Awakened
Ilior retired to his room under Selena’s orders. He didn’t seem well, and not even the news that she’d be taking on a new captain and crew on Huerta did much to bolster his spirits.
“Go,” she told him. “Rest. I promise you, my training with Accora is over. I’m in no danger.” She forced a smile. Not until Bacchus. She expected him to have more questions but he only nodded and trudged to his room.
As she watched him go a tiny sliver of dread wedged itself in her heart. Something’s not right. She’d never known her strong friend to look so weathered, not even when suffering the cold of the Ice Isles. He’s tired. It’s been a long strange voyage.
The thought did little to mollify her worry, and she still had yet to tell Julian that his commission was over. Her heart ached in a way that was impossible to ignore any longer.
But instead of tracking Julian down, she distracted herself by helping the Yuk’ri clean the shattered greenhouse. Accora retired to her own chambers, but Ori was there. Selena couldn’t help but shiver as she watched the Haru sweep up the pile of dead insects.
“Accora must be distraught at the destruction of her collection,” Selena said, for the sake of conversation.
Ori turned her sightless gaze on her. “Once, she might have been. But you’re here now and her most fervent wish is almost come to fruition. All else—and all others—no longer matter.”
Selena righted a bench and sat down on it. “What will you do after this is all over? When she is gone?”
“It has not been discussed.”
“Will you return to the Haru cloister?”
“No,” Ori said. “I’ve walked that path already and will not retrace my steps. There is nothing for me there.”
“What of your home isles?”
“My home.” Ori said the word as if tasting something long forgotten but familiar. “The Ho Sun Empire was my home. Isle Sun-Ka. But once one chooses the Haru, there is no going back. I doubt very much my family would welcome me anyway.”
“Why not?” Selena asked, glancing quickly at her empty eye sockets.
Ori sat beside Selena on the bench. “Shaizan is the god of the Ho Sun Empire. The moon god is honored among the sailors and fishermen, but it is not held so high as Shaizan, the God of the Seeing Eye. When my magic revealed itself as healing rather than reading the stones or far-dreaming, my future was forever altered.”
“Were you shunned for Hearing the god?” Selena asked.
“No, but there was no place for me on Sun-Ka. Healers were welcome and wanted, but my devotion was more fervent. I couldn’t imagine a life in which I was not among those who shared the same magic. I wanted to learn everything, to devote myself completely to the Shining face. When a Haru missionary barge arrived, I was certain the god had Heard me and wanted me in its service as badly as I wanted to serve. I stepped aboard their barge almost before they had dropped anchor.” She smiled wistfully. “I was ten years old.”
“Did you know the price of that devotion?” Selena asked in a low voice.
“Oh yes. Every Haru woman on the barge but for one had given her eyes. And the order is strict but not merciless. I would train for many years until I fully understood what the ceremony would entail, and I was always free to leave should I decide it was too much to give.”
“I know little about the Haru. I had thought it old tradition that was mostly died out.”
“That is true. There are only a handful of cloisters all over Lunos, and all of them small. Mine had twenty nuns and that was considered plentiful.”
“I’m relieved to hear they did not force you to go through with the ceremony.”
Ori wore a strange expression; difficult to read without her eyes. “Sometimes the most efficient prison is one in which the door is left open.”
Selena frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Because I was free to leave whenever I chose, I felt powerful for staying. I felt special. We all did. The pride among us was evident everywhere: satisfied smiles and knowing looks shared among us when we embarked on healing missions to other islands. The Haru who wore the veils were revered among the villagers. Stared at with awe and even fear. Those of us who hadn’t yet undertaken the Devotion were jealous.” She shook her head. “Jealous. Can you imagine? I went on countless missions in the fifteen years before my Devotion. So many islands. So many chances to walk away.”
Selena shifted on her seat and Ori seemed to sense her discomfort.
“I have learned to live without my sight,” Ori said. “My other senses are heightened to degrees I never thought possible. And that is why the Haru undertake the Devotion. But after I carved out my eyes, another sense was awakened. One that neither I, nor the Haru, anticipated.”
“What was that?” Selena asked, her thoughts conjuring unpleasant images of just how one went about ‘carving out’ one’s own eyes.
“A sense of truth,” Ori said. “After the Devotion, I was alone with my thoughts. Among the Haru, this time is called the Silence, in which one rests, recovers, and listens deeply to the god. But I heard nothing. My healing magic was no greater than it had been. No secrets had been revealed. The god did not speak to me in the private, intimate way I had expected it to. I was just alone in the dark. And the dark breeds unpleasant things.”
Selena couldn’t help but think of the silence she’d felt for the last ten years. Unanswered pleas, unrequited devotion. When she’d finally learned from Skye what the god wanted to close her wound, there was joy, but also fear. And doubt.
“You have been influenced by Accora,” Selena said aloud. “It’s clouded your thinking and it’s tainting me as well.”
“My anger was aroused in the dark after my Devotion,” Ori said. “Long before I met Accora.”
“Maybe so, but coming to her instead of to the Moon Temple or another Aluren, only added fuel to your fire. A wise adherent might have been able to help you better cope.”
Ori shook her head. “I told you, the truth was awakened in me, and that truth is what fueled the fire. I sought to kill Accora, not only to further appease a god that seemed to demand so much, but to assuage that anger. Killing is the precise opposite of healing, but I had done everything else. There was nothing, in my mind’s eye, left to do…except kill or die.”
Selena looked away, remembering the dream of the pier that came to her often at night. In the dark.
Find the light or die.
She cleared her throat. “How did you come to serve the woman you sought to kill?”
The Haru lifted her linen shift to reveal a hideous scar along her leg. Selena grimaced at the gash of creased white skin, a deep furrow carved along the length of her thigh.
“It must look a fright,” Ori said, “but I can walk without deficit.”
“She healed you?”
“No, she is Bazira still, in many ways. She cannot heal.” Ori ran her fingers over the rough-textured skin. “I healed myself.” A strange smile touched her lips, one that was difficult to read without a reflection in her eyes. “Before there was you, there was me. I was to be her champion.”
Selena’s eyes widened. “You were going to kill Bacchus for her?”
“Yes,” the Haru said. “But that came long after. First, I hunted Accora. I was trekking through the jungle, seeking her home, and startled a wild boar. It charged and gouged me. The Yuk’ri had been following me since my arrival—I was not nearly as stealthy as I imagined myself to be. They killed the boar but could do nothing for my wound. They brought me to Accora. I had hardly a drop of blood in me left and my ampulla had been lost somewhere in the jungle. But she showed me what to do. She taught me I need not beg for what was already mine.”
Selena’s hand reached absently for the place where her own ampulla had been and she snatched it away. “Go on,” she said. “Tell me the rest.”
Ori smoothed down her shift. “I could not be Accora’s champion. I healed myself but it nearly killed me. Subsequent lessons found me…wanting. I’m not as strong as you are. I have no swordcraft to speak of, and I have no sight. But I could still see, in my mind, the horrors of the darkpool water that she fed me during my failed training. I could not withstand it.”
She tilted her head, as if she were looking up at Selena.
“But while I failed there, I succeeded elsewhere, in ways not even Accora knows. I am blind to the outside world, but I can see myself. At long last. I don’t know where I will go when Accora is dead, but I will not be lost.”
Selena lowered her gaze. “Healing has brought me no relief. Killing the Bazira is all I have left to do.”
Ori rested her hand on Selena’s; it felt light as a bird.
“You are as I was when I first arrived. Blind. I only fear that when your eyes are opened you will not like what you see.”
The day passed slowly. When night fell, it cloaked the island in thick darkness that was full of chirping, buzzing sound. The air was heavy with water, and it seemed hard for Selena to catch her breath as she finally turned her steps toward Julian’s chamber in the keep.
The crew of the Black Storm had stationed themselves outside Julian’s door, taking cutlasses to hand when they heard footfalls approach. Since the greenhouse, a rift had opened between they and the natives. Tension hung as thickly in the air as the humidity, and there would be no more rum and feasting. For Selena, they put their weapons away, and parted to let her reach Julian’s door.
“He’s expecting me?” she asked, scanning their faces to see if she could read which one of them could speak. They looked the same as always, but for Grunt. The old sea dog nodded in answer to her question, his eyes fearful under bushy white brows.
Is it you? she wondered.
Her gaze went to Cur, to Cat, to Spit, to sweet Whistle with his open, guileless adoration of her. Does it matter? I’ll miss them all.
“There will be no retribution for Svoz’s attack,” she assured them. She started to say more but thought it best that Julian hear it first. “Go eat. I promise you, no harm will come to you from Accora or the natives.”
They shook their heads, collectively, all of them rooted to their post. To protect Julian. Cat narrowed her dark blue eyes at Selena and made a sign with her gloved hands.
We sail?
“Tomorrow. First light.”
Cat glanced at the closed door meaningfully and made another sign against her chest so that the others could not see.
Danger.
She shook her head of flame-orange hair, her eyes staring hard into Selena’s, as if willing them to communicate what her mouth could not.
Selena turned away. He saved her life too. Is there no one who sees what I see? Once they reached Isle Huerta, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
She rapped on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again and waited. Nothing.
“Is he not there?” she asked the crew with mounting irritation. She didn’t wait for an answer but turned the door handle and pushed. It opened to reveal his spare chambers: a bed, a chair, a table with a lantern, unlit. The room was empty. Black. Silent.
She left the empty chamber, slamming the door behind her.
“Tell Captain Tergus I wish to see him when he returns.”
Their faces revealed surprise and alarm, but she turned her back and hurried to her own room, three doors down the passage.
Her own chambers were cold and dark. It was nearly identical to Julian’s in its spare furnishings, but she had a balcony that overlooked the jungle to the north. Selena had intended to go straight to bed, to escape her turbulent thoughts in sleep. But the door that led to the small balcony was ajar. She slipped her sword from its scabbard and crept across the rushes. She pushed the door open slowly and stepped onto the balcony. It was shrouded in darkness. Above, the night sky that was strewn with stars. Below, the jungle looked like a broiling mass of dark green clouds. The ground was lost to shadow. She thought she sensed something there, behind her, or lost in the shadows of the balcony. She turned…and a knock came at her door.
She jumped and laid a hand over her pounding hear. He’s come already? The knock came again, and it was soft. Hesitant. She opened the door to find Niven standing there.
“Forgive me, Paladin,” he said, “but I must speak with you. Please.”
“Of course,” Selena said, both relieved and disappointed it wasn’t Julian she ushered into her chambers.
Niven paced the room, his hands turning over one another. “Thank you for seeing me. I have been so…unsettled since yesterday. Since your battle with the native man.” He looked at her, his blue eyes bright with fear. “You know why, I think.”
“Please, sit,” Selena told him and indicated a chair near the room’s lone table. She had gathered the broken shards of her ampulla and they now lay spread over it.
He obeyed, eyeing the ceramic pieces as with wide eyes. “What happened, Paladin?” he asked as Selena pulled a second chair beside him. “What does this mean? Does the Temple know? The High Reverent…?”
“Of course they know,” Selena said. “They must. Over centuries, some adherent or Paladin must have discovered what Accora knew. Impossible to think otherwise.”
Niven’s hand went to his own ampulla strapped securely to his belt. “But we are taught…that is, we carry the seawater…”
“There is a reason for the deception,” Selena said, “though I can’t fathom what it could be.”
“Deception?” Niven seemed as fragile as the ampulla, as if he would shatter at the lightest touch. Her own anger and fear were at the forefront of her thoughts, but right now he needed comforting. Healing.
“Do you remember when you first Heard the god?” she asked gently. “For me, I was eight years old, sitting in my mother’s garden. The flowers were dying from neglect because my mother was…not well. I wanted badly to heal these wilting flowers, just as I dreamt of healing the sick and injured as a Paladin for the Shining face. It had been my life’s purpose for as long as I could remember. I pricked my finger on a thorn and as the blood welled, I fervently asked that the god Hear me and it did. The orange glow came and the little cut vanished.”
“That was the Shining face making it known that it Heard you. The first time is like that for all of us,” Niven said. He heaved a sigh and his shoulders came down from the vicinity of his ears as the tension eased slightly.
“Yes. And that is what happened yesterday, Niven,” Selena said. “Nothing more, nothing less. The god Heard me and granted me tremendous power without seawater nor finding the moon in the sky to channel the magic. The only mystery is why that happened, not that it happened.”
She watched him closely, wondering if he would hear the doubt behind her words. But a brilliant smile brightened his face like the sun breaking through a terrible storm.
“You are so wise, Paladin Koren. The god is so…vibrant in you.” He took her hand in both of his. “I know your suffering is nearly at an end. I can feel it.” He rose from the chair. “Thank you, Paladin, and good night. Hear and be Heard.”
“Hear and be Heard, Niven,” Selena said, holding her smile until the door was safely closed and she was alone. Then it slipped off her face like a paper mask, and she turned to the broken ampulla. She gathered the pieces in a small burlap satchel and stowed them in her small trunk with her other belongings, and returned to the balcony where she had been when Niven interrupted her.
The jungle teemed below, and above the moon was full and bright. In years past, even with the wound bored into her chest, the sight had always given her a measure of peace. Now, she felt as though she were tossed on a turbulent sea and the small boat that carried her was breaking apart like ceramic shards…
Movement came from behind, and Selena whirled, sword at the ready. She peered into the dark.
“Who’s there?”
He emerged from the slant of darkness and approached, slowly. He wore his usual long black coat and his scimitars hung from his waist. They glinted dully in the starlight.
“Julian,” she sighed and sheathed her sword. “What are you doing here?”
“That old witch has Svoz,” he said. His voice sounded strangely thick. “I want him back. She can’t take what doesn’t belong to her.”
“You sent Svoz to kill her,” Selena said. “Didn’t you?”
“Aye, and what a coward I’ve become. You,” he said. “You’ve made a coward out of me.”
“What do you mean? Are you all right?” she asked, stepping toward him. He took an answering step back into the shadows. “It’s so dark,” she said. “I can barely see you.”
He said nothing, but seemed to be waiting for her to speak. Waiting for something; his body radiated tension like a sun. When it was clear he wasn’t going to answer her, Selena mustered the will to say what she had to say.
“I have ended the lessons with Accora but I still need her to bring me to Bacchus. She won’t tell me where he hides until we’re under sail. To protect herself. She has nothing to fear from me—yet—but it seems she does from you.”
Julian crossed his arms tightly across his chest as Selena often did when she was trying to keep herself from shivering. “And?”
“We will sail to Isle Huerta,” Selena said. “There, Accora will return Svoz to you, I will pay you what was promised…and then I will take another ship.”
He stared at her for a moment, his gray-green eyes glinting coldly.
“It’s better this way,” Selena said. “You and the crew. You’ll be safe. It’s…better.”
“Better.” Julian barked a harsh laugh and then released her from his stare to brace himself on the railing. His fingers clutched it so tightly; she could see the whites of his knuckles even in the dimness.
She stepped closer to him, her heart thudding behind the icy chasm of her wound.
“It is Accora’s edict that I end your commission, not mine. I’ll miss the Storm. And the crew. And you, Julian. I’ll miss you. I don’t know what happened or how…” She swallowed with difficulty. “I don’t want things to end badly between us.”
He made a small, strangled sound. “Gods, Selena…”
Pain twisted his features as Julian suddenly withdrew a dagger from some catch on his wrist. The blade glinted in the starlight, wicked and cold. Her gaze flickered to it and back to his eyes, but before she could speak, he knelt swiftly at her feet. He laid down the dagger, then his flintlock beside it. He unfastened his sword belt and laid his scimitars beside the rest.
“I pledge my blood and steel to your cause,” he said, his head bowed. “I will sail you to Bacchus and I will help you kill him, or die in the attempt.”
A life oath. Selena shook her head, stunned. “You don’t owe me this.” She thought of their argument in his cabin after she’d fallen in the water. “You told me we were settled.”
“I was a bloody fool.” He looked up at her. “About everything.”
“Julian, I…I don’t know what to say.”
He got to his feet and turned away, carving his hand through his hair. “You can tell me what happens to me when you sail away on the deck of another man’s ship.”
The words sent a shiver down Selena’s spine, only this time it was a pleasurable sensation, and she found she had no words.
“It’s too bloody dark out there,” Julian muttered, facing the shadows of the jungle, his back to her. “So bloody dark.” He turned and walked passed her, stepping over his weapons. “I should go.”
Selena followed him inside. “Julian, stop.”
“Selena—”
“Less than a week ago, I trekked into the jungle while you stayed behind,” she said. “Now you pledge your life to me? I don’t understand. What changed?”
“Not a damn thing,” he said. “Not one bloody godsdamn thing. I could have laid my swords at your feet the moment I met you. I should have. Instead I lied to myself, every day. Every hour.”
Selena felt a warm tingling in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t look at me like that. Please,” he said. “I’m not…Let me help you. That’s all I ask. Say yes, and then I’ll go.”
“I don’t want you to go.” Selena stepped closer to him, her heart pounding so loud she was certain he could hear it.
“Just say yes,” he begged, looking as he had when the merkind’s maelstrom was breaking his ship apart. “Helping you…it’s the only thing I can do. The only thing worth doing.”
He was so tall; she tilted her chin up and leaned in. She could smell the sea on his black leather longcoat. “Julian…”
“Let me,” he whispered, his lips brushing against hers with every word. “Say yes. Please.”
“Yes.” She parted her mouth and he kissed her hard. She felt it in the pit of her stomach and clung to him lest she melt out of his arms. “Yes,” she whispered, when he buried his face in her neck, kissing her ear, her chin, her throat. “Yes. Gods, yes.”
She said it again and again, until she had forgotten why. She said yes to him, to the feel of his arms around her, to the salt of his skin, the sound of his breath rasping in his nose as kissed her. It had been ten years. A decade. She couldn’t fathom it. The last time she’d known the touch of a man, she’d been eighteen years old, newly ordained and about to be shipped off to war. They all were being sent, the young Paladins in the Temple. The last of the Paladins, each wanting to experience one of life’s pleasures before their own lives were corrupted by war or stripped away entirely. She and Isaak—he also barely eighteen years old—had taken their months’ long flirtation from the training grounds to his bed, to fumble awkwardly but sweetly until the dawn came and the bells tolled that it was time to set off.
Now she had Julian and he was no untried boy. She pushed his black coat off his shoulders and then tore off her Aluren overtunic and sword belt. The sword clanged to the ground and the tunic fell away, crumpled and forgotten. They embraced again, crushing their lips together, and in the confusion of aching need, they simply fell to their knees.
He pulled her onto his lap so that she straddled him, his mouth moving over hers, his hands reaching around to grasp her thighs, to pull her closer. She ground her hips against his and lifted his shirt over his head. She reveled at the feel of him, his muscles hard beneath smooth skin. He was scarred here and there, but free of inky black tattoos but for one on his shoulder. Mina in small, flowing script. His sister, she thought and then his hand found her breast, his fingertips brushing the wound, jarring her. She took his hand away from the cold draft.
“It must…repulse you,” she breathed.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t. It won’t.”
He’s brave, she thought. That is why he is unafraid. Accora was wrong. Wrong about everything.
“It must stay on,” she said of her linen undershirt, “to protect you.”
He nodded and kissed her again, kissed her as though he were drinking her in. They fell back onto the rushes and the weight of his body on hers was a kind of ecstasy all its own. Their need grew frantic and he tore at the catches on his belt, and pushed his trousers down just enough. He was hard and hot, and a fresh swell of desire crashed over Selena at the thought of what was coming next.
“The bed?” he asked, his voice raw with want.
“No,” Selena breathed. “Here. Don’t stop.”
He tugged her underclothes off her hips and then held her face in his hands, meeting her gaze with his own unwavering green-eyed beauty. “Selena…”
She closed her eyes and bit the slope of muscle between his shoulder and neck to keep from crying out. The perfect heaviness of him, over her and inside her; it was nearly too much. She clutched his back, her nails digging into his skin as he groaned into the tangled mess of her hair and began to move.
Her ecstasy came swift and hard, rocking her until she was delirious. He shuddered shortly after, kissing her silent when she whispered his name, and then lying still, breathing heavily, breathing in time with her.
And Selena swore that while she’d shared the powerful vitality of Julian’s body, she had been warm.