Exiles of Forlorn (2 page)

“Go to the ashes, old friend,” I said, stepping closer to Reiwyn. I hoped for a reaction but got none. Uller reached across and tried to take her hand, but he found her fingers unyielding from the old wooden rail. That was satisfying, at least. I wasn’t the only one being rebuked.

“He was a noble old man,” said Antioc. As if to rub her lack of interest in our faces, Reiwyn reached over and took Antioc’s arm. Though he did not respond, I felt seething inside like a steaming kettle close to bursting. A sideways glance at Uller showed a similar look on his sweaty, sickly face.

“I can’t see,” whined Blackfoot, bouncing on the deck. Reiwyn’s arm had crossed his face. She dropped her hand to the rail and Blackfoot stopped jumping, much to the relief of Uller who seemed ready to gurge again. “Thank you.” He eyed the blaze with wide eyes. We all did, until the fire consumed the raft and the bundle rolled into the sea with a hiss of smoke. Roren was gone.

Once the crowd had thinned around us, I looked at Antioc, still watching the spot where Roren’s remains had fallen beneath the sea, marked by pieces of the raft floating in a circle. Reiwyn was similarly enrapt. I abandoned any notion of matching her sentiment, but noticed I still held her shoulder, and that she had yet to respond to it.

“What did he give you?” I asked Antioc in a whisper. I felt Reiwyn twitch.

“Must you?” she asked, meekly. Her voice was usually so strong.

“He chose this day to tell us,” I said, nodding unseen to the sea where he sank. “He knew he would die today. He wanted us to know. He wanted us to fulfill his legacy. I think he’d want us to talk about it, rather than mourn over him.”

That appeared to satisfy her; she nodded.

Antioc took his time in replying. “He told me how to kill them.”

I furrowed my brow at him. “Kill
them
?” Antioc nodded once. “What
them
?”

“The inhabitants of the ruins,” he replied, as casually as he would discuss a neighbor or a copse of trees. He gave me a not oft-seen grin. “You didn’t think all that treasure would just be sitting there without guardians, did you?”

I shook my head. “So you know how to kill them?” I asked, still whispering. “The defenders, or whatever they are . . . ?”

“Most of them,” he replied with a shrug, turning his eyes to the sea. “He died during the telling.”

“Most of them? You mean there’s more than one?”

“More than one
kind,
” he clarified. “I don’t have an exact number, but he said he’d learned of many and would share that knowledge with me so that I might keep us safe.” He took a long breath, filling his lungs with the clear, salty sea air. “I got most of it, I think.”

“You
think
?” I craned my eyebrows. “What kinds of thing are we talking about here? Walking dead? Wraiths? Giants?”

“Among others.” He seemed so nonchalant about it. “Killing things isn’t that big a mystery. Everything dies if you hit it hard and enough.”

“What did he tell you?” Uller asked after a few moments of silence.

“He told me where it was,” I explained with a whisper, glancing around to make sure we were far enough from the other exiles to be unheard. “He drew me a map . . .”

“He gave you a map?” asked Uller, almost too loud. His head was a mere two inches above mine, and his whispers were affronted by the stench of his repeated gurging.

“No, I said he
drew
me a map. Then he made me draw it.”

“So you have a map?” hissed Uller. His eyes were veined with red so bright they seemed likely to pop from his skull.

I shook my head. “He burned it. Then he made me draw it again, only from memory. He made me do it fast. I almost spilled the ink twice while dipping the quill.”

“Why?” Antioc was soft spoken, even for so big a man, so he barely had need to whisper. “Why make you draw the map, rather than give you his?” Uller nodded at the question and gave me a curious look.

I always had to raise my head when talking close to Antioc. He stood a half-stride taller than me, and had broad shoulders joining muscular arms to a thick, powerful chest. Few could doubt that he was a warrior, though he might have passed for a farmer, but for the short-cropped brown hair and thick, bumpy scars on his chest and arms. The scars of a fighter; at sixteen Antioc had more scars than men three times his age.

“I didn’t say he gave me a
map
.” My irritation was unbound. My companions could be dim, even Uller, despite being more educated than all of us put together. “I said he showed me where it
was
. He told me when we reach Forlorn, I’m to find quill and paper and draw this map. Draw it frequently, and burn the old one. Let no one see it, not even my friends. Do this, as he has done, and soon I’ll see the map in my minds-eye when we make the journey.”

“That makes sense,” Uller nodded, a moment before his cheeks puffed and his skin bleached. He ran across the deck and hurled his head over the rail, unleashing another smelly stream into the sea. Blackfoot and I laughed at him, and even quiet Antioc enjoyed a brief chuckle.

Our eyes returned to the sea, and somber moods prevailed over our brief frivolity.

“He knew this was coming,” said Antioc, nodding. “He knew he would never reach Forlorn. He said so mere days after falling ill.”

“I’m still surprised to see him go,” I replied, though it was only half true. Still, the optimism might warm Reiwyn to me . . . it didn’t seem to work. “I hoped he’d at least die on land. He never did like the sea.”

“Hard to imagine why,” Uller moaned. He put his hand on his belly. “I think I need to lie down.”

“Can you make it on your own?” I asked, looking at him over Reiwyn’s head. “I can have Antioc carry you, if you’re feeling feeble.”

Uller glared at me as he shambled by. “I’m fair enough. Thank you.”

Blackfoot followed him. “I figured a wizard would have a stronger stomach,” he commented as he walked in the taller boy’s shadow.

“I’m no wizard, urchin,” he replied with a low grumble. “If you’re coming with me, make yourself useful and fetch me some water. I’m close to parched with all this gurging and sweat.”

“Get your own hanged water,
no-wizard
! I’m going to go roll bones.” With that, Blackfoot vanished into the crowd, as was his way, hand in his pocket to pull out the spotted bones urchins and poor city folk amused themselves with. Uller went on alone and disappeared far less spectacularly through a door to the lower deck.

After a brief silence, I caught Antioc’s attention with my eyes wide. He gave me a puzzled look as I nodded to the oblivious Reiwyn. It took my stalwart friend a moment to catch on, at which point I nodded to the front of the ship. He nodded in understanding and backed from the rail.

“I must go do . . . a walk . . . now, goodbye.” And with that he marched away, leaving me alone on the deck with Reiwyn.

The sun was setting, its early evening light spilling over the sea like a waving orange road, one that led back to the Morment coast, lost to the months of sailing and fathoms of calm sea. I barely paid it any heed; my attention was elsewhere.

“Are you fair?” I asked, covering her other shoulder with my free hand. Now I held both, and with that I could fancy that she enjoyed my touch as much as I enjoyed hers; though she gave no indication that was the case.

“I’m fair,” she replied with a sigh.

“You don’t seem fair,” I said after a brief silence. While she gazed listless upon the sea, Roren’s watery tomb fading in the distance, I had occupied myself with the scent of her hair. The sea breeze caught a few loose strands and threw them against me. One chanced to land on my lips, and I tasted it. Her hair was salty with dried seawater and sweat, but I relished it all the same.

“I’ll be fair soon enough.” Her voice betrayed ripe vulnerability. A lesser man might have pounced. That wasn’t my way. It certainly wasn’t the way I wanted her. If—when she came to me, it would be by her choice. I had faith in that end, and faith that I would prove I possessed all the characteristics she looked for in a man. I was passably handsome, or so I’d been told, and clever above that. I was the son of a lord—a thirdson, and therefore entitled only to a pittance of my lord father’s wealth in even the best of circumstances, but Reiwyn was not one to be impressed by that. In fact, it might well have counted against me. But I would be rich, someday. Roren had seen to that when he’d chosen us to complete his lifelong ambition: to be the first to plunder the Ruins of Xanas Muir.

“I didn’t realize he meant so much to you,” I said, attempting to hide my glowering; I failed. She stepped away from me, not fast, but brisk enough that I barely had time to adjust my balance. Lacking her as support, I almost fell to the rail. A bit clumsier and I might have tumbled into the sea after her lost love.

“He meant as much to me as any of you. You think I would mourn one friend less than another, were it you gone to ashes on a raft in the middle of the sea?”

I shrugged, unable to meet her eyes. She stood with her back to the sun, its dying orange glow casting blinding rays through the same loose strands of her hair that I’d dared taste only moments ago. “I suppose not.”

“Why would you think otherwise?”

She was crafty, and being as pretty as she was, adept at evading men’s advances. Here she had just told me that Roren was no more than a friend, but the main message was obvious, despite being unspoken. I was a friend, and only a friend, no more or less than Uller, Antioc or Blackfoot. At least she was consistent. I took comfort for the stinging in my chest from her simultaneous rebuke of Uller and Antioc; though they had not been present to take it. At least I would not have to suffer the indignity of seeing her in the arms of one of my friends . . . for now.

“You were with him for a while,” I said, not thinking that through enough before speaking. I quickly corrected my error . . . or tried, anyway, “I meant that maybe you felt some kinship with him, or he to you that he didn’t share with the rest of us.” Perhaps he had a daughter Reiwyn’s age, I thought, but didn’t say. It would have sounded obvious by then. “That’s all. I didn’t mean to imply . . .”

“It’s fair,” she said, crossing her arms and turning to the sea. She took her time before going on, giving me a chance to catch my breath and let my pulse slow. “I liked him as I like you and the others. You’re all fine friends . . . usually. But it wasn’t for him.”

She put her hands on the rail and leaned slightly, letting the ocean breeze catch her hair. The same breeze brought her scent to my nose again, and once more I found myself urged to draw close to her. This time, I did not give in to it and stood out of arm’s length, in the place of a friend.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my sweaty brow furrowed, “What wasn’t for him?”

“When I left the river folk, I hoped to be spared another downing-in-ashes.” She gestured to the sea. “My father,” she explained, quietly.

It made sense immediately. Her father had been a river pirate, and there were customs that seemed universal for those who made their lives on the water.

“I watched him go to ashes much like this.” she said with a bittersweet smile. “I was ten. After that, I saw many more, including five brothers, two by blood the others by ward.” She looked at me. “The river folk do that, care for the children of their fallen mates. It’s our way. My adopted father was a kind man.” She gave the sea a wicked little grin. “For a pirate.”

I smiled at that, which she seemed to appreciate. We enjoyed the sunset in peace. Before joining our friends below deck for dinner, I swallowed a lump of apprehension in my throat and broached a subject that I’d already rendered sore by my petty jealousies.

“What did he tell you?” I asked, stepping close again. This time, she did not retreat, only hesitate.

“Nothing,” she replied. She sounded as surprised as I was at the admission.

“But . . . why did he see you if he had nothing to give you?”

“I didn’t say he didn’t
give
me anything,” she replied, bending low. She took the leather ties that ran up the side of her short leather britches and pulled. As they came undone, I thought for a moment she was going to undress right there before me—at least I could dream of such.

She stopped once the laces had come undone enough to reveal her thigh, long and thin with subtle cords of muscle under tight, lightly tanned skin. She had faint scars running up her legs, and a few tattoos here and there, each of varying age, color and quality. I’d seen them all before; the sea serpent, the skull and the lacy twirls that ended in a dead rose, laced with bloody thorns like the spikes of a mace. It was the tattoo I hadn’t seen before planted firmly on her hip that caught my eye. It was a perfect circle, the size of the bottom of a wine bottle with elaborate patterns scrolled around a center that seemed rather like a stylish image of a sun casting long beams out to the rim of the design.

“The jade disc? He tattooed it on your thigh?” I puzzled, daring to touch it. She indulged me for about two seconds then swatted my hand away.

“It’s not a tattoo,” she replied. “If it were, I’d have been in there much longer, and I wouldn’t be showing it off so soon.” On this, she was an expert. She had more tattoos than most of the men I’d met. This was no tattoo. The lines were raised, as though pushed from below. The color, a dark green like the older copper coins of Morment, seemed to press through as her skin strained to hold it in.

I wasn’t able to examine it closely enough, but its style seemed ancient. Satisfied that I’d had enough of a look, Reiwyn tightened and re-laced her britches.

“He didn’t tell you what it was for?” I asked, more surprised than incredulous. Roren was not a common sort, so it wasn’t hard to imagine him doing something that made no outward sense.

She shook her head. “He told me just that I was the only one who could carry it, and that I’d know what it was for when we needed it.”

“How did he do it? If it isn’t a tattoo . . . how did he . . . ?”

She held her breath for a second before answering, gesturing nervously with her small, strong hands. “He . . .” She closed her eyes as if to search for a better way to say it. She must have failed, because the explanation sounded perturbing, “He put it in me.”