Chapter Two
Kai
Luckily he heard her coming in time to act like he was working.
Light flooded the low-ceilinged chamber, the draught extinguishing one of his candles.
Kai relit it before sitting back, chair tilted, his feet resting upon his beat-up worktable.
The wardstone in his hands was finished hours ago, the smooth crystal sphere shimmering with his magical signature, but she wouldn’t know any better so he pretended to tinker away at it.
Wavy hands, wiggly fingers; she was a skilled spellcaster, but even she couldn’t sense wardstrings.
“My gods, are you not done?” The admiral of the Cetos, the smallest but fastest of the Mahina clan’s fleets, leaned over his shoulder. She made a disapproving huff. “We’re docking on Oseidos in an hour and you’re not even dressed.”
Kai jerked his chin towards his unmade bed. “Jacket’s over there. It should take me just under an hour, by my calculations, to button my shirt and throw it on.”
Admiral Malia released a world-weary sigh, going past him to sit on his bed.
Her knees bounced impatiently as she spilled the contents of the pouch at her waist – cigarette papers, matches, a small bag of tobacco – onto his side table.
“Is that thing even going to work?” she asked of the wardstone. “It’s tiny.”
Standing, Kai held the egg-sized wardstone to the light, felt the enormous, glittering power he’d spent two weeks imbuing into it. A wardstone this potent could fetch him a metric assload of money on the black market, but keeping it meant he’d eventually be even richer.
“Don’t question me, woman,” he said, buttoning up his shirt. “Summon a mist ward strong enough to knock Nalu on his ass and maybe I’ll suffer your opinions.”
“Woman.” She let out a mirthless laugh over her poor excuse for a cigarette, loose tobacco snowing down onto the lap of her pinstriped black dress. “Don’t speak to me that way. I brought you into this world – ”
“And you’ll take me out. Aye, I know.” Kai held out a hand until, sighing, his mother slapped the papers and tobacco onto his palm. She raked her hair back and leaned forward, elbows braced against her knees, and waited with mounting irritation while Kai rolled them both a cigarette.
“What’s the matter?” Kai muttered around his as he swept his jacket over his shoulders. “It’s my reputation on the line, not yours.”
“It is my reputation,” Mother Dearest retorted. “I’m the one who suggested you to Saros, and you’re welcome for that. I know as the tortured artist of the family, you haven’t far to fall – ”
“Hilo’s the tortured artist, Mam,” Kai cut in, hand over his heart in mock offence.
“I’m – what’d you call me the last day? Ah!
The village bicycle.” He cast an appraising look at himself, the tailored, midnight-blue frock coat, his pressed trousers, the shiny chain of his pocket watch.
Very northern, though he missed the rich embroidery the south seas was known for.
“Although I s’pose wards are kind of artsy.
There’s literal weaving involved. I could probably knit you a sweater. ”
She covered her face in both hands, emitting a muffled Gods, kill me through a wisp of smoke.
Kai strode around his worktable to the copper mirror hanging on the door of his closet.
He listened, pleased to hear nothing, and messed with his hair until it looked passable.
He, his brother Hilo, and their mother all had the same ruddy brown waves; he kept his short at the sides and let pomade sort the rest.
He looked good, he thought. Polished, precise, exactly as a Mahina should. He turned and pretended to flinch at the sight of his mother. “You’re still here? Were we not done?”
She glowered, sick of him, and he smiled sweetly.
Annoying his mother was one of his hobbies, and what he considered payback for sitting him down at the age of seven to witness the poisoning of nine men, and the casual throat-slitting of one.
He still couldn’t stomach mussels after watching a man bleed out onto a plate of them.
It was a lesson, proof of Malia’s love for her family – and the depths she was willing to go to ensure the full, uncorrupted control of her husband’s fleets after he passed away.
Which didn’t even work: half of his followers abandoned their posts after learning what their new leader had done to some of Ahe Mahina’s most trusted men.
Kai had had the gall to find the ordeal upsetting.
She stood and he raised his guard. “Were it my decision,” she groused, “I would’ve sent Etan or Nalu to Oseidos. With you at the helm of this assignment, I won’t sleep for weeks.”
Kai snorted. “Etan and Nalu can barely untangle fishing line, let alone weave a ward of this magnitude. And Hilo nearly killed himself trying to cast that silencing ward down in the brig – remember that?”
Her eyes, the same blue as Kai’s, narrowed contemptuously, deepening the crow’s feet around them.
Those wrinkles and the few streaks of grey through her hair were the only reminders of her age.
The rest of her – her eyes, her light brown skin, her high cheekbones, even her freckles – was uncomfortably reminiscent of her youngest son.
He liked to say this was where her disdain towards him started: his three older brothers all looked more like their father, who was the only person Kai had ever seen Malia show true affection towards.
That was a joke. They all knew why Malia hated him.
Mother of the Year turned away from him then, giving Kai the distinct feeling of a shark capriciously deciding not to slaughter something.
“May you prove me wrong,” she said, “as you so love to do.” She stalked towards the door, stopping short, her back still to him. “At your age, your brothers had all earned titles, led fleets. Won medals, founded shrines. And you…”
You’re twenty-two and have done fuck-all.
His family had worked their asses off to improve their clan’s declining reputation.
A better standing with Menon’s devotees meant better work, higher pay; fighting Sowelan’s pyromancers and rebuilding shrines was far more celebrated than policing trade in the southern seas without the charisma of Kai’s father leading them.
Archpriest Saros taking a liking to Malia had helped, but Kai wanted to be more than the glorified mercenaries his brothers were.
“This means more to you than you let on,” his mother mused. “Good. Do not disgrace your father by letting your deplorable attitude ruin this opportunity.”
Kai straightened, refusing to look cowed, to give her anything. He was only seven when his father died, and even now, fifteen years later, Kai teetered on the edge of the hole Ahe left in all their lives.
But that was weak, boo-hoo, so Kai plastered on the stupid grin his mother despised. “Ah, c’mon, don’t go bringing Da into this.”
She sighed, the door slamming shut behind her.
He waited. Released a breath, let his shoulders relax, counted his fingers. “Arright,” he called, knocking on the closet door. “She’s gone.”
The closet flew open and the unfortunate carpenter Kai had stuffed in there nearly fell out. There was a joke there somewhere, but Kai let it slide.
He stood, brushing himself off before pointing at Kai. “You drew that out.”
“It was funny,” Kai said, shrugging.
“For you.” The man, one of Hilo’s apprentices, rolled his shoulders and accepted the unfinished cigarette Kai handed him. Kai was relatively certain his name was Wade. “You get to leave. I’d be stuck dealing with her if she’d’ve caught us.”
The reminder made his chest swell. Yes, he got to leave.
The shouts of the Cetos crewman reverberated above him. They would be docking soon. He fussed over his hair, his earrings; patted the wardstone, warm and electric, in his jacket pocket.
“Well, then,” he said, winking. “Speaking of leaving.”
The carpenter stepped forward. Stopped. “Will I see you again?”
Kai smiled with all the coldness of his new station. “I hope not.”
Oseidos Shrine loomed ahead on a tidal isle off the coast of Lodestone, a quaint little city famous for its ancient connection to both Menon and the Sun God Sowelan.
Featuring not only Oseidos off-coast but also Caelos up in the mountains (before it got torched, anyhow), and also Soliz, a large shrine to Sowelan, to the east, Kai and his brothers had visited this part of the world once or twice when his mother was still trying to cosy up to the Archpriest.
Lodestone had some great bars, but he’d have to give them a miss this time, being condemned not only to stay on Oseidos for the immediate future, but also to be very good.
Mostly good. He only hoped it wouldn’t take him long to get his land legs back: having grown up on ships, he always walked a little wonky for a few days after returning to dry land.
He intended to make a positive impression on the Archpriest that didn’t involve bumping into any walls.
Dusk settled over them, bathing the sea in soft violet shades. Kai stood at the bow, jaw set and eyes forward as shouts rang out on the ocean wind between Cetosi crewmembers.
His brother Hilo crept into view, his tall wiry form casting a shadow onto Kai that was meant to feel intimidating.
He actually intimidated Kai the least: due to their animosity towards their older brothers, Kai and Hilo had become unwilling allies more than once.
Zeroing out the intimidation factor was the fact that Hilo was cradling the Cetos’s resident cat in one arm.
“The Warden of Oseidos arrives,” Hilo said, sarcasm slathered on thick; he cocked an eyebrow at the Cetos’s crew, clearing and mopping the deck like Oseidos’s priesthood gave a shit what state the ship was in. “With all the pomp and circumstance he deserves.”
“And a cat and a prick as my retinue.” Kai scratched the cat behind its ears. “I’ll at least miss this fella.”