Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows (3 page)

“Where is she?” Cobiah shoved passersby out of his way, clearing a path through the streets.

“On the shore, down under the pier!” Romy pointed with a shaking finger, his eyes wide with horror. Not wasting even a minute, Cobiah raced toward the planks where the great ships were docked. All the anger he’d felt, all the pain, was forgotten completely, channeled into a mad need to find his sister.

He skidded through the streets, grabbing hold of a pole to spin around a street corner, and took the stairs down to the ocean’s edge three at a time. Cobiah’s heart pounded in fear. Abandoning the stairs, he leapt down the rocky cliff from stone to stone, landing heavily in the wet sand below. He could hear the ships’ bells tolling like a call to worship, mixed with the faraway catcalls of the street vendors, and he could see a small group of sailors clustered beneath one of the large pylons by the rocks. Cobiah shoved his way through them as he struggled to catch his breath. Reluctantly, they parted to allow him entrance. Just before he reached the center of the throng, a firm hand seized Cobiah’s arm and dragged him to a halt.

“You don’t want to go in there, son,” a man with a full red beard said, reaching out with both hands to hold Cobiah steady.

Cobiah looked past him to the beach. He could see a sailor kneeling amid the rocks with an old green blanket in his hands. The sailor spread it out, and the blanket billowed but did not touch the ground, huddling instead over something that lay beneath it. Cobiah’s mind balked, refusing to identify the outline. “Biv . . . no, Biv . . . I . . . I have to help my sister.” He stumbled over the words. His tongue felt thick, like old gruel. Through the sailors, he could see a tiny black shoe peeking out beneath the edge of the blanket. Waves licked at it, foam teasing around the worn leather, a rusty silver buckle hanging from a mud-covered leather strap. A child’s everyday shoe. Ordinary. Common.

“Your sister?” The man put his arm across the youth’s chest. Cobiah hadn’t even realized he’d tried to step forward. “You knew this girl?”

“Her name is Biviane. Biviane is my . . . my sister,” Cobiah stammered, his blood cold. Why were they talking about her that way? “This girl”? Couldn’t everyone see that Biviane needed him? That she was frightened and he had to protect her? Anger and shock flooded Cobiah, hot and cold and hot again, pounding through his veins. After a moment, he recognized that the old man was wearing the sky-blue robes of the goddess Dwayna. The bearded man was a priest, then. “She went to get breakfast. I gave her a coin. She’d be right back. She’s coming right back.” He glanced again at the blanket, trying to make his mind attach relevance to the shape beneath it. “She needs me . . .” Cobiah raised a shaking hand and pushed at the priest’s shoulder, but the old man might as well have been made of stone.

The priest sighed grimly. “Your sister. I’m terribly sorry, son. She slipped from one of the dock pylons.” As if this explained everything, the priest added, “It was quick.”

Cobiah sank to his knees. The world around him spun, sickness rising in his throat. “I told her I saw a mermaid near the docks. I said . . . but it was just a story . . . just . . . Goddess Dwayna, no . . .”

“Don’t blame yourself,” the priest murmured, his hands on the young man’s shoulders. “Those pylons are slick with ocean spray. No one saw her climb them. It happened too quickly for anyone to intervene. We must turn to Dwayna the Merciful, sweet and gentle comforter of the soul. Pray to her, young man. She will bring you peace.”

In the midst of the priest’s benediction, a piercing shriek split the air. Shoving the crowd aside with wild, drunken movements, Cobiah’s mother lurched onto the rocky beach. “Biviane!” she howled insensibly. Hands clenching into fists, the woman shrieked in anger. “My little girl! She can’t be . . . she can’t be dead!

“Cobiah! You worthless, useless—Where were you?” she screeched, turning her anger toward her son. “
You
gave her money! I’ll bet someone pushed Biviane off the dock to take her coin! This is your fault!” The priest turned to grapple with her as she kicked and struck at Cobiah’s head and shoulders. “You foul piece of nothing! It’s
your
fault she’s dead! Your fault!”

Stunned, Cobiah couldn’t even raise his hands to defend himself. She struck over and over again, jolting him from every angle, raining down sharp pain on his shoulders, arms, and face. The priest grabbed the harridan’s wrists, forcing her to stop her attacks, but that did little to halt the abuse. “Foolish, worthless boy! Biviane
was just a baby, she was an innocent child, and you’ve killed her!”

You’ve killed her!

His mother’s words careened through Cobiah’s mind. He couldn’t force the sound from his ears, but his body reacted to expel it, vomiting bile onto the sand. Rage gripped Cobiah. Her abrupt, hypocritical turnaround felt like a punch in the stomach, and it took all the force of his will not to drive to his feet and strike his mother in return. Before he could move, sailors in the crowd dragged the woman off, her wails descending into screaming, incomprehensible accusations.

Cobiah drew a long, shuddering breath. He tried to focus his eyes and found himself staring at a rag doll floating in a tide pool. While everything around him was pandemonium and pain, the stitched burlap head with its cornflower-blue eyes still held for him a soft smile. Without thinking, Cobiah pulled the dolly from the tide.

Gently, the Dwaynan priest helped Cobiah stand. “Come, young man. I’ll help you back to your house. There are preparations to be made . . .”

“No.”

The old priest blinked. “What? No?”

“She needs . . . I can’t pay for a funeral.”

“I can arrange the funeral, son,” the priest responded gently. “Your sister will have a safe place to sleep.”

“Thanks,” Cobiah murmured woodenly. “She’d like that.” He squeezed the priest’s hand and turned away, clutching the rag doll to his chest.

Numbly, Cobiah made his way back up onto the docks. He stumbled through the press of people, the calls of sailors and dockworkers echoing around him without any meaning registering in their words. He remembered Biviane’s bright smile as he taught her
how to read letters, forming them into words. She was so smart, so clever. The way she asked him questions when he told her tales, forcing him to elaborate further and further until she laughed.
She was the only good thing I had in this world.

No job. No home. No sister to protect. He had nothing left except a sodden mother whose drunken binges would kill them both in time. Cobiah huddled in the cold, holding the limp doll to his chest. Her yarn hair was wet with seawater, but her stitched-on smile never wavered, frozen in a moment of time. Faintly, Cobiah realized that someone was calling his name. A familiar voice, rough and brutish like an old tree. Cobiah came to his senses and found himself standing at the base of a gangplank, staring past the end of the dock into the stormy sea. “Cobiah?” Bosun Vost’s voice finally pulled Cobiah from his fugue. “What’re you doing here, lad? We were about to raise the gangway. She’s ready to sail.” The old bosun eyed the youth with concern, taking in his bedraggled, pale appearance and the little bundle clenched in his hand. More soberly, the old bosun asked, “You doin’ all right, laddie?”

“Were you serious, sir?” The words rushed out of Cobiah’s chest, pushing down the tears and the sick feeling in his gut. “About my coming with you?”

Taken by surprise, Vost nodded. “Aye, we need a few more hands. You’ll have to sign to a full tour of duty. Six months or more. What happened, Coby? Did you lose your girl?” The old sailor chuckled curiously, expecting the sad tale of a failed romance.

“Something like that.” Cobiah didn’t bother to correct him. “Sign me up, Vost. I’ll take that berth.” He lifted his chin, stuffing the rag doll beneath one arm and reaching for Vost’s hand to pull him up the gangplank.

Something in the calmness of his words quieted the old man’s protests and questions, and Vost simply nodded. “Come aboard, Cobiah of Lion’s Arch. You’re a mariner now.”

—

Outside the city of Lion’s Arch, the sun beat down on a vast and empty ocean. It twinkled on the foam of a thousand waves and shone warmly over the hulls and decks of massive ships that plunged into the sea spray. The galleon
Indomitable
heaved her bulk from the dock like a thick-shouldered bull, stiff and ungainly in the shallows. While her sailors called the chants and songs, she lowered her sails to catch an early wind, and they spread in wide white arches over the broad top deck.
Angel’s wings
. Cobiah looked up at them as he gave a hand to the sailors slinging ropes from canvas to canvas across the lower boom of the mast.
Biviane’s wings.

Cobiah stared very hard at the
Indomitable
’s sails as the ship made her way into the open sea. He watched them as they caught the wind, putting the city of Lion’s Arch—and the only life he’d ever known—far behind.

C
obiah woke in the cold, pale morning, his head spinning with illness and fatigue. Someone was shaking his hammock. He’d been conscious of it but too thick with sleep to rouse. As he struggled to focus, the pillow jerked out from under his head, and in a flash the whole hammock reeled and dumped him unceremoniously to the wooden boards of the deck.

“Five bells, Cobiah!” Vost, weathered bosun of the
Indomitable
, shouted down at Cobiah with the hammock still twisting in his hand. With a baleful glare, the leathery sailor grunted, “Up, fer Kryta’s own sake! Wind’s out of the west if’n our compass’s boxed proper, and we’ve eased out of slack water and into sail. Time to heave the ropes, boy.”

Cobiah lifted his head and scrambled to his feet despite the pitch and roll of the ship beneath him. “Aye, aye, sir,” he gasped, trying to put a false energy into his words. “I’m ready.” The tang of seawater, stronger than he’d ever smelled it, lingered all around him, and the dark brown boards sucked sunlight from the portholes as if jealous to see it roam free.

Vost snorted. “Yer ready all right. Ready as a dolyak calf fresh out’n its mother. Get on yer feet and try not
to puke up yer dinner, green gills. And see that you do better next time, or I’ll come with a bucket of seawater to dump over ye—wi’ a crab in it to pinch off yer nose.

“Today’s crew inspection, sailor. Be up-deck in five, or be tossed out to sea.” The ship’s bell rang like thunder on the main deck, its shrill clang cutting through the old sailor’s snarls. With a grunt, Vost lost interest in Cobiah and stormed over to hound a man who’d been slow to find both boots.

Cobiah joined several other young sailors splashing water on their faces and scrubbing combs through their unruly hair. It was dark here in the berth, hot from the press of sailors and stinking of sweat and grime, but still cleaner than many an alley in Lion’s Arch where Cobiah had slept on bad nights. Better food, too, and more of it—an entire apple to himself! He swiped one from the bowl and jammed it in his mouth.

More eager now, he jerked his shoes onto his feet as he hopped after the others. He’d have to earn enough money to buy boots at the next harbor; these city slippers didn’t have enough traction for wet boards. Cobiah smiled around a bite of apple. Only seven days aboard the
Indomitable
, and he was thinking about a long-term future on the ship. He’d already worked harder than he’d ever done in Lion’s Arch. The intense labor wasn’t quite enough to make him forget, but it was enough to occupy his mind and keep him from thinking of—

“Up-deck!” Vost yelled. “Up-deck, ya scurvy lot! Now or never, and Grenth take you if you’re slow!”

In quick succession, the mass of youths and men raced up two long ladders from the berth to the main deck of the ship. They grasped at ropes and pounded their feet on the rungs to draw them faster. Up above, Cobiah
could hear the shrill call of a whistle blasting out a short rhythm of peculiar notes. Uncertain, he reached up to smooth his damp hair. “All call for inspection,” one of the other youths said, smiling at him. “Don’t worry, newbie. Cap’n Whiting won’t even notice you. He never looks past the officers in the first row.” Moving with an experienced roll to his footsteps, he scampered up the rungs toward the main deck.

Cobiah managed a shy smile of thanks. Was it that obvious? Although he’d never been to sea, he knew the ins and outs of ships from his time loading crates and wares. He’d cleaned them too, stem to stern, while they rested in the harbor. Lion’s Arch was a seaport, after all, and most of the pickup labor was on the docks. He’d never been to sea, but he wasn’t exactly a rube.

Just then the ship tossed under him, and Cobiah felt his stomach churn. The other boy grinned and clapped his shoulder. Cobiah sighed.
Fair enough
. His head crested the upper deck, and just as he’d done every day on board, Cobiah found himself staring out at the sea.

All around the galleon, the sea spread vast and deep blue. Touches of white flecked it here and there, but to the naked eye, no sign of land or harbor broke the smooth, even plane of the ocean. The sound of waves crashing against the wooden hull and the sharp crackling of wind in the broad sails of the galleon filled the air. Warm sunlight shone down upon the brown-and-gray deck, reflecting from polished iron small guns at either side. Huge white sails arched above him, their massive bulk speeding the ship across the water. It was a little bit creepy to a city boy who was used to the breakdown of streets and buildings, a horizon dotted with trees, meadows, and mountains high above. Here was the ship. Out there was nothing at all.