Sons of the Oak

A couple of weeks out from the Courts of Tide, Fallion celebrated his tenth birthday. On that morning, the children spotted a giant tortoise, nearly fifteen feet long, swimming just beneath the waves, its shell a deep forest green, and thus Fallion knew that they were in warmer waters.

Captain Stalker was walking the deck and said, “Down in Cyrma, I saw a ’ouse made out of one of those shells. Big ol’ mother tortoise crawled up on the sand to lay ’er eggs, and some villagers cut ’er throat, cooked up most of ’er insides, and used the shell to make a nice ’ut. She was bigger than that one out in the water, of course.”

“Do you think the water is warm enough for sea serpents?” Jaz asked eagerly.

“Close,” the captain said. “Serpents all ’ead south this time of year. We should come up on ’em soon, if the weather ’olds…” He gave a worried look at the sky. “If the weather ’olds…”

It was late morning, and a thin haze had been building across the heavens all night. Dawn had come red.

The black ship was spotted that afternoon, and the captain came above decks and nursed every stray breath of air into the sails.

A squall rose that evening, driving the ship inland. They’d been sailing well out to sea in order to avoid Inkarran warships, but now they were driven almost to the beach, even when the sails were dropped and the prow turned into the wind.

The captain was forced to drop anchor in the sand, and the Leviathan nearly ran aground.

They hugged the shore all night, and set sail again before dawn, the captain nervously keeping watch for both the Inkarrans and for the ship with the black sails.

For the next few days, Fallion kept busy with his studies-weapons practice by morning, the work of running a smuggler’s ship by day, and his magic by night.

The death of Streben was the topic of conversation for much the first week, but soon it faded from memory, just as the death of Fallion’s mother and father began to fade.

Fallion took Humfrey’s little spear, the polished shaft of a knitting needle with some mallard feathers and horse hair tied to it, and put it in a box under his bed, where he kept the promise locket that showed the image of his mother when she was young and beautiful, and where he kept a gold button like the one on the coat that his father had worn.

That box had become a shrine, a special place for him. Sometimes memories came unbidden to Fallion, like the morning that the cook fixed muffins with dried gooseberries in them, and as Fallion ate, he recalled how much his mother had loved the tart taste of gooseberries, and he’d feel a stab of pain at the memory, deep and bitter.

But he was learning to keep his memories in that box, to take them out only when he wanted.

So the days wore on, blurring into one another the way that the haze blurred with the waterline on warm days, so that one could not see where the haze ended and the sky began.

In three weeks, Rhianna healed enough so that she could join Fallion in weapons practice, and Fallion suddenly found that he had a peer. Until then, he’d always imagined that Talon was the best child-fighter that he’d ever seen. Talon was quick and tenacious. But Rhianna was a little taller than he, and heavier, and she showed a grace, a level of skill, a speed, and a ferocity that Talon didn’t possess.

On the morning of their first practice, Borenson watched the two of them spar for an hour, Rhianna weaving back and forth, her movements mesmerizing, the little finger of her left hand always drawing runes in the air.

Fallion had to wonder at that. Were her spells meant to slow his wits or to make him stumble? Or was she just trying to enhance her own abilities?

Then she’d strike with a swiftness and a fierceness that were jolting, demonstrating thrusts and parries in combinations that Fallion had never seen before.

Until at last, Borenson demanded, “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“From my uncle. He taught me when I was small.”

“His name, damn it?” Borenson demanded. “What was his name?”

“Ael,” Rhianna said. It was a lie of course, but only half a lie. Instantly Fallion knew that she spoke of Ael from the netherworld, the Bright One who had given her mother the pin. That opened a whole world of new questions for Fallion. Had she been trained by a bright One? Where had she met him?

But Borenson just searched his own memory, trying to think of a fighter by that name, and came up blank.

Later, Fallion pressed Rhianna, asking her about Ael.

Rhianna’s mother had sworn her to secrecy, but Rhianna looked into Fallion’s dark eyes and thought, I would do anything for you.

So, haltingly, she broke her silence. “He came here, from the netherworld,” she admitted at last. “My mother invited him in a Sending. They can only come if they’re invited, you know, and even then, they can’t stay forever. There are laws, you know, laws there in the netherworld the same as there are here.”

There, I’ve told him, Rhianna thought. But I haven’t given Ael’s real name.

“But what was he like?” Fallion said.

Rhianna thought for a long minute, and gave an answer that surprised even herself. “He was… like you.”

“In what way?”

“He was kind,” she said. “And handsome, but not so handsome that you’d think your heart would leap out of your chest when you saw him. He looked like a normal person.”

“But he was a Bright One!” Fallion said. In his imagination, men from the netherworld were shining creatures, as if some greater glory sought to escape them.

“No,” Rhianna said. “He didn’t look special.” They were hiding between a pair of barrels on the main deck, crouched with their backs to the captain’s cabin. It seemed to Rhianna that you could never really be alone on a ship, and just then, a pair of sandaled feet padded past, some sailor. She waited until he was gone. “You know how everyone says that the world changed before we were born?” Rhianna offered. “They say the grass is greener, and us children are stronger than they were, smarter, more like bright Ones than children in times past?”

“Yes,” Fallion said.

“Well, it’s true,” Rhianna offered. “At least I think it’s true. You look like a Bright One.”

“If I look like one, then you do, too. And how do you or I look different from anyone else?”

“Other people, old people, are divided in halves,” Rhianna said. “We’re not.”

Fallion gave her a confused look and she said, “My mother showed me. She held a mirror to her face, and showed me the right half of her face, doubling it. Then she moved it, and showed me the left half of her face. The left half of her face looked like a different person, sad and worn out. But the right half seemed younger, prettier, and still had hope.

“I had never noticed it before, but now I see it all of the time. Most people are torn in half, like they’re two different people.”

“Hearthmaster Waggit showed me that trick,” Fallion said, suddenly remembering a demonstration from when he was very, very young. “Most people aren’t the same on both sides.”

“But we are,” Rhianna said. “You are. When I look at you, both halves of your face are the same, both perfect. It makes you look more… handsome than you really are. And both halves of my face are the same, and so are Jaz’s and Talon’s.”

Fallion thought a moment, then said, “But you couldn’t have been born before the change. You’re too old.”

Rhianna smiled and took off her left shoe, then showed him the scar from a forcible on her left foot-a single rune of metabolism. “I got this four years ago. I was born a few months after you.”

Fallion thought back to blade practice. No wonder she was so fast!

Hearthmaster Waggit had told Fallion that for both sides of the face to mirror the other was a rare trait. But now he realized that Rhianna was right. The Children of the Oak, the children born in the past nine years, nearly all had that trait, and when he saw someone like Borenson’s son Draken, someone whose halves didn’t mirror each other, the child somehow looked wrong.

“It isn’t just people that have it,” Rhianna said. “It’s everywhere. In the cows and the sheep in the fields, in the new grass that sprouts. In trees that have sprung up in the past few years.”

Has anyone ever noticed this before? Fallion wondered. And what changed the world, made it so common?

His father had slain a reaver in the Underworld, one that hosted a powerful locus.

What does that have to do with me? Fallion wondered. Why are children now different from children born before the war?

There was more going on than just the way that he looked, Fallion knew. It was as if some great wrongness had been mended.

Fallion couldn’t see how the pieces of the puzzle connected. He was determined to find an answer.

Each morning, Fallion and the other children made a game of climbing the rigging up the mainmasts and looking out to sea for sign of ships or whales.

Thus one morning they spotted a great serpent finning in the waves, playfully swimming in circles as it chased its tail, its coils undulating as it swam. A sixty-footer-not huge, but respectable.

During the days, Fallion went back to work for Captain Stalker, struggling to gain his trust along with the respect of the crew. Fallion learned how to navigate by the stars, and to trim the masts in a rough wind. He learned the names of every crewman.

By day, he tried to gain their respect, and in the evenings sometimes he even sought to make friends. The men would often go to their quarters at night to drink ale and play dice. Fallion played with them twice, learning games of chance, but learning far more. In their company he began to gain familiarity with the hundred islands and atolls across the Carroll Ocean, learning not just their names, but tales of their peoples. Soon he spoke enough pidgin to speak with any sea hand within a thousand miles.

Myrrima put limits on his visits, telling Fallion, “I’ll not have you learning sailors’ filthy habits.”

Still, Fallion earned some trust. He ran errands for the captain, brought messages, and the men spoke to him with respect. The other refugees were often called “cargo” to their faces, and “ballast” behind their backs. But his shipmates didn’t see Fallion as just ballast anymore, like the other refugees. He had become “crew.”

Some men would never like him, Fallion felt sure. The steersman, Endo, was one. Fallion often would hang around the forecastle, where Endo steered the ship at night. The sea ape, named Unkannunk, was his. Most of the day, the white ape could be found lying near the forecastle, sunning on the deck, its folds of belly fat hanging over its hips. Often it would leap into the water and hang on to a rope ladder by day, peering into the water in hopes of snagging a fish. Once, the huge ape even caught a small shark by the tail.

Fallion began petting the sea ape, but when Endo caught him one afternoon, the little albino man said, “Hands off. ’E don’t like you. Never will.”

One night they stopped to take on water and fresh supplies at an island called Prenossa, a place where the fresh stores included mangoes, dragon-eyes, breadfruit, and a dozen other things that Fallion had never tasted before.

That night, Stalker took a seat in the local inn, a bawdy place by any standard, where the tables were cleaner and the women were dirtier than most. His seat. His place of business twice a year when he visited the island. He bartered some of his goods with the locals, traded for fresh supplies, then leaned back to get comfortably drunk.

Fallion sat beside him, learning how the trades worked, discovering what fair prices for goods consisted of here. Metal was expensive, food cheap.

Fallion basked in the captain’s presence. Stalker treated Fallion well, and he seemed like a fair man despite his tough talk. Fallion liked him. Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like to have Stalker as his father.

Then Blythe and Endo blew in through the doors. Fallion didn’t like either of them. Both men were cold, hard. They pulled up chairs. Endo looked at Fallion and said, “Get lost, kid.”

Fallion looked to Stalker, to see if he really did need to leave, and Stalker nodded. “Give us a moment?”

Fallion went out under the starlight. A fresh breeze blew through the palm trees, and Fallion walked for a while over tropical beaches where ghost crabs and scorpions fought over scraps that washed up on the beach. After weeks at sea, it felt strange walking on land again. He kept waiting for the world to tilt.

It was just about to do so.

Inside the inn, Blythe gave Stalker some news: “We lost time in that squall. ’Eard a rumor, I did. The black ship was ’ere two days ago. It’s one of Shadoath’s.” Blythe held back the rest of the news, waiting for a reaction.

So, Stalker considered, it was one of the Pirate Lord’s ships. That couldn’t be good. But Stalker was under Shadoath’s protection. He paid thirty percent of his income for the run of the sea. “Any notion what she’s after?”

“A pair of princelings,” Blythe said, eyes glittering. “Don’t know ’ow, but they tracked ’em to us.”

Perhaps they only suspect, Stalker hoped. Could they really be sure?

“Shadoath is willing to up the reward. Five ’undred gold eagles for the boys.”

Five hundred was a good offer, considering who they were dealing with. But if she offered five hundred, then they were probably worth ten times that much to her. Shadoath was a woman of unsurpassed cruelty. She ruled the sea with an iron fist.

But now that it came down to it, the thought of selling the boys to her rankled Stalker. Maybe he’d have sold to someone else, but not to Shadoath-not after what had happened to his own children, six years past, when Shadoath’s hand had first begun to stretch across the seas.

He was away from home at the time, on a trading junket, when his children were taken. At first he thought it was kidnappers, holding them for ransom. It was a common practice among pirates.

Indeed, Stalker himself had spent two years as a hostage on a pirate ship. Looking back now, it had been a grand adventure.

But Stalker’s children were placed in greater peril than he had ever been. With the first ransom note he’d received a foot, dried in a bag of salt, to prove it.

Shadoath tortured his children until Stalker agreed to pay for protection for the rest of his life. That’s where his thirty percent cut went. But it didn’t go to ransom his children and buy their release.

No, the torturers had gone too far. His daughter had lost a foot, and her mind. His youngest son had had his neck broken and could not even crawl. Stalker was forced to pay not for the release of his youngest son and daughter, but for their merciful executions.

Otherwise, Shadoath would have continued to torture them for years without end.

That was the kind of woman he was dealing with.

Stalker was himself the grandson of a pirate, and he’d spent his early years aboard pirate ships. But he’d never seen cruelty that equaled Shadoath’s.

Stalker hated the woman.

“So what you think?” Blythe asked. “You ready to sell them boys?”

Stalker forced a smile. “I’m not sellin’ to Shadoath. Other lords will pay more. Their own folk would best Shadoath’s price ten times over.”

Blythe and Endo looked at each other.

“You’re not goin’ soft on the boy, are you?” Endo demanded. “That’s not wise-not wise at all.”

The threat behind the words was palpable. If Stalker wouldn’t sell, Endo would go behind his back.

I should kill them now, Stalker thought. I should draw my knife and gut them where they sit.

But he’d never killed a man for merely thinking about betraying him, and though his anger was thick in his throat, his hand didn’t stray to his dagger.

“Be patient, lads,” Stalker assured them. “This isn’t a game that plays out in a day or a week. We can tuck the lads away in Landesfallen, nice and safe, and bring them out anytime. The price will only rise as the weeks pass.”

“Patience may be fine for you,” Blythe said, “but it’s the sound of coins in my purse that I like.”

It had only been a few weeks since Stalker had paid them both. They hadn’t been in port long enough to spend their cash, and so he didn’t offer more.

“Hang on,” Stalker urged them in his sweetest tone. “We’ll be as rich as princes a’fore long.”

Blythe left Stalker’s table and took a seat in the inn, a thick mug of warm ale in his hands.

He wasn’t a patient man.

He wasn’t stupid, either. Blythe glanced back over to the captain’s table. Fallion had come back, was sittin’ there peerin’ up at Stalker like he was some damned hero.

Stalker liked to think that he was the smart one, but Blythe knew that you didn’t say “no” to Shadoath. And you didn’t beg her to wait, or ask for more money.

If she offers you a deal, Blythe thought, you’d best take it before she slits your throat and boils up a pudding from your blood.

Stalker is a fool.

He knew that Stalker paid Shadoath for free passage. But that’s what he got, free passage. Nothing more.

The captain was going soft on Fallion, Blythe suspected. Or maybe he just hated Shadoath too much. But he couldn’t save the boy.

Maybe there was a chance that Stalker could buy the lad, but it would cost him dear, and he didn’t have that kind of money, not anymore.

He’d paid it all to the torturers, to end his own children’s pain, paid it all to save his oldest, the one that the torturers had left unmangled. But in the end, Stalker had bought nothing. His oldest son couldn’t live with the horror of what had happened, the shrieks of pain. And after Stalker bought his son’s freedom, he’d come on his first venture across the sea, and each night he woke in the cabin, screaming. One night, somewhere north of Turtle Island, out in the Mariners, he’d thrown himself overboard.

Now Stalker was too broke to buy a pair of princes.

But Blythe had it figured. He could take the reward himself, keep it all.

That was the smart thing to do. You couldn’t stop Shadoath. You couldn’t run from her. So you might as well get a little something in your purse from the deal.

He left the inn in the moonlight, stepped in the shadows at the side of the building, and waited for a few minutes to make certain that none of Stalker’s men followed him with a dagger for his back, then headed down the street.

There was a shack that the sailors all knew, a place where a man could get a bowl of opium to smoke, sleep with a whore, or purchase just about any other vice that one could dream up.

The proprietor was a tiny woman, an Inkarran dwarf with a crooked back.

“Yes?” she asked when she answered the door, her voice trailing off as she waited for Blythe to name his desire.

“I ’ave a message for Shadoath. Tell ’er that Deever Blythe aboard the Leviathan wants his five hundred gold pieces.”

The message would take days to deliver, maybe weeks. But Shadoath would get it. It was only a matter of time.