The Windward King, page 3
“Hurry up!”
“Wait!” he croaked. “I’m not . . .”
The words died in his parched throat. What did it matter? If there was one thing he was good at, it was being nobody. He could get on the ship and disappear. When Lord Ainsith’s servant did arrive, Shara would already be someone else, forgotten. And when his limitations inevitably caught up with him again, he could be yet another nobody. For the rest of his life, if he had to.
“Well?” the woman grumbled.
He opened his mouth to ask where the ship was going, but what did that matter, either? With wavering steps, he followed her up the ramp.
Chapter 5
The Stowaway
Once, when Shara had been mired in a particularly deep mud hole of self-pity, he’d made a list of all the things the Eagle had put on earth to torment him. Lethir, of course. Rathen most of the time. Burrs. Damp fur. Tasteless food. Overcooked food. Mice. Tangled wefts. Swirly handwriting.
Ships topped them all.
But even worse, as it turned out, were navy ships, where the officers took offense at people sneaking aboard by pretending to be servants to important noble passengers.
“Hurry up.” The officer’s hand pressed between his shoulder blades as he lingered at the base of the stairs.
Shara made it three steps before the monstrous floating box gave another lurch. He staggered, nearly knocking his head against the wall, and growled. Why was he still here? He’d spent a cold, sleepless night in a hammock in human form, then a miserable morning growing more and more nauseated as the ship left the docks and pressed further out to sea.
All he had to do was shift. Fly away or dive overboard and disappear. But every time he thought about it, an illness that had nothing to do with the pitching ship swept over him. He didn’t want to shift.
Not that he wanted to be thrown into a Barathi prison, either.
Stomach swirling, he resumed climbing, his escort close behind. Men and women in the practical clothing of Barathi sailors moved about the Myriad’s deck with ease, dedicated to their tasks and apparently unaware that the ship was trying to throw them into the sea. The exceptions were two men wrapped in layers of fine clothing, both gripping the ship’s rail and clearly trying to appear unbothered by its constant motion.
“Ridiculous,” the older of the two was saying. “Forty percent? I might as well go into business with pirates. Besides, if you marry my daughter, you’ll receive all the privileges extended to the nobility, and that will more than . . .”
The thundering wind swept the rest of their words away.
“Might as well be a pirate already,” muttered Shara’s captor, guiding him toward a pair of doors at the rear end of the ship. With a rap of his knuckles against the wood, he pushed the door open.
The rush of water and hollow drumming of wind faded into the strict stillness of the cabin, and only their footsteps remained as they approached the desk at its center. A woman sat behind it, watching their entrance.
“My apologies, Admiral Thosena, but—”
“I’ve told you, lieutenant, never apologize for coming between me and paperwork.” She dropped her stylus and leaned back in her chair. “Our guests are settling in, I trust?”
“Not even properly out to sea and they’re already bargaining,” the man grumbled.
She managed to give the impression of rolling her eyes without actually doing it. “Ainsith offer up his daughter yet?”
Despite the situation, Shara bit down a snicker.
But not well enough, for her attention moved to him. “And who is this?”
He nearly shifted out of habit but caught himself at the last second. A human wouldn’t think him rude for not greeting her in his true form.
“Stowaway, ma’am. Came on board last night claiming to be Ainsith’s manservant.”
No, she probably thought him worse than rude.
“Hmm.” Thosena brushed a hand through her white hair. A testament to Drasan ancestry, not age—she couldn’t be much older than fifty. “Thank you, lieutenant. You’re dismissed.”
Shara cringed. He hadn’t relished the idea of being interrogated on the deck of the ship, or wherever its equivalent of the Speaking Rock was, but facing the admiral privately wasn’t a much better alternative.
The lieutenant closed the door on his way out, and in place of hackles, the hairs on the back of Shara’s neck prickled. The giant floating box had been bad enough; now he was trapped in a small one.
Thosena prodded at the stylus like a child out of sight of a stern parent. “That true, what he said?”
He dragged his toes over the worn wooden floor. “Someone thought I was Lord Ainsith’s servant. I, uh, didn’t correct her.”
It sounded a lot more dishonest now that he wasn’t distraught and delirious.
“Ah.” Without looking down, she absently rearranged the documents on the desk. “And who are you really?”
He shrugged. “Nobody.”
“Nobody.” Chuckling, she pushed herself out of her chair with easy grace. How long did it take to acquire such comfort at sea? “Everyone’s somebody.” She pivoted at the end of the room, silhouetted against a broad stretch of paned glass windows that offered a blurred view of the sea beyond. “Let me guess: big family, lots of siblings, always overlooked. Decided you wanted to make something of yourself. Travel to the capital, distinguish yourself, earn a noble title and all the rest. But you’ve got no money, so you thought you’d climb aboard the next ship headed to Farna and hope to make it unnoticed.”
“Um . . .” Take out the grand aspirations and put in “vanish into obscurity,” and she wasn’t far off. The big-family-always-overlooked part certainly rang true.
“I’ve seen it before.”
Not sure how to respond, Shara let his gaze fall to the desk, where several official-looking documents had been stacked beneath a small cube. From the bottom of the pile jutted a paper cut along one edge with an intricate pattern of notches and grooves, the design vaguely reminiscent of overlapping feathers. The only things on the paper apart from a stray ink blot were a large, artfully scribbled signature and an oblong seal of green wax swinging almost cheerfully from the last letter of the name.
It was nothing but a fancy piece of paper, but somehow it reminded him exactly how clueless and overwhelmed he was. Some foolish part of him had believed that all he had to do to be human was not shift. Humans and alvithi shared common roots, after all—language, religion, even ancestry, or so said the legends.
But Shara was so far from those roots that he might as well have been perched on the highest branch. How would he pass as human if even paper was confusing?
Thosena’s boots sounded on the wood, and Shara retreated hastily. “Sorry, I—”
“It’s fine. Not every day you see a locking order, is it?”
He shook his head and pretended he knew what that meant.
“Now then.” She folded her arms and studied him. “I ought to dump you over the edge, but I’d lose sleep over that, and I like sleep. You have some sailing experience?”
“No.” And after he got off this boat, he would never have any ever again.
“No?”
“We lived . . . further inland. I only rowed on the river.”
“Ah. Any wind or water sense?”
“No.” His face flushed, though there was no reason he should feel embarrassed for not possessing the subtle human magic. Nor should he be worried that his lack would give him away—most humans didn’t have it, either.
“Well then, what can you do?”
Nothing came to mind, especially with that paper mocking him from the desk, but she was trying to help. He scanned the room, eyes landing unhelpfully on a belt laden with a sword and a pistol.
What could he do? Rathen had called him diplomatic once, but she’d meant it as a gibe. His fingers brushed over the corner of his sleeve, where his mother had embroidered his name in silver thread. “I . . . I’m not bad at weaving.” Not as good as his parents and brother Alopar, as he’d often been reminded, but not a disaster.
To his relief, she perked up. “Weaving. All right then, Nobody. Weather holding and no delays in ports along the way, we’ll be in Farna in about a week. You’re going to spend that time mending anything that rips—clothing, nets, hammocks, you name it. It’s not weaving, but it’s the closest I’ve got. You do as you’re told and stay out of the way, and I won’t feed you to the sea dragons. Fair?”
A week stuck on this ship did not seem fair at all, but that was his own fault. Maybe in a few days, the thought of shifting wouldn’t make his throat constrict.
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you. And I’m sorry about stowing away.”
Swirling with sea-scent, she stepped around her desk and guided him toward the door. “Sometimes you make it work, and sometimes you leave it all behind and start over. I know how that goes.”
He doubted that, but he thanked her again anyway and left the room, leaning against the doorframe as she called the lieutenant back inside.
Leave it all behind and start over. He wrapped his arms around his torso and drew a calming breath. He’d done the first half without thinking. Now he had to survive the second.
Chapter 6
Being Human
Shara staggered from the ship, swelled with relief, took a step—and nearly fell off the dock.
The sturdy wooden boards felt uncomfortably immobile beneath his feet. Too solid, too still. No rocking or swaying or cruel attempts to toss him into the water. Every step he took fell too hard, like the docks were leaping up to meet his footfalls.
But he’d made it. Six days of nausea and tasteless food, the faint bite of wind and water magic sizzling on his tongue, and sailors who sang out of tune, pried as much as Shara’s cave-brothers, and snored even worse. Now the city of Farna spread before him, tucked into the grassy hills rolling along the shore and guarded by the jagged, rocky slopes jutting up behind and around it.
His new home.
Before he could take it in, the chaos of Farna’s military docks swallowed him and ushered him away from the Myriad. Sailors rushed back and forth, some working silently, others competing to see who could shout the loudest and longest. Dockworkers and ropes groaned together under the weight of crates or the pull of ships. Sails fluttered and snapped. An official-looking woman consulted a sheet of paper while a pair of sailors waited to board a nearby vessel.
After a week with an assigned task on the ship, Shara once again found himself the only one with no purpose.
He took a final glance at the Myriad and pressed into the crowd, careful not to bump into anyone. Almost all Barathi military officers were nobles, and he had no desire to start his time in Farna by offending someone who held both military power and high social rank. Especially not after observing the behavior of Ainsith and his companion all week. Whatever had compelled Thosena to let them on board, it hadn’t been a sense of noble camaraderie—though that might have kept her from throwing them overboard when she clearly wanted to.
A grin tugged at the edges of his mouth, and for a ridiculous second, he wrestled with the urge to return to the ship and ask to join the Barathi navy. It might not be so bad. He could spend the rest of his life taking orders and mending things, couldn’t he? Surely he’d grow accustomed to life on the sea eventually.
He rounded a corner and glanced down into the water, letting sense settle back over him. He did not want to join the navy, but despite a week of thinking, he hadn’t come up with anything better. Nothing appropriate for a talentless alvithi, anyway. Yet now he planned to walk into Farna and . . . what?
He sagged against a nearby post and sighed. All week, Thosena’s words had played in his mind. Leave it all behind and start over. But start over with what? What was the point of resetting the game if you had only half the pieces? Of weaving on a rotting loom? What in all the skies had made him think he’d succeed at being human when he’d never been anything but teveth as an alvithi?
He didn’t want to start over.
Stuffing his shaking hands into his coat pockets, he stared at the murky water. He could shift and swim away. Stay down there, give up being Shara. A few months from now, humans would be sharing the legend of the sea creature that inhabited the bay. Children would brag about spotting or touching it. Others would toss food into the water, hoping to lure it to the surface.
“Shara!”
His heart leapt into his throat, barring most of his startled squawk as a member of Thosena’s crew trotted to his side. Huffing, the man pressed something into Shara’s hand. “Almost missed you. Here.”
The contents of the small cloth bag clinked, and Shara’s jaw dropped. “This is—”
“It’s not much.” He rocked back on his heels. “But we didn’t want you to wander off into the city with nothing. Good luck, eh?”
Without waiting for a coherent reply, he slapped Shara on the back and vanished into the crowd with a wave.
The weight on Shara’s heart seeped down his arm and into his trembling hand, and the dull throb from a week of gripping a needle faded as his fingers twitched around the bag. The crew had collected money for him. Wished luck to the awkward boy who’d stowed away on their ship.
Swallowing down a lump, he tucked the bag into his coat. Just get to the city. Start with that.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but at least he could be sure he wouldn’t end up in a den of neeka this time.
>><<
Shopkeepers and job hunting were worse than neeka.
Loosing a heavy sigh, Shara slouched into his chair, squinting his eyes against the setting sun. Humans, he’d learned on the ship, ate meals at fixed times of day rather than whenever they were hungry, and The Dragon’s Beard eating house bustled with so much activity that he feared the weight would crush the stilts holding the building above the water.
The young woman who’d shown him to his little table had disappeared, looking faintly amused at his request for “whatever you have that isn’t burnt.” She was lucky he hadn’t asked for what he really wanted, which was something raw and bloody.
Good job, Shara. You’ll be human in no time.
Letting his eyes half close, he traced his finger along the table’s wood grain as if mapping out his long, exhausting path through the city. Every shop he’d stopped in, every person he’d talked to, had felt like approaching Alanthas all over again, like all the weeks he’d spent convincing himself that joining the hunt would solve all his problems.
“Here you are.” The woman set a plate before Shara, grinning. “Not burnt in the least.”
His face bubbled with heat, though not as badly as when he’d asked the farrier for a job. The request that he be good with animals had seemed promising—right up until he’d learned what a farrier actually did.
Why would anyone nail metal to a horse’s hooves?
Humans were odd.
Then again, they also believed dragons had beards.
“Thanks,” he said as she placed a bowl of berries and a cup of mead next to the plate, where three rolled flatbreads oozed with lumps of fish in a brownish-red sauce. It smelled incredible.
“That’ll be eleven tonas. Anything else you need?”
“Um . . .” He wrenched his nose away from the food. One more, and if she said no, he’d give up and start again tomorrow. “I’m trying to find a job. I don’t suppose you need help?”
Say no, say no. The same shameful words he’d been praying all day.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll ask my father.” She glanced over her shoulder as a crowd of sailors shoved through the door. “It might be a while, though; sorry.”
“No problem.” He handed her the little coins and turned hurriedly to the food. If he ate fast enough, he could escape before she brought him the answer.
Eating quickly wasn’t a problem—the food tasted even better than it smelled, though there was something discomfiting about eating something he hadn’t helped capture or prepare. On the other hand, if they gave him a job here, he’d be preparing plenty of food—and he’d learn the recipes for the creamy pepper sauce and thick, salty flatbreads.
It was a comforting thought until a man with a white ponytail sidled his way past a group arguing about the prince’s upcoming coronation and stopped at Shara’s table. “I hear you’re looking for work.”
Shara shoved his hands into his lap and pretended to be a well-behaved human who hadn’t been about to lick sauce from his fingers. “Yes.”
The man folded his thick arms, picking at the twisted leather cord around his bicep as he surveyed Shara. “I’ve got plenty of servers and cooks, but I do need someone here first thing in the morning to receive deliveries and supervise the stock boys. Pretty straightforward, just need to be good with money and not let a pack of stingy merchants and lazy kids walk all over you. Oh, and be here by five bells every morning. Got any experience?”
Being walked all over? Plenty.
Shara forced a smile past the memories and the writhing in his gut. “Only the early hours.”
The man laughed. “That’s the part that scared everyone else away. I’ve got to get back up front, but come find me if you’re interested and we’ll talk, eh?”
He hurried away. Shara licked his fingers clean. The sauce no longer tasted good.
He waited until the man disappeared into the kitchen before slinking quickly from his table and out into the evening. The door clacked shut behind him, sealing the warmth and laughter and music within.
Flashes of white pulled his attention skyward, where two figures breezed past on gliders marked with official-looking insignia. With easy grace, they banked and soared directly overhead, swirls of air tousling Shara’s hair. The faintest tang of wind magic pricked at his tongue.
Maybe the patrol would hire a shapeshifter. He wouldn’t need wind sense or even a glider.
