Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (36 page)

He was beginning
to wonder if it was worth the trade.

“And so I’ve
been pouring over it day and night, and I just don’t see what I’ve managed to
do wrong,” Lysander finished. His shoulders were sloped down and his head hung
pathetically close to his chest. “What do you think I should do? How do I
change, how do I prove to her that I’m not a horrible, drunken leech with all
the depth of an inkwell?”

Apparently, when
Lysander asked Aerilyn to dance, he hadn’t got the answer he’d been expecting.
Instead, he got a rather cold refusal that included several creative reasons as
to why she wasn’t interested in him. That was the gist of it. There were loads
of other, more sentimental things in between, but Kael mostly ignored them.

“I don’t know.
Why are you asking me?” he said distractedly. He was looking for a tome on
dragons, something fun that he could read in his very little spare time, and
wasn’t at all interested in whatever nonsense Lysander whined about.

“Because you’re
her friend.”

“Well, then why
don’t you ask Kyleigh?”

It seemed like a
reasonable enough solution, but Lysander just snorted. “Kyleigh is a
woman
. And ladies tend to give very
flowery advice that makes a man feel good about himself, but doesn’t actually
solve the problem.” He leaned back, propping both his hands on the desk behind
him. “No, what I need is advice from a man — a fellow close to Aerilyn
who can give me the honest truth.”

Kael glanced up,
and knew from the tilt in his chin that Lysander meant to get advice from him.
“Uh —”

“No, don’t think
about it,” he interrupted. “Lies need time to grow, and all I want is the
truth. So out with it — what do I need to do to make Aerilyn think better
of me?”

“Well, you could
behave better,” Kael said without thinking.

But Lysander
wasn’t at all offended. He leaned forward. “I see … and how do I do that?”

The fact that he
didn’t know anything was wrong was a large part of the problem, in Kael’s
opinion. But if he explained it, Lysander might give him a moment’s peace. So
he reined himself in and tried to put it in words he thought the captain could
understand. “Aerilyn is a lady.”

“Yes,
undeniably.”

“No, she’s a
real
lady. A gentle lady who likes to
wear pretty things and doesn’t enjoy having dirt under her fingernails.”

“So?”

“So she isn’t
like Kyleigh — you can’t scoop her up and spin her around in a circle,
because it offends her.”

“Ah … I’m not
sure I understand.”

Kael wasn’t
surprised. He thought about it for a moment, tried to think of a way he could
dumb it down even further. “She’s like the treasures in your hallway: you can
look at her, but you aren’t allowed to touch her.”

His handsome
face became considerably befuddled. “But I
can
touch the treasures in my hallway.”

“Because they’re
yours. Aerilyn isn’t yours, she isn’t anybody’s. She’s like … a deer. She’s wild
and untamed and she won’t go anywhere near you unless she trusts you.”

“So I’m supposed
to … feed her?”

Kael wondered,
briefly, if he might be able to kill himself with the corner of a book. “No,
you’re supposed to respect her, respect her territory —”

“And then lure
her in and bring her down!”

“No!” Kael had
reached the end of his very short rope, and could do nothing to keep the words
from bursting out. “She’s a lady, not a meal. And you aren’t going to get
anywhere near her if you think of her like that. You want to know how to get
Aerilyn to like you? Stop behaving like a complete and total idiot. Stop
swearing, stop calling her names, stop drinking, stop flirting with Kyleigh and
— for mercy’s sake — keep your shirt on!”

His voice seemed
to ring off the walls for a good half-minute. He’d have been embarrassed about
the way he acted if the good captain didn’t so thoroughly need to be shouted
at.

Lysander sat
very rigidly in the aftermath, his mouth parted in a surprised O. “I see,” he
finally said. “If I want a lady to like me, then I’ve got to be a gentleman.”

“Yes.”

Lysander
scratched his chin thoughtfully. “So I’m not allowed to flirt with Kyleigh
anymore, eh?”

“No.” The word
came out a little sharper than he meant to.

Lysander smiled.
“You were looking for a book on dragons, no? Well let me suggest this one.” He
crossed the room in three steps and pulled a bright red book off the middle
shelf. “
Tales of Scales: The Complete
Catalogue of Dragons
, there’s not a more detailed book in all the realm. I
should know — I nicked it from the fellow who wrote it, right out from
under his quill.”

Kael snatched
it, muttered his thanks, and left before Lysander could trap him with another
story. He was suddenly in a very bad mood.

*******

Much to his surprise,
Aerilyn turned out to be a pretty decent archer. More than decent, actually.
She picked up on the form quickly and it wasn’t long before she could hit the
target nearly every time. They started out with Kael’s bow, but it wound up
being too much for her strength. That’s when Morris suggested they try one of
the longbows.

“But those are
bigger,” Kael said.

“Aye, but
they’re not as tough to pull back,” Morris explained. “She’ll get a stronger
shot with little effort. You ought to consider giving them a try.”

Kael wasn’t
about to give up his bow, even if it was more difficult to shoot. It was
Roland’s … and the only thing he had left of Tinnark.

Aerilyn was a
little intimidated by the larger bow at first, but it wasn’t long before she
figured it out. “This is
much
better,” she said, as her arrow struck the center of the barrel lid they used
for a target. “There’s no grunting or swinging clubs about — just careful
aim and skill.” Another of her arrows found its mark. “How’s that?”

“Good,” Kael
said. “Just make sure you don’t overshoot. I don’t want to have to pull an
arrow out of anyone’s rump.”

They’d weighed
anchor next to a string of leafy green islands, and most of the pirates were
out foraging. They swam in the crystal blue water beneath them, scouring the
reefs for any unfortunate creature the cook might salt and turn into a deadly
stew. Occasionally, a pirate would dive down and after a moment, bob back to
the surface with a fish wriggling on the end of his harpoon.

As much as Kael
wanted off the ship, he couldn’t make himself put one leg in the ocean. He
watched as Kyleigh climbed to the top of the rails and stood, harpoon in hand.
She was wearing a shirt cut to the elbow and pants cut to the knee. Her feet
were bare. At the goads from the pirates below her, she spread her arms wide
and fell, headfirst, in a graceful arc.

He leaned
forward and his toes curled when she struck the water. It was only after she
came back up that he was able to breathe again.

“Yes, and
speaking of rumps,” Aerilyn said as she retrieved her arrows, “what’s gotten
into Captain Lysander? He seems … well, he’s been acting rather nice lately.”

He pretended to
watch Noah and Jonathan as they grappled on top of a reef, trying to fling the
other into the water. He thought if he wasn’t looking at her, he might be able
to hide the guilt on his face. “I hadn’t noticed him acting any differently.”

She raised an
eyebrow. “Really? You didn’t notice that he hasn’t taken a drink in nearly a
week? Or that he managed to keep his shirt on all day yesterday? And he,” she
fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, “he’s been sitting with me at every meal.
It’s almost as if …”

“As if what?”

She shook her
head. “Oh, never mind. I’m probably just being silly.”

They shot for a
few minutes in silence, and he hoped that was the end of it. But then she
turned and said quite suddenly: “He hasn’t mentioned anything about me, has
he?”

He shrugged. “I
don’t know. How should I know?”

She made a
frustrated sound. “Well don’t boys talk about girls? Kyleigh and I talk about
boys.”

“Really? What
boy does Kyleigh like?”

Red sprung to
her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly.

“But she
does
like someone?”

“No —
which is why it doesn’t matter.”

Aerilyn’s
momentary weakness was over. Now she had her arms crossed and her chin set. He
knew that even if he pried her mouth open with his bare hands, he wouldn’t get
another word out of her. Which was a shame, really, because he wondered what
sort of boy Kyleigh might be interested in. He was probably some handsome,
stone-fisted knight she met while in the King’s army: a man who was just as
deadly with a blade as she.

For some reason,
that thought made his stomach hurt. “Lysander asked what your favorite color
was yesterday,” he admitted.

Aerilyn leaned
forward, hands clasped in front of her. “And?”

“And what?”

She slapped him
playfully on the arm. “And what did you tell him?”

“I told him I
wasn’t certain, but I thought it was blue.”

She flung her
arms about his neck with such surprising force that he nearly tumbled backwards.
“Oh, you know me so well! But I wonder why … do you think he might …?”

Kael wondered if
she actually expected him to be able to guess the ends of her sentences. “He
might what?”

She screwed up
her nose and tried to look severe, but in the end her smile broke free. “All
right, you don’t have to tell me. I know there’s a code you gentlemen have to
keep about these things. But I’m going to tell you something, and you can’t
tell Lysander I said it. Do you swear?”

“Sure, all the
time.”

She slapped him
again, grinning at his feeble joke. “That’s not what I meant. Promise you won’t
tell Lysander.”

He sighed. “All
right, I promise.”

“Good.” She
leaned forward, her eyes shining mischievously. “I think, against every
reasonable bone in my body, that Lysander is quite … handsome.” She giggled and
her face turned pink. “It’s horrible isn’t it, for a merchant to fancy a
pirate? Did you ever hear of anything so completely scandalous?”

Kael tried to
smile, but he thought there were worse things in the Kingdom than the fancy
between a pirate and a merchant.

*******

Every day, their
list of backbreaking chores stretched on and into the evening. Only after they
managed to choke down their last spoonfuls of a poisonous dinner were the
pirates allowed to prop up their boots and relax. This they did on the main
deck, out in the cool of the night and under the brilliant cover of the stars.

And because
there was literally no end to his mischief, Lysander kept Jonathan’s chores
running through the evening. While everyone else talked or played at cards,
he’d have to string up his fiddle and entertain them with a song. Lysander
ordered that they be strictly historical tunes, and mainly verses chronicling
their days aboard
Anchorgloam
.

But Jonathan
managed to weave in a bit of his rudeness into every song. And it was so
popular with the men that Lysander pretended not to hear. That particular
evening, Jonathan seemed to have been inspired by the contents of the galley:

Ladles of soup with spindly legs

Of crab and gooey starfish eggs.

Barrel of scales and fishy eyes,

You’re not quite like my mum’s mince pies.

Shut my lids and serve a plate

Of heaping, steaming merman bait.

The cook tells me it’s quite the catch,

So tip me spoon and down the hatch!

Oh, alas! My gut repels

The squirming, squiggling seahorse tails.

My stomach heaves, I turn a hue,

And out my mouth comes seafood spew!

The pirates
whooped and clanged their tankards together as Jonathan took a deep,
over-exaggerated bow. Only one man stomped off in a huff: and that was the
cook.

Rumors flared
up like bouts of scurvy aboard the ship, and it wasn’t long before everyone
knew about Kyleigh’s secret. No sooner did Jonathan finish his song than the
pirates were bellowing for her to sing their favorite tune.

“All right,
fine
!” she said, when it was clear they
would never relent. She leapt to her feet and shouted: “Ahoy, rapscallions!”

They roared and
raised their grog in greeting.

“Clean the
seaweed out of your ears and listen up. I’m about to tell the saddest tale ever
told.” A forlorn note came off of Jonathan’s fiddle as he joined her. “It’s
tale about a man. A man named Sam Gravy —”

Cheers rang out.

“— and how
he lost his true love to the sea.”

When Jonathan’s
notes pepped up into something the pirates could stomp their feet to, she
started to sing.

There is a tale of courage and bold,

Of a lad who felled trees and built him a boat.

His name be Sam Gravy and this be his tale,

Of how he found love with a rudder and sails.

Across the High Seas, he sailed with his love,

Through forests of trees with tops high above.

O’er deserts that quelled with burning hot sand,

And never such love for a boat had a man!

Sam Gravy she sped

And he felt not a shred

Of doubt in his soul of her valor.

With him at her helm

They’d conquer the realm

And his heart would rest ever with she.

So it happened one day a serpent arose

Out of the sea and lunged at his boat.