The sea devil's eye

VII

10 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet

"You're keeping to yourself a lot these days."

Jherek looked down from his position in the rigging and spotted Sabyna. "Good evening, lady," he said, and immediately felt uncomfortable.

There had been much to do in the four days since they'd taken their leave of the Dragonisle. Jherek had taken care to stay involved in shipboard duties that the pretty ship's mage hadn't been assigned to oversee.

"I've gotten the impression you don't care much for present company," Sabyna said as she hauled herself up in the rigging and looked out over the curved horizon of the sea.

They were well away from land now, sailing by the mystic astrolabe. The canvas cracked and snapped as it held the wind.

"Not true," replied Jherek. He marked his place in the romance Glawinn had loaned him.

"I thought maybe I was the cause."

"Of course not," Jherek assured her. "Why would you think such a thing?"

"Because the last time we spoke I was so… forward."

"You merely said what was on your mind."

"Is that what you think?" she asked softly.

Despite the quietness of her words, barely heard over the crash of the waves below and the snap of canvas sails around them, Jherek suddenly felt as though he'd stepped into the jaws of a steel trap.

"Lady, I don't know what to think," he admitted. "These are very confusing times."

"For all of us." She held his gaze with her eyes and said, "When things get confusing, people who are together should be most truthful with each other."

"Aye."

Jherek's temples pounded. He hoped she wouldn't steer their conversation in a direction that would force him to lie.

"Your name isn't Malorrie."

"No. Malorrie is the name of a good friend and teacher."

"Your name is Jherek. I know you feel that you have reasons to conceal your identity. I promised you I'd never push you about it." Her eyes searched his and he saw the pain there. "But times have changed. I can no longer bide my own counsel. There are things I must know."

Jherek's stomach protested, wanting to purge its contents. Even though the wind raced over him to fill the sails, he felt like he'd come to dead calm inside, the last place a sailor wanted to find himself in an uncharted sea.

"Are you a wanted man, Jherek?"

"Aye."

Sabyna didn't bat an eye. She'd already been mostly certain of that, the young sailor knew.

"Is it for something you have done?"

"I've never done anything in my life to harm another soul out of greed or anger."

"I believe you," she said.

Relief flooded through Jherek.

"So your guilt, the price on your head, came from association with others?"

"Aye."

"So how did you come to be with these people that earned you the price on your head?"

"Through no fault of my own, lady," Jherek replied honestly. "It was ill luck."

"When did you leave them?"

"I was twelve," Jherek whispered.

"By the Lady's mercy," Sabyna said in a hushed voice, "you were only a boy."

Jherek remained silent, hoping she had probed enough. Every question she asked-skirting so closely to the truth he felt he needed to keep hidden-felt like a healer lancing an infected wound. Only in this there was no release from pressure and misery, only the promise of even more, sharper pain to come.

"What did they do?" Sabyna asked.

"Lady, please, I can't talk of it."

"Why? Jherek, don't you see that there doesn't have to be anything unsaid between us?"

Her question caught him by surprise. He shook his head, unable to voice what she wanted to hear.

"Lady, I would never have anything unsaid between us."

"But there is something?"

He couldn't answer.

"I told you before, when we first met on Breezerunner, that I could be very forward," Sabyna said. "Most men feel uncomfortable around a woman who knows her own mind. Sailors especially. They're not used to it."

"Aye, but that is not true of me. Sometimes," Jherek said quietly to give his words weight, "no matter how hard you struggle for something, it's not meant to be yours."

"Is that a threat?" Sabyna's voice hardened, but it was only a brittle shell over uncertainty.

The young sailor laughed when he wanted to cry. "No, lady. May Umberlee take me into her deep, dark embrace this very moment if ever there was a time I would intentionally hurt you."

"Back in the diviner's cave, she asked you what you believed in. You told her that you believed in love." Sabyna gazed deep into his eyes. "Did you mean that?"

Jherek hesitated, but in the end he knew she would know if he lied. "Aye," he said, "I believe in love. Perhaps, lady, it's the last thing I do believe in."

"So many things, evil as well as good, have been done in the name of love."

"There is no evil when the love is true," Jherek stated.

"How much do you believe that, Jherek?"

He shook his head. "Lady, with all that I am."

"Then how can you be so far from me? Surely you must know how I feel."

The question hammered Jherek like a fisherman's bully.

Tears trickled down Sabyna's face. "Never have I met a man," she said hoarsely, "that I've wanted as much as I want you. From the moment I saw you hanging onto Breezerunner's side scraping barnacles, to the time we sit here together. Yet you don't acknowledge it."

Helplessly, Jherek watched her cry, not knowing what to do or what to say except, "I didn't know."

Her eyes remained steady on him and dark sadness clouded them, took away the merriment he always saw there.

"I know," she said finally, "and I think it's that bit of naivete that endears you to me even more. I look at you, Jherek, and I see a kind of man I've never known before. The puzzle of it all is that I don't know you."

"You know what you need to know, lady," Jherek told her.

"Do I?"

Jherek forced himself to speak, choosing his words carefully. "The other things you don't know, they are of no consequence."

"Then how is it we are apart? Unless I am wrong in your feelings about me."

Jherek tried to speak but couldn't. He dropped his gaze from hers, looking down into the deep waters below. How could his life be so twisted and so painful? What could he have ever done to deserve this?

"Tell me I'm wrong, Jherek," Sabyna said in a voice ragged with emotion. "Tell me I'm a fool."

"I would never call you a fool, lady," he told her.

"Tell me again how you believe in love, Jherek. Gods above, when I heard that timbre in your voice in the diviner's cave, I felt more confused than ever. The anger I'd been harboring toward you left me, and with it all of my defenses against these feelings. Tell me."

He raised his eyes to meet hers, seated across from her in the rigging. "As you wish, lady."

She gazed at him expectantly.

"I believe in love," Jherek said, "but I don't believe in myself. If I've learned anything at all in my life, it's that a belief in himself is what makes a man. I haven't yet become one."

Sabyna shook her head. More tears cascaded down her face. "Mystra's wisdom, I wish I knew some way to let you see yourself as I see you, and as others see you."

"It wouldn't matter, lady," Jherek said gently. "It's how I see myself."

"Why?"

"Because I know the true me that no one sees," Jherek stated. "Even now, you're in danger here on these seas because of a mistake I made. That weakness of pride I felt in accepting Lathander's disk at the Rose Portal has brought us all here."

"And what if that was no mistake?" Sabyna asked. "What if that disk is truly supposed to be here?"

"It's in evil's hands, lady There's no way to make that right."

"You are so stubborn, Jherek," the ship's mage said in a harsh voice. "I would change that if I could."

"I know of no other way to be," Jherek told her.

"I know, and changing you would be so dangerous. Everything in you builds on everything else. Were one small part removed, I think the whole would somehow be changed as well. You are one of the most complete men I have ever known." Sadness carved deep lines into her face, draining her of the vitality he loved about her. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pressed you like this, but I couldn't go any further without letting you know how I felt. Forgive me."

"Lady, there is nothing to forgive."

"There is. I should have handled my own emotions better. I am a ship's mage, trained to handle battle, dying men, and the ravages of an uncaring sea and a fickle wind. I am no young girl to have her head turned so prettily. I have a heart, though, Jherek, and I've learned to listen to it. Selune forgive my weakness."

Sabyna stood in the rigging and turned to go.

"Lady." Jherek stood too, catching her hand in his. It felt so slim and warm, so right in his. "It is not you."

Tears sparkled like diamonds on her wind-burned cheeks. "I know. I only wish I could be brave enough and strong enough for both of us. I wish I could help you trust me."

Without warning she leaned in, too quickly for Jherek to move away. Her lips met his, and he felt the brand of her flesh, tasted the sweetness of her tears. His pulse roared, taking the strength from his knees. In all his life Jherek had never known such a feeling, so strong and so true. For the moment, all his fears and self doubts were nothing. He felt whole.

She pulled back, breathing rapidly. The wind swept her tears away, sipping them in quick gusts.

"I do trust you, lady," Jherek said in a thick voice. He still held her hand, pulling it to him and placing it against his chest. The heat of her flesh almost seared him. "I swear to you, if it came to it, I would give my life to save yours, and you would never have to ask."

"I don't doubt you," she replied. She clenched her hand against his chest, knotting up his shirt and pulling him toward her with surprising strength. "You would give me your life, but can you give me your heart?"