Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (26 page)

The people and the buildings looked
worn out, ready to collapse and let the tide sweep them away. A new coat of
whitewash hardly repaired rotting, drooping eaves, just as new clothes failed
to brighten the dullness in people’s eyes. They slogged through their routines
because they knew nothing else. They had everything they needed, the result of
backbreaking labor that sapped any enthusiasm for hopes and dreams. So there
was little urge to venture beyond the confines of the cove, much less the
island.

Rhian doubted he would be one of
the lucky few who escaped. Years ago he tried to work up the courage to board a
ship—pirate or legitimate, didn’t matter—bound for Mosegi or Dravnir or Zimra
or Zadorna. Even Windhaven would’ve been a beginning, but he was needed here.

After his father drowned, debt
collectors claimed that Ryrden owed them money. They produced what looked like
proof, and Rhian’s mother had given them almost everything Da had earned. With
the little coin they had left, Fiala was able to rent a small house and feed
her growing son for a couple of years. After that, they begged for the most degrading
work. Rhian had shoveled kelp and manure; his mother scrubbed floors and pots
and sheets. Then Captain Bones hired Rhian to dive, and one of Fiala’s cousins
offered her a room and a job as serving wench in his inn.

The Castaway’s Inn stood on the
corner of Prince’s Street and Flood Way—the former being too lofty a name to
fit the venue, the latter being all too appropriate. Every squall pushed the
sea the length of Flood Way, drowning the lower floors of the buildings that
lined the curbs. Sea weed, dead fish, driftwood, and debris from the docks
clogged the gutters and had to be raked from the road. Then there was the sand.
All the town’s streets were flagged, but no one bothered shoveling the sand
back to the shore. Not only was the town dying, but the sea was slowly burying
it.

The swinging sign announcing the
inn depicted a ship broken on a reef. To Rhian this seemed highly unlucky, but
even now several men and women—some familiar, some not—passed through the door
to fill their bellies with Vella’s chowder. Supposedly, Vella made the best
chowder on the island, but more likely, it passed as edible only in Sandy Cape.
Rhian hurried around back, hopped over the rotten steps of the back stoop and
into the kitchen where he dumped the clams into a basin of fresh water.

“Finally!” Vella cried, reaching
for her knife to crack open the shells. She was a buxom thing, smeared with
purple eye paint, splashed with cream, and smelling of sweat and onions.
“You’re late, Eyes, and my chowder’s getting thin. Shark’s looking for you.”

The common room was packed by the
time Rhian squeezed through the door. Sailors, merchants, and laborers crowded
the tables, shouting for beer and full bowls. Fiala bustled among them,
balancing a tray stacked with dishes and bread rounds. Once, she had been soft
and glowing; now she looked as tired as the rest. Her dark hair (powdered to
cover the gray) fell across her eyes, and sweat beaded on her brow. She wore
snug, practical leggings, battered slippers, and a blouse with a low neckline.
Shark insisted on the latter. Feast for the belly, feast for the eyes, he said.

Fiala noticed her son’s arrival and
shouted across a row of tables, “You’re late. I was beginning to think Bones
had drowned you, too.” Ma hated Captain Sea Bones. From one end of the cove to
the other she decried the former pirate as the cause of her husband’s death and
all her subsequent miseries. Her anger was not unjustified:  when Bones lost
the payment for the Squid’s Eye, Da promised he would find a second prize to
make up for Bones’s blunder. That dive was his last.

Rhian pressed between the tables,
aiming for the stair and the room he shared with his mother. He needed to wash
the salt off his face and change into a less faded shirt, but Shark spied his
arrival as well. “Get your arse over here!” He stood beside his bar, a wide,
drooping moustache exaggerating his frown. Rhian did as he was told because
cousin Shark owned the roof over his head. “I do your mother a favor and this
is how you show your gratitude?” How many times over the years had Rhian
listened to the same tirade? It took every ounce of self-control to bite his
tongue and keep his eyes from rolling. “Every table I have to clean, it comes
outta yer pay, man.”

“You don’t pay me enough to take
anything outta my pay,” Rhian retorted.

“I’ll dock every copper, just see
if I don’t. Now get about it!”

Rhian cursed under his breath and
swiped a wet rag off the bar before he ripped that gaudy moustache off his
cousin’s face.

Shark bellowed at his back, “Sure
yer mother didn’t let me beat enough respect into yer head!”

Among the din of stories told and
retold for the thousandth time at the same grimy, warped tables, Rhian scraped
bowls and mugs into buckets, then dumped them in the sink. A kitchen wench with
raw, cracked hands rinsed them and passed them to Vella who filled them with
her chowder and sent them back out again. Rhian mopped up spills, swept up fish
bones and clam shells and sand that sifted off boots like snow, and all the
while endured the impatience, the indifference, and the insults of the patrons.

Eventually the crowd thinned. The
towners drifted home to finish chores before dropping into dreamless sleep. The
inn’s guests lingered at the tables demanding ale, discussing business, and
tossing dice in games of Skull ‘n Rose. At last, Rhian set aside his bucket and
leaned on the bar for a deep breath.

A bowl of chowder slid toward him.
Vella glanced snidely at Shark gamming with a pair of dark-skinned Ixakans in a
far corner, then said in a low, husky voice, “The man treatin’ ya rough
tonight, Eyes?”

“Nothin’ I haven’t learned to
ignore.” Rhian stirred the heat from the chowder.

“It never ends, does it?” Vella
waved at a promising table across the room. Cooking chowder was not her only
means of making money for Shark Stoven. She steered clear of most of the
towners, but the strangers were fair game. Unfortunately, the room to which she
escorted her guests abutted Rhian’s and Fiala’s. The walls were thin, and Vella
was vocal.

Many a sailor left Sandy Cape
grinning and praising Vella as the most lively thing about the town. She kept
herself soft and voluptuous by neglecting her floor scrubbing and linen
washing. On the other hand, this habitual laziness, along with her love of
chowder and beer had made her feminine roundness a bit excessive.

After Rhian devoured every drop in
the bowl, Vella reached under her skirt and freed her silver flask from its
pouch on her thigh. Crinkling her nose, she shook it at him. He eyed it warily.
“What’s in it this time?”

She grinned. “Love potion.”

Rhian took it from her, sniffed the
contents. Apples and rum. He gulped, cringed, paused artfully, then shook his
head. “Didn’t work.”

Vella’s plump red lip pouted. “When
are you gonna let me treat you, Eyes?”

Rhian broke into a laugh. Vella had
asked him that question every day for the past four years. “Not tonight,
Vella.”

She poked his forearm with a pudgy
finger. “One of these fine days, you’re gonna give in to me.”

“Vella!” Fiala slammed her tray on
the bar, startling everybody in the place, including herself. She lowered her
voice. “Stop propositioning my boy. Get your mop, Rhian.”

Vella swiped her tongue over her
teeth and retreated into the kitchen.

“Ma, you don’t have to—”

“Just do your job, Rhian,” his
mother said through her teeth.

“That’s all I ever do.”

Ignoring his comment, Fiala lined
her tray with mugs of beer and returned to a table under the front window.
Three Evaronnan sailors eyed her greedily.

Rhian grabbed the mop and attacked
the stains on the floor. He had progressed past the ‘life is so unfair’ phase,
having accepted his circumstances long before boys are expected to. But by the
Goddess! At nineteen, he not only shared a tiny room with his mother, but she
still felt it necessary to coddle him, even from harmless banter. He appreciated
the shame she endured for his sake by working in this filthy pit, but when
would she realize it wasn’t necessary anymore? If he managed to convince Bones
to pay him a full wage for his diving—the same wage Bones had paid his
father—then Rhian could sweep his mother away from this inn and break free of
Shark’s tyranny for good. Maybe then she’d see he wasn’t twelve anymore. But
Bones was a stingy old bastard who seemed to hope that Rhian hadn’t realized he
was being underpaid.

What if he tucked a pearl into his
own pocket every now and then? Really give the factor something to accuse him
of. He could save enough coin to get out of here. On the other hand, Ma wasn’t
blind. She would know her son had turned thief, and that was shame he couldn’t
live with. He felt as if he were driftwood caught in the in-out monotony of the
tide. Something inside of him wanted to explode. He wanted to shake everyone by
the shoulders and scream,
Don’t you want to get out of here? Don’t you want
to
do
something? Goddess, there must be something better!

“Stop it!” Fiala demanded and
loaded empty mugs onto her tray faster.

The three Evaronnans laughed. They
leaned back from their table, beer forgotten. One of them reached out a hard,
brown hand and squeezed Fiala’s thigh.

She slapped his hand away, and she
wasn’t teasing. The Evaronnan grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down onto
his knee. She squirmed and bared her teeth in anger. “If you want to grope,
I’ll fetch Vella.”

“We don’t want that fat bitch,”
said a second sailor. “We’re here for only one night. Give us something nice,
eh?”

The mop handle cracked across the
sailor’s face. Rhian swept Fiala from the sailor’s lap and set her behind him.
“Go fuck yer own mother!”

The man surged from the table,
fists balled, teeth grinding. The second picked himself off the floor and blew
blood from his nose, while their startled companion rose slowly, fingers
closing into fists.

“Wait! Don’t,” Fiala cried, darting
between them. “Harassment comes with the job, Rhian, you know that. It doesn’t
mean anything.”

“Like hell it doesn’t.” He flicked
an arm around his mother and landed a taunting slap on the nearest man’s face.

“What is
wrong
with you?”
she demanded.

Massive arms seized Rhian from
behind and dragged him away from the Evaronnans. Rhian glanced aside to find
Shark’s yellow teeth bared beneath his twitching moustache. One of the sailors took
advantage of the opening and drove a fist into Rhian’s gut and another under
his jaw. He and Shark staggered into an occupied table. Patrons scrambled out
of the way.

Fiala barraged one of the sailors
with her tray, and Vella cheered from a safe place behind the bar. Shark dived
for the ringleader in an attempt to pitch him from his inn, and as soon as
Rhian’s vision cleared, he charged the sailor with the broken nose, flung him
off Shark’s back, and hammered a fist into his eye.

Knocked to the floor a second time,
the bleeding sailor whipped a whittling knife from his belt. Rhian leapt back.
The sailor danced after him, slashing at a bare throat, at those aquamarine
eyes. Rhian spun aside, grabbed a chair, and smashed it over the sailor’s
shoulder; he dropped senseless. His companion pummeled Shark in the ribs, then
dived for the blade. The third ducked Fiala’s flying tray and ran for Rhian,
arms open, teeth grinding.

A delicious fury and a deadly calm filled
him up inside. He lifted a hand, and an explosion of energy raced down his arm
and out his palm. The wave of raw power rippled the air like an earthquake shakes
the sea. It thundered against the walls, overturned mugs, assaulted patrons
deep inside their ears. The brunt of the wave lifted the charging sailor off
his feet and hurled him back through the salt-encrusted window.

Only when the glass stopped falling
and an astonished silence filled the room did Rhian realize what he’d done—and
what he was.

~~~~

F
iala dabbed the blood off
her son’s chin and smeared silverthorn ointment on his swollen jaw. He felt too
numb inside to stop her from fussing over him. His teeth and his knuckles
throbbed. The taste of blood lingered in his mouth, and the tingle of that raw
power lingered in his hands. They gripped the edge of the trunk that doubled as
a chair. His mother set the medicine bottles aside and tenderly tucked his
shaggy hair behind his ear. He shook it loose again. A common routine, even if
he wasn’t embarrassed by his eyes in front of his mother.

How had he done it? Wondering if
he’d be able to do it again, he rubbed his fingers together. A life of labor
had calloused them, yet tonight they felt sensitive, tender, almost sore, as if
he’d chaffed them in the sand.

Angry shouts rose from the street. Fists
pounded the inn’s front door. “Listen to them, will ya?” Fiala muttered with a nervous
chuckle; the tension on her mouth and between her eyebrows gave her fear away.
“You’d think you killed their friend, rather than just tossing him out on his
arse.” The two Evaronnans had lifted their unconscious friend out of the glass
and carried him through the streets, rousing their shipmates with shouts of
“Attack! Sorcery! Rally!” A short while later they returned to the inn with the
rest of the crew; half a hundred outraged sailors wielded wooden slats for
clubs and ropes tied into tidy nooses.

“I saw Mackry the tanner out there
and Forber the eel-fisher,” Fiala added, cramming the cork back into the ointment
bottle. “Other neighbors, too, as if they’d never heard the word ‘loyalty’.”

Shark and a few towners did what
they could to barricade the entrance and the windows until the authorities
arrived and sorted out the ‘misunderstanding.’