Chapter Six
Wes and Delauney smuggled the spectroscope onto the ship with the help of two of Fern’s apprentices in the morning. Gregory startled like a frightened cat when he spotted them, but the apprentices were so happy to see him again that he reluctantly allowed them to give him a single, quick embrace.
“You have to make it right with Fern,” Serafina said, as they rowed back to shore. “He’s miserable without you.”
“He’s miserable in general,” Gregory said.
Dominance slipped into his voice for the first time since Wes had met him.
“And I don’t miss him none.” Serafina and the other apprentice, a boy named Mattia, rolled their eyes at each other.
“You tell him that he’s a stubborn old crab and I hope his hair falls out before he’s sixty. ”
“But you still give him your wages,” Mattia said.
“Can’t have you or the cats going hungry with the way he spends his silver,” Gregory muttered, scowling as he rowed the little boat toward the docks. Wes gave Delauney a dubious look over Gregory’s shoulder, and Delauney covered his mouth to hide a laugh.
“About the cats,” Wes said, when they were finally on shore again. “There was a black one that didn’t look too healthy. There was something wrong with its breathing, I think. It had three legs...”
“She’s breathing funny?” Gregory said, eyes wide in panic.
“That ain’t right. Fern would’ve fixed it if it weren’t too serious to cure.
That ain’t right at all.” He abandoned them on the docks, stomping off toward the far end of the island with his head down.
The apprentices followed him nervously, casting confused looks toward Wes.
“That cat looked perfectly fine to me,” Delauney said.
“She was,” Wes said pleasantly. “It just gives him a reason to see Fern in person.”
“I don’t know if you’re evil or brilliant,” Delauney said, tying the rowboat to a post on the dock.
“Hopefully the latter,” Wes said. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and rocked back on his heels.
“I was thinking... your cabin doesn’t have many books on the stars, and there’s a library right here.
I know it’s daunting, but we can start small.
Just one book. Something you’re interested in, not the bullshit your tutors tried to make you read. ”
“You don’t have to do all this,” Delauney said.
“I want to.” It was a little surprising to admit.
Delauney was precisely the sort of wealthy, privileged noble that Wes preferred to avoid, and he was far too cheerful to boot, but Wes couldn’t seem to help himself.
Anyone could see that Delauney was bright, almost unnervingly so, but Delauney had been so strongly convinced otherwise that he couldn’t seem to imagine the life he wanted.
Delauney was likeable. He was nice. And he showed the same dogged optimism that encouraged moths to dance into a torch flame, which engendered the spark of protectiveness that had brought Wes before the military council in the first place.
“We’ll divide and conquer,” Wes said. “You get those elements you were talking about, the ones you want to test on the telescope thing.”
“Spectroscope,” Delauney said.
“Right.” Wes figured that enough people had dismissed Delauney’s interests already. He carefully repeated the word. “The spectroscope. Then I’ll get the book, and we’ll confer tonight.”
“This feels almost like carrying off an illicit tryst,” Delauney said. “Skulking around in secret to do science.”
“I haven’t had any illicit trysts to speak of,” Wes said, “so I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, they’re great fun,” Delauney said. “I had one yesterday, in fact.”
Wes thought of Delauney’s mouth on his cock and fixed his gaze firmly on the ground. “Good for you.”
“It was in this funny little side street,” Delauney started to say.
“Book,” Wes interrupted, before Delauney could go any further. He turned on his heel. “I’d better go before the library closes.”
“But it’s barely noon,” Delauney said.
Wes beat a hasty retreat, trying not to show the discomfort on his face.
Delauney considered going to the sailor’s library a tryst?
Had they been... trysting? Wes shook out his arms, trying to loosen his rattling nerves.
No. There were no trysts, because they weren’t going to do anything of the sort ever again.
The library was like a sundial, casting a long shadow over the island as Wes rounded the final bend. Gargoyles in the shape of wyverns perched over the door, but whatever ominous threat the door posed was ruined by the vegetable garden directly next to it.
Inside, the library was shaped like a bizarre lighthouse, with a winding staircase hugging the walls and narrow landings and bookshelves stretching up to the high ceiling.
Librarians scaled the walls without the stairs, using a series of ropes, pulleys, and thin ladders to navigate the shelves.
Wes had been there a few times, but it still alarmed him how casually the librarians navigated the shelves.
The librarian who found a book for him read the usual list of terrifying things that would happen if Wes tried tampering with the spell that would whirl it back to the library in three weeks, including “snails” and “sending the wyvern after you.” She ended the speech by stamping a page at the back of the book, which glowed faintly as she handed it over.
“What if I need more time?” Wes asked. He’d finished his other books on time before, but he wasn’t certain how long Delauney needed. “I might have trouble with my letters, you see.”
The librarian’s stern expression softened somewhat. “Oh,” she said, waving a hand toward the book. “Just wait until the book starts disappearing, then shout ‘extension’ until it solidifies again. That’ll give you another week.”
Wes returned the book to their room at the inn, but Delauney must have still been out searching for supplies. Wes set the book gently on the desk, wary of witch-librarians riding over on wyverns to chide him for treating it carelessly, and returned to the sunlit streets.
It was easy enough to find Vee and the other sailors from her coterie. They were playing cards with a group of scantily-clad men with long, colorful hair and dark eyes.
“This is Wes,” Jim said, when Wes pushed between Vee and one of the strangers to examine the bets. “He’s about as shameless as you are.”
One of the men smiled brightly at Wes. There was something feral and sharp there, an edge that stirred Wes’ cock and made him shift uncomfortably.
“I’m Leland,” the man said. He nodded to his two companions. “They’re Coran, and he’s Marlow.”
“They say that they’re sirens,” Vee said, rolling her eyes. “But I don’t see any sunken ships around here, so they can’t be very effective ones.”
“We aren’t in the business of sinking ships,” Coran said. They looked Wes up and down. “We have other conquests to consider.”
Wes met his gaze for only a breath before looking away. The three of them had a dominance that seemed woven into every move they made. Marlow gestured quickly with both hands, pinching his fingers together and pulling back as though pretending to tug a string.
“Marlow says that you’ll look pretty on your knees for us,” Leland said.
He lay a hand on Wes’ thigh, pushing him down so that he was no longer crouching between him and Vee.
He slid his hand up Wes’ leg, fingers curling around the hem of his trousers.
Wes’ cock jumped, desperate even after his exhausting stint at the library the day before.
“No one does anything until I win back what Vee stole from me,” a sailor named Ginnie said, glaring at Wes and the so-called sirens. Leland only smiled.
The sirens didn’t seem entirely interested in the game after that.
They kept eyeing Wes, finding excuses to touch him or smile at him.
Leland kept his fingers hooked around his trouser hem, as though quietly staking a claim.
When Ginnie finally accepted defeat and Vee suggested they retire to a public eating house, Leland gently held Wes down.
“We might have a walk with your pretty submissive friend,” Leland said. “If he’s interested.”
Wes bit his cheek. After a day spent trying to ignore thoughts of Delauney’s mouth and enormous cock, he could use a proper distraction.
Vee laughed. “Gods help you, Wes. Come back in one piece.”
Wes gasped as Marlow crouched over him right there in the street, his long, curly hair falling like a multicolored curtain over his face.
He ran his hands up Wes’ chest, unlacing his shirtfront, and bent to catch his mouth in a teasing kiss.
When he pulled away, he flicked Wes’ nose with a finger and made a gesture that was so suggestive that Wes almost didn’t need a translation.
“He just called you a slut,” Leland said.
“I’m not exactly denying it,” Wes said. Coran signed something to Marlow, whose smile broadened. He kissed Wes again, reaching into Wes’ trousers to palm his cock. Wes jerked at the touch, moaning faintly into Marlow’s mouth.
“He’ll do,” Coran said. Marlow stood, drawing Wes up with him.
Leland took the laces of Wes’ shirt and pulled him toward the edge of the docks, where a quiet beach lay out of view of the anglers fishing nearby.
People could still see them from the docks if they knew what to look for, and Wes could even see the upper floors of the inn from beyond the dunes.
That didn’t deter the sirens. It certainly didn’t deter Wes.
He exchanged messy, fervent kisses between them all, melting into their touches as they stumbled along the sand.
They tugged at his clothes as they passed him between them, until Wes was naked and breathless, writhing in Leland’s grip.