Bard’s Songs and Bloody Memories
Night was approaching when they emerged from the library. Sebastian felt as though they had just escaped from the gullet of some terrible beast as the impenetrable blackness released them to a twilight of violet and orange. The clouds that had helped to paint the vistas of Isle Nanokar in shades of perpetual gray glowed. Glowing too, were the icebergs that ringed Isle Nanokar, the setting sun limning them in fiery gold and red. Selena had told him she thought the icebergs that created the bay around Nanokar resembled icy teeth, as if the isle sat in the maw of a giant monster.
No beasts. No monsters. Just rocks and ice and water. The monsters are not of the world, they walk upon it.
“I know ye be eager to get back,” Tunney said, as they loaded into the sled, “but seeing as yer departing tomorrow and not like to return, there be one thing else ye might like to see. A melancholy place, aye, but rarest of all that be rare and old. Mayhap on all of Lunos.” He wore a small smile. “When ye speaks of yer travels you can tell’em that Nanokar is more than ice an’ whales an’ strange old men living in caves.”
Sebastian glanced at Selena, huddled into her seal coat. She met his eye and shrugged as if to say, I can’t get any colder.
“Make it quick,” Sebastian said.
“Aye, t’is near. Just ‘round that bend o’ the cliff.”
A few short minutes and the dogs took them to where the path curved around the cliff. Tunney called the dogs to a halt at the lip of a great ice plain. Sebastian sucked in a breath and heard similar gasps from Niven and Selena.
The ice plain stretched across the land. Great plateaus and ridges of snow-covered ice that continued on into the northern horizon as if forever. But the ice… Sebastian had never seen such ice. It thrust up from the ground in great slabs, wearing coats of snow. There were hundreds of such slabs, and each was blue. Impossible blue. The blue of a high summer sky, of blue topaz gemstones, of blue tang fish that swam around the waters off his atoll.
Blue like Selena’s eyes…
“That color…like God’s Tears…” she murmured.
“What is it?” Niven whispered. His words were torn away by the whistling wind but Tunney heard anyway.
“Byric calls it dragon ice. He didn’t speak o’ it whilst I was snoozing? Surprising. Aye, dragon ice, from the Breaking. A remnant o’ that terrible, terrible war.”
“But why dragon ice?” Niven said. “It’s too beautiful to be named for such vile creatures.”
“It’s not named for it, but of it. Or so Byric would tell,” Tunney said. “This be a…what’s he call it? A breath weapon. Don’t know from which dragon an’ neither does he.”
Selena shivered and hugged herself. The crescent moon she’d painted on her face was dark in the falling light.
“We’ve seen enough. Time to go,” Sebastian said.
“Ye haven’t seen all,” Tunney said, “but I’ll hurry on yer account, lady. One last bit o’ history.”
He cracked the whip and turned the dogs down a small slope that curved behind a hunk of gray stone. In the bend was more dragon ice, tall slabs of bright blue that tapered up in jagged ribbons, like licks of flame. Inside the ice were people. Three men were locked in the brilliant azure, and perfectly preserved. Bundled in hides and fur caps, and they appeared to have been running when the ice trapped them. The expressions of horror on their faces were apparent.
“Breath weapon,” Tunney said, his voice low. “The plain yon be full of such. Women and children too. Ye can see’em if ye trek out in daylight hours but these here are plainest.”
There was a silence among them as the last light faded, shrouding the trapped men in darkness.
“Why don’t you melt the ice and give them a proper rest?” Niven asked finally, sounding stricken.
“Because, young sir,” Tunney said, “not the hottest sun, nor the roarin’est flame will melt that dragon ice. Not never.”
Selena struggled out of the sled.
“What are you doing?” Sebastian demanded. “Sit down and let’s get the bloody Deeps out of here.”
She ignored him and shuffled to the trapped people like an old woman. She raised one shaking hand and touched the ice. “Have any Aluren ever seen this?”
“Cain’t say any have,” Tunney said. “Not that I’ve ever heard in all my years.”
Selena took off her glove and touched her bare hand to the ice. “Luxari,” she murmured through chattering teeth. A white orb of light bloomed in her palm.
Niven gasped. Tunney muttered something under his breath. Sebastian just watched as the dragon ice began to weep. Rivulets of striking blue water flowed from under Selena’s hand, and the hard edge became concave.
The ice was thick; the people trapped within were held deep, but Selena’s light sought them quickly. Just before it could burrow to the upraised arm of one of the men, she jerked her hand away and staggered backward. She stared, wide-eyed, at melted ice and then down at her hand, as if she couldn’t believe it was her own.
“They’re dead,” she said, her voice thick and breathy. “We should go.”
She climbed back into the sled, avoiding Niven’s awestruck stare, and struggled to put her glove back on her hand that was stiffened and claw-like.
Sebastian took the glove from her and tugged it over her hand. “Why did you do that? Not cold enough?”
“She melted dragon ice,” Tunney said, awed, as he took up his post at the rear of the sled. “The sun cain’t even do that.”
Selena nodded, as if Tunney’s reply was her own, and said nothing more.
Tunney cracked his whip above their heads. “Not even the sun,” he said again, and then the only sounds were the panting dogs and the susurration of ice slipping under their sled.
It was full dark when the township reappeared on the path before them. The great ice rocks in the sea glowed silver now in the moonlight and the black sea was laced with white as it lapped upon the shore. The moon hung full in the sky, like the god’s great eye staring down at them. Ahead, the fires of the tryworks were still burning; red and orange ribbons under the great ovens, and the smoke stole the crispness from the air and filled it with the rank stench. Selena wrinkled her nose.
“I’ll never get used to that smell,” she murmured through clenched teeth.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her discomfort abated a bit as the warm lamps burning along Nanokar’s main street became visible, and the sound of laughter and conversation filled the air
“It’s like music,” she said, almost to herself.
Sebastian had to agree. After the sad strangeness of the ice plain and what happened there, the life of the township was a welcome sight. He watched as the somber mood fell off of Selena like an old coat, and she smiled. The cold still had her in its icy grasp and shook her now and then, but she bore it better than she had the day before. He thought he could guess why. Selena had stood where the Bazira had stood and perused the same books. She thought that a good omen or a sign of the god’s favor.
It’s a load of whale shit nonsense. The god doesn’t smile upon you, Selena, not so long as it makes you wear that wound.
Moreover, the information Byric had given them was so old as to be almost useless and had no bearing on her quest that he could see. It had bearing on his, however. He thought of what Zolin had told him, that Accora espoused views that displeased the Bazira.
Byric was right about her questioning her faith. She’s enough of an apostate for Zolin to issue a death sentence.
He sighed with irritation. That would make his task all the harder as he was certain Selena wouldn’t dispatch the woman if she were no longer an enemy. She was conflicted enough about killing the old witch in cold blood.
I’ll have to do both jobs myself. He glanced down at Selena trudging beside him. Her pale hair shone in the lamp light.
Eight hundred gold doubloons will shine even brighter…
But there was no answering thrill at the thought. Only the deepest blackness, like the tunnel under the canyon.
At the White Sail, the common room was full to bursting. Raucous laughter and singing spilled from the open door and into the street. Warm light emanated from the windows and the scent in the air wasn’t boiling blubber, but delicious food and mulled wine. They stepped inside with Niven and Captain Tunney following behind. The heat was near stifling, packed as it was with patrons and with a fire in the immense hearth roaring away. Selena sagged with relief.
“Thar she be!” Boris shoved his way through the crowd, his lone eyebrow giving his face a lopsided appearance. His skin was red but Sebastian thought that was from drink now, not from the burning oil that had splattered him only half a day before. Selena’s healing skill was incredible. Miraculous even.
But she can do nothing for herself, Sebastian thought. What a crock.
“Shove aside, now!” Boris stood before Selena and raised his mug. “To my lady! As beauteous and sweet as you are kind fer what you did fer a scallywag like me. I won’t e’er be as perty as I once was—”
“That’s the god’s bloody truth!” someone called.
“—but I be alive an’ hale an’ I have you to thank fer it.” He laid his lips to her hand and then hoisted his mug, sloshing white foam down the front of his jerkin. “To Lady Selena!”
The men and women in the tavern hoisted their mugs again, echoing the toast, then Boris was guiding her through the room, bellowing at the other patrons to get out of his bloody way. Sebastian followed behind.
“I knows you like to stay close to the fire, so I saved you a seat,” Boris said, indicating a chair beside Ilior. It was nearest the hearth and close to a small stage that had been set aside for a bard to play.
Hilka came around with mugs and wine glasses. “Mead,” Sebastian told her. “The Gold.”
The innkeeper bent close, her lips brushed his ear. “Of course. Anything ye ask, young cap’n. I’ll be quick to fetch it.” Her hand lingered on his shoulders. “Anything at all.”
He muttered a word of thanks and sat with Selena and Ilior. The dragonman’s skin was its usual gray color as opposed to the sickly pale white it had been these last days of the voyage. He scrutinized Selena from under heavy, scaled brow ridges, then nodded at Sebastian, curtly, in approval. His crew was gathered together at a nearby table and greeted Selena with their silent smiles and raised mugs.
“Did you find anything of use?” Ilior asked. The dragonman had to raise his voice above the tumult.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “There was one thing…”
“What is it?”
Selena smiled and patted his hand. “Nothing. Today was a good day.”
Sebastian hid his scowl in the warm, wet cloths Hilka had brought for them to wipe the windpaint from their faces and wondered at his foul mood. Eat and then drink yourself stupid, he told himself, but stop wasting your thoughts and energies on Selena. She is nothing to you but a pile of gold and a channel to freedom. Your last job…
After their faces were clear of paint, Hilka stuffed them to brimming with plate after plate of food: boiled lobster and steamed crab on beds of greens and drizzled with a sweet pink sauce. Fish stews and whale kabobs, scallops, clams and eel, and a lobscouse stew that Sebastian’s crew devoured bowl by bowl. Sebastian saw Whistle, his chin running with brown juice, grinning at Selena and waving at her with a biscuit in his hand.
Sebastian ate everything that was set before him. He hadn’t realized how hungry he’d been, and after his plate was clean and a mug of gold mead washed it all down, his stormy mood abated. Boris descended upon Selena now and then to make sure his promise that she want for nothing was kept. Hilka hovered as well, and her visits always included some reason to touch Sebastian. Despite a having a small army of barmaids and serving boys, she always cleared away mugs and plates on their table herself, necessitating that she bend over so that Sebastian had a clear view of her breasts that strained at her white blouse.
“She is very…attentive, isn’t she?” Selena said, biting back a smile.
“Like a pox,” Sebastian agreed.
Selena laughed but then shook her head. “I shouldn’t laugh. She’s been nothing but gracious to me and I like her.”
“I’ll tell her that,” Sebastian said. “Maybe next time she passes ‘round she’ll rest her rack on your shoulder.”
This made Selena laugh again. Her sky blue eyes seemed even more striking when she smiled. Sebastian quaffed the rest of his mead and hailed a barmaid—not Hilka—for another.
Soon after, Sebastian realized that Niven was turned away, intent in conversation with a young man at the next table, and that Ilior was talking with several locals about the Zak’reth war. He and Selena were alone, or as alone as was possible in a noisy, crowded room. Dozens of conversations; loud, booming laughter; a bard singing and strumming a lute…the tavern was full of sound, but the silence between them grew thick.
“Your men are a good, loyal crew. How long have they been with you?” Selena piped up, and he guessed she had felt the silence as well.
Sebastian hesitated over how much to tell her. He’d had jobs in the past where he’d had to befriend the mark, but never had he taken one aboard his ship. That was akin to inviting her into his life and he didn’t like it.
“I’ve had other crewmen come and go but these have been with me pretty steady. Grunt the longest,” Sebastian replied. “We picked up Cur about four years ago and it’s taken about that long to calm him down.” He gestured to the man of middle years and unkempt beard who was drinking rum as if it were water. “I almost thought he was too much of a madman, but then I found Whistle on a tiny little shit-hole on Isle Sabacor. Cur was protective of the boy, and still is. Whistle seems to have straightened him out.”
“He’s very sweet,” Selena said. “Whistle, I mean.”
“He likes you. They all do, but him especially,” Sebastian said. “He’s spent most of his shore-leave allowance on a gift for you. Try not to laugh when you get it.”
Selena looked down at her mug of cider. “I would never do that.”
“Sorry. I should have known better. Of course, you wouldn’t laugh at him.” He took a long pull from his own mug and saw her watching him. “What?”
She crossed her arms. “I’m trying to decide if you meant to insult me or to pay me a compliment.”
“Neither. Just making an observation.”
“You think being kind is a weakness?” she asked.
“No. I think making yourself weak in order to be kind is foolish.”
Selena smiled tightly. “It takes more strength and will to be kind than it does to indulge in anger or hate.”
Sebastian snorted. “Is that what they teach you in your pretty Temple? Try taking that out in to the world, onto the seas full of cutthroat bastards and see how far the strength of your kindness gets you.”
“I take that out into the world every day, Captain,” Selena said. “That is my duty as an Aluren. To wade into seas full of ‘cutthroat bastards’ and staunch the blood of their violence with healing.”
“That’s all very well and good, but sometimes you have no choice but to spill blood yourself. Sometimes, it’s either you or them, so what do you do then? You don’t wear that sword for nothing.”
“And I use it when I have to. As I did on Uago, where we met.”
“Where you hacked off a pirate’s arm and then turned around and healed him?”
“I had a chance to take a bad situation and make it better. I was weakened in body for a time, but that passed. What doesn’t pass is the memory of violence and bloodshed wrought at my hand. The fewer of those I carry, the better.”
You don’t carry them, Paladin, he thought, you bury them.
Sebastian glanced over to where Whistle sat with the rest of the crew. The boy grinned his crooked-tooth grin at them both.
“People laugh at him,” he muttered. “I’ve heard them, on shore-leave or at the market on other isles. They think he’s slow or stupid. He’s not. He’s a good kid trying to survive in this bloody shit-stinking world without a voice. And he does it with a loopy grin on his face.”
“Ah, so Cur is not the only one who is protective of him,” Selena said with a smile.
He shrugged. “I’m the captain. He’s part of my crew. It’s my job to look out for him if I want to keep my ship sailing the way it ought. Doesn’t matter anyway. People will be cruel to him no matter what I do or don’t do. That’s just Lunos for you.”
“There is much that is ugly and cruel in this world,” Selena agreed, “but there is much that is beautiful too. Surely you’ve seen beauty in your voyages?”
My atoll, he thought. And you. The thought slipped into his mind like a cat through an open door.
Selena was waiting for a reply. “No, not much,” Sebastian said.
She glanced about the room, gesturing to the people in it. “For every cutthroat pirate there are dozens—hundreds— of good people who would treat Whistle with kindness were they to meet him. It’s only the bad who draw the attention, or demand it. It is what the Bazira rely on to swell their ranks and why the Aluren struggle to fill theirs.”
“What do the Bazira rely on?” Sebastian asked, his voice low.
“The impression that the bad and ugly outnumber that which is good and honest, and that it’s simply easier to succumb,” Selena said. “Hopelessness. It is the Bazira’s greatest weapon.”
“Is that why you became a Paladin? To bring hope to people?”
“Yes,” she said, answering his sarcasm head-on. “It has been my sincerest endeavor since childhood, when the Two-Faced God Heard my desire to ease pain and suffering.” She gestured to the other side of the room. “Look at Boris. His face is scarred and some might think him ugly. But he is alive and he can still provide for his family. Is that not a beautiful gift the god has given me?”
Sebastian set down his mug with a clank. “How you can sit here, wearing some cold ugly hole in your chest, and still feel like you are blessed, is a bloody mystery.”
He thought Selena might grow angry or upset at his words but she sighed.
“I have wrestled with that for long years,” she said. “I still do but—”
“Wrestled with it?” Sebastian asked, incredulous. “Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want to…I don’t know—”
“Make others suffer as I have?” she finished. “In the beginning, when the wound was new, I was…unwell. I did things that would shock you, I’m sure, to imagine me doing. Not murder. No, most of the damage I did was to myself.” Her eyes grew cloudy with memories and then she threw them off. “Healing and Ilior. Those things saved me.”
“You seem too calm. I wouldn’t be.”
“I have to be. The wound is terrible. More terrible than I can describe or that you can imagine. Your worst idea of it will not come close to meeting its reality.” She set her mug down. “I can’t afford to be angry, Julian. Or weep when it strikes me to. Or draw my blade when I feel I’ve suffered enough…” She took a shaking breath and he watched her hands tremble before she hugged herself to still them. “If I do any of those things, I am lost. I will fly into a rage from which there is no end, or weep to rival the oceans, or simply succumb.” She shook her head. “No, there is a better end and I must find it.”
I have wept. I have killed enough to drown in the blood, and still my rage knows no end. Sebastian’s thoughts tried to coil backwards, to that day long ago, during the war. The day he found his father and Mina…He pushed the memories away—buried them— before they could see the light of day.
The Paladin had cast her gaze to the fire. “So here I am, on a quest of Skye’s devising to murder two people I have never met. Because of hope. I am loath to do it, no matter they are Bazira. But there’s no other way and I can’t…I can’t wear the wound much longer.”
Sebastian held up his hands. “So in the end, it’s either them or you. Just like I said. Right?”
“I’ll do my best, when the time comes,” she said. “What else can I do?”
Sebastian thought he could hear Mina laughing at him from whatever corner of his mind she haunted. His mead’s sweetness had been pleasing before. It was cloying now, and he set it down. The bard played a softer melody on his lute and sang a song of a sailor’s tragic love for a mermaid who could never be his.
“Don’t listen to me,” Sebastian muttered. “It’s none of my business.”
“My business concerning the Bazira is your business,” Selena said, “since you agreed to sail me to Isle Saliz.” When he couldn’t find a reply, she shifted in her chair and said lightly, “What about you, Captain Tergus? What will you do when your commission is finished? Do you have a family somewhere?”
“I have no family,” he heard himself say. “I lost them in the war.” He had never said those words aloud, he realized. Not in ten years. Memories swam up at him again and were dispelled with a jolt when he felt Selena’s hand on his.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she told him in a low voice. She gave his hand a squeeze and then withdrew. “I have made you upset. That was not my intention.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I know that pain. I lost mine too—”
Boris appeared and pulled Selena from her seat before she could say more. The bard had begun a jig and tables had been cleared aside to make room for dancing.
I lost mine too.
Sebastian felt a strange calm settle over him like a warm cloak. All the mead he had drunk made him pleasantly heavy; he sat back in his chair and watched the merriment as other couples took up the jig. Boris led Selena in the dance with surprising agility for one in his advanced state of inebriation, and then other men took turns swinging her about, making her laugh, making her forget her wound. Sebastian found the memory of his atoll rising up from the golden depths of his mug.
Hilka buzzed in his ear, tried to pull him into the jig, but he shooed her away and just watched as Whistle, his face red to his ears, tapped Selena’s shoulder to ask for a dance. The smile that spread over the boy’s face when she agreed made Sebastian’s heart ache with an unfamiliar pain.
The bard’s jig ended and the patrons applauded and cheered, while the dancers resumed their seats. Selena returned to her seat beside Sebastian, breathless and laughing, her eyes sparkling.
She wiped her hand over her dry brow. “Too bad. I was hoping to sweat a bit. I haven’t sweat in ten years.”
Sebastian had no idea what possessed him to do what he did next. The strange contentment, perhaps. Or more likely the mead. Someone, Hilka he was sure, kept spiriting away his empty mugs and replacing them with full.
He dipped his fingers in the mug then gently touched them to Selena’s temple. She gasped a little—a sound he shouldn’t have been able to hear under the noise of the commonroom, but he did. Her eyes—atoll blue and just as clear—were locked on his. Her skin was soft under his touch and warm, even if she couldn’t feel it.
Two small drops of mead ran in small rivulets down her temple.
“See? You are sweating,” Sebastian said, his smile and his soft tone seeming to come from far away. From someone else. Not him. Not the assassin. But for one moment, time stood still and nothing moved but those two drops that trailed down the smooth curve of Selena’s cheek, and Sebastian wasn’t Bloody Bastian on a mission to end a life, but a man sitting with a beautiful woman and making her feel good and safe.
“Julian…” Selena said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
He withdrew his kerchief from the inside pocket of his long black coat and offered it to her.
“I think I see a drop or two.”
Selena took it wordlessly, and dabbed her skin.
“You are kind, Julian. Kinder than I think even you realize.”
Kind. The word had never been attributed to him. Ever. The spell—the soft quiet—between them cracked but didn’t break.
“I’m not…”
Selena pressed the kerchief into his hands and held them for a moment. “Thank you.”
The silence that fell between them then was not uncomfortable, and they listened to the bard strum his lute and sing and tell stories of Ages past. There was more dancing but this time Selena refused, remaining instead beside Sebastian. He waved off all proposals that came his way as well and the hour grew late.
Finally, the bard sang a bawdy drinking shanty that all the locals knew. The song ended in a great thumping of mugs on tables and sloshed drink. He stood up and swept the jaunty little cap he wore off his head in a bow. He straightened with a grave expression on his face and the room grew quiet.
“I’ve been singing at the White Sail every summer for three years and I know well the Nanokari custom of paying respect to both aspects of the Two-Faced God. You, my friends, face numerous dangers in this harsh climate, and so no good luck should ever be taken for granted. Therefore, the time has come to honor the Shadow face in song or rhyme, to preserve and honor your traditions, to ensure that the god continues to favor you and bring you good fortune.”
Selena leaned over the table. “What does he mean?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Maybe the Bazira witch is here after all and she’ll come prancing out to dance for us.”
Selena smothered her laugh. The patrons were solemn; all eyes were on the bard.
“The moon is full; the Shining face smiles upon you—” he indicated Selena, who waved his attentions away—”so I feel we need one shanty to acknowledge the Shadow face. What say you, Nanokar? Shall that suffice?”
The crowd raised their mugs and the men bellowed their assent with an “Ayah!”
The bard clapped his hands together. “Then what shall it be? Something good and dark, as it’s to be our lone homage.”
The patrons began calling out the names of sad ballads, or tales of ships lost at sea, or of ghost ships crewed by the damned. The bard scoffed at them all until some bearded bear of a man who lingered close to the ale spigots, called out, “Oi! Sing the Ballad o’ Bloody Bastian!”
The crowd cheered and the bard wagged his finger. “Aye, now that’s the right proper stuff. The Ballad of Bloody Bastian it is.” He returned to his stool and settled his lute across his lap, tuning and fiddling with the strings.
Selena leaned close. “Who is Bloody Bastian?”
Sebastian didn’t trust his voice to speak. He didn’t think he could if he tried; he felt like those people in trapped in the dragon ice—frozen in place while the world spun without him.
A man at the next table leaned in. “Bloody Bastian is Sebastian Vaas,” he told Selena. “The Black Star, some call him. An assassin. One o’ the worst, most depraved assassins Lunos has e’er seen.”
Sebastian watched Selena’s reaction through lowered lids. She pursed her lips. “I’ve never heard of him. When did he live? During the Age of Sedition? Those were dark times.”
“No, he lives still,” Niven spoke up from behind them. “We lived in fear of him during my time on the Eastern Edge. He’s been terrorizing those islands the last ten years.”
Six years. Not ten, Sebastian thought, and reached for his mug. The movement shattered him from the strange paralysis and panic coursed through his veins instead of blood. He downed the entire mug, trying to drown his thoughts, but they scampered around his head like wild hares catching the scent of danger on the wind. He took inventory of his weapons, regretting he’d left his sword belt in his room; he eyed the front door, judging the distance should he need to run; he thought of how easy the inn—nay, the entire township—would burn with all the oil that was stowed here…
Bloody gods, calm yourself, man! Just get up and walk away.
Then the song began. The common room had grown uncommonly still. To leave now would invite unwanted attention. He sat, pinned to his chair by the words the bard sang, feeling each syllable like a dagger in his gut.
It had been a long time since he’d heard his song.
A shade in the night
Silent and sleek
To still your true heart as it beats
When he comes for your life
He sings with his knife
And the name of the ballad is Bloody Bastian.
The Zak’reth were first
To taste of his wrath
We whetted his blade on their pain
A frenzy of death
Left few with a breath
And those that did screamed ‘Bloody Bastian’
A taste for the gold
As well as for blood
Turned his lust into a trade
Warm bodies grew cold
Their lives bought and sold
By those who could afford Bloody Bastian
Beware, he still lurks
Sailing the seas
On a ship black as night and called Dread
For no one is safe
Be they villain or saint
As even rapers and killers fear Bloody Bastian.
The last note was plucked on the lute, hung in the air, and then dissipated. The patrons were silent for the space of a heartbeat and then broke out into a smattering of applause and nervous laughter. Selena shivered. Sebastian couldn’t look at her but waited, like a prisoner awaiting the magistrate’s sentence.
“How awful. Had you ever heard of this man? Sebastian Vaas?”
“I have,” he said.
“Surely the lyrics are somewhat fanciful. They’re not true…are they?”
My ship is not named Dread, as you well know, Paladin.
“Aye, every one is true,” said their helpful neighbor. “Isle Parish has a bounty on his head and it’s said that Raven himself is on the hunt for him.”
“Who is the Raven?” Selena asked.
“The best bounty hunter on Lunos,” said the Nanokari. “A spice merchant told me Isle Parish is looking to pay the Raven a thousand gold to bring the Bastian in alive!”
Four years ago it was three thousand. I must be slipping.
Sebastian felt a mad laugh burble up in him. He hid it behind his mead. How many had he had? Six? Seven? He’d lost count.
“It’s a shame he hasn’t been caught and brought to justice,” Selena was saying and Ilior was concurring.
Sebastian sneered. Sanctimonious bitch. I thought her beautiful? I’m drunk, is all.
“I wonder where he is right now,” piped Niven.
Sweet, innocent little Niven who would piss his britches should he learn where, exactly, Sebastian Vaas was right now.
The assassin hauled himself to his feet, and cursed as the floor spun in a lazy circle. He muttered something about stretching his legs and wended his way between the tables, intending to go to his room in the inn and sleep it off. He glanced at the bard who was now tooting a flute like a court fool. Sebastian had a bleary, maniacal fantasy of pulling out his flintlock and blowing the bard’s brains all over the wall behind him.
The room swayed and canted like a ship tossed on a squall. Sebastian steadied himself at the bar where Hilka polished a glass and stared him up and down.
“Having a little too much fun, are we?” she drawled. “I didn’t think nothing was to tear ye from our sweet Paladin o’ the god.”
“Rum,” he said. “And not from the bloody Isle of Lords. Your hardest.”
“Right away, young cap’n.”
Hilka set a glass down on the bar. Sebastian wanted to quaff the whole thing but forced himself to sip it lest the room spin out from under him completely. Selena watched him. Her and Ilior.
I’ll kill them both.
His bleary imagination conjured Selena’s beautiful face smeared red, and Sebastian thought he might be sick.
“What do ye think of our singer?” Hilka leaned over the bar so that her breasts were pushed to the edge of her blouse. “He’s quite the storyteller, ain’t he?”
“Singers can go to the Deeps.”
Selena was no longer looking at him but he felt her attention, like a light, tremulous breeze blowing his way.
He turned his gaze to Hilka. Her copper hair was showing the first hints of gray but still glinted brightly. She was rounded at hips and breast, smoothed by years of cold wind, and just as blustery. Her mouth was cherry-red and slightly open as her dark eyes raked him up and down.
“My room is unsatisfactory,” he said.
“Is it now?” She ran her tongue over the edge of her lower lip. “Will you be requiring a diff’rent one, mayhap?”
“I might.”
“Well, well,” she said. “I aim to keep all me customers happy.” She trailed her finger over his hand. “Whatever it may take.”
“Small town,” Sebastian said, conscious he was slurring his words. “Tongues wag. Heard you had a husband…”
“Aye.” She didn’t take her hand off his. “But he’s out with our boys. They’re learnin’ the trade. They come back late.” She leaned closer, her breasts pushing against the bar. “I get so lonely waitin’ for them.”
By the hearth, Selena was shivering again. She sat hunched as close as she could get. Ilior did the same. Like a worn-out married couple, warming their old bones by the fire.
“And what happens if I take this other room?” he asked.
Hilka bent close. Her breath was hot in his ear. “I fuck ye silly is what, me young cap’n.”
Sebastian tossed back the rum. “I’ll take it.”