, and I understand that, which is why I’m taking your refusal to promise yourself to me in any official way with good humour. However, I know that your tide of negative emotions will eventually recede, and so I will ask you to make me another kind of promise: loyalty in exchange for loyalty.’ He raised a brow that was as chiselled as every other perfect feature on his face. ‘In fact, I must insist that you don’t reach for another man until you have first given me the chance to heal you and win your heart.’

  ‘Why should I have to promise anything like that?’ I demanded, more amused than shocked by the request.

  ‘Because I believe that you have the potential to be my true love, and I am not going to let you slip through my fingers the way I let…’ he swallowed hard and dropped his eyes to the snow and once again, I wondered what had happened to Iana. ‘I have a lot to offer you,’ he said quietly, ‘protection for your people. Access to trade routes- access to information, money…I said before that I would surrender everything to you if you took me in your arms.’ He pulled up a little and looked me squarely in the eye. ‘But you have neglected to do that and say that you might never, so if I am to help you, then you must give me something to hold you to: your word.’ He glanced over at someone behind me, and then back into my eyes. ‘Promise me that I get the first chance to steal your heart when it is ripe for the taking again, and I promise you that not only will my men and I stay at your side until you have enough food and shelter to see this first winter through, but that we will return periodically to make sure that none of you are wanting for anyth
ing.’ He tucked a strand of my hair back under my hood. ‘Least of all, you.’

  My mouth popped open. Satan had said that calling Cairo Kingslater a romantic was an understatement, but even that had been understating it. ‘Cairo that’s…’ all of my fears of not knowing how to hunt or build dwellings evaporated, but was replaced by how this man might turn on me if I never reached for him. ‘But what if I never…?’

  ‘If the damage that the Barachiel boys did to your soul proves to be irreversible, then so be it… obviously that will mean that we are not meant to be, and so I’ll know that my true love is still waiting for me to find her. If you do take me into your arms, but find yourself unmoved by it, then that’s fair enough as well- at least I will know that you gave me the chance, out of loyalty and gratitude if nothing else.’ His grey eyes darkened as he looked into mine again. ‘But if you turn to another while I am elsewhere or worse- right in front of you- after all that I plan on doing to prove my worth to you, then I will see it as disloyal and ungrateful indeed, and I will take back all that I bestowed upon you in the first place.’

  I bit my lip. ‘That’s an awfully big risk for either of us to take, Cairo. Especially considering the fact that we barely know one another.’ And it sounds exactly like the kind of primal, pirate law-making that I’m trying to avoid!

  ‘But one with a potentially very large payoff, no?’ He smiled gently at me, but I could see the desperation in his eyes and not only did that make me feel for him, but it made me remember Kohén when he’d been at his most vulnerable, which was disarming to me. ‘I’m not asking for you to surrender to me, Larkin- only to give me an authentic chance should the opportunity arise, even if all that amounts to is a few kisses or a brief courtship and nothing else. I know you fear that you will break my heart, but I fear never feeling mine pound for a woman again the way it is pounding for you right now, even more.’ He smiled when I flushed. ‘And who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky and I’ll find my true soul mate before you even need to throw a flirtation my way. Satan promised me that I’d find her after all- and in these parts- so the way I see it, it’s my destiny to stay close at your side, whether we go to bed now or later.’ He tilted his head to the side and treated me to a glorious but lop-sided smile. ‘So what do you say, Larkin Aztaroth… do we have an agreement?’