He licked his lips with a forked tongue. Sebastian wiped his slashed palm on his trousers, as if he could wipe the memory of that tongue lapping his blood.
“But come now,” the sirrak continued. “I find it preposterous that you do not understand the power of a name. You, who maintains a crew of mute and tongueless rogues. Surely you, Julian Tergus, must have some appreciation for the power of a true name.”
Sebastian gripped the rail. “You cannot speak true names, sirrak.”
“True enough,” Svoz returned, “and I did not, did I? Don’t fret, my dear Master. I am bound to secrecy. Our strange nature provides sirrak’ah with vast amounts of secretive knowledge and yet very little means to use it.”
“What does that mean?” Sebastian asked. “What do you know?”
“Everything.” Svoz regarded him from beneath hooded eyelids. “Your bloodied past is not something I may speak freely of to anyone but you. Another pity. Of all my masters thus far, you have the most promise and yet you conceal your glorious reputation—”
“Silence,” Sebastian hissed. “You will be silent, as silent as any other man in my crew, for that’s what you are now. Mine.”
Svoz smiled lazily. “A command uttered is as good as done. But may I be permitted a question?”
Sebastian held the sirrak’s gaze another moment. His head was beginning to pound in earnest. “Speak.”
“Why have you not carried out your task? Your…what do you call it? Your last job?”
Sebastian looked up sharply. His head thundered with his pulse. Visions of his atoll came to him awash in blood…
Svoz continued before he could speak.
“You could have let her drown, you know. Clean. Simple. Though not terribly fun, I agree.” The demon leaned close enough that Sebastian could feel the heat emanating from his skin. The sirrak’s eyes gleamed with longing, his voice thick with bloodlust. “Say the word, Master. Say it. If you find the job too odious or have not the heart for it…”
“No,” Sebastian said. His face was a mask, his voice stony. “I don’t go back on my word and I don’t pawn off my work to others.”
Svoz sighed. “I’m disappointed, of course, but I understand. If she were mine to kill, I wouldn’t let anyone else spill the golden-haired flesh-tart’s blood either. It tasted so sweet…”
Sebastian clung to the edge. He turned his gaze to the ocean. The sun was setting behind them, casting orange ribbons of light across the iron-colored water. The sky was not dark but would be soon. The moon was a silver crescent hanging in the sky, like a lopsided grin.
“She has a fucking hole in her chest and it keeps her perpetually cold,” Sebastian said after a moment. “Did you know that?”
“Of course,” Svoz said, “but…”
“But you can’t speak of it.” Sebastian looked up at the sky. “It’s a crescent moon, I know that. Black as pitch and it…emanates.”
“An ingenious conduit,” Svoz mused
Sebastian hardly heard him, his thoughts drifting back over the years.
“When I was a cabin boy on one of my first voyages, I fell asleep on deck. I curled up against the sideboards like a cat in a slant of sunlight. The bosun poured a bucket of cold sea water on me as punishment for over-sleeping my watch. I thought I’d die from that first shock and then shivered for hours in the damp after. And that’s how she feels every moment because of that damnable wound. How she isn’t mad or dead by now, I don’t know.”
“A mystery for the ages,” Svoz said airily.
Sebastian faced the sirrak. “You are not to tell Selena that you’re mine now. Not one word. You will act as if nothing has changed.”
Svoz pursed his lips. “I’m afraid that charade won’t work, Master. Any command from her will fall on very deaf ears.”
“I’ll take care of that. Just say nothing to her of our…arrangement.”
Svoz inclined his huge head. “As you say, Master.”
“Captain. You will call me ‘Captain’.” Sebastian peered up at the sirrak. “That is all that you will call me. My name is Julian Tergus but you are not permitted to speak it because it is my true name. Now go help the other clean up the mess.”
The sirrak inclined his head. “As you command. Captain.”
When Svoz had vanished in a puff of that same acrid smoke, Sebastian hung his head between his hands and suffered the headache, letting it pound the insides of his skull until he thought he might be sick. Exhaustion finally pulled him from the prow just as the sun sank completely.
He strode across the cluttered, sodden main deck, prepared to sleep until the dawn was old. He laid his hand on his cabin’s door handle and remembered with a jolt that his bed was currently occupied.
“Gods be damned…”
He leaned his aching head against the door until his face was composed. Stony. Expressionless.
When he opened it, he found Selena wrapped tightly in one of his blankets, standing over his desk. She had lit the lantern that hung from the deck head and it suffused the small cabin in warm yellow light. The falling night revealed in the gallery windows behind her frame her in deep blue. She smiled to see him come in.
“I was just looking at your sketches. They had spilled onto the floor during the maelstrom. I hope you don’t mind.” Her voice was raw and raspy, scratched by salt water.
A bedroom voice…
Sebastian strode to the desk. He hastily gathered the schematics and shoved them under a leather portfolio. “It’s nothing. Just something I do when I’m bored.”
Selena backed away from his desk and sat down on the edge of the bunk, clutching the blanket around her. Her hair was dry now and she had pulled it down her left side of her chest. The right side of her face was swollen and bruised where the boom had struck her and Sebastian’s blood still stained her chin. She looked like the refugee of a shipwreck, not the Summoner who made the seas do her bidding; not one who lifted his entire ship out of maelstrom…
“They’re hardly nothing,” Selena was saying. “You’re an extremely talented draftsman. Why don’t you work for the Guild?”
“If I did that, you’d have no one to take you to Saliz,” Sebastian snapped. He glanced at her again and then looked away. “Why aren’t you dressed? Why are you still here?”
She clutched the blanket more tightly. In one hand was her linen undershirt. “But for this, my clothes are gone. I didn’t want to traipse around the ship wearing only your blanket.”
“Cat set them to dry. I’ll go get them.”
“First tell me the crew and the Storm are all right.”
“Crew is fine. The ship’s taken damage. We’ll need repairs at the Isle of Lords. But it could have been worse.” He mustered a grim smile. “To say the least.”
She released a breath and touched her fingertips to her bruised cheek. “I’m so glad. I was so scared. I thought it was going to be worse. For me, I mean. Like last time.” She glanced up at him. “What of the merkind?”