Spellbreaker: Book 3 of the Spellwright Trilogy. Blake Charlton
was brushing her hair when she heard the rope outside her quarters creak. It made her smile.
Again she ran her tortoiseshell comb through her hair, glossy raven black like her father’s. Her wrists ached and her stomach still felt uncomfortable, but it seemed her disease flare was cooling despite the rice wine with Dhrun last night.
Behind her, the floorboards creaked. “Come in, Kai. Close the curtains.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
She tapped her temples. “An hour ago, I felt a few of my future selves were experiencing moments of … unsustainable pleasure. The more I thought of returning to my bedroom the more of my future selves began to feel such unsustainable pleasure.”
“Come on now, you know that sustainable problem only happened to me that one night.” He laughed. “I had an excuse; it was Bright Souls’ Night on Mokumako and my devotees drank too much kava and forgot about my requisites.” His firm hands landed lightly on her back and begin to massage her shoulder muscles.
She sighed as her muscles unknotted. Mokumako was Holokai’s home island, rimmed by cliffs and covered with jungle and cloud forest. She had met him there years ago, and his cult was still centered on that island.
“Did you want to talk about any of your requisites in particular?” she asked.
Holokai’s cult was a throwback to the golden age of the Sea People, when they had raided across the archipelago. His cult believed that, when the Disjunction came, he would defend the island from the demons. His requisites were to destroy any divinity posing a threat to his island. His cult also prayed that Holokai would one day father a demigod who would lead them to glory.
As a result, particularly in the morning when his worshipers were their most fervent, Holokai developed the powerful desire to sire that demigod. Long ago he and Leandra had discovered that her condition had left her infertile, but she did not mind helping her captain practice for such an important task. In fact, for the past few days he had received an unexpectedly large amount of prayerful energy. He wasn’t sure why his followers had become more devout, but because it made him particularly vigorous during certain actives, he wasn’t questioning it.
“Is the catamaran ready?” Leandra whispered.
“You know her captain wouldn’t rest if there was anything more to do for her. I thought there was another lady who might want help getting shipshape.”
She leaned back against his chest and smiled.
“You feeling better about the news that your mother might be in the bay?”
“I wouldn’t say better, but at least I can prepare myself.”
“You truly haven’t seen her since Port Mercy fourteen years ago?”
“Truly.”
“You ever gonna tell me what happened that drove you apart?”
“Sure, how about just before the seas boil?”
Holokai stopped massaging her shoulders. “So this thing with prophecy and you needing to kill someone and your mother’s coming into the bay … do you think it has to do with the Disjunction? How bad do you think it is?”
Leandra rolled her eyes. She’d forgotten how touchy he could get about prophecy. “Not bad enough to interrupt a back massage.”
He started working his hands again. “Hey, Lea, I’m serious.”
“I don’t see how this could be connected to the Disjunction. There’s no evidence of demons crossing the ocean. I just caught a glimpse of what’s coming for me.”
“But the possibility of war between empire and league—”
“Politics. The empire is cannibalizing deities to become stronger than the league, and the league is pumping out deities to keep up with the empire. Maybe they’ll fight another small war to see who’s got the upper hand lately. Whatever happens, neither civilization is going to give half a damn that they are torturing their own to crush the other one. Our job is to be different. That and stay alive.”
Holokai grunted agreement. “And about staying alive … is what we’re dealing with like that incident with the mercenary elephant god?”
“You keep harping on that.”
“He did crush half the bones in my body.”
“Do you even have bones when you’re a shark? I thought you were all cartilage.”
“Not the point. I want to know what we’re facing. How hot is the water we’ve landed in?”
“In terms of tight scrapes we have been in before?”
“That’ll do.”
Leandra considered. Since becoming Warden of Ixos, she had placed herself and her crew in mortal danger only three times. The first was the attempt to take down an elephant mercenary god who had gone neodemon and was trying to pressure the Sacred Regent to let him enter the Trimuril’s divinity complex. Leandra was trying to convert him back into the pantheon when things turned violent. If one of the neodemon’s lieutenants hadn’t gone mad, they never would have escaped.
Leandra’s second mistake had involved a jellyfish neodemon who had made his bloodthirsty devotees immune to the sting of his twenty-mile-long tentacles, which he wrapped around a fleet of their pirate ships.
Leandra had attacked with a full squadron and lost two ships and half her crew. She had been forced to flee and survived only because the sea became unusually hazy that evening and they lost their pursuer in the gathering dark. The remains of her squadron had just limped back into harbor. Blessedly, a powerful storm had struck and washed the neodemon onto shore where he died.
More recently, there had been the discovery of a mosquito goddess on the northern coast of the big island. She had been sucking blood from neighboring villagers and divine language from rival deities. When trying to escape after a failed conversion, Leandra and her party had gotten lost in a mangrove swamp. They heard the mosquito goddess’s swarm filling the air miles away. The neodemon’s insectoid manifestations were truly nightmarish. They had watched her swarm over a man. The bugs covered every inch of exposed skin and wriggled under chain mail. They sucked him dry of blood in moments. Leandra’s party would have suffered the same gruesome fate if a nearby volcano hadn’t erupted and filled the air with smoke that confused the swarm.
The more she thought about her three failures, the more Leandra realized that she still lived only because luck—the lieutenant’s madness, the sea storm, the volcanic eruption—had averted disaster. But then again, who could claim differently in such a precarious world? Every soul in Chandralu was alive only because fortune had spared them from war, disease, disaster. And, she reminded herself, only three of her expeditions had failed while her successes numbered in the hundreds.
She looked up at Holokai. “I’d say it’s a dangerous situation we’re in, maybe as bad as that botched conversion of the elephant god, but nowhere near as bad as the jellyfish or the mosquitoes.”
A bit of the tension went out of his eyes. He didn’t like thinking much for himself. Sharks, as a rule, are not being overly thoughtful. “Okay then.”
She leaned back against his chest. “Now, wasn’t there … something else you were concerned about?”
He laughed softly as his hands slipped down her back, tracing along her skin, to hang around her waist. Then she could feel his fingers working as they gathered in the cloth of her robes. Slowly, slowly her hemline rose up to her knees. “Maybe one thing.”
She reached back to press her palm against his hips. “What’s that?”
Softly he kissed her neck. “You’re sure no one will disturb us?”
“I gave everyone chores to keep them busy for an hour.”
He kept gathering in her robes, drawing