Chapter Fifteen. Gin
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GIN
You’re welcome. I don’t think I was ever thanked.
I startle at the voice. The sun dips beneath the horizon. On the sea, water and sky are nearly indistinguishable.
Hello. Are you ignoring me? Fine lot you are. Impolite. No wonder our kingdom fell.
“Did you say something?” I say to Eban.
“Huh?” He’s busy rowing toward the distant horizon, in the direction the spirit pointed the bottle toward.
Silly girl, it’s me. Tadhana. Your esteemed ancestor. Guardian. Guide. What have you.
“You’re the spirit,” I whisper. The spirit in the bottle.
“Did you say something?” Eban asks.
I shake my head, concentrating on the voice I hear in my head. Tadhana? I ask. Is that your name?
Don’t make me say it twice.
-Thank you, Tadhana.
That’s better.
-Are we going the right way?
What do you think?
-Are you a fairy?
A fairy! Excuse me, are all Ophir this dense? I told you, I’m Tadhana.
-My ancestor?
Something like that. I’m not a fairy, I was a warrior. One of the shieldmaidens of Queen Bulakna. Only the best of us become spirits who channel the gods. I’ve been waiting a long time for one of my line to wake me.
-I don’t know anything about Queen Bulakna. The Laconians—they scrubbed our history. They don’t want us to know anything about Ophir.
That’s a pity, says Tadhana. Then you must learn. But now that I’m awake, I find I need a little nap.
I turn back to Eban, who is rowing furiously, watching the arc of his broad shoulders in the dim light of the relic, the corded muscles in his arms as he rows, the faint tan line at his chest. He looks up and catches me staring and now we’re both blushing.
With the heat rising in my cheeks, I remind myself that I’m determined to see Rollo again.
Luckily, Eban doesn’t say anything. To fill the silence I ask him a question about the Lashing.
His demeanor softens. “What do I know about it? Not much.” He takes a few moments to concentrate on pulling on the oars, then continues.
“There are many different stories, some more fantastical than others. Most pirates say it’s nothing more than a collection of rafts, always moving from place to place, which might explain why it’s hard to find. ”
I hope that’s not the case, that we didn’t survive all this just to find a ragtag collection of dinghies. “What do you think it is?”
He focuses on the vast open sea in front of us, squinting as if that will help him see in the endless darkness beyond.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m hoping it’s an actual city and not just a fairy tale.
Not just something they told us as kids to make us feel better about our miserable lives. To give us hope.”
There is hope!
“There’s hope,” I echo. “I mean, Tadhana—the spirit in the bottle—she says there’s hope.”
He narrows his eyes. “You still hear the voice?”
“Yeah, and it’s a she. Her name is Tadhana and she was an Ophir warrior who served Queen Bulakna. Have you heard of her? I don’t know anything about our history.”
“Queen Bulakna was the last queen to stand against Lacon. She led a battalion of warriors against Lacon but was caught and executed. They burned her.”
It’s true, Tadhana says softly. I saw her die. She held her head high, she never screamed. Her mage turned all of us dying warriors into spirits and hid us in the reliquary. It was the last thing I remember before falling asleep. How long have I been asleep, by the way?
-Five hundred years.
Tadhana is silent after that.
I tell Eban what Tadhana tells me, and his brow furrows. “What I really want to know is how did Ophir relics end up at House Dominant? And how did House Eternal know they had them? And what do they mean to do with them?”
The boat drifts slightly as Eban has stopped rowing.
“Beats me,” I say. Maybe I’m just an illiterate street rat, but most of us are.
What we know about our heritage, our culture, is only what Lacon allows us to know.
We’ve been stripped of our kingdom, our land, our history, our language.
The only thing we do know is that we are not Laconian. That much they make clear.
“Are we going the right way?” I ask aloud. A soft sigh comes from within, and then the bottle glows brighter while tugging my hand forward slightly. “That’s a yes,” I tell Eban.
His brow is sweaty from the effort. I fight the urge to reach out and wipe it away. “How much farther?” he asks.
The relic’s light intensifies. “Keep going,” I tell him.
Still, even with an Ophir ancestral spirit guiding us, I’m worried.
The sea is hazardous, its mood unpredictable, and we have nothing but an aged fishing boat.
No food, no fresh drinking water. Even if we’re headed the right way, we can’t possibly survive many days of this.
If nothing else we’ll die of thirst. And what happens when the sun comes out and bakes us beneath its relentless rays, without any type of shelter?
I can tell Eban is thinking the same.
“There’s no going back now, anyway,” I add. He can’t deny that truth, either. We both know there’s no point in complaining or worrying.
We’ll arrive when we arrive, Tadhana sings.
I gaze into the bottle, eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” But Tadhana gives no answer.
We continue on, silently, for a while, until I give in and slide to the floor of the boat.
I try to find a comfortable position by resting my head on one arm over the bench seat in the middle of the vessel.
It doesn’t quite work, but it has to be good enough, if only to rest my eyes for a bit.
Despite the anticipation of the journey, and the promise of reaching the Lashing, my body is giving in to exhaustion. “Are you all right?” I ask Eban.
“Perfectly fine,” he answers, slightly out of breath. It’s getting to him, too, even if he won’t admit it. “You rest. I’ll keep going,” he says. The oars aren’t moving as quickly as they were before.
“But when will you rest?” I mumble. My eyes are heavy. I will them to stay open, but it’s as if they’re weighed down.
All at once, I fall asleep, the relic clasped in one hand on my lap.
In what feels like mere moments, my eyes pop open.
The sky is maroon and orange above deep green, rippled water.
Eban stands, one hand at his forehead, gazing at something in the distance.
I fumble around for the relic, finding it still nestled in my lap, glowing brighter than ever before.
“What’s happening?” I ask. I wipe some drool from my cheek with my sleeve, quickly, so he won’t notice.
“I think we’re here,” Eban says.
Yes we are! pipes up Tadhana from within her bottle.
I hoist myself up. I ignore the ache in my neck and arm and try to shake off the sleep from the foot that was folded beneath me for hours.
“Where? I don’t see it.” I scan the horizon for the shimmering towers of the Lashing.
All I see is blue and more blue, water against sky, with almost no separation between.
“There, I think.” Eban points straight north.
I search in that direction. Then I see something moving in the distance. “That’s not it.” It isn’t clear, but it looks like a pod of whales, maybe even dolphins. “That’s just…” A figure comes into focus, then another. The unmistakable shape of a man stands above what I’d mistaken for sea animals.
The stories Eban heard are accurate, then.
The Lashing is a community of rafts and elaborate tent shelters.
Enormous rafts, yes, and much sturdier than any I’d ever seen, but a far cry from the utopia I’d secretly hoped for.
It’s not so much a city but a collection of floating docks.
Its residents, even if they are fellow Ophir, also don’t appear to be friendly.
“Are they…” The people standing along the edges of the rafts appear to be lifting up weapons.
Something flies through the air and hits the water. Arrows.
“Duck,” Eban shouts as he drops.
I slam down on the rough floor of the boat and yell at Tadhana. They’re attacking us! Why did you bring us here? Are you trying to kill us?
Keep going, Tadhana insists. Keep heading toward it! You’re almost there!
The sound of the warriors shouting warnings carries across the water.
Eban moves beside me. “We have to turn around, unless we can signal that we aren’t Lacon.”
No! Don’t turn around. Continue.
“Tadhana says we should keep going,” I tell him, even as we can make out what they’re yelling now. “Death to Lacon!” “Approach at risk of certain death!”
Stay the course!
“Tadhana says we can’t turn back.”
Eban nods. “Of course not. But we need to let them know we’re here in peace. We’re Ophir.” Except with the way the arrows are falling, we’ll be riddled with holes before we get the chance. “We just have to show them we’re not a threat,” he says.
“How do we do that?”
“I don’t know.” He’s still steering the boat toward the nearest floating dock, while dodging arrows.
One lands way too close to his foot. “Maybe we should turn back, we’re going to get killed,” I argue. But we need food and water, and Eban’s leg is still bleeding. We’re weak and tired, on the run for two days already.
Arrows whistle through the air and slice the water nearby.
“They’re just warning shots. If they wanted to hit us they would.”
Then an arrow lands on the boat—and this one is on fire.
Eban lunges to grab it before it can set the boat aflame, but a huge swell lifts the vessel and knocks him back down. It wobbles with the wave, but thankfully the water douses the flame as well. I hold on but the relic tumbles from my lap and rolls across the bottom. Tadhana yells, Hey!
The bottle rolls away and I panic. I’m going to lose the relic to the depths. I crawl forward and reach out for the bottle as the craft sways sharply from side to side. I can’t reach it.
Don’t lose me! Tadhana yells.
“I’m trying!” I yell back.
Eban grabs on to my leg; he tries to hang on to the edge at the same time as the boat lurches side to side. The bottle rolls again, back and forth. It’s so close, my fingertips almost touch it. “Come on, come on,” I repeat, more desperately each time.
The boat tips the opposite way and the bottle rolls. But this time, I’m able to clasp it, only barely, in my fingers. As I do, the craft slams violently. My body bounces against it, almost knocking the wind out of me. “Ow!”
Eban clings on to me, keeping me from spilling over the side. The boat comes to a rest against the first floating dock. A ragtag bunch of Ophir, holding weapons and looking fierce, rush toward us, leaping from raft to raft.
Some of them pull swords, holding them up, ready to strike. They’re clad in homespun tunics and jagged britches tied at the waist with rope.
A tall and imposing woman pushes her way to the front and raises an axe. “We warned you to leave us alone! Now go!”
“We’re not Lacon!” Eban says, standing up and raising his arms in surrender. The interlocking diamond symbols on his arm glow in the firelight. “We’re Ophir from the Sleeve, we’re looking for help and shelter. Please, we’re just like you.”
Then a tall, muscular man with shiny black hair pushes his way through the growing crowd and walks in front of the woman, holding his arm out to keep her back. “It’s all right,” he assures her. She seems unconvinced but doesn’t protest. He clearly outranks her.
I wonder if I should show them the relic. Whether that might help, or cause more trouble. Tadhana has been quiet since the Lashing folk approached. The bottle is no longer glowing. I hide it back in my pocket for the time being.
The man in charge looks at me and Eban. His big dark eyes rest on me for an especially long time. He looks me up and down, as if evaluating a purchase. I turn away, uncomfortable.
“It’s all right, Perlah. They’re Ophir. They’re not Lacon. They look hungry. Ever seen a Laconian who looked that thin and desperate?” he jokes.
I flush. We definitely don’t look like much. Tattered clothes, mud on my face, Eban with that haunted look in his eyes.
Then the man smiles, a sight that feels somehow familiar and comforting, as if I know him from somewhere, though I can’t quite place it. I suppose we are all Ophir, after all. It makes sense he detects some kinship with us, and vice versa.
His arms open wide and his booming voice calls out, “My friends, welcome home!”