A Respite From Storms Page 2

  “What did you say?” Burund asked.

  “We came from there,” said Alixa, breathy and fighting to clamp down on her nerves. “Luukessia.”

  Burund looked past her, to the light aglow in the distance. “You cannot have.”

  Jasen followed his gaze.

  A tumult of fire burned. From here, it was but a blot; but it had streaked down the mountainside, buried Terreas, and in the intervening day was surely consuming yet more of Luukessia as it poured inexorably on.

  “Nothing lives there,” said Burund. “Nothing.”

  “Well,” Jasen shook his head, just slightly, “we used to.”

  2

  “Come,” Burund said, rising.

  “Come where?” asked Alixa. She clambered to her feet with ease; but when Jasen tried to do the same, he struggled, and fell hard onto a knee. All the air blew out of his lungs as though he’d taken a punch to it. He keeled over, slapping out a palm just in time to stop from impacting face first into the deck.

  Alixa scrabbled for him. “Jasen!”

  “I’m okay,” he breathed, feeling anything but.

  She hoisted him by one wrist, hooking it around her shoulder.

  “I can do it,” he wheezed—but even saying it, he was sure he couldn’t. The well of energy once fueling him had run truly dry. Not even the faintest heat from dying coals kept him moving anymore.

  “I’ve got you,” Alixa said. “Let me help.”

  He did, maybe because he was too tired to argue the point, or maybe because if he didn’t he would remain on the deck until he died there.

  Rising was difficult, even with Alixa’s help. She was not particularly strong, much of her power residing in her fingers from long hours weaving with Aunt Sidyera. Her legs held, though, and she helped Jasen rise to full height. Almost, anyway; she was shorter, and in any case he hadn’t the strength to straighten his neck.

  When he looked up to Burund, the captain regarded the cousins through a veil of suspicion.

  Alixa cleared her throat. “What?” The faintest tremor.

  “Your comrade,” said Burund, meeting her gaze head on. “Is he sick?”

  “No,” Alixa answered. “Just tired. Our village—”

  Burund muttered something to Kuura, who nodded. He regarded the children with his own peculiar expression, perhaps not suspicion, but certainly a wariness, mixed—maybe—with pity.

  The men on deck began to murmur too.

  Burund retorted. The murmurs did not still. New speakers joined, louder, addressing the captain directly. A handful of them stood and stepped forward. Most loudly vocal, they illustrated whatever they were saying with wild gestures. Whatever Burund answered only made their gesticulation more manic.

  One thrust a finger at Scourgey, speaking hard and fast.

  Language was not a barrier now. Jasen could not know specifically what he was saying, but his tone communicated his mood well enough.

  Perhaps these ebon-skinned men had encountered scourge too.

  Perhaps they knew to fear them.

  Burund answered, nodding once. Then, to Alixa: “I will summon our doctor to assess your friend. If he is sick, he cannot remain aboard.”

  Alixa’s eyes widened. “But—”

  Then men were pushing past her. Sinewy muscle flexed as they approached Scourgey. One carried a rope—another unsheathed a sword, curving gently and polished to reflect a perfect bar of orange light from the windows into the other decks.

  “What are you—no!” Alixa shunted Jasen along, sideways, throwing the pair of them in front of Scourgey—who, at the sight of the men moving threateningly toward her, whimpered louder than ever, and thrust herself backward.

  The man with the rope barked something at Alixa.

  She held out an arm, blocking the scourge, but did not move. Her eyes blazed.

  He barked something again—an instruction.

  “What’s he saying?” Jasen asked.

  “He orders you to step aside,” Kuura answered. Then he spoke to the man holding the rope, a more thickset fellow than most on board, with a thick leather strap wound about his forearm.

  An answer came.

  “The beast is dangerous,” said Kuura to Alixa. “You should stand clear so Hamisi can deal with it.”

  “Scourgey is not dangerous! Scourgey saved us.”

  An eyebrow drifted up Burund’s forehead. “Scourgey,” he repeated.

  “Yeh named it?” asked Kuura.

  “Her, and yes, I named her.” Alixa directed a fiery stare at Hamisi and widened her arms yet farther to block any sight of the scourge. Jasen was wobbled along and teetered precariously.

  The stink of rot assailed his nose. Fear seemed to make it worse, that pervasive odor that clung to the scourge like an immoveable mist. If these people had never once encountered scourge in their life, and the sight did not put them off, Jasen could not imagine the smell was doing Scourgey any favors.

  “Scourgey saved us,” said Alixa. “I forbid you from harming her.”

  It was a ridiculous thing to say, Jasen thought, even in his fractionally composed state. A girl of Alixa’s stature could not forbid anything against such a collection of adult men, whose bodies were lean, sculpted with the muscle of constant physical exertion.

  Yet there was a pause. Kuura exchanged a look with Burund.

  Chatter on the deck. Raised voices. The collection of sailors who had approached to deal with Scourgey began to talk again, loud and fierce. Hamisi spoke over all of them. Though he stared down Alixa, he appeared to be speaking to Burund, for he interjected harshly, in short bursts, which Hamisi quickly answered with more hard-sounding language.

  “What’s happening?” Alixa asked Kuura.

  Kuura appeared uneasy. He glanced to Burund. The captain paid him no heed. And so he answered, “They are discussing what to do with it.”

  “Her,” said Alixa. “And they’re not doing anything.”

  Kuura said something in the native language of the boat-dwellers. A few voices spoke hurriedly.

  “Is it a pet?” he asked Alixa.

  “She,” she began, putting as much emphasis on the word as she possibly could, “is a friend. She saved us—plenty of times. None of them are touching her.”

  A fragmentary thought came to Jasen as he leaned there against her, the wall obscuring this beast, a hill that Alixa seemed to have chosen to die on. If Burund’s men did wish to harm Scourgey, what did that mean for him and Alixa? She would not let them … so would they be cast out to sea again, lobbed overboard?

  Then again, what had Burund said about an doctor? Something about assessing Jasen for illness. And if he were found to be diseased …

  Kuura was speaking. “… believe it is a dead thing,” he told Alixa. “They wish for it to be cast off the ship.”

  “Scourgey isn’t dead.”

  Scourgey whined dramatically, as if to illustrate.

  “Scourgey is alive, and just as deserving of remaining alive as …”

  “To keep it here is to invite death upon us,” said Kuura.

  “Well, she has been keeping us company for days, and we’re still alive! Surely you don’t believe that.”

  Kuura shrugged. “It isn’t about what I believe. It is what Burund believes.”

  Alixa turned her attention to the captain. “Please listen to me. This creature saved our lives. She is a friend.”

  Burund did not look round from addressing the men on deck. Nor did he stop to acknowledge Alixa.

  She huffed, and turned to Kuura. “I’m not lying to you.”

  Kuura tugged his lips to the side. He spoke again, to the men arranged on the deck.

  Hamisi’s nostrils flared. He gripped the rope tighter. One threatening step forward, and—

  Burund snapped again, a quick string of syllables. Whatever he said, it did not silence Hamisi, for he retorted and again resumed a back and forth with the captain. It did, however, still him; he approached no farther, even dropping b
ack a step. After maybe the fifth interjection from the captain, his hard features began to soften into a look of disbelief. At the next, he turned to Burund, attention off Alixa—or, more likely, the scourge behind her.

  “What’s going on?” Jasen asked.

  “Burund has listened,” said Kuura slowly. He appeared to still be listening to the conversation happening alongside him, head cocked slightly to one side, the way a dog lifted an ear for its master with offal from the butcher. “He is … willing to allow this … Scourgey … to be housed below decks … in one of our cages.”

  “Cages?” Alixa asked, apparently bypassing the good news entirely. “Scourgey isn’t some wild beast who can just be locked up—”

  There was an outcry on the deck then, loud enough to silence Alixa. Then it, too, was silenced as a great gust of wind blew. The sails whipped, filling and then dragging the boat across the frigid, black waters. Waves broke against its prow.

  No stars winked overhead; the scattering that Jasen had seen at the beginning of this night had vanished. Blotted out by the smoke dirtying the sky from Luukessia? Outshone by the lamps on deck?

  Another gust shook the ship. Something rattled above, and Jasen squinted up and into the darkness. Posts crossed the mast at perpendicular angles. Rope and chain hung. A coil of silver whipped, clanking wood.

  “A storm approaches,” said Kuura warily. “We should rally ourselves inside, Captain.” Why he didn’t say it in their native language, Jasen did not know. Politeness, perhaps, keeping the children in the loop.

  Burund nodded. Turning to Alixa, he said, “As you vouch for it, I will allow this creature upon my ship.”

  She loosed a breath she must have been holding. “Thank you.”

  “But you must lead it. I have compromised with my men. If it is unwilling to go, it will be killed and thrown overboard.”

  Alixa tensed. But she set her jaw, inclined her head. “She will follow.”

  “I will not have that thing wandering my ship,” Burund said. Then he spoke to his crew, loud and firm, so that none would speak over the top of him. Thirty seconds, the diatribe lasted; then he spun on his heel and returned to the confines of the ship.

  The crew began a process of disbanding. Awkwardly, some of them, and Hamisi most of all. He stared, halfway between morose and thunderstruck, at Alixa and Jasen. Rope hung limp between his fingers, apparently robbed of its own integrity too.

  Kuura said something to him. Whatever it was caused Hamisi to stalk off, the other would-be killers of Scourgey in his wake. Into the ship they went, Hamisi slamming the door.

  Kuura looked at Jasen and Alixa, momentarily awkward. Then he hooked a thumb in the overflowing material of his tunic, and bobbed on his tiptoes, up and down, midriff swaying back to front. “The captain called them a bunch of wet old women,” he said cheerily.

  Alixa bore an unreadable expression. “And what is wrong with being a woman?”

  “Ask the ones the captain offended,” said Kuura. “This way.” He waved and led them toward the door into the rear upper deck—not the way Hamisi and friends had gone, fortunately.

  Alixa didn’t move. Her mouth tightened just a fraction. “Or ask the captain himself,” she murmured to herself.

  Not all of the men upon the top deck had disbanded. A couple were presently pulling at ropes affixed to the mainsail. It blustered in another forceful gust of wind. The men braced. They stayed put, somehow. Jasen was pushed though, and he had to clutch tight around Alixa’s neck to keep himself from toppling over.

  She grimaced, tamping down a choked cough.

  “Come,” Kuura called, when the wind’s whistle had died down. He waited beside the deck’s door, hands gripped in front of him. If the blast of air had dislodged him from his place, or even disturbed more than the hairs on his head and the loose fabric of his clothing, he did not show it.

  “Let’s go then,” Alixa mumbled. Wheeling about, she extended her free hand to Scourgey—

  Who looked positively depressed. Once such a fearsome, frightening beast, she was more and more the sad, sorry dog that Jasen increasingly came to see her as. A quivering, misshapen wreck, she shuddered with great, racking spasms. Those coal-lump eyes, usually empty, tonight seemed to be filled to brimming with pure sadness. Her sporadic clumps of wiry hair were plastered down where they’d allow it. A sheen of water still clung to her, intensifying the stink of rottenness coming off of her. Jasen felt sorry for anyone downwind of Scourgey when the approaching storm sent another gust across the ocean waves—which was him and Alixa, this moment.

  Jasen leaned into the wind.

  A spray of seawater and foam erupted against the side of the ship and rained down upon them. It was cold now. Night fallen, the day’s warmth had been stripped away.

  Alixa bowed toward Scourgey, stroking the side of her face gently. “I need you to come with us, okay? Just for now.”

  Scourgey made no move. Her capacity to understand was a constant question in Jasen’s mind. Many moments on this trip, he had believed she understood what was said around her, but now she was just a terrified animal, cringing and witless.

  Alixa wrapped a hand around Scourgey’s front leg, just below the shoulder joint. She pulled.

  Scourgey didn’t move, except to whine even more loudly.

  “Please move,” Alixa said.

  She tried again.

  Scourgey wailed. She pulled backward, loosing herself from Alixa’s hold.

  “Come on!” Alixa snapped her fingers around again. She pulled—

  Scourgey quaked. Her legs shook with great force. Claws rattled on the deck, their clacks muted by the puddled water soaking into the wood.

  Someone on deck shouted something—one of the men pulling at ropes. Jasen turned back, expecting to see him calling to his shipmate; but he looked to Alixa, and Scourgey, pointed a finger.

  Kuura piped up. “If it ain’t movin’, Captain Burund said—”

  “She’ll move,” called Alixa. Then, to Jasen: “Help me.” Desperation turned her words into a vicious whisper.

  “I don’t think I—”

  “Please.”

  That same desperation had crept into her eyes too. Hers was the wild-eyed look of a cornered thing.

  Jasen could do nothing but oblige her. “Okay,” he said, reaching his own free hand for Scourgey’s limb, “I’ll try.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sorry, Scourgey,” Jasen whispered to her. “But you need to come with us.”

  They pulled. Scourgey held firm, but yowled.

  Kuura: “If it’s not tame enough—”

  “She’ll move.” Alixa, again. Hard, under her breath: “Would you just stop messing around?” She pulled and pulled—and then she let go of Jasen so she could wrap both hands about Scourgey’s leg, tugging. Scourgey was stronger. Jasen thought for a moment that she might have slid a fraction of an inch on the wet deck, then decided that movement was an illusion and that she was simply leaning forward a bit more than she had.

  Jasen gripped her, taking a deep breath.

  Then he braced, the way the men adjusting the mainsail had, and pulled …

  Only he had no strength. He couldn’t move a child, let alone the hulking brute that was a scourge. His yank was feeble, barely a contribution.

  Now both the men working the sail were shouting.

  A glance backward.

  Pointing, too.

  Kuura began to step for Jasen and Alixa again—and Scourgey, Scourgey who had saved them but who Jasen and Alixa could not seem to save in return.

  His mouth opened—

  As if sensing it, Alixa’s mounting frustration exploded—

  “Would you just MOVE?”

  And that did it. Scourgey’s frantic noise built to a last crescendo and then slipped into a softer, constant wheezed squeal. She moved, though, coming unwillingly, but coming nevertheless. After the first few steps, Jasen was able to relinquish his hold; Alixa too, except for one palm she kep
t rested on Scourgey’s ribs.

  Her head twisted relentlessly as Alixa brought her across the deck, to Kuura.

  More than a handful of sailors kept their own wary watch.

  Jasen stumbled just a half-step behind.

  Kuura had eyes on Scourgey, and Alixa. His mouth turned down at one side, and his eyebrows were crooked.

  “Well then,” he said after a moment, “follow me. Careful now.”

  He opened the door leading into the rear deck—there were terms for these, Jasen thought out of nowhere, but he couldn’t grasp them; either the memory itself had been overwritten, only the memory of having had it remaining, or his fatigue was causing him to fail at finding it.

  The entryway was initially wide. The overall space was small though, Jasen thought: like a squat loaf turned on its side, only a few steps in it ended in a wooden wall held erect by thick beams, almost the width of the masts. Two lanterns hung upon a post each. Liquid pooled in the bottom in a separate compartment to a lit wick, in the upper, wider chamber. This part was bulblike and round, and dirtied by smoke. A hole had been wiped clean in both, probably with a cloth. The cleaning was imprecise, and finger marks remained.

  On the right was a door to what Jasen supposed must be crew quarters. It was closed.

  “This way,” said Kuura, gesturing left. A staircase stood there, descending a level.

  Jasen peered at it. All dark wood, and thrown into crisscrossing shadows by the lanterns up here, another midway down the steps, and surely more in the level beneath. The steps were cramped—wide, offering enough room for two men side by side to walk, but only spacious enough for half of a foot to be placed upon them. Six steps down, where the lantern hung, was a little landing. There, the stairs twisted ninety degrees, leading toward the front of the ship.

  There was no rail of any sort here, to protect someone from going over. Jasen wondered how many times the sea had caught a man unprepared, and sent him careening over the ledge.

  “Bring your … pet,” Kuura finished. His voice lifted, angling for the answer to his half question. Then he commenced for the stairs, moving down the first two. On the third, after neither Jasen nor Alixa took a step, he looked back and said, “C’mon then?”