Tric picked himself up off the ground and growled. “You want to wait until I’m ready, next time?”
“That’d defeat the point of the exercise, wouldn’t it?”
“Damn Itreyans,” Tric growled. “You can always count on them to stick the knife in when you turn your back, aye?”
Marco’s handsome smile slowly died. “You’re half-Itreyan yourself, you fool.”
Mia’s heart sank. Tric’s eyes widened. And then it was on. Fists and curses, elbows and snarls, the boys falling into a tumble on the stone. Tric split Marco’s brow with his fist, punched his lip bloody. Solis soon broke it up, thrashing both boys with his belt like children until they stopped fighting. Hauling Marco to his feet, he ordered him to go see Marielle and get his hurts mended.
“And you,” the Shahiid growled at Tric. “Ten laps of the stair. Down and up. Go.”
Tric glared into the blind man’s eyes, and Mia was honestly wondering if he was about to try to take a piece. But with a black scowl, the boy obeyed. Solis roared at the other acolytes to get back to work, and Hush stepped into the circle to begin his round. Mia noticed Tric never returned to the hall after his tenth lap.
She went searching for him when Songs was done, checking his room, the Sky Altar, the athenaeum. She finally found him in the Hall of Eulogies, thumbs hooked in his belt, staring up at the statue of Niah. A thousand corpses’ names carved on the stone at their feet. Nameless tombs on the walls all around.
“How do, Don Tric?”
He glanced at her briefly. Nodded once.
She edged up to him slowly, hands clasped behind her. The Dweymeri boy had turned back to the statue, looking up at Niah’s face. The statue’s eyes had the disconcerting quality of seeming to look right at you, no matter where you stood. The goddess’s expression was fierce. Dark. Mia wondered who or what the sculptor had imagined Niah staring at when he crafted her countenance. For the first time, she noticed Niah held her scales in her right hand. The sword gripped tight in the other.
“She’s left-handed,” Mia said. “Like me.”
“She’s nothing like you,” Tric growled. “She’s a greedy bitch.”
“… Are you entirely sure it’s wise to call her a bitch in her own house?”
Tric looked at her sidelong. “I thought you didn’t believe in the divinities?”
Mia shrugged. “Hard not to when the God of Light apparently hates your guts.”
“Fuck him. And fuck her. What good do they do us? They give us one thing. Life. Miserable and shitty. And after that? They take. Your prayers. Your years.” He waved at the unmarked graves all about them. “Even the life they gave you in the first place.”
Tric shook his head.
“Take is all they do.”
“… Are you all right?”
Tric sighed. Shoulders slumped. “Shahiid Aalea gave me the word.”
Mia waited patiently. The boy pointed to the ink on his cheeks.
“I’ve put it off as long as I could,” he said. “After dinner. My turn with the weaver.”
“… Ah.”
She placed an awkward hand on his arm. Unsure what to say.
“Why were you avoiding it? The pain?”
Tic shook his head. Mia said no more, letting silence do the talking for her. She could see the boy struggling. Feel Mister Kindly in her shadow, gravitating toward his fear like flies to dying meat. He wanted to speak, she knew it. All she had to do was give him the room to— “I told you about my mother,” he said. “My … father.”
Mia nodded, almost sick with sorrow at the thought of it. Touching his hand again. Sighing, Tric stared at his feet. Words struggling behind his teeth. Mia simply stood beside him, holding his hand. Waiting for the silence to fill.
“You asked about my name when we met,” he finally said. “Told me Dweymeri have names like Wolfeater and Spinesmasher.” A momentary smirk. “Cuddlegiver.”
Mia smiled in return, saying nothing.
“And you told me my name couldn’t be Tric.”
“… Aye.”
The boy looked up to the statue above. Hazel eyes dark and clouded.
“When a Dweymeri is born, the babe is taken to the high suffi on the isle of Farrow. The Temple of Trelene. And the suffi holds the baby up to the ocean and looks into its eyes and sees the path that lies before it. And the first words she speaks are the baby’s name. Earthwalker for a wanderer. Drakekiller for a warrior. Wavedrinker for one fated to drown.
“So like a good daughter of the bara should, my mother took me to Farrow when I was three turns old.” A bitter smile. “Runt, I was. Dweymeri are a big people. Our forefathers born of giants, they say. But I was only a half blood. Barely a handful. Took after my father, I suppose. The midwife joked I was so small my mother didn’t feel me on my way into the world.”
Tric shook his head. Smile dying on his lips.
“You know what the suffi said when she held me up?”
Mia shook her head. Mute and aching.
“She said tu rai ish’ha chē.”
Mia put the first letters of the sentence together. Found his name. But …
“I don’t speak Dweymeri,” she murmured.
Tric looked at Mia. Rage and pain in his eyes.
“Drown him and be done.” His voice dropped to a trembling whisper. “They were her first words. That’s what she fucking named me. Drown him and be done.”
Mia closed her eyes. “O, Tric …”
“The suffi handed me back to my mother and told her to give me to the waves. Said the Lady of Oceans would accept me, because my people never would.” A bitter laugh. “My people.”
He sat down on the plinth at the Mother’s feet, staring into the dark.
Mia sat beside him, staring only at him.
“Your mother told the priestess to go to the abyss, I take it?”
“She did.” Tric smiled. “She was fierce, my mother. My grandfather agreed she should drown me, so she took me far from Farrow. Far from him. She gave up her birthright for me. Gave up everything. She died of bloodpox when I was ten. But on her deathbed, she gave me this.” He held up the three silver drakes ever circling his finger. “And she told me a way to prove myself as worthy as she knew me to be.”
Tric leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Dweymeri warriors undergo a ritual when they come of age. At the end of it, our faces are tattooed so all who meet us know we’re Proven. For warriors of the Threedrake clan, the trial was the harshest. Brave the deepwater, and slay one of the great seadrakes. Storm, saber, or white.
“From the time my mother told me of it, I dreamed it. We lived east of Farrow. A port called Solace. After she died, an old seadog taught me boatmaking. Sailwork. Harpoons. I cut down the ironwood trees for my skiff myself. Took me a year to make her. And when I was fourteen, I turned my back on Solace and set out for the deep.
“See, stormdrakes are big, but stupid. Sabers are smarter, but smaller, too. But the whitedrake … he’s the king of the deep. Big and cruel and clever. So I headed north to the coldwater, where the seals were pupping. All I wanted was to sail into Farrow with the carcass of an eighteen-footer. Stand before my grandfather and hear him say he was wrong about me. I prayed to the Lady of Oceans that she’d bring me a beast worthy of a man. And she answered.”
Tric breathed through gritted teeth, eyes alight.
“Mother of Night, he was fucking huge, Mia. You should’ve seen him. When he hit my line, he almost ripped the skiff in half. But my hook bit deep, and my boat held true. He tried to ram me more than once, but after he tasted my harpoons, he learned not to stray too close. The waves smashed down on us and I didn’t eat or sleep. Just fought. Five full turns, toe to toe, hands bleeding. Imagining my grandfather’s face as I dragged this monster into Farrow Bay.
“He got tired. Couldn’t stay down, swimming slower and slower. And so I rowed up beside him and picked up my best and sharpest. The harpoon I’d saved for last.”
Tric looked at Mia through the curtain of his saltlocks.
“You ever looked into a drake’s eye?”