Chapter 21 Play Drinking Games with Pickled Organs #2
“I was attempting to create a self-sustaining weather system for agricultural purposes—a permanent rain cloud that would follow farmers around—when Lord Blackrose happened to be passing through the village.”
“I was there to collect taxes,” Kazimir clarified, landing another perfect shot. The man’s aim was irritatingly good, even with pirate moonshine. “Instead, I found a village drowning under three feet of pink snow that smelled like roses and turned anything it touched temporarily invisible.”
“A simple pigmentation error,” Griffin said defensively.
“The villagers chased him with pitchforks once they could find him again,” Kaz continued. “After that, I started making Griffin experiment in the North Tower under heavy wards.”
Griffin hiccuped again. “ ’Twas a promotion.”
I turned to Thorne as he prepared his next throw. “What about you?”
He landed another perfect throw before answering. “Lord Blackrose killed my previous employer. Offered me double pay and better benefits. I said yes.”
“Benefits?” the captain asked.
“Combat bonuses,” Thorne said seriously. “Magical healing.”
Brecca looked seriously offended, as if these benefits hadn’t been part of her employment package. Kazimir noticed and said, “You have first refusal on any salvage rights. Thorne gets healing spells.”
Brecca’s irritation vanished, replaced by a satisfied smirk. She raised her notebook in a salute.
Sebastian suddenly laughed. “The Dark Lord provides better employee benefits than the royal court of Solandris.” The moonshine was definitely working.
He’d progressed from careful sips to generous swallows, and his aim was suffering accordingly.
Another organ went wide, this one sticking to the mainmast with a wet thwack.
“The flowers are getting bigger,” Griffin observed, pointing to the small garden that had sprouted around Sebastian’s feet.
Sebastian swayed. “When I was eight, I accidentally turned my father’s entire study into a greenhouse during a particularly tense lesson on trade negotiations.”
“The same kinds of flowers?” I asked, lining up my next throw.
“Varies by emotion.” He touched a blue bloom—a tiny morning glory—and it disappeared.
“That’s adorable,” I said, then immediately felt bad when he looked mortified. “I mean it’s sweet!”
“Arabella finds everything adorable,” Kazimir said. “Yesterday she called my shadow warriors ‘cute little murder puppets.’ ”
“They are, though. The way they prowl around all menacing.” I mimicked their stalking motion, nearly dropping my organ.
“You’re drunk,” he observed.
“You’re pretty,” I shot back.
Captain Brecca made a note in her book. “Three to one odds on Lady Blackrose initiating public displays of affection within the hour.”
“I’ll take that action,” Thorne said.
We’d been playing for a while when I finally asked the question I’d been wondering about. “Sebastian, why didn’t you ever write? After… everything?”
He missed his throw so badly the organ went backward. After his requisite drink, he said quietly, “Your father told me you were sick. Said the healers recommended no visitors, no letters, nothing that might upset you.”
“That bastard.”
“I should have known better. Should have tried harder.” He looked at me with those earnest violet eyes. “I’m sorry, Bella.”
I hadn’t heard that nickname in years. “It’s not your fault.”
Kazimir’s hand found mine, squeezing gently. Through our bond, I felt his rage at my father simmering just below the surface.
“Next round,” Brecca announced. “Score’s tied, somehow, despite Lord Sebastian’s complete inability to aim.”
“The ship keeps moving!” Sebastian protested.
“The ship’s been steady as stone for the last hour,” Thorne pointed out.
We’d moved on to the mystery organs now, things that defied identification and probably belonged to creatures that had too many legs.
“I wish Vex were here,” I said, watching Griffin attempt to calculate the perfect throwing angle while swaying dangerously. “She’d destroy all of you at this.”
“Vex doesn’t play games,” Kazimir said, then added, “unless it’s eyeball golf.”
“She played cards with me last week.”
He turned to stare at me. “She what?”
“Beat me six hands out of seven, too.” I landed another throw, though it was getting harder to aim with the moonshine making everything fuzzy. “Why is that weird?”
“Vex doesn’t do things for fun,” Thorne said. “She works, she organizes, she occasionally threatens people with elaborate death scenarios, but she doesn’t play.”
“Maybe she just needed someone to ask,” Sebastian suggested, then immediately looked like he regretted speaking.
“Or maybe,” Griffin said, glasses now completely askew, “she’s been replaced by a doppelganger! We should test her when we return. I have a kit for that.”
“You do?” I swayed on my feet and landed against Kaz’s solid chest. He wrapped an arm around my waist to keep me steady.
“I have kits for everything. Detecting poison, identifying cursed objects, determining if your reflection has gained sentience—”
“That last one can’t be real,” Sebastian interrupted.
“Happened twice at the Academy,” Griffin said solemnly. “Poor Marcus is still negotiating visitation rights with his mirror self.”
I must have been more drunk than I thought because Griffin’s statement made perfect sense.
By the fourth round, we’d abandoned any pretense of proper scoring.
Sebastian had given up entirely and was lying on his back, making the flowers around him grow into increasingly elaborate patterns.
Thorne was throwing with his eyes closed just to make it fair.
Griffin had started drunkenly narrating each throw like it was a dramatic battle.
“An’ the gall—gallblabber soarsh through the air!” he announced, completely wrong about the organ’s identity. “Will it fin’ dish target? The crowd holdsh ish breath! The very fate of the—the realm hangsh… in th’ balance!”
It landed three feet short with a sad splat.
“The realm is doomed,” Thorne deadpanned.
I was leaning heavily against Kazimir, who despite drinking as much as the rest of us, seemed frustratingly unaffected.
“How are you still sober?” I demanded.
“Practice,” he said, then proved he wasn’t entirely unaffected by pressing a kiss to my temple. “Also, my runes.”
“Cheater.”
“I want it on record,” Sebastian said from the deck, “that this is the strangest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Including the Bone Witch incident?” I asked.
“That was an accident. This is on purpose. This is us actively choosing to throw pickled organs around while drinking something that might be poison.”
Griffin hiccuped thoughtfully. “Technic-cal-ly, the Bone Witch cursh was also a choice. Jush… sheveral bad choishes shtacked on top of each other.”
“I thought it was rather mild, as curses go,” Sebastian continued, missing his throw by a spectacular margin. “But Auremar was furious. Called it an attack on the dignity of the crown.”
“The dignity of his crown was compromised long before anyone started rhyming,” Kazimir muttered, landing another perfect shot.
“At least rhyming has artistic merit,” I added, trying to fish out something that might have been a liver. I gave up trying to use the tongs and thrust my whole arm into the jar.
Sebastian took another drink, and vines curled around him. “You know what’s funny? The curse made people more honest. Hard to lie when you have to make it rhyme.”
“Poetry ash truth,” Griffin mused, swaying backward so far I thought he would fall. “Thatssssh profound.”
“So what you’re saying,” Thorne said slowly, “is that we’re all cursed right now. By moonshine. Into throwing organs and telling the truth.”
We all stopped to consider this.
“Are we the organsh?” Griffin asked, squinting at the jar where I was still trying to grasp the slippery liver. “Meta-metaphorically shpeaking. Are we all jush… pickled thingsh being thrown at arbi-arbitrary targetsh by forshes beyond our control?”
“That’s dark,” Sebastian said as my hand finally closed around my organ.
“No, no, he’s onto something.” I pointed at Griffin with my liver, the pickle juices running down my arm and onto the deck. “We’re all preserved in our own jars of trauma and bad decisions, and life just keeps throwing us at holes we can’t quite reach.”
“Some of us reach the holes,” Thorne said.
“Because you’re already dead inside,” I said with the certainty of superior logic. “Preserved. Like these organs.”
“I need to lie down,” Sebastian announced. He was already lying down.
“The real question,” Kazimir said, his lips twitching as he fought to keep a straight face, “is whether we’re aiming for the holes, or if the holes are aiming for us.”
There was a long, contemplative silence broken only by the sound of snapping sails and Sebastian’s flowers aggressively sprouting.
“I hate all of you,” Griffin finally said, words slurring together. “You’ve ruined organsh and philoshphy for me.”
“We should do this more often,” I announced. “Spending time together without trying to conquer anything. Just being people. Weird people throwing organs around, but still.”
“To weird people,” Sebastian said, raising his cup.
“T’organ throw-wing,” Griffin added.
“To not dying at the God Spire,” Thorne contributed.
“To family,” I said, then immediately worried I’d overstepped.
But Kazimir raised his cup. “To family.”
We drank, and Sebastian immediately turned green.
“Side of the ship!” Brecca barked.
He made it, barely.
“Called it,” Thorne said.
“Thatsh cheatin’,” Griffin protested. “He vomitsh all the time.”
As they bickered and Sebastian groaned, I looked at our ridiculous group and felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the moonshine. We’d need to descend soon, according to Brecca, to avoid the night predators. And we needed food and rest.
“Last round,” I announced. “Winner takes all.”
“Takes all what?” Sebastian asked weakly, returning from the railing.
“Pride. Glory. The last pickled brain.”
We lined up for our final throws. The wind had picked up, adding an extra challenge. Or maybe we were all just too drunk to stand straight.