Chapter 3 #2
It’s twilight now, the sun melted beneath the horizon—his favorite time of day. A shade of sky that can’t be named, in swathes of blue and black and purple and brown.
Basuin nods, and Tehali nods back, and together they duck inside.
The rest of the captains are already there, their lieutenants standing beside them. A captain from the Third Fleet meets Basuin’s gaze with sad eyes. Another, from the Fifth, glances at Basuin and then away, staring down at the floor. The tent is very, very quiet for a Commander’s meeting.
Kensy stands behind a circular table covered in maps and military orders, his hands clasped at his back as he looks through Basuin. His smile widens into a grin, his blue eyes sharp and bright. Kensy raises his hand, gesturing to the pair of them.
“Everyone, meet Ariche’s new captain.”
Basuin looks at Tehali, but Tehali stares blankly ahead.
“Welcome,” Kensy says warmly, “Captain Tehali of Jankri.”
“You replaced me,” Basuin seethes, voice booming in the silence of the tent.
Leaning back in his chair, hands clasped together in front of his mouth, Kensy stares at him. The roar of the ocean outside the bastion walls isn’t loud enough to cover Basuin’s roar of fury.
“I gave the legion near fifteen years,” he says, palms pressed against Kensy’s oak desk. “I gave this war ten of them, and I gave you the better half of those. And this is what I get?”
There is begging in his voice. He hopes Kensy doesn’t hear it.
“You brought me across the sea, leagues away from my home—” his words are heavy, breaths shuddering through his flaring nostrils, “—just to kick me out and leave me here for dead.”
Fitting, he supposes, through the heavy fog of anger. That he should die on an island ripe with gods he doesn’t know the name of, dishonorably, rather than on the godless, bloodied battlefield strewn with pieces of his men and his broken faith in honor and glory.
Kensy looks at Basuin through narrowed eyes. “Are you done?”
His nails claw at the wooden desk, fingers curling into fists alight like the fires they set upon the piles of dead enemies, bodies souring. No, he’s not fucking done. But as he’s rearing to go again, opening his mouth, Kensy holds up a hand with a snapped, “Enough.”
And like the good, dishonorable soldier boy he is, Basuin’s jaw clicks shut.
Kensy rises from his chair, shoulders rolled back and spine straight as he stands at full height. He is only a few inches shorter than Basuin, but twice as menacing. A spark of respect, an ember of fear, begins to burn in Basuin’s chest as he meets Kensy’s icy eyes.
“Don’t you think,” Kensy begins, and Bass feels his body slink back to stand at attention, “that if I was discharging you, I wouldn’t have bothered bringing you here?”
No, he doesn’t think that. He thinks Kensy is out to punish him in any way possible.
Kensy shakes his head. “No, Basuin. I brought you here for a purpose. A purpose much greater than what you serve as Ariche’s captain. I need you here with me rather than running the fleet. Tehali is capable of that.”
There’s a stinging in his chest. “Tehali deserves to be captain,” he says. He means it.
“I knew you’d agree.” The corner of Kensy’s mouth jumps in a weary smile, clasping his hands together and bridging his thumbs. “Let’s face it, Bass. After Valkesta—”
For fuck’s sake, he could scream. He’d tear down this whole bastion. Burn it to the ground and go with it. Just to make them stop mentioning Valkesta.
“—your men haven’t seen you the same.” Kensy looks solemn, but his eyes are still cold. “A captain needs the respect of his men if he’s to succeed in the legion.”
It never should’ve been Tehali who found him bleeding out in the snow at Valkesta. It should’ve been Kensy—Kensy would have finished the job.
Basuin says nothing. He barely breathes. Kensy walks around his desk and stands beside Basuin, not looking at him, but resting a hand on his shoulder. Basuin stares at the wall ahead.
“But I still need you,” Kensy says. Needs him. Doesn’t respect him. “There’s only one person who can help me, and that person is you, Basuin.”
Kensy’s always said Basuin’s strength was in doing. In following orders. It’s why he chose Basuin to be his right-hand man—a rank that was Kensy’s to give, and now Kensy’s to take away.
So he swallows, and he asks, “What do you need, Commander?”
Kensy smiles at him. “A god speaker.”
A prickle of fear, unlike any other he’s felt, runs through his nervous system like fire struck from a match, racing to swallow everything in its path.
The only thing that keeps him from visibly shuddering is the fact that Kensy is watching, and if Basuin shows any sort of weakness, it will only make it worse.
Why would Kensy need a god speaker? This is conquest. This is unholy.
And, worse than sacrilege, being blessed with the power to speak to the gods is murderous. A curse. God speakers never saw prisons. They were “kill-on-sight” targets after Queen Ye’suite outlawed the gods.
Basuin can’t speak to them anyway. Only his mother, cradling her jade stone between her wrinkled and worn hands, was blessed enough.
Kensy walks away, out of Basuin’s sight, to take a turn about the room.
His footsteps echo off the wooden floors of his bunk house.
It sounds like what Basuin imagines the death-bidden road to the Blacksalt Sea would, screams of emptiness echoing off the cavern walls as mortality is wrenched from the dead and their souls travel into the endless nothing of the afterlife for the damned.
Are we going there? a trembling hand clutching Basuin’s shirt asked. To the Blacksalt Sea? Captain, I don’t wanna go—
“Why?” he manages to ask through the bile rising in his throat. Kensy doesn’t believe in gods. He repeats it to himself like a mantra.
“I’m looking for something,” Kensy says. “Something sacred. Something only the gods know.”
Basuin nearly recoils, blowing a breath out of his nose. “You don’t believe in the gods.”
“No,” Kensy agrees, “I don’t.” He raps his knuckles on the wood grains of his desk. “But who built man?”
Who built man, Kensy says, as if man were a science. As if man were the technology that Ha’riste drives, the capital engineers soldering junk together to make weaponry. They did build man into weaponry. It’s why he stands here now, in front of Kensy, unmoving.
Kensy, who doesn’t believe the gods raised man.
Basuin doesn’t answer and Kensy continues on. “I’m in search of a godly artifact for our queen. Something powerful.” Kensy’s hand tightens into a fist. “I know how much you care for your gods. Finding the artifact is the best way to protect them.”
He bristles. “Protect them?”
Kensy grins. “Did you think I was so ruthless?” With slow, measured steps, Kensy approaches him, so close Bass can smell the lye of soap on Kensy’s skin.
“I’m not replacing you, old friend. I’m recruiting you.
” Kensy leans in closer, like he’s sharing a secret.
“Help me find it so I don’t have to destroy the entire forest to get it. ”
Ruthless—no. Kensy is godless.
Basuin swallows. His throat is dry. “Where did you learn of it?”
“From a god speaker,” Kensy says with a flash of teeth. “One like your mother.”
The stone sitting in the hollow of his throat echoes the rhythm of his heart, making it feel alive. The heat of it stings his skin. A seed of dread buries itself in the gloom of Basuin’s gut.
“That’s why you’ve brought me, then?” he asks, knowing it’s an overstep. “The queen wishes to own everything, but you—you’ve always known exactly what you want, Commander.”
Kensy stares him down with an expression one would give a child, condescending but still warm despite the disappointment. It’s a familiar look, one Basuin knows to mean that he’s not clever enough to understand.
“It’s your choice, Bass. You can stay in Shaelstorm and help me. Live out your duty honorably.”
Basuin closes his eyes, chest tight.
“Or I’ll send you home.” Kensy’s chair creaks as he sits back down, an ankle thrown over his knee. “Back to Ankor.”