Chapter Eleven #2
The door was wide open, and Marin, with Ree, stepped inside.
Inside the Kraken’s Nest, both the inn’s lobby and the dining area were filled with candles everywhere: from chandeliers in the ceiling, in sconces on the walls, and along the mantel of the wall-wide brick fireplace.
Bundles of herbs dangled from the rafters, filling the place with the scent of cinnamon and lavender, on top of the rich scent of spices from the food, which a few servers were carrying from table to table on platters.
Most of the tables were full with families and couples, though there was the occasional solo diner.
All eyes were riveted to the stage beside the fireplace, and no one noticed a sailor and a wax myrtle joining the audience.
The stage was tiny, just a raised platform next to the fireplace, and it had candles placed around its edges that flickered and danced.
Dax sat on a stool on the stage, all his focus on his lute, while the singer, a woman with tawny fur and tiny antlers nestled in a crown of leafy branches, stood nearby, a serving tray in her hands with plates of food that no one seemed to care hadn’t been served.
As one song slid into the next, Dax glanced up. His gaze traveled over the audience, and it stopped when it found her. A smile lit up his face. His fingers didn’t stop moving over the strings, and Marin felt something inside her crack open.
That music.
His smile.
Good can win, even against strength and power.
“You’re crying,” Ree said softly.
“Just sharing a little of the sea,” Marin whispered. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m a halophyte, remember? Salt-resistant. But are you sad?”
Was she? “I don’t know.”
He patted her arm with a leafy branch.
She began to think that her resolution to never care about anyone again beyond a superficial level, besides her parents, was not going well at all.
After Dax’s performance, the singer-server ushered him to a table.
Dax waved over Marin and Ree, and they were all served a heaping platter of savory pastry rolls (half with marinated beef from the island of Blaye, they were told, and half with spiced vegetables, their house specialty), as well as a lemonade with some kind of honeyed spice in it.
“You were great,” Marin told him.
Dax beamed at her. “That was fun. I haven’t just …
played for an audience like that. I mean, one that wasn’t judging whether I was worthy enough by the complexities of my melodies or how the composition continued the argument begun by …
Anyway, just to play songs that people like because they like them …
Oh, and they’re paying us with food and a room, so long as I perform for a few hours tonight. ”
A room at the Kraken’s Nest? Wow. She let out a whistle.
Ree hopped up onto the table. “Where’s Stowy?”
He waved a fork toward the doorway to the kitchen, beyond the collection of tables. “He’s being admired by the staff.”
The server carried out a glazed pot and placed it on the table. “Is this what you need?”
“Ree?” Dax said.
Ree gasped. “For me?”
“Yes,” Dax said. “I thought you might like some nutrients and such. The kitchen was happy to oblige, once I explained it was for my friend, not myself.”
The pot, Marin saw, was filled with rich black soil, damp with water. Letting out a squeal, Ree scrambled over the side of the pot and sunk his roots deep with a sigh.
“That was thoughtful of you,” Marin told him.
She hadn’t thought that Ree might need fresh soil.
He carried around his own soil ball wrapped in his roots.
She reflected that some of it had washed away during his plunges into the sea and especially during his swimming lesson, and she felt a stab of guilt for not asking Ree if there was anything he needed that she didn’t have on board.
She wasn’t used to having a crew to take care of.
I’ll do better. “Found some jobs for us.”
“Excellent,” Dax said. “Lots of jobs to lots of different places?” He sounded eager. “I want…” He trailed off as if he didn’t know how to finish that sentence, as if what he wanted was larger than words could describe. He extended his arms wide, fingers spread. “I want to see everything.”
She bit into one of the pastries. She didn’t know if she could show him everything, but there were several islands they could visit after the End-of-Harvest Festival on their way back to …
Oh, wow, that’s good. The filling was some kind of onion and nut mixture that tasted like spiced caramel with oniony chocolate and maybe a vegetable?
Some kind of tuber. It was hot, the kind of steamy/spicy hot that warmed both her tongue and her throat as she chewed and swallowed.
It was not terrible to eat something other than fish.
She wondered how it would feel to sleep in a bed on land again.
It had been … well, two years since she had.
Even on her rare visits home, she always slept on her boat—if it were raining or cold, she’d sleep belowdecks, but whenever it was the slightest bit nice, she’d prefer to sleep under the stars.
Iovar had always thought that was ridiculous.
He’d never want to sleep on a boat. It was only after they’d been together for a while that his opinion that she shouldn’t want to either slipped through.
Unhealthy, he tried at first. Then: Unsafe.
And then the one that worked: I’d worry.
She hadn’t wanted to worry him. It was only that he loved her so much that he worried, and if she loved him too, how could she make him worry about her unnecessarily?
It wasn’t so difficult to pull into port or return home between runs on one of her parents’ boats.
He preferred her to return home, but that was only because he missed her, wasn’t it?
Marin shook herself. There were the thoughts of him, popping up again. She didn’t want to think about him at all, ever. And especially not now, while the pastries were so delicious.
After they ate, Dax played again while, outside, the sun sank and night crept over the island. Several rounds of diners came, and many of them lingered to listen and sing until the whole restaurant was packed. Eventually, the server who’d sung earlier was called back onstage for one final song.
“What shall I play?” Dax asked the audience.
Lots of suggestions were shouted.
Ree piped up. “Sing about the sea, the blue beautiful seeeeeeea!”
“All right, then,” Dax said with a smile. “How about you sing with me?”
The shrub bounded across the floor to his side, and the server produced a stool. Ree climbed up onto the seat, while Dax’s fingers roved across the strings. Loud and clear, Ree sang:
“The sea, the beautiful sea,
So bluuue, so truuue,
You think you stole my heart, but I gave it to thee!”
Dax repeated the lyrics but varied the melody. After the last word, he said, “Again.”
Ree sang the words again, and this time Dax sang with him, dipping notes below. The server joined in, hitting notes above them.
On the fifth round through the lyrics, everyone had joined in.
Some sang well, some didn’t, but all sang joyfully while the lute danced with all the notes.
Marin sang too, and she thought if they were loud enough, maybe Perri could hear them and sing along too.
Maybe he wouldn’t miss other sea serpents, if he had his crew to sing with.
Liking that idea, she sang louder.
She imagined that the whole sea could hear them. She pictured her sea serpent out in the harbor, dancing between the boats and tossing fish in the air to delighted flying friends.
There was only one bed.
Marin considered it for a moment and then wished she hadn’t, as her mind helpfully served up a memory of Dax shirtless in the waters by Turtle Island, drops of the sea dripping down his bare chest. This is a truly terrible idea.
“You know, there’s a ballad type about this,” Dax said behind her. He set down Ree in his pot. Ree hadn’t wanted to leave the lovely, soft, damp soil, and the innkeeper said he could use the pot for the night, no charge.
She crossed her arms and tried not to notice he still smelled like sandalwood and cinnamon, even after an evening soaked in the scents of a tavern.
She was acutely aware of how close he was and how close he could be, in the pillow-laden bed with the deliciously fluffed mattress. “Did you arrange this?”
“Actually tried to bargain for two rooms, but she said my playing wasn’t worth all that.” He sounded miffed. “I’ve played for the emperor and his court, but not worth two rooms. Just one room, two dinners, and a pot of soil.”
“It’s a very nice pot of soil,” Ree volunteered.
Humphing, Dax lowered his tri-lute onto a chair as Ree climbed out of his pot and hopped around the room, examining everything.
It didn’t take long to examine. It wasn’t a very big room.
Cute, like everything else in Dew. Murals of various sea creatures had been painted on the walls, and the bedspread was blue and embroidered with wave patterns.
Fresh daisies sat in a pink vase on the mantel of the fireplace.
It was very good that Dax wasn’t interested in her because … Sea save me, I want him.
Luckily, she was sensible enough not to let him know that.
She was going to take that want, box it up, and pretend it didn’t exist. That was, of course, the only way forward.
She just had to get through the night, and then they’d be back on Silver, where it was easier to remember that she was captain and he was crew. Yes, she could do that.
“Fine,” Marin said. She began to strip off her clothes. “You sleep on the right. I’ll sleep on the left. No cuddling. I don’t cuddle.”
“Like ever, or just not with me?” Dax asked. He sounded a bit forlorn, but that could have been her imagination. He removed his shoes and socks and slid off his pants, folding them and placing them on a chair beside the fireplace.