Eira lay awake in her hammock as the ship continued its course, plodding along toward a distant island—Black Flag Bay—that Adela had mentioned they’d be restocking in before continuing to Carsovia.
But her mind was still in the sea behind.
The lutenz’s eyes were seared onto hers. It didn’t matter where she looked, or if she closed her lids, she could still see him and his cold, almost inhuman stare. What stripped a person so cleanly of anything that even remotely resembled a soul? What loyalty demanded the cost of one’s humanity and why were so many willing to pay it? Those were the questions that kept her awake. She searched for an answer…one she wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to find.
Eventually, she gave up on sleep.
Eira swung her feet over the edge of her hammock and eased herself down. The creaking of the ship concealed her steps. But she didn’t even check to see who else might have been awake. She wasn’t trying to hide from them.
A few other pirates were up on deck, of course. Working. But they hardly had any reaction to her now. After the battle and surreal aftermath earlier, they had resumed their duties as if nothing had happened. Though, for pirates, sea battles and murdered prisoners were business as usual.
Still, there were questions left unanswered for all of them. Namely around Adela and Eira. She could hear their wonderings because she carried the same. The looks they cast her way were felt, more than seen. And the
only person who had any insight into the game she was playing was the pirate queen herself. Who…wasn’t about to tell.
So there was little point in her agonizing over it. Yet, agonizing was something Eira was very good at. And it had kept her alive by keeping her mind and feet moving, always one step ahead of the people who would kill her. So she wondered and plotted and planned anyway.
She made her way to the bow of the ship, determined to force herself to look forward, rather than back, and was surprised to find that she wasn’t alone. Varren sat at the bow, legs over the edge, leaning against a railing. Had she been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard him leaving? Or had he never come to bed and instead had remained on deck as the night bled on, and she’d been too absorbed in herself to notice?
Varren acknowledged her with a glance and a small nod, one she returned. Taking his slight shift as permission, Eira sat next to him, but said nothing. She felt like his guest—one infringing on his contemplative solitude. She didn’t want to be the one to break his thoughts and she had plenty to muse over herself.
After an indiscernible amount of time of Eira just letting her mind go blank, Varren said, “I’m sorry.”
Eira was so startled that she nearly jumped off the ship. “Excuse me?” “I shouldn’t have put that man’s blood on your hands or Cullen’s; I
shouldn’t have told you to kill him.”
She inhaled sharply, realizing what he was saying—what he thought. “It was not your fault that he died. I made my own decision, as did Cullen. And before you said anything, I’d already reached the conclusion that there was no point in keeping him alive. Cullen offered to end it faster.
“Carsovia wouldn’t have negotiated for him, he wouldn’t have helped us. And if he had any information, I’m sure Adela extracted it before she even asked me,” Eira repeated all the things she’d been telling herself. It was odd that, despite having fought Pillars to the bitter end, despite having slain Ferro before men and women from around the world, this death was sticking with her…probably because it wasn’t about the man at all, but about what acting on Adela’s behalf had meant. Another step into a world that she was still figuring out where she stood within. “It wasn’t on any of us, really. Circumstances unfolded. It is what it is.”
“Still—”
“Varren,” Eira interrupted him. She hated being firm with him when he was clearly agonizing over it. But she also needed him to understand he had nothing to worry about. So Eira held up her right hand, halting him. “We have all done things we might not be proud of to survive—things that haunt us. Don’t let the ghosts win.”
“Thank you for saying all that.” He still seemed slightly unconvinced.
She dared to rest a hand on his shoulder. She hadn’t exactly been close to Varren and didn’t want to overstep any boundaries now. “I’m not just saying so; it’s all the truth. I understand how guilt and doubt can make you cast unfair blame on yourself—make you second-guess your every action because it is so easy to think what you might have done with the luxury of hindsight. But please believe me when I say you have nothing to feel guilty over. I’m all right, Cullen—” She snorted. “He’s sleeping soundly in his hammock. All is well.”
He nodded and looked back out at the sea. Eira allowed her hand to slip from his person.
“If the roles had been reversed, he would’ve done the same to us or worse.”
“I’ve gathered as much about Carsovia,” Eira murmured.
“It’s been years since I left the empire, yet their monsters still keep me up at night.” He chuckled softly. “They live in my mind and never let me be, to the point that I’ve practically named them. I know them by the movement in the corners of my eyes, or the sound of a creaking floorboard. And you’d think, after coming to know them so well, having long accepted their presence, they would no longer bother me…”
“And yet they still haunt you as much as always,” Eira finished. Varren glanced at her. “The Pillars?”
She nodded. “I carry my own monsters. Whether I like it or not, they too will always be a part of me. Ferro’s laughing eyes. The sound of Ulvarth’s voice. The feeling of his sycophants beating consciousness from me will always be imprinted on my skin.” Even now, as she said it, the phantom impacts were there.
“How often does it keep you up?”
“Only sometimes, now,” Eira said with a note of relief. “I’m trying to acknowledge that Ulvarth is a part of me without giving him the power to define me. To varying success.”
“Sounds familiar.” Varren chuckled sadly. “But I don’t think I’ve been as successful as you… The moment I saw the lutenz, I began to shake all over. All I wanted was to see him dead. And worse.”
“What did they do to you?” Curiosity prompted her to ask before she could think better of it. She hastily added, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” He had told them very factually about the mines and the empire previously. But Eira had noticed, then, how detached it all felt. How he carefully avoided anything personal.
“I know, but part of me feels like I owe it to you for helping keep us safe and trying to get us back to Qwint.” He shrugged.
“You owe me nothing.”
“Fine. Part of me wants to tell you.” He glanced her way. Eira nodded and remained silent, allowing him to speak uninterrupted. “I was born in Carsovia, in a small village not far from Qwint. Though I was mostly unaware of the two nations. Honestly, I lived most of my life without even really understanding what being part of an empire meant.
“We were fishers. But that was mostly food for us. The real treasure in the town were our pearls. The divers knew special rune magic that gave them the ability to swim deep enough to collect the rare spiked clams that make the golden pearls.”
“Sounds beautiful.” Eira thought back to the jewels Solaris wore at the opening ceremonies. The display of power took on a different meaning with the context of Carsovia having their own major trade of precious rocks and metals.
“They were. Some were as big as your eye.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Only the shadow of a joy long gone. “But all those were collected by the royal knights. They came twice a year to demand their share—hardly anything was left over for us to sell and earn an income.”
“What did the knights do with them?”
“I heard the empress would take pearl baths, filling a pool the size of a small house with them, coated in precious oils and perfumes.”
Eira tried to imagine it. The thought was incomprehensible. Even the gilded spires of Solaris didn’t compare to that level of wealth.
“I never thought it was fair, even as a boy,” Varren continued. “But I saw the way the elders of the village acted around those knights when they came into our town—the way my parents acted. I knew better than to say
anything. I had a friend make that mistake once. The soldiers made his parents beat him.”
Eira’s mouth fell open.
Varren laughed bitterly. “Your face looks like what I imagine mine did the first time I saw it happen.” He put his fingers under her chin, pushing lightly on her jaw. “Keep your face respectful, Mother told me. She explained later that parents always asked to perform the beatings because it would always be half of what the knights would’ve done. It was a kindness.”
The circumstances were so far removed from everything Eira had ever known that it made her stomach churn. Her own parents came to mind. For all their flaws, they would never go out of their way to harm her. And the Solaris Imperial family would never expect a parent to do so to their child for merely speaking up—or asking a question.
Granted, dissonance against Solaris in modern times was rare. But it wasn’t forbidden. Merely unpopular. She couldn’t imagine what ruler would bring about a world that would make parents beat their own children. “One year, the knights came an extra time. There weren’t enough weeks between for the divers to stock up. So the knights took boys from the village to work the mines. My parents tried to flee—to smuggle me out to
Qwint. But they weren’t successful.”
“That’s how you know all about the mines,” she said softly. “Yes.”
No wonder he had wanted to avoid them at all costs. Eira had never blamed him for it, but she had been curious. Now, knowing this full explanation, she didn’t want him to even step foot on Carsovia.
Though, the full extent of the risk she and her friends were taking— what Adela was asking of her—was coming into view.
“How did you escape?”
“There was another boy, not much older than me at the time. The rumors were that he was born in the mines and grew up there—that was how he knew the tunnels so well. We called him Slip because he was always gone whenever the guards came around. Was like he vanished into thin air. I never knew what his real name was, if he had another name at all, but he didn’t seem to mind Slip.
“Slip got people out as he could, one at a time. He never asked for anything in return and couldn’t be bought or bartered. You never knew what
was going through his head that made him pick some and not others…but one day, he showed up by my bunk and held out a hand. I’d been chosen.”
“Didn’t the guards ask questions about how people were disappearing?” Eira asked.
He shrugged. “We told them that the escaped person died in the deep tunnels. They didn’t question us further and never searched for bodies. Why would they risk going into those hot, cramped, deadly places? We were little more than pickaxes to them—criminals of the crown don’t last long in Carsovia. And since they never saw Slip, they had no reason to suspect anything else.”
Eira was still struggling to fathom such a horrible place. Such inhumane treatment of “criminals,” most or all of whom, by the way Varren told it, weren’t really even criminals.
“So Slip picked you…”
“He came to me and guided me out of the mines through a labyrinth of tunnels far beyond any I had seen in my years there. The entire time, he gave me clear instructions on how to get to a nearby port. I repeated them after every time.” Varren looked out into the night. His gaze had gone as soft as his words. “I ran through that forest as fast as I could. I gulped down the fresh, clean air as if it was going to be my last night alive. But when dawn broke, I saw the most beautiful sight I’d ever beheld:
“A horizon of unbroken water and a small village, not unlike where I grew up. Just as Slip had said, there was a ferryman who didn’t ask questions. Who appreciated someone who kept their mouth shut, head down, and worked hard. It wasn’t far from there to get to Qwint—just across a narrow strait under the cloak of darkness.”
“Did you ever find your parents?” Eira asked softly, hoping that there would be one happy note to Varren’s story.
He shook his head sadly. “I looked for them when I arrived in the republic. I knew, even then, they were dead. The knights don’t let deserters live, especially not if they’re deemed too old to work. But I tried to look anyway. I had to.”
Eira nodded. She knew that feeling of wanting to find your parents at all costs. It was almost unbearable for her and she didn’t even know who her blood parents were. Now, she had a new agony of not knowing if the parents who had raised her survived.
In a small way, she could empathize with him. But Varren’s turmoil ran deeper than Eira’s worst imaginings. She wasn’t going to lessen it by claiming she could understand that hurt.
“Lavette’s father was overseeing refugees from Carsovia when I arrived. Even at her young age, she helped him.”
“She seems like a natural leader,” Eira agreed.
“Much like you.” Varren surprised her with the sentiment. He must’ve seen as much on her expression because he added with a chuckle, “You and her are different types of leaders. She’s very…by the book. It’s easy to feel safe when Lavette is in control.”
“And you feel in danger with me?” Eira grinned slightly. She knew the role she filled in their group.
“Maybe a bit more risks…sure,” he admitted. “But, with you at the lead, I feel like anything is possible.”
Eira was stunned yet again. She didn’t think she’d made such an impression on Varren. Eira returned the focus to him yet again. “So you met Lavette through her work with the refugees?”
He nodded, finishing his story. “No matter what she says, I will always be in her debt. She found me shelter, food, checked in on me. Just like she did with all the others, time and again. Sometimes I think she spent more time in the refugee houses than her own home.”
“She seems like an incredible woman.” Eira meant it, too. Now wasn’t the first time Eira could imagine it would have been for the best if Cullen had fallen for Lavette. But that was a different world. With who Cullen was becoming, now that he was free to explore his own path…Lavette only fit the lordly facade he’d maintained.
“She’s always been like that. A goddess among men, really.” Varren shifted, drawing up his knee to rest his forearm on it.
“Do you love her?” Eira whispered.
“Perhaps.” He smiled faintly. “Or perhaps not… I never entertained it much. All I ever wanted, truly, was for her to be happy. With me, with someone else…near or far, it doesn’t matter. Just knowing she’s out there, thriving, is all I need.” The words had remnants of what Cullen had told her
—that he would be anything, so long as it meant he was on her mind. Eira’s chest gave a slight squeeze. “I love her deeply as a best friend, a loyal soldier, or whatever words best encapsulate the immeasurable and unending wellspring of emotion that runs deeper than my magic.”
The sentiment warmed Eira’s heart. But, in all that, she didn’t quite hear him saying that romantic love was entirely ruled out.
Without warning, he stood and dusted off his pants. “Thank you for listening to my tale.”
“Thank you for sharing it with me,” Eira said sincerely.
“I think my mind has settled enough that I’ll go and try to get some sleep…and leave you both to it.”
“‘Both’?” Eira looked back over her shoulder to find Olivin waiting, intensity simmering in his eyes.
