Despite its northerly setting, the city of Saefel Caeld is never approached by ships from the south. If the rocks don't ward off mariners, then it is the Coldspire, which, come too close, and the ship would freeze and become a glacier, an ice-covered hull incapable of steering itself. A practical mariner must sail out west, and then arc back in to port.
-A Practical Mariner's Guide to the Albic Seas, Author unknown.
***
Skaria lurched forward, face green, grabbed the rail with a white-knuckle grip, and vomited over the edge. Again.
It took some time for her to get over her seasickness, but Skaria would eventually. If anything, throwing up made her feel a little better. It relieved some of the pain, took some of the edge off of the queasiness.
"Seasick?" Indra asked, approaching her. They both wore their cloaks, and when Skaria turned to look, Indra wore her hood up, and her dark hair blended in with the shadows of the hood.
"What does it bloody look like?" Skaria asked. She wiped a trace of bile off the corner of her mouth and spat back out into the sea. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something." She was about to speak, but instead of words, she felt her gorge rise. "Hold on," she managed to get out before emptying the rest of her stomach over the edge.
With her breakfast floating away in the surf, Skaria grimaced and turned back to Indra. "There. Knew breakfast would be a bloody bad idea," she said. Karik'ar had pressured her into it, kind of. Well, he had told her to eat, to keep her strength up. Of course, she couldn't keep any food down for a good day or two. She had been on ships before. Nasty things, ships. Really just open wooden coffins. It didn't matter how open you made it. It was still a coffin.
"Okay, okay. I think I can talk now." Skaria said. Her stomach was empty now, but it was still dancing and jumping around like a mad monkey. "You did that on purpose, with Kyra and Laidu."
"I did what on purpose?" Indra asked innocently, blue eyes wide. "I only wanted Kyra not to freeze to death or lose a toe to frostbite, and I don't want to bother her with the thaumaturgic heater. After all, it would cause her pain. You saw her when she was just drawing this," she said, indicating the scrap of parchment she kept tucked in one of the pockets of her cloak. "Just imagine days of dealing with that!"
"Please," Skaria said. "You're just using that as an excuse."
"An excuse?" Indra asked. "So you think I don't actually care about the wellbeing of my charge? Of our bounty? I doubt Lord Solstael would be happy if his daughter said that her rescuers were forcing her to stay in a room that made her head hurt, that gave her headaches. That was what I suggested was the case. Have you kept abreast with the political rumors within Saefel Caeld?"
"No," Skaria said. "My focus is on who I beat up. Not which politician is sleeping that other's politician's wife." She paused. "Why?"
"Well, there was always a rumor that Lord Solstael's daughter was sickly and weak, and that was why she was rarely seen. But she's whole and hale, as we see. Think. Caeld is a place of high learning, of noble study. Thaumaturgy is used quite commonly. Almost every district has a thaumaturgy engineer. How terrible would it seem if the daughter of a very famous and important politician collapsed in the street? That seems much more likely."
"Yeah." Skaria frowned. "She's in better shape, good shape really. Some of those daughters are kind of disgusting-looking. Or their sons. Half the time, I cannot tell the bleedin' difference."
"There is a sort of...androgyny that my of the younger nobles seem to aspire to," Indra admitted. "Based off of some ridiculous philosopher's musings. Part of the anti-nature movement."
Skaria frowned. "Anti-nature?" she asked. "As in they avoided the outdoors?"
"No, nature in the philosophical sense. They didn't believe anything had a set collection of inherent characteristics. Any difference was the result of outside influence."
"Any difference?" Skaria arched an eyebrow.
"Behavioral, social, cultural, mental differences. Not physical ones," Indra clarified.
"Seems kind of strange," Skaria said.
"Yes, it is. Upon my study of the anti-nature philosophical movement, I'm pretty sure they're the result of too much navel-gazing and over-thinking simple issues. Not everything deserves to be contemplated and considered. Some of it is just stupid," Indra said.
"First time I ever heard a scholar call something stupid." Skaria said. "Anyway you're avoiding the question. Why did you put Laidu and Kyra together?" she asked.
"Why do you think? It would be obvious to a blind man! You've seen Kyra. Any time Laidu talks to her, she gets all flustered and blushes. And you've seen how protective Laidu is of Kyra." Indra rolled her eyes. "By any standard, his protectiveness has far exceeded professional levels of attention."
Skaria nodded. "Yes. We know this."
"What you don't know is that they confirmed it with me. Separately, of course. Just don't tell anyone. They asked me to keep it secret."
"Whatever. I mean, it's not as if it's a really hard to guess secret. Stay in a room with the two of them for ten minutes and you can guess." Skaria paused. "Frankly, it's starting to get annoying."
"Precisely my thoughts," Indra said. "So I decided to do what I could do. I decided to... how shall I put it? To instigate something. To prompt them to evolve in their relationship. To subtly encourage them." She leaned on the railing next to Skaria. "Honestly, I feel like Laidu is going to be a positive influence on Kyra. I think she needs someone like him. And I think he needs someone like her."
"So that's your plan. Get them together," Skaria said. "You're playing matchmaker. I would not have guessed that coming from you."
"Yes," Indra said. "Though it is not I who has made this match, but it is I who detected it and I who wants to see it come to fruition. I like Kyra. I want her to have a better life."
"Oh?" Skaria said. "I may be a bit of an outcast, but I seem to remember the proper standard for the upper class being a Caeldari man. Dark hair, blue eyes, fair skin. Not no hair, yellow eyes, and bleedin' scales. Don't you think you could be making this worse for her?"
"Maybe. But I do not think that matters as much as it used to. She seems to have a thicker skin now. Most of the nobles and heirs and heiresses I know are pretty easy to upset. Kyra doesn't seem to have that anymore." She smiled. "At this point, I doubt she's going to care if some of those stuck-up heiresses didn't approve of her love."
"That could be," Skaria said. "Of course, if you're wrong... she'd be committing social suicide. You want to live with that?" she asked.
"I am not forcing her," Indra said.
"You're just pushing her. No, sorry, encouraging her." Skaria glowered. She was angry, yes, even when talking about love. "I don't feel comfortable with you blundering about and experimenting with another person's life! You don't think about that! About if you ruin her life!"
"How could Laidu ruin her life?" Indra asked. "We are no moral saints ourselves. But can you find anything reasonably objectionable about him?"
Skaria stopped. "No," she said. "Besides his... condition, he's bloody fantastic. But he is a killer."
"As are you." Indra glared at her.
"I never stated otherwise," the mercenary responded.
"But he is not cruel." Indra stared out over the sea. "Save one occasion, when he was acting like a monster to convince that bandit Torvan, I have not seen him be rough with her."
"Wait," Skaria said with a grin. "Was that when he tried to apologize and Kyra slugged him?" She laughed. "I wished I saw his face!"
"Yes. But he is by no means a bad person."
"Yeah, yeah, I get your point." Skaria sighed. "I think I'm ready to risk dinner."
"You didn't have lunch?" Indra asked as they walked belowdecks to the galley.
"No, felt too queasy. I didn't want to bloody vomit it back in the cook's face. I may not care for etiquette, but that'd be a bit rude even by my standards." Skaria sighed. "You know what they're eating?"
"Looked like gruel...with some sort of chunks of meat floating in it."
"Appetizing," Skaria said dryly. "Sometimes, I wonder if half the reason I throw up is the food itself."
The galley was a cramped room, full of tables and sailors and passengers, not a place to sit down and have a good meal, but a place to grab something resembling food, scarf it down, and get out. Of course, two idiots completely ignored that and sat there, laughing while their bowls of food-like substance got cold.
Karik'ar and Thaen sat next to each other, and were both laughing at something Thaen said. Oddly enough, it made Skaria feel... good. Karik'ar needed a friend, another man he could relate to. He had grown closer to Laidu as well. For too long, Skaria had been the only one Karik'ar had opened up to. Now he had others.
Thaen looked odd. His normally short hair (once free, unbound, and shaggy) now was tied up into about a dozen small, inch-and-a-half long braids. Since they weren't long enough, they stuck up like spikes. But she had seen how fast his hair grew. Give him a few days, and they'd start to look respectable.
After picking up a rough clay bowl filled with a waxy chowder of dubious origins (It could be chicken, it could be rat), the scholar and the mercenary sat down across from the two of them. "Thaen?" Skaria asked.
"Hmm?"
"Could you tell me what this stuff is?" She pointed to the chalky soup.
"Hmm." He took a spoonful and swallowed it. "Chicken, a few days old. Peppers, slightly moldy onions, garlic... not much else." He shuddered. "Kind of reminds me of my mother's cooking, if my mother didn't have any taste buds and was trying to poison me." He paused. "Honestly, the jail cell food in Alberion was better than this."
"That reminds me," Indra said. "Why were you in Alberion?"
Thaen shrugged. "Well, when I was younger, I went for religious instruction to another country. First taste of life outside our hold. Anyway, we went to Ten-Zuan, and we each got a foster family for about a year." He smiled, and his eyes had a distant look to them, as if he was remembering the time, remembering the joy and excitement he had felt. "For about a year, Laidu was my older brother."
"Oh?"
"Yeah." He paused. "After we left -we being the Vesperati- I kept in touch with him. We wrote letters." He yanked something out of the inside of his shirt. Old yellow parchment, with faded characters. "he was around sixteen, I was thirteen, when I got that. He said he was going on a trip, travelling the world, and then returning home, where he'd write me a letter. He let me know he would be silent for five or six years." He paused. "I never got that other letter."
"So you went looking for him?" Indra asked.
"I had just been Reforged, so yeah. I was a soldier. I could handle my own," Thaen said. "I wandered, tracked him down. Rough, some times. Some places he wandered weren't good. I found out he had been enslaved in Ajand, but the salt pit he was at was raided by Alberic Rangers, who recruited there. So I went to Alberion, asked around, and when I got a lead, got in a drunken brawl and got arrested. And imprisoned."
Indra was silent. "You cared for Laidu that much?"
"He taught me to be an older brother," Thaen said. When he was met with three blank stares, he sighed. "Forgot, human families don't do what we do."
"Some, probably," Indra said.
"Yes, yes, of course, some of them. But as a rule, they tend not to." Thaen thought for a moment, and his ears moved back, like a dog. "The eldest male and female child in a household tend to have extra responsibilities once their younger siblings reach a certain age. When they don't soil diapers anymore."
"When they're used to using a chamber pot?"
"Sure." Thaen paused. "They're supposed to help care for them. Mostly chores and the like. But you're supposed to be there for moral support too. If my younger siblings are crying, I comfort them. If they have a nightmare, they usually end up sleeping in my bed. Probably because Yusna snores, though."
"Oh."
"Yeah," Thaen said. "I never had good examples of it."
Skaria kept eating her chowder-like sludge. It probably wasn't good for her, but it filled her stomach, and that was all she needed for now. Energy. She needed fuel to get through the day, especially since she had thrown up whatever morsels had remained in her stomach.
After she had finished, she gave Karik'ar a look. She didn't have to speak, didn't have to call his attention. He knew. Karik'ar often spoke, in private, of sensing others' emotions, others' lusts and thoughts, especially if they were strong. She mentally shouted and screamed at him, and he knew. "Can I talk to you for a moment?" she asked.
He nodded. "Excuse me," he said, getting up, making sure not to jostle Thaen over as he rose in the cramped confines of the galley. He followed Skaria out of the room, up the stairs -or companionway, she remembered it was called, after a crusty old crab Tethyd lectured her on it- and onto the deck, where the sun slowly drowned itself in the horizon, bleeding the sky red. "Yes?" he asked, but Skaria stared at the line where dark green sea met indigo sky, and watched in horror as it went up and down and up and down and up and down and...
Skaria frowned, gritted her teeth, and turned to him. "Excuse me for a second," she said, before plopping down on the deck. "I can't stare at the sky."
"Is that why you called me up here? To complain about being seasick?" he asked, mildly irritated. But that was, in and of itself, a shock. Karik'ar never got irritated with her, even slightly. Even if he had been stabbed (which happened twice), burned (four times), or cut up (three times) on her behalf, he still was kind, was still patient. More than she could say about herself.
"No." She stared at the center of his chest, right where a small medallion hung, glinting in the dying sunlight. They had bought them when entering Alberion to ward off Day Specters. Only two had tried to accost them; one had met the sharp end of her blade, and the other Karik'ar had knocked off of a cliff with a boulder. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright with the situation in our cabin."
"You mean with Thaen?" Karik'ar asked.
"Yeah. I don't want you to feel like you're forced into anything," Skaria said. When they had first arrived at their cabin, there were four cots. Three of them human-sized, and one larger, able to fit Karik'ar, and sturdy enough to hold all forty stone of his weight. He had set that as his, Indra had already sprawled on her cot reading, and Skaria was ready to settle down for a quick nap to ease away the seasickness when Thaen tried his out.
It creaked. In truth, it sounded less like a creak and more like the scream of the damned, the shriek of a soul tortured by the weight of its sins, the cries of the hideously mutilated. Thaen tried to settle down in it, to make it stop moving, stop shrieking, but every time he shifted his weight, it came up with a new sound, more nerve-wrenching and monstrous than the last one. And when the sailors told him that no, that was the last available cot, Thaen had to make do.
So he was bunking with Karik'ar.
"It's fine," Karik'ar said. "I do appreciate your concern, but I don't have any problem with it."
"Okay, as long as that's so," she said. "He's a lot friendlier to you, though. I noticed that much."
Karik'ar nodded, before sitting down next to her. "Yeah. He is. And that's part of it."
"What do you mean?"
Karik'ar sighed. "I love him."
"What?" Skaria asked.
"In the same way I love you," he said. "Or a similar way. Not romantically, not physically, by any means. But I call you sister, and I mean it in every sense of the word. He calls me brother and means it in every sense of the word."
"How do you know- oh, right. You can see thoughts."
"To some extent," he said. "Enough for this to be sure of."
"And I don't remember ever having you sleeping in the same bed as me, unless we were cold or you were protecting me," Skaria said. "Why?"
"Remember that Vesperati family we stayed with? Did you not notice they would, in the course of any conversation, somehow manage to make contact, physical contact, with you?" Skaria nodded and moved closer towards Karik'ar. The air was frigid out in the open sea. "They're by nature more tactile. And Thaen said he does the same with his siblings. I think he's just treating me like he treats his other brothers."
Skaria smiled. For Karik'ar, who claimed to have no family, she knew that being his sister was something deep, something she felt honored to be. But brother? There was a bond between brother and sister, but it was not the same as a bond between brothers. There was something indescribable about that, something heartwarming. She knew that she and Karik'ar were matched in one respect -her hard-headedness and rebellious spirit was matched by his calmness, his overwhelming strength but his moderated manner.
But he and Thaen complemented each other in a different fashion. Where Karik'ar was big but never boastful, Thaen bragged about what little short stature he had. Where Karik'ar was calm and reserved, and his idea of fun was relaxing with a good book while Skaria sharpened her blades, Thaen was animated and energetic, and although Skaria didn't know what his idea of fun was, she could bet it had little to do with sitting still.
"Plus, he shares my faith. Or our faith, rather," he said. Skaria arched an eyebrow. She knew Karik'ar was religious -he had mentioned converting when he was a young man- but the closest thing she had to faith was a tacit acknowledgement that God existed, and a suspicion that He didn't care. Our faith? "I wasn't referring to you. I was referring to Laidu. Kyra, I think she professes to believe, and Indra does, but she, I think, has more of the philosopher's concept of God as opposed to the faithful's concept."
"You lost me on that."
"One's more... cold, clinical. The other is more personal."
"Ah," Skaria said. Even if she didn't share his devotion, she liked the fact that someone else did. "That's nice."
"Yes it is. However, I think we should be going back. It is rather dark out." The massive Kai'Draen rose and offered her a hand. Which, as usual, Skaria pointedly ignored and got up. And noticed that the entire world was rocking back and forth and back and forth and...
Karik'ar put a large arm around her shoulder and guided her back to the companionway. They descended belowdecks, turned a few times in the passageway, and stepped into their cabin.
The only sources of light were a glass Tethyd-lamp, which appeared to be a bottle with some form of a phosphorescent liquid in it, and the dull orange glow of Indra's heating thaumaturgy. Both of them had since gotten ready for bed, and were doing their nightly routine; Indra was brushing out her dark hair, and Thaen was brushing his teeth. He stared into a mirror, holding a small circular brush with stiff bristles, and was scrubbing down his small fangs. His hair hung around him like a mop, a dark grey that contrasted with the light grey and russet brown of the fur that coated his back and torso and arms.
Skaria stripped off her armor (she had only worn the gambeson today, with her cloak) and sighed in relief. The thaumaturgy heater made the room nice and toasty. It was as if they had their own little fireplace, but it was necessary, especially given what Thaen and Indra were wearing. Indra wore traditional Caeldari pajamas, a loose sleeveless tunic and a pair of light trousers, and she looked different in those, reading a book by the light of one of her glowing vials. Thaen only wore similar trousers, though his weren't the unremarkable grey that Indra's were, but a combination of black, white, and red, with mustard-yellow thread worked through the waistband.
"It's warm in here," Karik'ar said. He had unbuckled his outer belt, with a loop for his axe and a scabbard for his greatsword, and laid it on the side of his bed, next to the stool Thaen was perched on. "I like that. Can't stand the cold." He yanked his shirt off, folded it neatly, and sat on the bed He slipped off his boots, stepped out of his pants and, clad only in that loincloth garment he wore (a dhoka, Skaria remembered), he rummaged through his pack before yanking out a pair of sleeping trousers. Once or twice, the first time the two of them stayed at the guildhouse, he had tried sleeping only in the dhoka. But even a Kai'Draen had limits, and the cold of Saelfel Caeld was one of them.
The door opened, and the sudden rush of cold air in made Karik'ar tense. Skaria saw where it touched him, and in the dim light she could see gooseflesh breaking out across his chest, his shoulders. "Oh, sorry," Kyra said, eyes wide. She wore a similar garment to Indra's, but her's was brown instead of grey. Also, probably from the cold, she wore her cloak around her shoulders. No, not her cloak. One several sizes larger than the already tall young lady. Laidu's cloak.
Much more interesting.
"I just needed to ask Indra for one of the lights," she said.
Indra yanked a small satchel out from by her pack, and tossed a small vial to Kyra. "Shake it a bit for light. If it cools down in temperature, it should go out."
"Thank you," Kyra said, and quickly closed the door.
"Anyone notice what she was wearing?" Skaria asked.
"Yeah," Karik'ar said, reaching behind his head to undo his braid. Most of his scars were gone, and the last batch he had Skaria excise was fading, the bumpy lines replaced by red scratches that quickly faded away. "Laidu's cloak."
"Ah," Indra said with a smile.
"Please," Thaen said. "It doesn't mean anything."
Karik'ar stopped unbraiding his hair. "You're joking, right?" he asked.
"No," Thaen said, "I'm not."
"How... how in bloody thorns do you not see this?" Karik'ar said, stunned but keeping his voice low. "See what Laidu and Kyra are doing?"
"I know they're friends, and he is keeping her safe. Like a bodyguard."
Karik'ar sighed, and went back to undoing his hair. He was halfway up the length. "You're blind. You're a Vesperati, gifted with sight beyond normal men, and you're blind to the fact that the man you call your brother is head over heels for Kyra!"
"Don't be ridiculous!" Thaen said.
"It's true," Indra said. "He admitted it to me."
"No, I think you're wrong."
"You wanna bet?" Karik'ar asked.
"Sure." Thaen rolled his eyes. "Twenty Caeldari crowns? Or whatever the top denomination of coinage is. I say he's not in love with her. You say he is."
"Done." Karik'ar chuckled. "You, my khovasi, are going to owe me some money."
"Yeah right," Thaen said, then frowned. "What does khovasi mean?"
"Brother."
"Oh, thanks," he said, before collapsing on the bed next to where Karik'ar was sitting.
"I'd give it a day," Indra said. "By then, one of them would make their move." She smiled. "And then we'll see."
"No," Karik'ar said. "Give them two."
"Oh?" Indra asked. "I'm not normally the gambling type, but five crowns I'm right," she said.
"Done," Karik'ar said.
"Then you owe me twenty crowns when I'm right," Thaen said.
"Fine," she said with a smirk.
Karik'ar turned to Skaria. "I don't suppose you'd like to make a bet."
"Oh, in a way," she said. "I'm expecting a minor scandal to erupt. I don't care when they admit their feelings for each other, but I think they'll go a bit farther than that."
"You mean to say..." Indra began, but Skaria finished it.
"I doubt Lord Solstael would admit it. In fact, I'd think he'd want to hide the fact that his daughter would have had her maidenhead taken by a Changed. And an Alberic to boot."
"Thirty crowns you're wrong," Thaen said. "Even if he was in love with her, Laidu wouldn't bed a girl like that."
"I'd have to agree with him," Karik'ar said. "From what I could gather, Laidu's too much of a romantic to simply sleep with her. He'd have to woo her over."
"Fine." Skaria smiled, and settled down. "Anyway, I'm going to bed." She turned towards the Tethyd-lamp and grabbed it. Immediately, the light vanished. "Good night, and may the best wager win." Indra settled down underneath her covers, and she saw Karik'ar yank the covers over him as Thaen leaned against the Kai'Draen's side. She saw a smile on Karik'ar's face from that.
As Skaria wrapped the lantern up in cloth, she breathed out a sigh of exhaustion. The journey had taken its toll on her. But now she was almost done. Now, she could truly rest. She was almost home.