“You’ve been to the Ice Isles before,” Selena observed.
Julian didn’t look at her but kept his eyes on the icy teeth around them, his friendly demeanor slipping off like a mask. “I’ve been everywhere.”
The Black Storm sailed slowly into the Ice Isles. Those aboard who could speak did so in hushed tones, as if loud noises might topple over the sheets of ice that rose on all sides.
“Are avalanches common?” Selena asked.
“It’s not unheard of,” Julian said. “But summer’s ending; it’s getting colder so we don’t have much to fear anymore.”
Getting colder means I have much to fear. Selena looked around. The sky was slate gray with clouds blotting out the sun. The water was a muddy color, however, instead of flat gray. When she noted it, Julian said it was whale blood.
“Isle Nanokar is the exclusive seller of whale oil, mostly to the Isle of Lords,” he said. “The season is ending and the last hauls are coming in.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “You might not like it.”
“Not like what?”
“The burning beach.”
Julian was right.
The canal of icebergs opened to reveal a wide bay with miles of beach that was part pale sand, part snow, but not much of it that was white. Crimson streaks ran from the bodies of the hundreds of bowhead whales beached upon the sand. The surf was sluggish with rust-colored foam lapping at its bloody shores. Men were hard at work, using flensing knives to slice off huge rashers of blubber. These rubbery steaks, as long as a man in some cases, were lugged up to other men who stood at long wooden tables. The blubber was cut up into smaller pieces and tossed into canoes behind them.
Selena watched the scene from the Black Storm as it came upon the beach. A canoe, filled to spilling with blubber, was dragged further up the beach to a huge brick and mortar oven. There were twenty or so similar ovens all along the shoreline, the smoke of which covered the island’s lone township that clung to the edge of the island. The stench made Selena’s eyes water.
“Tryworks,” Julian told her, gesturing to an oven. “For rendering the blubber.”
“I guessed as much.” Selena turned away.
“You use lamps on Isle Lillomet? In your big fancy temple?”
“We do.”
“Where do you think that oil comes from?”
She forced her gaze out and watched as a great bowhead, its huge mouth a bristly rictus, was stripped of a wide swath of blubber.
“That’s how it goes,” Julian muttered.
“How what goes?”
“Lunos. Something bad for something good.” He looked at her. “There’s always a price to be paid.”
The Storm came to port at the township’s docks that were set aside for merchant packets. The whalers docked at other piers or were run up on the beach to more easily transport the whales to the tryworks. Selena longed to sit beside an inn’s hearth fire but Svoz paced the deck like a caged animal, slavering over the burning beach.
“The Nanokari won’t appreciate a sirrak roaming about, as frenzied by blood as the sharks,” Julian said. “He’ll jeopardize our stay here, especially if he makes a ruin of someone’s catch. The sale of oil from one whale is all it takes to keep a family fed and warm through the winter.”
Selena bit her lip. “Where can I send him?”
“The township is small and backed against the forest. There’s plenty of game there, I’d wager.”
Selena nodded. “Svoz. Seek your meals in the forest. You are to remain out of sight the entire duration of our stay unless I call for you.”
Svoz wore his human sailor guise and looked pained as his pale eyes roamed the beach. “You torture me, Master,” he said with a sigh. “You really do.”
He vanished himself in his usual cloud that blended well with the oil that already hung thick in the smoky air.
Selena did not hesitate but gathered her things from her cabin, and disembarked with only Ilior beside her.
The township on Isle Nanokar stretched along the beach for a league. Stone and mortar homes, shops, and taverns sat huddled against a slope of mountain that was covered with a forest of pine trees. Yellow light of home fires shone in the windows of the squat, one-story structures, and smoke issued from every chimney. Selena and Ilior walked the main thoroughfare. Townfolk garbed in fur seal coats or oilskins, some with faces curiously painted in white and brown, watched them pass with curiosity but not hostility. Dogs that resembled small wolves accompanied many of the people, and Selena saw a team of eight lashed to a sled outside one rustic tavern. The dogs watched them pass with the same curiosity; their teeth bared to better sniff the strangers rather than snap at them.
A shopkeeper was lounging in the door of his business. In the fading light of the day, Selena saw harpoons of all sizes mounted on one wall inside. A pipe was clenched between his teeth and his beard almost hid his smile as he directed them to the finest inn on Nanokar, the White Sail.
“I had thought that a tavern,” Selena said, remembering Julian’s conversation with the whaler.
“Aye, it be tavern an’ inn both. Best lodging’s in town. Loric an’ Hilka be the proprietors. They’ll see to it that you get good an’ warm, lady.” He gestured with his pipe. “Two doors down. Cain’t miss it.”
Selena uttered thanks through chattering teeth. The inn was easy enough to find; the only two-story structure on Isle Nanokar that Selena could see. She stepped into the common room where a hearth fire burned and where a busty, blustery woman greeted them in a booming voice.
“We got rooms a-plenty!” Hilka the proprietor bellowed, showing a smile full of boxy white teeth. She was a voluptuous woman of middle years, with pale, freckled skin and a great mane of coppery curls. “In a week, the packets come to load up on the last o’ the season’s oil an’ you won’t find an eve in the attic to be had then!”
Selena paid for rooms for the entire crew of the Storm, which endeared her to Hilka at once. The woman chatted animatedly, speaking of her husband and two young sons who were still “out at the hunt”; and of the bard who sailed up from the Pleasure Isles to sing for them every night until Ilior cut her off with a curt, “That’ll do, thank you.”
“Aye, an’ thank you too fer yer generous business! Please don’t hesitate to trouble me fer anything.”
Selena didn’t trust herself to speak through trembling lips, but hurried to the hearth fire that was roaring in a mouth large enough to fit a man sideways. Ilior took the seat across from her.
“Better?” he said.
She put her hands as close to the flames as she dared. “Yes, much.”