This was a ridiculously fun story to write. It came out of nowhere when I was sketching D. Kovalev as an elf, and completely f*cked up his left eye. I became so irate that I blacked it out with a black patch, and I was blown backwards out of the water (metaphorically) by the obnoxiously sexy elf-pirate that ensued. Plot bunnies hopped away in all directions, but I was deeply entangled and my Victorian story (more about that soon) and I didn't want to start a new project.
My resolution lasted exactly 12 hours, after which I was swallowed into this short story... I had no idea where it was going, but it was to be light and short.
Except that D. Kovalev himself provided such an intriguingly dark interpretation to the original sketch that the whole thing sped off out of control in a whole new direction, acquiring a far more complex story arc than I had anticipated. How do you combine the idea of fun-filled Mediterranean pirate world with an elvish character possessed by a blood-thirsty, demonic "otherness"?
Well, as it turns out, it all fell in quite nicely with my old fantasy novel Spellbreakers, of which it became part sequel, part spin-off.
It was a fantastic romp into a world of beautiful ships, bantering pirates, scheming queens and the shadow of old black magic, and a much needed holiday from the more "serious" stories I have been writing lately.
It also ran to 92k words. So much for a light short story. Ahem.
Here's my sexy elf-pirate, Rikko'.
Blurb:
Born in the northern wastes of Kaleva in
the middle of a devastating war between light and darkness, Rikko’ has found
his way south to the warm shores of the Circled Sea, the first elver to ever
turn pirate.
Forbidden by the rules of the Andalouan
court to pursue such an ungentlemanly career, Gael can only dream of ever becoming a doctor,
and his medical studies remain unfinished until his aunt the Queen sends him on
a covert mission to the pirate city of Beyas’kahl.
And here, after one night with Rikko’, all
his loyalties are put to the test.
Queen Amata has reigned for three decades,
and she always used her men cunningly. But even the best player can
miscalculate, and her blunder places Gael first in slavery, then in a naval
battle, and finally, worst of all, face to face with Rikko’s darkest and
deadliest side.
Prologue (unedited):
The midwives had
gathered in the house at sunset, when the waters broke. The armed men had come
too, and waited outside, except for Eikki, the father, who would have to do the
deed, afterwards.
The men thought
that it should have been done long ago, months ago, before it came to this
monstrous screaming and the unnatural, accursed thing that was happening in there.
They were uneasy. Men are always uneasy around a birth, but this was different.
One of them, Juoni, had a wife in there, Anneli, one of the midwives, and he
fidgeted near the door, fingering the hilt of his dagger, half in a mind to go
in, and put an end to it all, whether or not the birth was over. No living
woman should be in the presence of such evil, his wife least of all.
But The Elders
had spoken. It had been agreed that the child should be born.
Inside, the
mother was thrashing in the childbed, soon to be her deathbed. Her hands and
feet were strapped to the sides of the frame, and her eyes had turned back into
her head and gleamed like pale blind eggshells in the light of the fire. The
midwives were silent. There was no point soothing or urging her on, as is
normal at such times, or telling her to push, to hold, to breathe, not to throw
her head around so. She was beyond their reach. Never had been such a birth,
the mother screaming, screaming, screaming, barely muffled by the gag—because
she was gagged, she had to be, lest she bites her attendants—and the midwives
mute, standing back, waiting. All they could do was hoping the child would come
anyway, of its own accord, and that the mother would not kill him on the way.
That, and that the child would be … normal.
It had been
hours already, and the woman, what was left of her, was becoming weak, too weak
to scream in her gag, or fight her bonds. Her body was doing what a mother’s
body should, but sluggishly, fitfully, without her will having anything to do
with it.
“It’s coming, I
think,” said Anneli in a dog-tired whisper.
It was almost
dawn. The women, the living ones, stirred, approached, prodded and probed,
inside and out, shivering at the touch of that tainted flesh, feeling for the
little life inside. Was it alive? Was it alive?
When it came
forth finally, in a great gush a dark blood—it looked like ink in the
firelight—it was blue-grey and lifeless, and it had to be drawn out from that grey
body with irons, like a knife out of a wound, but babies can be like that
sometimes, when the mother has been ill, or has fought so badly. Anneli lifted
it, him actually—it was a boy—wiped
the little nose, slapped him and chafed him.
“Breathe!
Breathe!” she said again and again, chafing, slapping. “Breathe!”
She didn’t want
him to be dead. He must be alive, for
the sake of the poor father, if nothing else. “Breathe!”
And finally the tiny thing coughed, and a
mewling cry came from him.
“Stay with me
now. There, there, stay with me, my sweet…”
Anneli washed
him in the warm water that waited by the fire, and rubbed his little limbs
(each of them perfectly formed and pink now) and carefully opened his eyelids.
A lustrous pale green eye in each. He was small, smaller than the littlest
elf-child, but flawless, beautiful.
“He is … normal.
A living child. Weak, but living. The
taint is not on him,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion, as she cradled
him and rocked him, poor orphan.
Eikki, the
father, put his face in his hands. “Thank the gods,” he whispered. “May I hold
him? Please?”
The women looked
at him, all of them, except his wife.
“Do what you
need first. For mercy, Eikki. Do it. She’s already gone, you know that.”
Eikki sighed,
and walked to the childbed, like a man in sleep-walk. He looked at his wife’s unrecognizable
face. She had been beautiful once, the light of his life. Now her flesh had
melted from her bones. It had been hard to feed her. Her silvery hair had been
sheared from her head. It had been impossible to brush it.
“Do it, Eikki,”
said a voice from the door. The men had come in. They were there to make sure
he did it. It was agreed.
He took his
knife from the sheath, and looked at his wife one last time, and then he
plunged the blade in her soulless heart. She didn’t even cry. There was just a
sound like wind through dried leaves…
Juoni looked at
the child and spit on the fire, as men did in those parts to ward off the Evil
Eye.
“That should be
killed too,” he said.
“Why?” said the
midwife, protectively. “He hasn’t been touched. He’s one of us. There’s few
enough of us as it is.”
“How can you know? There’s never been a child born of … of one of them. You don’t know if it shows. You cannot tell.”
“How can you know? There’s never been a child born of … of one of them. You don’t know if it shows. You cannot tell.”
“We will watch
him. We will watch him close. You will not kill him though, not like this. Not
a baby.”
She crouched
about the child protectively, like a wild cat.
“It would be a mercy,
Anni. You know it would be. There’s not a woman in the whole of Kaleva, the
Elverlaen, or the Near Vaelta’a that will nurse him.”
“I’ll feed him,”
said Eikki. “I’ll feed him. Goat milk will do. It’s been done before. He’s all
that is left of her. Let me have him.”
They gave him
the child in his towel, and he held him close and rocked him. Tears streamed
down his face, but he smiled a little. Poor little thing, that he should come
into the world like this, at such a time. He should see one smile at least, on
his birthday. Tears fell off the father’s chin and onto his little mouth. The
little lips stirred, licked, sucked. It
should have been milk, thought Eikki. It
should have been milk, not salt-water, the first thing he tasted.
“What will you
call him?” said Anneli.
“Lasse. Lasse.
That is the name she wanted… if it was a boy.”
“Lasse,”
repeated the midwife, stroking the child’s pale head. He was fair, like his
mother had been, one of the white northern race, one of the very last. “Lasse
Eikkissen. May you find your way home, always.”
IN THE EYE OF THE WIND
coming
January 2019
