Under One Roof
From the shadow of the keep’s north wall, Sebastian watched as the big native man yielded to Selena after a long battle that had nearly completed his last job for him. Until the end. In the end, Selena had appeared indomitable, and he’d inhaled deeply on his cigarillo to quell his accelerated pulse, watching swordcraft like he’d rarely seen it. Graceful. Exact. Perfect.
But the victory was not sweet to her; the cost was high. Something had happened, something momentous, though Sebastian was too far away to know precisely what. Her flask of seawater had shattered, and yet she called healing anyway. In that act lay her victory and a kind of defeat, he guessed. He’d had little business with Aluren since the war, but knew enough. The seawater was necessary to healing. Or had been. Somehow the old witch had shown otherwise.
Now, he watched the sword clatter out of Selena’s hand and she knelt in the dust beside the vanquished native man. She was bone-weary; it was evident in every slumped line of her body, and though the shadows of the day were growing long, he could see her face in the dying light. She stared at the broken shards of her holy relic.
She looks lost, Sebastian thought, and watched as the defeated native man carried his conqueror inside. Niven, Sebastian’s own crew, and the witch followed. The old woman wore the smile of triumph. Ilior brought up the rear and he smiled not at all.
There was feast much the same as they’d been given during their first night in the Bazira’s home. The feasting hall’s six wooden tables were arrayed with food and drink. Matted rushes rustled underfoot, and lit torches ensconced on the wall bore clouds of moths. Other winged insects buzzed in the air or scuttled across the floor, drawn from the jungle by the light.
As with the previous night, Sebastian paid little attention to the food and drink being set before him. Instead, he watched as Selena came down from her room looking better rested in body but no less troubled. Her eyes were shadowed and ponderous with thought. Her hair glowed in the torchlight in golden ribbons around her shoulders as she sat at a table with his crew. Whistle engulfed her in a gangly embrace that she returned half-heartedly. Niven sat across from her and Sebastian watched both Aluren share a thick, troubled look. Ilior was nowhere to be seen.
Accora beamed at Selena like a proud mother, and plied them all with centuries’ old rum from dusty crates brought up from the keep’s cellar. The atmosphere in the hall brightened as the Yuk’ri and his crew passed the bottles. Sebastian didn’t like it. The strange juxtaposition of half-naked islanders surrounding them in the hall of a stone-and-mortar keep irked him. His crew eating and drinking—but mostly drinking—until they lost all sense of caution irritated him. Even Grunt, who was more cautious than the rest, chugged the rum like it was water. And Cat, with her strange orange hair and her gloves that she never took off, even as she broke bread; Cat who was as wary and alert as her name implied had a bottle of rum tucked into each of those gloved hands, and took turns swigging from each. None of his crew seemed bothered that the Bazira witch watched them all become as helpless with drink as they had been under her kafira smoke.
Sebastian swore under his breath and looked up from his untouched food to see that Selena was gone. Niven remained, staring morosely at his own plate. The adherent looked up and saw Sebastian watching him.
“She was still…weary,” he said with a wan smile. “It’s been a…strange day. I think I might…Yes. Good night.”
Sebastian’s gaze followed the young man to the upper level where the doors to the bedchambers lined the hallway. Niven slipped into his room. Selena’s was beside his, a thin line of light seeping from under her door. She was still awake, likely pondering the repercussions of the witch’s lessons. Sebastian had his own thoughts rattling his brain, thoughts that had only whispered before but were now clamoring like a lighthouse bell warning an incoming ship of sharp rocks ahead.
What are you waiting for?
His answer was to take a long swig of the rum someone had set before him. The keep’s walls were too close, and beyond them he could feel the jungle pressing in on all sides, choked with life and writhing in the hot dark. It was hungry and would swallow them whole; devour them with sharp teeth and stinging bites of poison. He longed to be aboard the Storm and the open sea. But his ship was wounded. Broken spars and missing sails marring her perfection.
Both marks under one roof. Finish the job and you’ll have more than enough coin to repair the Storm and make her what she was before. Find another place, another atoll. Buy your own godsdamn island.
“Or spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for Zolin’s ice in my back,” he muttered.
He forced himself to take a bite of fruit. It was as tasteless as dust in his mouth. There was nothing left to do but to get as stinking drunk as his crew.
He pushed his plate and the rum bottle away. Instead, he drew a flask of gold whiskey from his coat pocket. Captain Tunney had given it to him on Isle Nanokar. Isle of Lords’ best, and not cheap, either. The flask was nearly full, as he never drank while under sail. The first two gulps burned, but the third was warm in his gut and, more importantly, it silenced the thoughts that tormented him.
The moths flitting around the torches made the shadows dance.
The night’s hours slipped past. He nipped steadily at the flask until his vision was blurred as though he were underwater. A fat moth blundered into his cheek. He snapped it up between two fingers and blearily peered at its struggle.
You could start over again, whispered a voice in his mind. A faint voice, hardly a whisper. With Selena. Tell her everything. If there is one person on all of Lunos who might forgive you…
A ridiculous notion. The dead—his dead, his victims—would not be so easily mollified. He’d buried them down deep but whenever he thought they were at rest, they came clawing out of their graves, blood-drenched and begging, their mouths open in silent screams.
If I tell her who I am, she will hate me. If I tell her why I’m here, she will kill me.
The moth fluttered frantically as he held it to the flame of one of the table candles. It burnt pungently and when it was a blackened, wingless little husk, he dropped it onto his food plate. Dust from its wings coated his fingers. He held them up for examination and saw Cat watching him. He wiped his fingers deliberately on his black long coat, and she looked away, disgusted.
Sebastian drank more. The hall grew quieter and torches sputtered. Natives slunk out. The more sober members of his crew staggered to their chambers. The rest slept where the rum left them.
The Haru came up behind Sebastian, asking quietly if he wouldn’t like to retire to his room. The black pits of Ori’s eye sockets seemed endless. He snapped at Ori to leave him be and watched her go. Ori. The Haru who served the witch. And the witch wanted him dead or gone. To keep Selena for herself, he was sure of it.
Selena…
As beautiful as his atoll, and just as impossible to keep. A strange ache gripped his heart and squeezed.
The flask was almost empty. His whisky-soaked thoughts swirled together in a maelstrom; one thought rising above the tumult to make itself heard.
The time has come.
The candles on the table drowned in their own wax, and Sebastian was left alone in the dark, thinking of what he must do.
The time had come.
“Svoz,” he whispered, “to me.”