Chapter Two
SLEEP HAD BEEN FLEETING. A rarity for me.
Hyla liked to toss out that a soul had to have a conscience to be plagued by bad dreams. To which I generally replied that I had a fine conscience, I just had no regrets.
Which, until a few days ago, had been true for the most part.
I’d considered my life to be a rollicking good time spent asea or in bed with lovers or enjoying the heady kiss of dark red wine.
Now, though, the life my father and his father and his father had enjoyed seemed dimmed.
Tossing about all night like a feather on a riotous sea found me in a mood as the sun glinted off the choppy gray waves of the Stormhold.
Suddenly, I was not carefree—or feckless, as my first mate liked to say—and it sat poorly on my shoulders.
I had no wish to be found to carry royal blood.
Fukkate, who would want all of that worry?
I had enough people to care for aboard the Cloud’s Shame.
I rose from the tangled sheets of my large bed to pad to the porthole.
A cool air wafted in to kiss my cheeks. It was foolishness.
Why I had even consented was a mystery as deep as the ocean chasm the witches called home.
Yes, having all that wealth would be lovely.
The wind blew in and chilled my nude body while lifting my hair from my shoulders.
I found the cold sea breeze invigorating.
My balls did not, though, for they scampered up into my body like a squirrel diving into a leafy nest. Inhaling the scent of brine and tobacco—someone on the deck was enjoying a morning pipe, Prescott, I imagined, for he did enjoy a sweet smoke—my mind did wander to the fantasy of being rich as a prince.
Aye, I had yearned for coin. All those who didn’t have money wished they did, but I’d done well for myself.
Plundering the navy’s vessels or those of the aristocrats.
My father had left me well taken care of in terms of finances.
The ship, several businesses in Quinn’s Quay, and a home on the lip of the cliffs overlooking the Stormhold.
I wanted for nothing. So no, it was not the lure of the money that I might come into.
Nor was it the prestige or the power. Prancing about in court, whispering lies, plotting against others, pretending to be chaste and virtuous while diddling every maid and/or footman within grasping range, stuffing myself on tarts and honeyed mead until my breeches needed letting out.
No, that was not for me. What I wanted, I went for—openly.
If I found a man or woman attractive, I said so, and nine times out of ten, he or she was in my bed before I could pop the cork on a bottle of Sandrayan red.
My life was here. On the water. The sea was in my blood.
The witches’ blessings etched into my very bones.
So that left only one other reason to even be sailing to Celear.
Kin.
A possible half-brother. Aelir. A younger sibling who had been denied me throughout my years.
Lies. Lies atop lies atop lies. If my father were here, I would demand the truth, but he was not here.
His skeleton had been gathered by Vaelora to use in her rituals.
Hyla, the woman who had been a mother to me, had also lied.
Aye, she had come clean, but she knew only what she had been told that fateful night I’d been whisked away from Renedith.
Perhaps I sought only the truth of my lineage.
Staring out at the first gulls kiting in the dark blue sky, a small flake fell from a passing cloud.
Snow was always in the air this far north.
I reached out to catch it on the tip of my finger.
It melted quickly. The icy design turning to water.
I brought my hand in to lick the droplet from my finger.
A brisk knock on the door drew me from deep pondering.
Sailors have many sayings, most to do with sex, the sea, or getting drunk, but not all.
My father liked to say one could not sail from one’s destiny, for fate followed in your wake like a pod of ridged porpoises.
A wise man, my father. A liar as well.
“Enter!” I barked, turning from the window to see Simon slipping in with my morning meal. I grabbed a rich green silken robe from a stuffed chair in the corner. “Ah, time to break my fast already. Fine. Set it down on the dining table.”
“Captain,” Simon said, his bristly head bobbing as he rushed to set out my morning meal. “The coffee is very hot, and the eggs are runny. Pith said to never trade for eggs from the Lopp tribe, as their chickens lay watery eggs.”
“Perhaps Pith should not add so much whey to her skillet of eggs,” I countered, making my way to the round table bolted to the floor. Simon laughed softly. “Do not tell her I said that or she will spit in my oatmeal on the morrow.”
“My lips is sealed, Captain,” the only young hand we had on this idiotic trip replied.
Given the state of his upper lip, I doubted his lips would ever truly be sealed, but the boy was a good one all in all.
He scurried over to pour my coffee while I forked a fat, greasy sausage from my plate.
The rich scent of sage and pepper hit my nose as I lifted the link to my lips.
Just as I was set to take a bite, a ruckus outside pulled my attention from my meal.
One of my hands, a lanky elf called Kilter, ran into the open door of my quarters, howling like a horny ice walrus, his hand over his left buttock.
“Captain! It bit me! Right on my arse!” Kilter shouted then spun as Beiro raced into my room, uninvited, with Hyla on his heels.
“Tore a right chunk out of me arse! Look!” Kilter spun about to show me the rend in his trousers.
Blood seeped from a bite mark on his left buttock.
I glanced from the wound to my first mate who pointed at Beiro.
The scout appeared to be rather flustered, his red hair akimbo, his green eyes round as a cask lid.
“Did you bite my crew member on his arse?” I asked, Simon standing at my side, coffee urn in hand, watching the chaos unfold. Surely it was not asking too much to have a cup of coffee before the day’s work began, was it? The royal scout’s eyes grew even rounder.
“No! I would…I have a love whose arse I would bite if the urge overtook me!” Beiro exclaimed. Several hands were gathering outside my door. My coffee, lovely dark beauty that she was, sat on the table in a delicate cup passed down from my father to me, as he too had enjoyed his coffee.
“Captain,” Hyla interjected, stepping around the scout and my poor, sore arsed hand, her odd, heavy gait bringing her to the other side of my table. “It was the dragonling residing in the crow’s nest that bit Kilter on his skinny arse.”
“My arse ain’t skinny! It’s toned!” Kilter shouted at Hyla, who, with a stern look I knew well from my childhood, silenced the sailor. “Sorry for raising me voice, ma’am, but me arse is torn open, and the pain is making me crankish.”
My sight moved from Hyla to Beiro. “The dragonling bit someone. On the arse.” He opened his mouth to reply with what I was sure was his standard reply about the wyrm.
I lifted a hand, the sun winking off the gold signet ring that once graced my father’s thumb as it now graced mine.
I did not recall ever hearing him say he had this kind of nonsense on his ship.
Lucky me. “No, do not tell me he is a dragon. This we know. What I wish to hear is why the beast bit one of my crew.”
“On me arse!” Kilter wailed.
“Take him to Pith to have that wound salted and stitched.” The man was leaking ass blood all over the fine round rug under my table. Simon rushed to do that, leaving the carafe of coffee on the table next to my rapidly chilling watery eggs. “Now, Beiro, explain matters.”
“Jaculi was reacting as any dragon who was startled while resting on their hoard would react. The man leapt over the side of the bucket thing—”
“The crow’s nest,” Hyla corrected.
“Yes, the nest, and stepped on Jaculi’s tail. He reacted in fear, and also to protect his treasures.”
I glanced up to see the offender was nowhere to be seen. “My treasures,” I pointed out and got a timid nod from the ginger-haired outrider.
“Yes, well, uhm…he thinks them to be his now, Captain. He did express a bit of an apology for the deep bite.”
“Oh, so taking a hunk from the arse of my crewman gets a modicum of apology?” I asked and got a smirk from Hyla. I smiled back even though I was still angry with her.
“Yes, well, he is a dragon. They rarely apologize at all.” Beiro ran a hand through his hair, which only made the cinnamon mass more unruly.
“He has expressed a desire to not have to bite anyone coming to steal his hoard again. He is agreeable to having you pay him one copper per day to allow your hands in proximity to his hoard.”
Beiro hoisted his trousers up, his shirt hanging off one shoulder as I gaped openly. “To ensure that I understand this offer. Your dragon wishes me to pay him to not snip the cocks off my men.”
“Or the tuppies, Captain,” Hyla commented. “We have more than one aboard.”
“Yes, of course, the cocks or tuppies of my crew will remain unnipped if I give the wyrmling a copper a day. Is that the offer the dragonling has put forth to parlay?”
“It is. It’s a fair offer.”
“For him. Beiro…” I rubbed at my brow as I wondered if this morning could get any worse. “I wish for you to tell that light-fingered beast that—”
The ship slowed to nearly a dead stop just as one of my crew bellowed, “Dark sargassum!” to which all manner of bedlam erupted on deck.
“Fukkate,” I snarled, jumping to my feet as the coffee urn went to its side at the unexpected stoppage. “All hands to deck!” I roared, stripping off my robe to dress at breakneck speed. There was no time to delay, for a bed of free-floating dark sargassum meant we had sailed into sure destruction.