“The Fleet Captain graces us shortly,” says the head servant, who clearly thinks a lot of himself. He gestures me to the table.
Two mages, wrapped in pristine Akarii robes, enter behind him. They nod to the head servant, and go to stand in two large silver niches set into the side wall with their knives held in both hands before them, close to their chests. One of them sets perimeter wards shimmering around the room, across the walls and the large windows. The other traces a pale light across Semper and I, and then nods, satisfied, I guess, that we’re unarmed.
I feel nothing from any of it, and that really bothers me. Am I permanently crippled?
We stand by the windows. The head servant closes the door. Out of the large span of glass, I can tell we’re heading east; the light of the setting sun silhouettes a fleet of other Akarii ships all sailing in formation behind us. Four moons are in the sky, two of them bright white and one a deep emerald. We’re at the head of a large fleet of warships, an armada. I count at least fifteen ships in all, with a number of them trailing back toward the horizon line. High, carved bows are fronted with figureheads of herons, wings spread back across the sides of the ship, each of them vividly painted and edged with gold leaf. The smaller ships, the frigates and transports, are carved as demons and sea creatures and encrusted with ivory and silver.
We’re also, apparently, a good ten feet off the surface of the water, as are the other ships. We must be riding directly on the lei line, and using an immense amount of power given how big this city-ship must be.
“They’re First Family ships, all of them,” Semper says. “You might know that the Akarii family has five branches, and the First Family branches twice again? With the exception of the Tel Kharan vessel,” Semper pointed to one of the ships, “this fleet is the direct personal armada of the Tekhur Nuvvala Akarii himself, Magnate of the first branch of the First Family, a direct line from Dekheret. The Fleet Captain is his daughter.”
Semper pointed out several of the ships, and talked about the histories of each, but it all washes over me. Too much detail at this point. Most of them are hung with complex matrix platforms, for use in battle. All of the ships look well-crewed and heavily armed, and all of them are moving quickly under power, leaving wide, foaming wakes across the green sea. Spotted dolphins are leaping and surfing in the waves thrown up by the black bird across the Tel Kharan ship’s bow.
“You’re going to war,” I say.
Semper looks back at him. “We’ve all been at war for a long time, Blackwell,” he says. “We’re trying to end decades of war.”
“Tamaranth?”
Semper nods. “Tamaranth first, and when the Free City falls, the Kerul and the smaller families will come in line. Tilkasnioc next, if we need to, and we probably will. The Fjilosh don’t like any ideas that aren’t their own, as I'm sure you're aware.”
“What’s wrong with Tamaranth?”
“The city itself is a beautiful thing, like any child. But Tamaranth has lost its way, Blackwell. It’s wandered off into darkness and despair. It needs a firm hand to lift it up to the light.”
Some of my fur goes black. “They’ll fight back, you know.” I feel a sense of pride as I say it.
Say what you will about Tamaranth, but for all its faults it
is
my adopted home. “They’ll stand up against you.”
“We’re not monsters,” Semper frowns. “The Akarii
lead
, Blackwell. Other houses follow. It’s been that way for centuries, and Tamaranth will remember that. And how can they stand against us? With the grohvers? You know those are really just ceremonial. The city guard?” Semper shakes his head.
I think for a minute. “That’s a lot of information for a fancy butler to be giving a guest.”
Semper studies me with his two-color eyes. “Perhaps,” he says, slowly.
Suddenly the mages in the niches behind us stiffen, and their eyes roll back in their heads. The large door swings open, and someone who can only be the Fleet Captain squeezes into the room, followed by a flurry of servers carrying covered silver dishes.
“Hulgliev! A Hulgliev on my ship!” she booms, as one of the mages lights her up with a white aura. “By Great Great Uncle Lasser’s Golden Balls, I didn’t think I’d see a day like this.”
Servers set the dishes on tray-stands near the table and uncover them as the Fleet Captain envelops my hands in her huge, hot grip. The Fleet Captain is immense and round, nearly three times my girth. Her body is stretched and bloated and gargantuan. She’s aether-bonded, I realize. It's something I’d heard of and read about in some of Sartosh’s books, but I’d never actually seen it in person. It’s an old Akarii tradition, and it can kill you if you’re not careful. Her eyes are filled with the flickering glow of magefire. Her skin is stretched, and pale and lit up from within like a light-globe. Her blood vessels all through, faint and pulsing, working hard to move whatever is left of her blood around. She radiates heat, and the room is already much warmer than before she entered.
Aether-bonding is supposed to give you incredible skill at working the lei. But if I remember right, you can never leave a lei-line without help. If you’re cut off from it, there’s no way to keep you intact.
I’m betting that wouldn't be pretty.
She wears a white Akarii robe, unwrapped and hanging loose, and a knife rests between her billowing breasts. Her long white hair is bound with a silver cord and stretches down her back. She’s surprisingly nimble for someone her size.
“You’ll excuse the lack of décor, I hope?” she says, gesturing around the room. “My peers find me eccentric, but I confess that I’m at a time in my life where simplicity and directness are what I crave. We can talk without ceremony, Hulgliev? Just you and I, yes?” She gestures to her servant, who dims the magefire in the large globe, and then gestures sharply to the servers and Semper.
Semper gives me a serious, meaningful look as he and the others leave.
I don’t have the slightest idea what the man is trying to tell me.
The door swings shut behind them, and the Fleet Captain gives me an elaborate, ironic curtsey. It looks bizarre on someone so large, and from the expression on her face she knows it. “Nadrune Akarii, of the First Family,” she says. She gestures to the food. “Please,” she says. “Make up a plate for each of us, whatever suits you.” She moves over to the windows, and looks down on the ships. The trays were filled with fish, spiced and marinated and arranged across a latticework of metal over a small dish of coalse. I fill two plates as full as I dare and carry them over to the windows. I go back and pour two glasses of Solingi beer. I look around for bourbon, but again, no luck.
The sun’s nearly gone. On the horizon it’s becoming hard to tell where the water and sky meet—they’re all going the same color of grey. Bobbing globes of light in the ships’ riggings and matrix platforms flicker on. Nadrune takes the plate and eats absently with her fingers, staring out into the dark. She clears her plate without apparently tasting anything, and is silent for some time.
I inhale my food, too, standing by the windows. I think I could eat five more plates the same size. After a few minutes, I clear my throat and say “I regret the loss of your marine.”
And I do, though I’d probably regret it more if she hadn’t been so good at nearly killing me.
Nadrune turns and studies me with her fiery eyes. She gestures to the cushions around the magefire globe. I sit.
“A Hulgliev on my ship,” she says again. “Well, Hulgliev, your kind and mine go a long way back, are you aware of that? My sage tells me you’re an omen for us, that your race ‘shows itself to members of the Akarii First Family in times when history gets written.’ ”
She gestures out the windows, to the ships. “It sounds pretty melodramatic. But if it’s true, though, you have pretty good timing.”
I nod. How do you answer something like that?
“When my father’s great-great-grandmother Dekheret formed the first Lunar Council with all of the Families together, founded the Tel Kharan, and brought on a century of prosperity across our world, there was a Hulgliev at her side. When my own grandmother fell before the Grohmn, and later rose again to lead the Family in bridge negotiations with the Halfromen and Stona, some of our most profitable world alliances, there you were again.
“Did Semper show you the painting?” I nod again. I feel like a Hulgliev bobble-head. “Good. He’s a good man. I’ll grant you, he has a tendency toward the dramatic. But now here you are, at the head of my fleet, in my best warship, in my quarters, eating my fish.”
“It’s good fish.”
“I expect it is.”
“Thanks,” Blackwell said.
“You’re very welcome.”
There was a pause for a moment, as the two us in silence. I have no idea where this is going.
“I think you have my podship,” I say, after a few more minutes. “Any chance I could get it back?”
Nadrune tilts her head to the side, looks at me, and then closes her eyes and laughs. It was a booming laugh that shakes her whole body in waves. Sparks crackle from her eyes and the ends of her fingers.. She sets her plate down, leans her back against the windows, and shakes some more.
“A podship? Oh, you’ll have a ship all right. Hulgliev, my grandmother’s first had a fleet of seven podships that traded across four worlds. He also had an estate in the Akarii lands at Karandelh and private lodgings on the upper levels of Tilhtinon. He dined with family Regents. Hundreds of mages were under his direction, and a wing of the College is named for him. He was every bit an Akarii noble of the highest rank.”
“Did he wear a collar, too?”
Her smile chisels itself into her round, luminous cheeks. “In the beginning, I expect he did. We like our omens, Hulgliev. It gives the masses something to talk about. But my grandmother wasn’t a fool, either.”
“Are you offering me a job?” I ask quietly. I’m not sure of the answer I want to hear.
“ ‘Offering’ is a stretch. I’d argue you’re in a job now, Hulgliev, and we just need to figure out the details here.”
“But you don’t know anything about me,” I say. “I could put a knife in your back at any time, without any provocation, for all you know.”
The Fleet Captain nods to the mages in the niches behind us. “You might not get as far as you think. But even if you did, you’d fit into the First Family better than you realize.”
“All the same,” I say. “Why me?”
Nadrune turns back to the windows. Her burning eyes are reflected there, as if they are two dark pits of fire in the ocean. Then she turns to the first drone in the niche. “You may commence with the exercises,” she says. The drone nods, and the glow of her aura tells me that the Fleet Captain’s message is being relayed.
Nadrune turns back to me. “Here’s how it is, Hulgliev. The Akarii are tired of war. I think you probably are, too. I think everyone on this whole exhausted, dying world is. Personally, we’re tired of arguing with the Fjilosh over stupid little islands in the north that no one really cares about, and we’re tired of the free cities trying to grab more farm land from each other every chance they get. We’re tired of the old Kerul ceremonies and rituals and all of their diplomats who want to talk and talk and talk to us about how to run a world in the way that would be completely, absolutely perfect for little old Kerul, and we’re tired of the way that every minor family that suddenly cuts a deal with another world thinks it can implement trading tariffs and stand up an army to try and enforce them just because it’s got some new tech that none of the rest of us have yet. And we’re really tired of all of those refugees from other failed worlds scrambling to get a leg up in our world in any way they can.”
Out on the decks of the ships, I see men raising nets from the holds that are filled with large, glowing spheres of magefire. Others are assembling and positioning what looked like sophisticated catapults.
“This world of ours is a mess, Hulgliev. It’s dying, let’s face it. It’s been that way for a long time and if we’re not careful, if we don’t get our act together, then one of two things will happen. We’ll collapse ourselves into the aether, and need to jump into Earth or somewhere like it just to survive. Or some other world out there that we don’t even know about yet, a world that’s much more organized than we are, is going to stumble across us. They’ll open up a bridge, walk in here in the middle of the night under the cover of some new trade arrangement with a minor Family, and they’ll take it all from us, either piece by piece or all at once.
“No one else has the capability the Akarii First Family does. Let’s be real. No one else has the history, either. We’ve unified the Families before when we needed to, and now we’re going to do it again, even if it takes the whole Akarii and all of the knives of the Tel Kharan to do it. We’re going to bring together the Families in a new Lunar Council, kicking and screaming if that’s what it takes, and we’re going to set this right.
“Now, I don’t know where you’re from, Hulgliev. I’m sure my sage could tell me. I don’t know anything about your politics, either, and frankly I don’t really care. You’re here. You’re on my flagship and now you’re going to help me.”
I set down my beer. This ship has lowered back down onto the surface of the water without me noticing, and I can feel the slow roll of the swells now. It makes me a little nauseous.
I’m trying to figure out how I’m a part of this conversation, when a week ago I was boiling barley and scraping mold out of my fur in my closet in the Warrens.
On the ships, the men are loading the globes one at a time into the catapults, and pulling a bunch of levers that sets them up to fire. “I was actually just hoping for that old podship back, if you’ve got it.” I say. “Then I could just get out of your way. I’m not really sure I’d be much help to you, to be honest.”
“Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if your life was that simple? It’s not, Hulgliev.” She stands and paces, opens a thick palm and starts ticking off reasons on her huge fingers. “To start with, you’re a Hulgliev mage, the first one we’ve seen in nearly two hundred years. You’re a symbol for that reason alone for us, now that you’ve been noticed. Second, if you’re standing next to me, I look a lot like great-great grandmother Dekheret, and frankly I need that right now. Third, my marines tell me you’ve got some strange, occult ability that no one has ever seen before, on top of that. Add, four, that you’ve killed a veteran Tel Kharan in combat. Nobody kills a Tel Kharan and lives, you know.