Pirate and King, chapter ten

10

Kaazin crouched on the main deck of a dark, haunted pirate ship, eating dead things, but tasting nothing at all. Shadow had left him (off hunting ghosts, no doubt) and so Kaazin looked very peculiar. Shining like a day-walker but casting no shade.

The drow’s mind was elsewhere, as he struggled with what to do next. The present was nothing but trouble. The future, shrouded in mist. As for the past…

Though the airship creaked and shifted below him, though a chilly wind fluttered his clothing and long, stark-white hair, Kaazin felt none of it. His thoughts had returned to the Under-realm, to a cavern-bound land that had never been home.

He’d been born there, surrounded by all the luxury of a second-rank estate. Allowed to live where so many others had been tossed away, because his albino hide and red eyes had intrigued his mother, Daazra. His presence in the House of Shadow sparked conversation and interest. So, Kaazin lived and was named, to be paraded before his mother’s occasional guests.

He’d been raised by the slaves and by Daazra’s mute healer, Bone-Setter. It was many years before Kaazin learned that the captured high-elf was his father, for affection and care were seen as weakness in the Under-realm. Feeble emotions to be ruthlessly squashed in oneself or taken advantage of in others.

Bone-setter couldn’t speak. He had no memory of his own name or status before being captured and sold by a drow raiding party. He’d seemed very tall and quiet to Kaazin, with day-burnt skin, green eyes and brown hair. Bold, too, for he not only healed those who came to him in secret, but he shared Daazra’s bed whenever she summoned him. Both were hazardous pastimes, for his powders and tinctures and blades were meant to serve only the Ranked Ones. He belonged to Daazra, Priestess of Loeth, and he was never allowed to forget it. Through collar, brand and dark magic, he was mostly all hers.

Bone-Setter had always looked after Kaazin, though, making certain the half-blood boy was fed, clothed and warmed inside of that grim stone estate. The House of Shadow was old and deep, chiseled by captive dwarves into the rock of Grand Cavern. (Four of them were still present, their bodies smashed beneath the house’s main pillars.) The estate had a water view, with steps leading down to the western shore of the Sunless Sea. It was a cold mansion, dark and normally silent. Filled with barefoot, half-naked slaves and a persistent aura of fear. Captives died early and children didn’t flourish in that awful place, but Bone-Setter seemed to be blessed with unusual luck, and through him, Kaazin as well.

The other slaves mostly ignored the boy, fearing his kinship to grey-skinned Daazra. Not Bone-Setter. The tall elvish healer could not speak, sign or write, but he could draw, and he entertained Kaazin with colorful pictures of an impossible world up above. Maps, some of them. Others just portraits: a glorious city, a shining elf-woman holding a baby, a burning town and drow raiders. Just dream pictures, they’d seemed at the time.

Then came the day that Kaazin overheard a pair of kitchen slaves refer to him as the son of Bone-Setter, not just the issue of Daazra. He was barely past childhood and already strong, so he’d grabbed and beaten them both. They dared not strike back, cowering under his punches, curses and kicks; keeping silent until Kaazin yanked a chained cleaver out of its block and threatened to hack them to pieces. They were siblings, he thought; skinny and pale, covered in bruises and long, shaggy hair.

“What did you mean ‘Son of Bone-Setter’?!” Kaazin demanded, advancing on the quietly weeping girl. “Tell me, or I’ll rip out your throat!”

She was just out of range of that chained meat cleaver, but Kaazin seized a big fistful of her straggly hair and hauled the slave closer. She weighed next to nothing at all, and didn’t resist him.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Please, Lord! Please, Great One,” whispered her scrawny brother, throwing himself to the ground and reaching a hand forth to touch the floor by Kaazin’s foot. “It’s just a rumor, My Lord, spoken aloud by one of the Lady’s visitors. I swear, Great One, that’s all that we know. Please, please…?!”

Kaazin grunted a curse. Pained and disgusted, he kicked the boy into a wall and then threw his sister nearly into the cook fire. She was agile enough to avoid getting burned, and the young drow had more important things to think about than a pair of cringing slaveys. He turned and burst out of the kitchen, intending to find Bone-Setter and demand an answer.

Heart hammering, breath coming fast, Kaazin stalked the dark, carven halls of his mother’s estate. Of course, he knew that he had a father… and that his sire wasn’t a drow… but he’d expected a warrior. Someone important. A captive she’d drugged and bedded, then slain for the feast.

But a lowly healer? A slave, just a few notches over those filthy scullery waifs? That was humiliating, no matter how kind or useful Bone-Setter had been to him. The fellow was mute and completely unable to do any magic. Not even a simple light or cleansing spell.

Some of that anger had turned to implacable frost by the time Kaazin found Bone-Setter. The healer was out back near the midden, carefully stitching a human slave’s gashed face.

He looked up, surprised, when Kaazin burst into the steel-gated trash pit. Glow fungus and sputtering flame were feeble illumination, but Kaazin had dark-sight, and so did his ‘father’. They could see well enough and had their own way to communicate.

Bone-Setter held up a bloodied hand, palm outward. Meaning, probably: wait. He carefully made the last two stitches, then tied off the spider-silk thread and cut it short. Next, a bit of ointment went onto that swollen wound, gently applied by the tip of Bone-Setter’s least finger.

His patient was a maid in the nearby House of Blood. She whimpered a bit, but kept still throughout her treatment, clasping her hands tight together and biting down on a rag. Bone-Setter had probably given her something for pain, but not enough to be detectable or to prevent her from doing her work.

She needed rest in order to heal, but a slave’s only rest was the trash-heap or grave. Bone-Setter did what he could, accepting a bit of bread and cheese in return for his aid. Slaves owned nothing. Not even themselves, but hoarded food and swift coupling were frequent commodities. Now, the maid pressed her small meal into his hands, bowed once, and then scurried back to her post, drawing a hood up to hide her stitched face.

Bone-Setter put the food away and gathered his tools. Very intently, he cleaned them with sharp, stinging fluid. Then, he stood up. Turning, the captive high-elf gazed into Kaazin’s eyes with peculiar intensity... After that, something strange happened. Kaazin’s mouth opened, and his voice came out, but the words were not his.

“You found out, didn’t you?” the young drow said aloud. “You know I’m your father.”

Kaazin startled, leaping backward into the midden-heap’s low stone wall.

“What?!” he blurted (this time as himself, thinking the word as he said it).

Bone-Setter’s handsome face settled into grim, weary lines. Once again, he made that strange, probing eye contact, and Kaazin found himself speaking involuntarily.

“Listen, Son. I can only do this three times a day, up to a few thousand words. Her magic is strong, and She poured all she had left into giving me a way to speak, but there are limits, so… Yes, I’m your father. No, I’m not ashamed of that fact, and it changes nothing between us, for my part. I would have told you myself, but you were so young, and why add to your burden?”

Kaazin had been staring hard at Bone-Setter’s face as the slave’s words came out of his own rebel mouth. He shook his head violently.

“You… you’re her pet!” he snarled. “Her bed-warming toy! You’re no fighter! No one at all! You probably gave yourself up, rather than pick up a sword when the raiders came!”

Bone-Setter smiled a little, taking back over his son’s voice.

“Third and last speech for the day, Kaazin,” he remarked with a sigh. “I’ll keep it short. I fought. It didn’t do any good. We were overwhelmed and the town fell. I was captured with nets and blunted arrows. Kept drugged and bound until final sale to your mother. I’m alive because of my skill with herbs and heal-craft, and because I keep Daazra pleased enough in bed. It isn’t very grand, but every day alive is a sort of victory… and then there was you: the first child she didn’t just throw in the sea. I’ve done my best to help you learn and survive. No, don’t interrupt, or I won’t be able to speak again until Nextday… But what do you say to escape? Do you trust me?”

Do you trust me?

Here and now, Kaazin surged to his feet and hurled his tray and half-eaten food over the airship’s rail. Screeching gannets and harpies fought for the scraps as he stared, hard-faced, at nothing.

“I trusted you, Liar,” he whispered. “Once.”