Chapter Six
UNSURE IF THE CLERICS OF AVOLIRE were truly taking a sample of my blood or trying to drain me dry, I sat through the bloodletting and made witty quips.
Let no one say a Cadere grew wobbly at a little blood in a bowl.
The process would take two days, according to the pudgy healer who had come to fetch me.
The blood would be prayed over by several members of the church to purify it.
I thought to ask if they did so over the blood of the nobles but bit that tart query back.
I was sure I already knew the answer. Then they would call forth the court mages to begin their mystical workings.
Rare regents, ancient nodes, scrying mirrors of lineage?
My understanding of the old ways and magicks was limited.
Amazingly, there must be a few elderly elven mages left breathing who could perform the rites.
Most of the city elves had left magicks behind when they turned on the goddess Danubia to create a god that loved intelligence and pomposity over affection and respect for the woods and each other.
Perhaps a few scholars had been granted leave to study and keep the old spells alive.
Witches know who may need to have their grimy bloodlines tested someday so best to have a few doddering priests with some knowledge of the mystics.
I knew of the magicks my father’s line carried and had learned to manipulate water to my bidding.
I’d met elves that could control the wind, the ground, and speak to beasts or shift into an animal.
But my schooling had been sparse when reading of the ancient elven spellcasters.
The druids were looked down upon for their belief in a goddess of the forest, and the wood elves were disparaged for their skin tone, much like the Sandrayans and the Tundra peoples.
The dwarves were disliked for their lack of height, refinement, and overall ability to look an arsehole in the eye and call said arsehole an arsehole.
The poor were disdained for being poor. Then there were the bandits and the privateers who shared the contempt from those who stood on the throats of those not born in the right house.
As much as it terrified me to think I could be thrust into a nest of hateful vipers, there was a side of me that looked forward to the possibility.
After the clerics had several dainty white bowls of my blood, I was left to rest on a cot by the window.
The king sat with me as he told me tales of his youth at Castle Willowspirit.
He spoke of his parents, Gialar and Tendarl, who had died when he was an infant of the wasting sickness the humans had brought into Renedith.
He told of his mother’s kindness, of how she went out into the streets, a lady of the realm, to help the acolytes and clerics tend to the sick and dying.
How she had contracted the sickness, passing it to my father and several others in their service before passing over to rest with Ihdos.
“What of you?” I had asked while sipping on warm apple juice as the sun began to fade behind some thickening clouds. The winds dipped and gusted. Rain was in the air.
“When the plague began, I was sent to Celear with my grandfather, as he was elderly. We stayed in the Stillcloud residence in the southern part of the city. Only when those infected had died and were placed onto a pyre did we return to Castle Willowspirit. Umeris buried his daughter and his son by marriage and then took over raising me,” he’d told me, his words soft as he relayed the past. Even though he had not known his parents, his sadness over losing them was evident, so I spoke of other things until I was given leave to return to my suite.
The king and I separated outside the Hall of the Sanguine. I was led to my room by two armed guards. With a sigh I gave the pull cord a tug. A thin young woman appeared at my door mere moments later. I asked for hot water to bathe in.
It was delivered with haste, and many a side-eye to the snoring lump in the hearth.
I then had a message sent out to Hyla at The Skye Nest, bidding her to visit me soon.
Using some vellum from the desk, I opened an ink pot, found a new sharp quill awaiting me in a cup filled with plumes, and sat down to pen some notes to my associates on the high seas.
I had promised the queen I would do so, and so I would. A Cadere never went back on his word.
The tub was large enough for two trolls and a goat.
Bits of dried lavender had been sprinkled atop the bathwater, so I chose a bar of soap with the same scent.
Stripping off my clothes, I stepped into the tub, easing down into the hot water, amazed at how my shoulders loosened as I slid downward.
With my chin resting on the surface of the aromatic water, my sight went to the open doors.
The sky was thickening, heavy gray clouds creeping in to blot out the sun.
A storm brewed on the horizon. I knew this to be fact.
Sailors understood the weather. We lived by the upsets and pleasure of the sea.
Ducking under the water, I rose slowly, blinking to clear the bits of flower from my lashes, and lifted my left arm skyward.
Water sluiced over it. The white cloth tied gently around my forearm was sodden now, so I removed it with care.
The slice was clean, neat, and treated with an astringent but still puffy.
Staring at the incision, I let my mind wander.
What would I do if the results showed me to be this lost prince?
Most sane people would grab a crown and then live like a fattened hog.
And while the hedonistic side of me liked the sound of that, the parts of me that had grown up in Quinn’s Quay rebelled.
As a child, I’d seen orphans sleeping in alleys forced to work just to survive.
I’d grown to my majority in a brothel. The women and men bound in poverty so heavy that the only way many of them could put food in their mouths was to sell themselves for a few copper.
While I’d not gone without, many children I played with had.
Some were carted off to parts unknown on ships with captains not as morally inclined as the Cloud’s Shame.
And given that my father was a pirate who nightly fucked as many people as his cock would endure, Pontious Cadere’s mores were questionable at best. Yet he did have some lines he would not cross.
One or two. Obviously, one was not lying or not sailing off to leave a fucking noblewoman with a bastard growing in her belly.
A chill wind blew into my room causing my wet skin to pimple.
Shaking free from my issues with my father, I poked at the delicate scab forming on my arm.
Yes, wealth. Power. Prestige. It might be within my grasp.
What would I do with the bounty? Waste it on wine, men, and song, or do something of merit with it.
Obviously Aelir would use his power to try to make Melowynn a better place for elven kind.
But I was not pure elf. I had human blood.
Shorter ears. Those things would bar me from society even if a circlet sat on my head.
Or would it? Would the noble houses swallow their revulsion to kiss my ring?
That could be amusing. If I lingered here in Celear, a lost prince found, I could watch the rich cockers fawn over me, mouths mewling as they swallowed down their disgust. Now that held real potential!
Perhaps if I stayed here as a royal-blooded stiff, I could work with Aelir to bring real change to the world.
To ease the suffering of those who the powerful trod on and over.
Persuade the queen to lessen the port fees and allow those to enter those ports to sell their goods, papers or not.
What harm could come if I stayed—outcome being the good option and not the one where I was disposed of for crimes against the kingdom—and helped my brother?
A lashing of wind blew in a sheet of rain just as thunder cracked overhead.
Prescott slumbered on as he was known to do.
I sat in the tub, rubbing soap over my flesh and hair, as a storm raced in from the Silvura.
Rising from the water as rain pelted the castle, I toweled off, inhaling the smell of brine, and padded to my trunk to open it.
A valet had not been located yet, it seemed, which was not an issue.
I could pick out my own clothes and pull them over my arse.
Just as I could shave and brush my hair.
As I stepped into a pair of black trousers with a slim silver threading, I heard a sharp knock on the door.
“Aye,” I called, stepping over a long gray-blue leg, just as a guard opened it and stuck his head through the crack.
“A woman by the name of Hyla asks to be presented,” the female elf said as her gaze flew to that thick, bare troll calf.
“Yes, please send her in,” I replied. Hyla stormed into the suite, glowering at the guard as she made a beeline for me. She hugged me to her, planted a kiss on my brow in a manner not befitting a first mate, and then took hold of my damp shoulders as she stepped back to inspect me.
“You’re hale and whole?” Her sight fell to the cut on my arm, her brow furrowing.
“Aye, yes, I’m good. Have you eaten? How fares the crew? Have you spoken to the port master and the shipwright about—”
“Slow yourself, Captain. You always did batter a soul with questions when nervous.”
“I’m not nervous, just curious. I have had too much idle time already. My mind leads me to deep thoughts with no ready replies.” I sighed, easing from her grip to lift my hairbrush from my trunk and started dragging it through my knotted hair.
“If you know there are no replies forthcoming, then why ask?” She sat on the edge of the bed to ease a finger into the top of her wooden leg to rub her stump.