Chapter Two #2
Hilo let the cat climb onto his shoulders and stepped up onto the railing, one hand wrapped around the thick rope securing the jib sail. “You tell Lady Ione what she’s missing, too.”
“Would’ve been a match made in heaven,” Kai returned, rolling his eyes. Hilo had only introduced himself to House Artem’s daughter during a festival before he hurled a marriage offer at her parents. He was still sore at their resounding no.
An architect and a supposed goddess. Good fucking luck, Hilo. Although Ione Artem’s divinity was, if anyone asked Kai, a crock of shit: if Menon wanted to inject Herself into a mortal body, She wouldn’t have chosen some spoiled brat.
Hilo stepped down and thumped Kai’s shoulder. “Enjoy your new station, Warden,” he said, smirking. “But I hear the Archpriest is hard to please.”
Kai let that go, not wanting to expend energy on a spat. He had, after all, always been content to be thought of as stupid. Stupid was safe: aside from a target he might willingly paint onto himself – a joke, a snide comment – his brothers happily forgot about him.
But being hired as a master of wards meant his brothers would see him only as a threat now.
It was Archpriest Saros himself, along with a smattering of priests and guards, who awaited them at the docks.
He had a spryness to him that made him seem much younger, mischievous, despite the tufts of grey hair like dandelion fluff and the old burn scars darkening his hands and one side of his face.
Most high priests were burned in some way, testaments to their younger-days battles with Sowelan’s Moths, but Saros smiled at them like he’d never suffered a day in his life, white-blue eyes crinkling as he scanned his guests.
“Welcome! Unearthly Light, welcome!” Saros opened his arms, the sleeves of his pearly robes fanning out like butterfly wings.
He held out a hand for Kai’s mother to take and kissed the backs of her fingers.
“Admiral Malia, a pleasure as always. Thank you for taking the time to visit our fair shrine. And for your generous donation.”
As though Mam was the one who blacked out twice while crafting the wardstone. Glory to Malia.
Her Ladyship clasped Saros’s hand, all aristocratic charm. “The pleasure is mine, old friend. Our family lives to serve Her Holiness.”
“My gods!” Saros finally noticed Kai, who straightened his posture so hard his neck clicked.
“And this is Kai? Welcome to Oseidos, and thank you for your service.” He clapped Kai’s shoulder hard.
“My, but you’ve grown. Do you remember me, boy?
I last saw you when you were only this big.
” At this he held out a hand, thigh-high.
Kai cleared his throat, drumming up his gentry voice: northerners tended to have trouble understanding the rougher Coralpool accent he earned growing up below deck. “I do remember, and thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to serving the people of Oseidos – and now the people of Caelos.”
“Yes, terrible times, these.” Saros sighed. “The plan was, of course, to move us all to Caelos. A rough journey to and from Lodestone, perhaps, but a larger territory and a much safer location, were it better protected. This unprompted attack has thwarted that, to say the least.”
Unprompted wasn’t exactly accurate, but Kai wasn’t stupid enough to say so.
Saros cleared his throat and turned his attention to Hilo. “Your men are taking charge of the repairs, yes? You’ve received my specifications?”
“We have, aye. I’m heading up there after this to – ”
“Good lad.” He nudged a young man beside him who barely moved and did not smile. A seleneschal, Kai gathered: one of Saros’s personal guards. “We need all the help we can get, right, son?”
Unlike the other priests who regarded them with nods and pleasantries, the seleneschal stood tall and proud, as though he was a cadet in Etan’s fleet.
Also unlike the priests, he was not wrapped in moon-white robes, and instead wore a fine indigo tunic and set of leather pauldrons decorated with the moon’s phases.
A rapier glinted from the belt at his hip; his offhand rested on its hilt, and the way he glowered at Kai plainly said he was fantasising about running him through.
He looked tough in the sort of way that would be fun to break, handsome and sharklike, his skin dark and hair cut into a mop of coils. He stared with open disapproval at Kai; Kai smiled stupidly back, gratified when the man’s eye twitched with repulsion.
“We’ll move on ahead, then.” Saros clasped his hands together. “I should like our Kai to set up shop, as they say, first. But you’ll stay after for dinner, Malia? Hilo?”
Unfortunately, they would.
The trek through Oseidos was short and sweet, with Saros babbling about this garden here or that old altar there.
Snowy peacocks and doves dotted the paths between whitewashed, blue-rooved buildings; one building of interest was a small library, thank the gods.
Kai was only able to bring one trunk of clothes and two books.
Night had fallen by now and as they neared the main altarhouse, the lower priests broke away from their group to finish their duties or return home, until all that remained was Kai and his family, Saros, and the still-sulking seleneschal.
“And there’s the acolytes’ building,” Saros was saying.
“We’ve most of the survivors from Caelos stationed there, down in the undercroft.
Not many rooms left in the flats upstairs, see.
We secured one for you, though, lad.” The old man unleashed a winning smile.
“Don’t be offended if I admit it was once a storage room.
” To the seleneschal, then, “You cleared it out as I asked, River?”
The seleneschal – River – faltered a step, astonishment flitting across his features. Evidently he did not know he was clearing the storeroom for Kai’s arrival.
Saros released a ragged laugh. “We can’t put our esteemed guest in the undercroft with the rest of them.” He leaned in to River; whatever he said next was in low tones, but Kai at least caught, “Be hospitable. You can’t have that wing to yourself forever.”
River said nothing in response, merely straightening and sparing Kai one short glance. And if looks could kill, Kai would’ve been immolated.
Kai buried the urge to grin. To be the person he was raised to be, deep in the belly of his family’s meanest ships. He loved fighting – and gods, River looked like he knew how to fight – but he couldn’t be that person here.
Here, he was a warden. Cool and controlled. He’d hold his own against Saros’s guard in other ways.
“Here we are.”
The altarhouse. Kai scanned the ornate building, frost-white against the wooded peak behind it, its domed roof painted blue and silver. The front entrance hung open to let in the night air, letting an arc of yolky light splay out onto the path from within.
“You’ll need a prominent location to lay your wardstone, correct?” Saros threw open his arms, Ta-da. “This is the centre of Oseidos, where all our high priests and their families live, and where all our ceremonies are performed. I’ve just the place for your handiwork, lad. Come!”
They passed first through a little courtyard wrapping around a wide, turquoise cooling pond; then through a labyrinth of altar rooms and passageways, all tiles and mosaics in an opalescent array of whites and blues, pinks and greys.
It was all very pretty and nice until Kai bashed his shoulder into a column, resulting in a laugh from Hilo and a smirk from River. Fucking sea legs.
At the end of a long set of stairs stood a narrow, single door. “This,” Saros breathed, rummaging through his pockets for something – a long brass key. “was the Great Sage Llyr’s quarters. Uninhabited now, naturally, although we maintain it just the way it was when he passed – ”
He clicked his tongue: the door was already unlocked. Almost inaudibly, River sighed.
Saros thrust the door open. Indeed, the chandelier in the room beyond was lit. “Ione, out.”
Beside him, Hilo’s breath caught, which was so pathetic Kai felt sorry for him.
But there she was: Ione Artem, Goddess Apparent, curled up in a nightgown at the bay window, a book on her lap and magnifying glass in one hand.
As Hilo had said, she was remarkably white, with long, wavy ivory hair and grey eyes; she reached behind her for something that looked like a tiny telescope and peered at them all through it.
She was pretty, Kai gave Hilo that.
“Ah,” she said mildly. “You’re doing this here.”
“Yes,” Saros said, doing his damnedest to sound unbothered, but the effort produced a short coughing fit.
“Take a lozenge, Saros,” Ione said, bored. “Anyway, you left the door unlocked.”
“I most – most certainly did not,” Saros managed. “Read elsewhere.”
“Oh, but I want to see this famed ward.” She slid out of the bay window and ambled towards them, abandoning the book and magnifying glass on a plush sofa on the way.
She was like an exotic, spindly insect, all stick-thin limbs and small breasts (of course Kai looked) wrapped in diaphanous fabric like mantis wings. “Allow me to bear witness, O Warden.”
Saros looked like he wanted very badly to say something. River rubbed his face, weary.
“Lady Ione,” Hilo said, inching forward – and Kai noticed then that he had worn his nicest shirt, full linen sleeves replete with embroidery of waves and dancing fish. “A pleasure to see you again.”
Ione blinked. Frowned. “Oh, yes,” she said – and Menon wept, she did not recognise Hilo whatsoever. Poor bastard. “A pleasure, my lord.”
She did recognise or at least know of Malia. “Admiral Malia,” she said, cordial. “I have no quarrel with you. Welcome.”
“An honour, Holiness,” Mother of the Year said with admirable graciousness.