Chapter Six
Kai
Thank the gods he was out of that room for good.
Desirous of being the warden of Saros’s dreams, Kai had spent these past few weeks cooking himself in the summer heat of Llyr’s quarters, casting and weaving and adding to the protective ward.
Building, building, building. Dawn until dusk in that room, taking an hour here or there to attend some meeting or catch just enough fresh air to keep himself sane, frittering away the small amount of snow he’d naively thought would last him a couple months until he saw his brother Hilo again for more.
A necessary sacrifice. It was artificial alertness and agitation, or losing focus at the wrong time and risking the ward self-destructing. Kai wasn’t going to fucking let that happen again.
Hours moved like molasses, the air at times nigh-on unbreathable from the heat of his own magic and the ceaseless sun beating in through the windows.
Wardstrings twisted and oscillated beneath his closed eyelids, glimmering, maddening.
Even sleep, when he’d factored in time for it, was impossible: between his snow-induced anxiety about the ward and the nightmares that had plagued him on occasion since he was a kid, the last thing he was able for was shut-eye.
Instead he walked the edges of his new quarters, storage room turned bedroom; he counted floorboards, memorised cracks in the ceiling; he curled up and pressed against the cool wall, feverish, listening to River play piano next door.
Staring at the little hand on his pocket watch, waiting for dawn.
He needed his violin back. A distraction. Anything.
“Ah, good morning! Still here?” Saros, cheerful as ever as he skulked in each morning with a new pot of tea.
“Good afternoon, son.” Saros, squinting disapprovingly at the remnants of white powder Kai had left on the table. More tea.
“Good evening!” A plate of grilled monkfish from another missed dinner, a gentle chide about skipping meals. Kai only had his health, apparently. More tea.
“Working hard, or hardly working?” Blithe laugh. More tea.
If he said that one more time, Kai would kill him.
At least the tea was strong. It tasted rotten, earthy and a little metallic due to the old copper pot Saros brewed it in, but it kept Kai awake well enough after the snow ran out. And had less of a shitty comedown.
“It’s really coming along, now, isn’t it?” Saros had said one afternoon near the end, having startled the daylights out of Kai. “Your mother vastly undersold your worth.”
Kai counted his shaky fingers, one, two, three. He was losing it; he hadn’t even heard Saros come in. “Yeah, she – she does that.”
“Brilliant. Just brilliant.” Saros lifted one hand, his fingertips brushing the traces of Kai’s signature hanging in the air. “Exactly as I’d hoped.” Here he smiled, his eyes on Kai like blue steel. “If only our Ione would apply herself so.”
Kai smiled back, hazy and exhausted, as the next item on his to-do list began to take form.
He was surprised Ione didn’t fight. Well, he supposed she did in her own way, turning up late to the walled courtyard behind the altarhouse to practice at the fountain – the water here devoid of koi, and Kai was sorry about that, seriously – and ignoring him unless necessary.
She listened without looking at him, tried roughly half of what he suggested, and overall just ran through the basic exercises her old teacher had taught her.
Gods bless her, if that was what Jorah had her doing, no wonder she was shit.
Worse, she brought her retinue with her, Cynthia, offering advice and metaphors about fish; the attendant, looking like an actor who’d walked into the wrong play; River, pointedly polishing his sword like an asshole and distracting Kai.
Over a fortnight later, Ione’s skills remained stagnant. Great work, Menon.
Kai wasn’t worried. Actually, he was worried about everything, but not this.
He could get anyone to crack. It was how his own parents fell in with one another, a story his mother regaled him and his brothers with after enough wine.
Malia Lua, a highborn girl sneaking out to bars frequented by pirates, drinking and smoking and playing cards; something about Kai’s father, the admiral of the Seven Star Islands’ most cutthroat fleet of traders, piqued Malia’s interest.
They didn’t like each other much at first, either. But as Malia carved a place for herself first as Ahe’s advisor (also bank account), Kai would become Menon Apparent’s most valued seleneschal.
Somehow.
“Ah, don’t you dare,” Kai snapped from his perch on the stone bench beside the fountain.
Thunder rolled distantly; a few fat drops of rain plopped onto the flagstones, and already Ione was complaining to River of the cold and making like she was going to go inside.
“Shield the rain, Ineen. It’s basic shit. ”
She scowled at the nickname but gave up correcting him sometime last week. “It’s lunchtime, anyway.”
More raindrops, faster now, peppering the flagstones and their clothes with blooming wet splodges.
The cool air, fragranced with sweet petrichor, hauled Kai back to nights on the deck of the Cetos, to drifting to sleep on a hammock.
His eyelids drooped, but a bright spark of pain wrenched him back to the present.
Automatically – it was all automatic now – he healed his fingertips before they bled onto his jacket. A shard of ice shoved up his fingernails always did the trick when he was sober and needed to stay awake.
He darted to stand in the way of the door. “It’s been – ” He’d lost track. “ – more than long enough. I have been more than patient.”
A heavy droplet landed square on Ione’s head, making her shiver. “And it is more than rainy, and you are more than annoying me. Aside.”
Kai thrust an arm out, barring her from moving past him; she sent River a Can you believe this look.
“This is one of the most versatile skills.” He lifted one hand and the rain billowed out overhead, trickling to the ground around his feet.
He left the rest of them unshielded. “A strong enough shield can withstand physical blows or be woven into wards, and you’re only fighting me because you can’t do it. ”
She remained impassive. “You cannot provoke me.”
“Give me time.” He sent her a bleak smile, feeling uncomfortably like his brother Etan when he trained new Leviathos crewmen.
“We’ll see how confident you are when I drag you to the sea floor.
Your options are to create an air pocket with this technique, or drown.
Shitty way to go. I’ve seen it once or twice. ”
“My gods, you’re so scary,” Ione yawned, utterly unthreatened.
Finally River sighed. “Word to the wise,” he said mildly, “harming her isn’t going to end well for you.”
Kai switched focus, River’s sword in his periphery. “You’re all enabling her.”
“Oh, it’s why I like them so much,” Ione said.
Cynthia sniggered at that, but the attendant hugged herself and rubbed her arms, chilled. Seeing it, and seeing too that Kai was getting fucking nowhere with Ione, Cynthia wordlessly raised a water shield over them all. The attendant bowed her head and whispered her thanks.
That woke Ione up. She whirled, softening: “I’m sorry, I’ve let you all get wet.” She opened both hands. “I’ll dry us off.”
River started forward, lowering Ione’s hands. “Don’t trouble yourself. Cynthia will.”
“You hold the shield,” Cynthia suggested.
“I can do it,” Ione hissed so hotly that Kai wondered what the hell she’d done the last time she tried to pull water out of something. He envisioned a dried-out human husk and a lot of screaming. He didn’t realise he’d laughed until they all looked at him.
After a moment Ione gave in, her expression souring; she took control of Cynthia’s water shield and let Cynthia wick the rainwater from their hair and clothes.
Ione’s handiwork was stable enough, Kai noted, although she was tiring herself out needlessly by holding onto the water and not letting it drop to the ground: by the time they were all dry, Ione’s arms were shaking.
“After you, please,” Ione said to the girls, her face pinched with pain as the sheet of water above them grew thicker and thicker.
At a loss – she’d done it, after all – Kai stepped aside and issued them a mock bow as Cynthia and the attendant skirted past him into the altarhouse.
Kai had read once that praise was helpful, so he said, “Very good, Ineen.”
Ione reeled back – “Thank you.” – and hurled the entire shield, every drop of rain that had formed it, over Kai’s head. The weight of it knocked him back into the wall, but worse was the coldness, the icy chill of loathing she had poured into her magical signature.
Weakened by lack of sleep, Kai fell to his knees with the rest of the water, soaked to the bone and shivering. When he met her gaze again, she was smiling, proud and contemptuous as a cat – and then she was gone, leaving just River, arms crossed and leaning against the doorjamb.
Still coughing, Kai forced himself to his feet and dried himself off before going to stand across from River at the threshold. “Arright, dryshite?” he asked like nothing had happened, the posh accent gone, fuck it, River knew what he sounded like. “What’s the shtory?”
River’s disinterested expression cracked into a ridiculously smug grin. “Happy now? You got her to shield.”
It was a testament to Kai’s dwindling sanity that he felt gratified that River smiled at him, even if it was a decidedly mean smile. “Thrilled,” Kai said back; in the gods’ tongue he added an old proverb, “A devastating storm makes for a skilled mariner.”
River scoffed but had nothing for that. Point to Kai.
He hated losing, but Ione had unwittingly showed him how to win the war if not the battle. Kai would make a skilled mariner out of her yet.
The attendant delighted them all the following day by gracing them with advice.