Scarlet and the White Wolf [02] - Mariner's Luck (14 page)

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

by the Wolf. Liall had not been fooled, and had laughingly cut the costume from the pedlar's body, scalding Scarlet's pride and leading him to call Liall a rapist and a probable murderer.

Liall had reacted so badly that Scarlet had feared he would die.

"I was no better, I admit it. I frightened you and tried to break your pride," Liall said, his mouth twisting as if he would spit. His hands were gentle as a woman's. "It was not the battle you were remembering on the deck today. It was me."

"Liall—"

"No, I know. I was cruel to you when we first met. I was."

Liall took a deep, controlled breath. "No more talk. We must see to your injuries."

Scarlet's teeth were chattering. "How did you find me?"

"I found your coat on the deck," Liall explained. "You would never have just left it there. Not you. You're too neat and you hate the cold too much. I knew you had to be in trouble." He clucked his tongue in distress and dropped the bloodied cloth into the basin. "There's so much blood on your clothes. Let me clean you up and get you warm
, t'aishka."

Scarlet did not have the strength to argue. T'aishka. The word sounded exotic, but pleasing. He tried to pronounce it and failed, and saw the flicker in Liall's eyes at his rude attempt at the word. "What does that word mean?"

Liall did not smile, but his gaze was strange and powerful.

"I will tell you some day when ... when you are as certain as I am. I am certain now, and that is enough for me to say it."

Crouching, Liall rinsed the cloth in the bloody basin and carefully began to wash the rest of Scarlet's face, his 118

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

expression stony. Scarlet noticed Liall's hands had a noticeable tremor.

"I'm not hurt bad," Scarlet said, touched.

"I know, but I am angry. You must allow me that. You were angry in Volkovoi, no?"

He had been, and had wanted to kill the bravo on the edge of his blade. Liall nodded and he cleaned more of Scarlet's face and throat, then helped him out of the shirt and fetched a clean blanket from the cedar chest.

Liall then made him raise his arms and take several deep breaths. "No pain when you breathe inward? Good. You chest is only bruised, then," he pronounced. "They look nearly as bad, I do assure you. Oleksei will lose his thumb, most likely: it is bitten almost clean through. You did very well, Scarlet."

"Oleksei," Scarlet said, shivering as he wrapped up in the blanket. "I wish I didn't know his name. That makes it worse, somehow. It's hard to hate a nameless thing."

Liall gave him a strange look, and something passed between then. He nodded a little, his eyes shadowed. "Yes, Oleksei, curse him. But I never desired him. I swear that to you." He began to clean a small cut on Scarlet's wrist. "When cornered, you are as fierce as a snow bear. They expected you to submit tamely."

"Their mistake."

Liall's fingers cleaned the cut delicately. "I could have warned them, stubborn lad," he said, striving for a teasing note. It fell flat.

Scarlet had stopped shivering when a knock sounded at the hatch. Liall jumped up, reaching for his knives. The door 119

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

opened at Liall's call, revealing the quartermaster and another mariner who carried a covered tray. The quartermaster bowed slightly and spoke to Liall in his own language, then switched to Bizye, looking at Scarlet.

"The captain recommends that you eat something hot, ser, and has sent both a salve for the bruises and some herbs to help you sleep, if there is ... pain."

Liall watched him from beneath lowered brows. "There will be no pain of that kind," he growled. "And well it is so, or there would be three dead men tonight."

The quartermaster bowed again and spoke respectfully.

Liall snapped something back and the two mariners withdrew.

Liall bolted the door when they had gone.

"What was that about?"

"Idiots," he said, and sat down on the bunk beside Scarlet.

"You must eat all of this soup. You look better now that your illness has passed, but you need to put a bit of fat on that frame or you will freeze in Rshan, the land that does not exist." He winked.

The soup was good and the che was bland but hot. Scarlet suspected that Liall put some of the herbs in after all, because he was sleepy after, but comfortably so.

"Will you let me have a look at you?" Liall asked with worry. "There might be further injuries under your clothes, where I could not see. Or I could send for the curae again,"

he offered.

Scarlet made a sound of distaste. "Gods, no. Not him." He hesitated, and then began to toe off his boots and remove his breeches, blushing with embarrassment. "I fell on the ice, 120

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

by Kirby Crow

before ... just before. And then he threw me into the hold. I don't know what I landed on."

Liall's face was troubled as he politely looked away. Scarlet finished undressing and pulled the blanket around him before Liall motioned for Scarlet to lie down on his stomach.

Liall's touch was gentle as he rubbed the salve into a blue bruise high on Scarlet's shoulder. Scarlet was tense for several minutes, and then, as his heart slowed and the after-effects of panic set in, his muscles relaxed and he nearly dozed.

He stirred when he felt hands at his waist and started awake, heart pounding, but Liall whispered reassurance into his ear.

"I was only seeing if your legs were cut," Liall murmured.

"I would leave it, but I fear infection on this ship."

Scarlet nodded wearily. "No, that's wise, I suppose. The hold was filthy."

Liall's expression was grave. "Please excuse me."

Scarlet sighed and closed his eyes, resting his torn cheek against the cover. It continued to ooze blood steadily. "I'm getting the sheets bloody."

"Let it bleed," Liall advised. "Perhaps it will help it to heal faster if the blood washes the poison away."

His face hurt more than any of the rest of his injuries, for the moment. Scarlet heard Liall hiss as the blanket was moved aside. He raised his head, craning to see. "Bad?" he asked.

"They were excessive," Liall said through his teeth. "If they did not intend to kill you, you could not prove it from this."

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Scarlet decided not to look after all. The salve set warmth glowing on the bruised spots on his lower back, easing them, and he was surprised at how many spots there were as Liall carefully applied it. Later, he would find a blackened bruise the size of his fist on his calf, where Oleksei had kicked him.

"They are fortunate indeed that you were more calm than me," Liall said, his voice low and frightening.

"I didn't feel very calm at the time," he mumbled sleepily.

Liall tugged the blankets loosely around Scarlet. "They are fortunate," he said stonily. "They laid hands on someone I ...

care about, intending to harm."

Liall's words were like balm to Scarlet, far soothing than the medicine.
He cares about me
. His head was buzzing with all the thoughts that were packed into it, like bees in a jar.

Liall smeared the salve liberally on a clean piece of linen and had Scarlet press it to his torn face. "Try to sleep with it there," he advised as he set the salve aside, rinsed his hands in the water left in the basin and kicked off his boots. He took a blanket and made a rough bed on the floor next to the bunk, his knives within easy reach. "Sleep, t'aishka. Nothing will disturb you further tonight. I swear it."

* * * *

Days passed, and as Liall's initial fear that Scarlet's wounds would become infected faded, Liall seemed consumed with his commitment to punish Oleksei and the mariner's conspirators. The quartermaster took a vote among the crew, and it was agreed the ones who attacked Scarlet should be whipped. Scarlet gathered there was some dissent over that, 122

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by Kirby Crow

but it was mostly from Liall, who wanted the men branded as well, and also a few of the more vocal mariners who disagreed with the sentence and wanted a much lighter punishment. There was a day when Liall's mood was like a black sky and even to speak to him was risking a cloudburst.

Scarlet found out later that it was because Oleksei and his men claimed that Scarlet had promised to whore for them.

Oleksei asserted that Scarlet had taken their silver but refused them when the time came, so he and his men had only tried to take what they were due. The lie proved to be short-lived, for Liall offered trial by combat to determine the truth, and two of the men recanted. Scarlet supposed they came to their senses and reasoned a whipping was better than death.

Liall would have had Scarlet go up on deck to watch the whipping, but he refused. The atya shook his head at the strangeness of Byzans and went out to watch alone as the mariners were flogged. Scarlet could hear the whip strokes and the outcry anyway, so staying in the cabin did not shield him entirely from what was done. Liall came back pleased and did not understand why the punishment of his would-be rapists had affected Scarlet so.

"If they had succeeded in their crime," Liall informed coldly

"I would have had them castrated. It is well for them that we are at sea, and they are needed to complete our journey."

"You don't understand," Scarlet said in shame. "You and the crew decided their punishment. That's justice, and I agree. But Deva forbids revenge, and I wouldn't be able to watch Oleksei being whipped without feeling happy about it."

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Liall sighed. "I do not comprehend the difference. You have a right to want to see him punished."

"Yes," Scarlet agreed. "And no." He waved his hand and turned away. "I said you wouldn't understand."

Scarlet was wary of leaving the cabin after the whipping, fearing that the crew would want vengeance for their fellows, but Liall was always with him, and oddly, he was treated with more respect. Not surprisingly, one of the three who were flogged was the fellow who had put the coin down Scarlet's shirt.

When Scarlet pointed that out, Liall went stony-faced and quiet and vanished for an hour. When he returned, he looked grimly satisfied and would answer no questions. Liall also treated him with more respect and not so much like an unruly child, perhaps because he saw how much the mariners were already bruised and marked before they were flogged. When he mentioned this, Liall seemed upset.

"Those are not my reasons," Liall said.

"What, then?"

They were on the deck in the icy wind, the faint sun a pinpoint of brightness in the dawn mist. Liall took his hand and touched the healing cut under Scarlet's right eye.

"Because I finally realized that fighting against what is happening between us is futile, t'aishka. What should be, shall be. It was decided long ago, and there is nothing that either of us can do."

Scarlet was curious, but when pressed, Liall would speak no more.

* * * *

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Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

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Three days later, in a wet, driving wind that Liall called

'brisk' but which stole Scarlet's breath away, Qixa ordered the men to gather fish that would sustain them until the end of their voyage.

"Further north the fish dwell deeper. Harder to catch," Liall explained, almost shouting over the wind. "We must take them now."

"How far away are we?" Scarlet asked, teeth chattering.

The wind contained little needles of sleet and ice, and the sea boiled with foam . A gust nearly blew him off his feet and he clung to the ropes. Liall steadied him.

"Less than ten days, as Qixa reckons it, but it is the most dangerous leg of our journey, and many things can happen on those waters. We could easily be delayed or locked in ice.

It is best to stop one day and get the fish while we can than to push on and take our chances with starvation."

While Liall and Scarlet stood on the heaving quarterdeck and watched, the mariners dumped long, tarred ropes into the icy waters, laying them out behind them in a swath leagues long. After an hour or so, the captain ordered the anchor dropped and they began to haul the ropes up over the rail, and Scarlet saw that the ropes were baited at intervals with chunks of fish and palm-sized hooks. They brought up ten hooks in a row with nothing, and then, on the eleventh, a fish as large as a dog with fins like scalloped sails tumbled over the rail in a flash of slippery silver.

They took two more before Liall's restlessness won out and he took the short steps to the main deck as the crew was 125

Mariner's Luck [Scarlet and the White Wolf Book 2]

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hauling their fourth beast in. It had fearsome black eyes, fins as long as a man's arm, and shining, iridescent skin like an opal catfish. Scarlet had never seen the like and could not name the thing, but Liall laughed as he helped gaff the thing's mouth and called over his shoulder to Scarlet.

"It is called a wave-rider!" Liall shouted over the sound of the sea. The fish twisted nearly in half and turned its massive head toward Liall, and Scarlet gasped and started forward, but Liall only laughed. "No fear, it has no teeth!"

Perhaps not, but it could still dump Liall overboard! But Liall was sure-footed as a goat on the icy deck and Scarlet began to feel idle and useless to be standing there easy while they worked. He knew if he went down that Liall would be angry and order him away, so he stood with his hands folded on the rail and watched. It turned out to be pleasant watching: Liall's muscles strained under his woolen shirt as his body moved effortlessly into the rhythm of labor. He glanced up at Scarlet once, and his teeth flashed in his dark, handsome face when he grinned widely and waved.