“She has a small stateroom for passengers. Two bunks, a trunk for your things and no room for anything else. Not big enough for your dragonman, I’m afraid.”
“The proper name is Vai’Ensai,” Selena said darkly, “and a hammock in the forecastle will suffice for him.” Despite her harsh tone, she felt hope rise for the first time since Captain Olin had cast her and Ilior adrift. She thought of the seer’s reading and her first card, The Voyage, but brushed it aside.
Of course there will be a voyage. This is Lunos. There is always a voyage.
She turned back to Julian. “She sounds fine. And you say she’s fast?”
“Aye.” Julian tried his wine again, made the same grimace and sat it back down. “I’ve topped her out at twelve knots. I can have you to Isle Saliz in four weeks, weather providing.”
Selena kept her expression neutral. Four weeks. She could be facing her first target in little more than a moon’s turn.
Careful. You don’t know if he’s trustworthy. He opened Mallen’s throat easily enough.
“Four weeks to Isle Saliz? That seems optimistic.”
“Is that not ideal?” Captain Tergus asked. “I had heard you were in a hurry.”
“Talk is like rain here,” Selena said, “constant and bothersome.”
He shrugged. “Aye, but the talk neglects to mention why you’re voyaging to such an unpleasantly vicious island. Or is that not something I’m permitted to know until you hire me?”
The Paladin eyed the captain steadily. “I’ve been sent by the Alliance to kill two Bazira adherents.”
Julian leaned back. “That seems…unlike you. From what I’ve witnessed out in that alley, murder in cold blood isn’t your thing. In fact, I seem to remember a lecture from you on that very point.”
“I’ve been commanded,” Selena said stiffly. “I have no choice. And…”
Julian raised a dark, arched brow.
“I am bound to obey.”
“And that’s it. That’s enough to abandon the morality that spares the life of a pirate who threatened you with rape?”
Selena shivered but kept her voice stern. “It’s more complicated than that but not relevant to our business association.”
“If you say so. But you really should heal yourself,” he said. “Your shoulder is as damp with blood as it is with rain. And your cheek…” He made a face. “People ‘round here will think I roughed you up. Not that they’d care.”
“Ilior would care,” Selena said.
The captain was right; her sleeve was darkened to the elbow. Her cold had prevented her from feeling the pain. She poured from her ampulla, reached for the moon, and spoke the word. Beneath her tunic, her flesh knit itself. The blood stopped flowing but she reeled with mild dizziness.
“You shouldn’t have wasted your energy on that pirate scum,” Julian said. He hailed the barmaid. “Take this back and bring me something that doesn’t taste like piss.”
The barmaid took the wine glass with a smirk. “That might take a while.” Sweat beaded her lip and glistened over her ample bosom. She gave Selena a strange look and moved off.
“Everyone is deserving of a second chance,” Selena murmured.
“Are they?”
“That is one of the founding principles of the Aluren faith. If I didn’t believe that—or practice that—I’d make a very poor Paladin.”
There was a silence and then Julian asked, “And does using healing prayers make you shiver with cold when it’s boiling out?”
Selena hesitated.
Julian sighed. “Very well. Let’s get your conditions met so that I may ask these questions freely. Am I hired or not?”
Selena studied him for a moment, or tried to. Healing her shoulder had compounded her weariness until she struggled to keep her eyes open. “Yes. You’re hired.”
“Good,” the captain said. “So?”
Selena made to take her cider again, but her hands trembled and so she held them near the fire instead. I may as well tell him. There’s little point in prevaricating. “I am the Tainted One. You’ve heard of Isle Calinda? At the end of the war?”
Julian nodded.
“I cast the spell that destroyed the Zak’reth armada and the four hundred people who called Calinda home.” She glanced at the captain. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m listening.”
Selena tried to feel if he were toying with her; she found she was fairly good at reading people. But he was walled off. Not a hint of what he was thinking was revealed on his face.
“After the spell was cast, I was weak as I am now, only a thousand-fold more. I nearly died. But the Two-Faced God was angry with me for the innocent lives lost and smote me. Though I am an Aluren Paladin, a warrior for the Shining face of the god, it marked me with the symbol of the Shadow face: a crescent moon. To show its displeasure with me.”
Julian was watching her intently with his gray-green eyes. Their light color and his olive skin told her he was Farendii, and she wondered if he fought in the war. And on which side? He was strikingly handsome, she thought, but in the same way a finely wrought dagger can be beautiful.
The barmaid returned and plunked a glass of rum on the table. “Enjoy.”
“And this wound makes you cold?” Julian asked.
“Always. I haven’t known warmth in ten years.”
“You feel no heat?”
“I sense when it’s there,” Selena said, her voice low, “but it does nothing to warm me.”
“The only reason I ask,” Julian said after a short silence, “is that the safest and quickest route to Saliz is a north-eastern bearing at the edge of the Heart Waters. To avoid most of the pirate traffic, it’s best to sail as close to Ice Isles as possible. And unless we stock my ship so that she’s over-laden and slow, we’ll have to dock at Isle Nanokar for supplies anyway.”
“I want to avoid the Ice Isles,” Selena said. “With my wound, any additional cold is a…well, it’s a torture. And Ilior—the Vai’Ensai who accompanies me. His blood is cooler than ours. While it will be uncomfortable for me, for him the cold could be dangerous.”
Julian rubbed his chin. “That complicates things.”
“I suppose, but it can’t be helped.”
“I don’t get it,” he said, sounding irritated. “Why would the god punish you for ending the war? Many hundreds of lives were saved by what you did. It makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. I killed four hundred innocent people—”
“Who would have died anyway at the hands of the Zak’reth, and with far less mercy than a quick drowning.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Selena started to say and then the tavern door banged open and Ilior was there. Rainwater dripped off his wing and horns. He surveyed the room that had gone silent, and then strode to where Selena and Julian sat.
“You were gone too long,” he said, and then saw the wound on her cheek. “What…?” He rounded on Julian, fist clenched.
Selena rose quickly—too quickly—and gripped Ilior’s arm to steady herself. “Ilior, this is Captain Julian Tergus. I have hired him to sail us to Isle Saliz.”