Pearl of Emerald, page 2
“Which one?” I asked, scratching my scaled nose.
Nathaniel grunted, “The black-headed lass—with the tails.”
“Sirra’s apprentice?” I said, watching the student Healer get smacked by one of Vendy’s powdered balls. “Or, uh, I guess her Da’torr or whatever. Sirra said her name was Lëtta.”
Nate gave a low, suspicious mumble, “Well, I be thinkin’ miss Lëtta looks mighty familiar, see…”
“Ya think ya know her?” I asked.
Aiden muttered from his other side. “Nathaniel thinks she’s his descendant.”
“Aye.” Nate ran his fingers over his black beard, one round bear-ear swiveling to the side speculatively. “See, back when I were alive, I went down the Flowering Trail across Marincia, like we be doin’ here.”
Aiden chuckled. “Yes, as a ship merchant.”
Nate glared at him sharply, and after Aiden made a zipping motion over his lips, the bear turned back to me and went on. “See, our ship had docked on Tel’net Brunn, somewhere ‘bout 200 years back. n’ this wasn’t no safe town, ye see, a man couldn’t walk those streets without his pistol. This be back when guns with powder weren’t just antiques in rich lords’ display cases. Shotri weren’t around to put ‘em outta worth yet, so they was expensive pistols and gun powder—shot like a canon blast from yer hand, real loud, n’ all ye got in the mates were these tiny lead balls called—”
“Bullets,” I finished for him. “Nate, I’ve taken history lessons.”
He shrugged. “Can’t keep up with the times, lad. Anyway, aimin’ those things back then was a right hassle. No fire to burst over the targets, no lightnin’ shootin’ over their limbs and freezin’ ‘em—but Bloods, they could kill a bloke quick if yer aim was sure.”
Aiden scoffed. “Bows were still better. You could get your arrows back from the poor sods, at least.”
“Ye feather-brained dolts never liked a good ol’ musket. Woulda put yer arrows outta commission fer good, if’n ye didn’t make those Shotri.” Nate shook his head, getting back to his story. “Anyways, I was in town and met a pretty little lass there—she was a Landish bear, see, wantin’ to see the world, now that ships were made better and safer for travelin’. She was bein’ robbed when I walked on her street, she was, so I shot the bloke and got her belongin’s back. She ended up wantin’ to join me crew, since we was… uh, merchants… an’ all.”
I snorted. “Uh, huh. Merchants.”
He scowled, but sniffed, continuing, “Well, the lass a’came me first mate in the end. When our ship went down with that bloomin’ storm, I thought she sunk with it. But that little lass.” He pointed at Lëtta. “Looks just like her. ‘scept she’s got my Grim hair. An’ she’s got my Grandad’s Necrovoking, we had both that an’ Pyrovoking in the line, see.”
I idly scooped some snow into a pile on the floorboards. This white stuff was weird. It was cold and wet, and it made this fun little crunching noise when you pushed on it. I started poking holes in the icy powder while scrutinizing Nathaniel’s face and then Lëtta’s.
“Have ya tried askin’ her?” I offered.
Nate frowned. Then he shoved to his feet.
“’Ey!” He called down to the lower deck, getting the three doctors’ attentions. He stabbed a finger at Lëtta. “Little lass, do ye know who yer… uh, great-great grandmother was?”
Lëtta’s bear ears dropped slightly, asking in her fluid accent. “Two greats?”
“Aye. Whoever was the first t’ come overseas to the Flowering Trail.”
“Oh, you mean great-great-great grandmother Darcy.” She put a hand on her hip and shifted weight, her thin pigtails waving in the snowing breeze. “Grandmother said she was first mate on a merchant ship.”
“Hah, hah!” Nate slapped a hand on the railing. “I bloomin’ knew it. The lass’s name was Darcy, too, it was—‘ey, little lass, that was my ship she were on! Yer alive ‘cos ‘o me!” He laughed boisterously.
One of Lëtta’s bear ears perked, and she called up. “You’re great-great-great grandfather Nathan?”
Nathaniel elbowed Aiden in the ribs when the bird rose beside him, the bear still guffawing. “Ye hear that, feather-head? I’m a tri-great grandfather!” He crossed his arms over the rail and grinned. “’Ey lass, I always wondered what happened to Darc. I thought she be a siren down in the sea, singin’ to starfish for the last hundred years.”
Lëtta rubbed a snowflake from her cheek, humming. “Grandmother said she was shipwrecked and washed ashore on a piece of driftwood.”
“Ah! That lucky duck. I tried swimmin’ me’self, but ended up sinkin’. I was right lucky the Reapers found me soul a’fore I rotted down there an’…”
They talked up a storm, trading stories, when I saw the rest of our shipmates were coming outside from the cabins. I pushed to my feet and wiped off the melted snow from my hands and coat, then slid down the stair rail to greet Alex and Tavius.
Alex saw me and tucked one hand into his baggy breeches’ pocket, his other hanging in a sling while his still-healing collarbone was wrapped in new dressings. “Ah, Jaq,” Alex greeted with a head toss. “There you are.”
“We goin’ out to the docks yet?” I asked. “Herrin mentioned something about a tavern earlier.”
“He said the same thing to us,” Tavius agreed next to Alex. He wore a thick, stuffy coat today, looking like a waddling, sea-green marshmallow. He must have had three layers under there, and his lanky black hair was hidden under a warm hat that hugged his skull and trapped his ears. Despite the layers, the poor sod still shivered.
In contrast, Alex wore a thinner, burgundy cardigan with a woolen cowl, the sleeves pulled up to his elbows to reveal his grey-haired arms, like he was too hot. I grinned, noting it was same number of layers I was wearing. Yeah, we Grimlings are pretty used to the cold, thanks to the caves.
Alex swept his gaze toward the docks, watching the bustling merchants and marching Wavecrashers, web-eared shifters going about their day around our ship. There were even some people swimming in the ice-cold water, seeming unfazed by the chill as their scaled legs melded together in the water and shifted into long fish-tails, diving in and disappearing into the ocean’s depths.
Man, this place is cool. Weird, sure, but still cool.
Alex sighed and muttered, “Herrin also said he had something to tell everyone. It sounded important.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Important how?”
“Death if I know.” Alex shrugged, tossing his properly combed head to the ramp that led down to the docks. “I suppose we won’t discover his intentions until we arrive. Come. Willow and Lilli went ahead, and Xavier is staying behind for a time. He’ll meet us there shortly.”
I paused, my brain backpedaling. Oh, right. They weren’t sharing a body anymore. They could actually be in two different places again… Bloods, this was going to take some getting used to.
I grinned. Something to look forward to, I guess.
My feet crunched snow as I followed Alex and Tavius to the docks.
Some people from our ship walked down the ramp behind us, not part of our main crew. They were the handful of refugees from Y’ahmelle Nayû we’d rescued a month ago. Ringëd was with his parents, babbling in Marincian with the rest of their huddled group.
Bloods, there were so few of them. Out of an entire island, roughly a dozen survived that Fera attack.
They passed the three of us and we followed behind them. As we stepped off the docks and strode through the snowy city, we passed through the Reaper district—
A black blur soared past my face, startling me and making my foot slip on a patch of ice. Tavius caught me before I hit the snow and pushed me to my feet again, but several more black blurs streaked around us.
I whipped my head every which way, trying to get a good look at the things. “What the Void are these?” I demanded, dodging another flying creature.
They were the size of ravens, their heads and beaks kind of resembling them too, in a weird way. Their “wings” wavered like a translucent veil in the wind as the flyers seemed to bob up and down off the air and float by all the crowded Reapers’ shoulders. They had tails that were shaped like a crow’s, but they looked more like fins, and the Bloody things had gills on their necks.
Alex hummed curiously. “Ah, these must be those Seacrows I read of in my cultural studies textbooks.”
“These are Seacrows?” My eyes followed one as it smoothly bobbed past my face, like it was swimming in air. “Bloods, I’ve never seen one in person… but they’re all over the place here!”
Alex shrugged. “We’re in the Ocean realm. Most Marincians are fish shifters, so it makes sense that Marincia’s Reapers would receive messengers who could travel in the water with them.”
One “flew” by Octavius’s head and he ducked out of its way, both of us staring after it and breathing, “Cool.”
Ahead of us, Ringëd stopped to speak with a Trixer from this district. I thought about listening in, but even if I could hear them, I figured I still wouldn’t understand since they were still talking in the local tongue. Whatever it was, it looked serious.
Then Ringëd hugged his parents and walked off, leaving the refugee group with the Trixer, who led them into the station.
I crossed my arms. “Guess this is where our refugees are relocating for now?”
Alex rubbed his chin. “I wondered when they’d decide to resettle… Or perhaps this was the first island whose duke accepted their pleas?”
“Prob’ly the latter,” I said. “If it were up to the refugees, I bet they’d have settled on the very next stop after Y’ahmelle Nayû.”
Alex grunted, agreeing, and we followed Ringëd toward the tavern Herrin had asked us to meet him in.
2
The Road to Recovery
XAVIER
“Xavier, you have to drink it,” Bianca insisted, one of her rabbit ears lifting as she stared me down like a feral leopard transfixed on an enormous ball of yarn. She shoved the glass of blue-green liquid into my skinny hand. “Go on! You’re not getting off this ship until I see you drink all of it.”
I grimaced at the suspiciously radiant tonic, swirling it in the glass. “Didn’t I drink enough of this disgusting swill this morning?” I complained, scratching at my thick, scruffy beard. “I think my throat’s had enough abuse. Death, whiskey would leave less of a burn.”
The rabbit girl put fists at her sides. “Do you want to use your legs again? Your immune system will only accept this elixir for a couple months, if you’re lucky. We need to use it while it still works on you. Muscle regeneration is a slow process on its own, but this stuff will speed it up. Now drink.”
My nostrils cringed at the pungent stink leaking from the flask’s rim. I whimpered, “But it tastes like crow piss—”
“Xavier.” Her glare sharpened as her long, orange ears lifted in warning. “With the state you’re in, I’ll have no problem overpowering you to force it down your throat anyway.”
I deflated, glancing solemnly at my twig-like limbs. Even under the long-sleeved coat and trousers, the boney things announced themselves like an embarrassing, rude relative spouting politics at a holiday reunion.
I sighed and muttered a curse, then steeled my taste buds and chugged the tonic. My eye sockets burned, the spiced mixture draining down my throat in a hot yet unsettlingly cool prickle. It wasn’t quite liquid exactly, more of a thick syrup that steamed up my nostrils and ears. When the flask was finally empty, I thrust it on the nearby table with a hard clink and hacked over my knees.
Bianca beamed and patted my head, picking up the flask. “There we go,” she praised. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“What in Void is in that?” I coughed, thumping my still-prickling chest.
A sly grin rolled over her lips, and she winked. “You don’t want to know.”
I grimaced—
Snip!
I nearly flinched at the sound of clipping shears behind me, suddenly feeling someone’s fingers run through my shoulder-length hair.
Snip! Snip! Snip!
I carefully inched my gaze over a shoulder. Sirra-Lynn was back there snipping away at my frayed strands with a contented smile on her lips, her orange cat ears flicking.
“Erm,” I began awkwardly in my chair, clearing my throat. “Mrs. Treble?”
“Oh, don’t mind me,” she hummed in a cheerful tune. “You looked like you could use a trim, so I thought I’d go ahead and give it a quick cut before you went out.”
I sighed and gently pushed down her hand. “Mrs. Treble, please. I am grateful you’ve looked after my body for so long—truly, I am—but I thought we’d already discussed certain… privacy boundaries?”
She paused, her eyes growing distant as though her mind was in a fog. “Oh.” Her voice was faded, almost saddened. “Uh, r-right. I guess I just… haven’t really gotten out of the habit, huh?” She sheathed her shears into the pocket of her doctor’s coat, lowering into a chair beside me and offering a small smile. “Got to admit, I’ve never had a Souless patient wake up with their soul back. Can’t say I’m having an easy time adjusting. Maybe I should find a new routine.”
I smiled in kind, then fished into my trousers’ pocket and produced a string, tying my unfamiliarly long hair into a tail to free my sweaty neck. I wasn’t accustomed to having so much warmth there. Though, I was thankful it hid my scrawny neck, to a degree. The new hair and puckered, aged scar running down my right eye were strange and new, but by Nira, this was me. I wasn’t borrowing my brother’s body anymore, and the long hair served as a constant reminder that, for the first time in years, I was my own man. No longer a parasite.
It was a small, glorious reminder that I existed.
“Are you enjoying your time with your family again?” I asked Sirra, shifting the subject to something more pleasant.
She chuckled. “You bet, Howllord. Though, I wish Connie would have joined you all when you came to Y’ahmelle Nayû. So far, she’s the only one I haven’t seen.”
“She elected to stay in High Everland,” I said, my head wavering. “She’s safe, I assure you. My parents are housing her and keeping her well-guarded, being the sister of their graduated student.”
Her laughter brightened. “That’s right, Rochelle told me about his random apprenticeship after you all first visited her in Nulani. I was pretty skeptical of you all finding us, to be honest, but…well, I’m glad it worked out for the best.”
“You and I both, Mrs. Treble.” I produced my silver pocket watch from my silken vest’s pocket. “Ah, it’s nearly time to meet with Herrin and the others in town. I’d best be off.”
I fetched my ornate cane that was leaning against the nearby desk and grunted while pushing myself up.
From her desk, Bianca saw how slow I was moving and asked, “Do you need your crutches today?”
I secured my grip on the cane’s silver handle and waved her off with my free hand. “No, this works fine now.” I wobbled with the first step, my skinny legs still so despairingly weak. I had to grasp the cane with both hands for balance, but it was better than when I’d started out.
Just three weeks prior, I’d needed Kurrick to carry me around everywhere. I couldn’t even use the crutches for too long before my arms gave out. If not for those disgusting tonics, I would still be that far behind. Thank the Gods we had so many Healers on our ship.
I fumbled my way to the opened door of the clinic room, stopping to turn back to Bianca. “You’re meeting us there, aren’t you?” I asked her.
She was still at her desk, fiddling with medical tools. “Maybe. Why?”
“Well, as I mentioned, Herrin has something important to tell us. He thought everyone should be there.” I held my breath before adding. “And I think Alex would… er…”
One of her rabbit ears folded down. She didn’t look up from her tools and remained silent.
I cleared my throat. “You know, I don’t think Alex had properly conveyed his situation with, er, Lilli…”
“Has he now?” She muttered flatly, fiddling away with her tools.
“Well, Alex isn’t exactly the most verbose when it comes to his personal affairs. But I think it’s worth noting that my engagement to Willow wasn’t the only arrangement our parents made in our youth—except, Alex hadn’t learned of his until months ago.”
Her rabbit ear lifted slightly, and she peeked over her shoulder. “It was arranged?”
“Much to his distaste, yes. But as a friend and brother, I would suggest discussing such things with him—”
“Come back for your next appointment in a few hours, Xavier.” Her tone suggested the conversation was over, and she returned her attention to her tools.
I sighed and rubbed the beard at my jaw, hobbling out of the cabin with my cane clicking over the ship’s floorboards.
Ever since my soul returned to my body, she and Alex had been avoiding each other like feral moles to sunlight. Now that my brother and I were separated, I guessed she didn’t have an excuse to see him anymore, except to check on his injury. And even then, it was usually Miss Ana or Sirra-Lynn who tended to him.
But they aren’t the only ones gaining distance, are they? My mood dripped depressively. I’d barely seen Willow these past weeks. She’d never visited during my physical therapy sessions with the Healers, she’d never stopped in to check on me…
When I first returned to my body, I expected to be pushing her off and complaining that she was too invasive. Now, I would prefer that problem. She may as well be a phantom, only showing her face at dining hours—if I was fortunate. Doesn’t she care? Is she ashamed of me?
