The Pirate King Ch. 12

That movement, reaching over the salt and putting myself in some danger, a movement I had made many times in my trades back when I was named, when it was known who and what I was coming into these negotiations, it was not one I think the being on the other end was expecting.

A second disturbance snapped the cool surface of black as a grey tentacle whipped up from the depths, wrapping around my arm. Almost instantly the thick scent of Dave filled the air. It's an indescribable smell - wet, the kind of wetness that clogs your lungs, like moss on land or the cloying fog that drifts over the sea. But denser. As though you're truly breathing the sea. And it smells of the sea, of salt and decay and life and that distinctive flavor of seaweed, topped with the scent that only the sea has, the one that isn't any other thing and can't be ascribed to any one part but is in fact the sea as a whole. The soul of it.

And not just the sea. The darkest parts. The deepest layers. Where oxygen does not even go, where bodies sink to die and small creatures make cities out of bones. The places where no man should ever dare to go, to dream, to think.

But I am no man. I am the sea. And so I stared balefully down at the writhing appendage restricting my movement, wondering how much longer we would play at this game.

Not long, it would seem. The tentacle slinked from my arm, silently disappearing back into the black. I watched it go. If Dave did not know who had made the deal before, I was pretty sure he did now.

"Brother." Val's voice held caution, questions. He had watched the whole situation unfold and I can only imagine what it looked like from the outside.

"He was just saying hello," I responded calmly. In fairness, it wasn't entirely untrue.

Entirely.

I returned to carefully lifting the man I held out of the darkness. First, the arm revealed itself, complete with the requisite marks around the forearm that were always present when men returned from Dave's halls, then a shoulder with a lolling head. I raised an eyebrow to see the scar Wicky had put under his chin; he'd never gotten a better blade, I saw. A shame for Ichor, who would have to wear the result of it for the rest of his life.

As it were.

When I had him out fully, the portal closed silently behind me. I was glad of that. I had no control over the state of this doorway - if Dave had decided he wanted to come out and talk, I couldn't have stopped him. I didn't feel much like speaking to him just them, explaining my death. My lack of presence in his world. How the sea, as always, had came first.

How many times had I had that conversation? The sea is primary; the ocean takes precedence. I may have promised something, but if the sea asks for the same thing, then that is the end and the promise must be broken. I can't control this. I can't stop it.

In this case, it was my death. In so many others, for so many others, it was just the opposite. How many people had accused me of giving my life to the sea, rather than to them?

"He isn't breathing," Val sighed, annoyed.

"Give him time." I settled myself against the cell wall. He would have been existing aquatic, anaerobic. Coming back to oxygen would be.

One of my men once described the experience as electrifying.

"And step back," I warned Val as I remembered the experiences I'd had with fighters previous.

Val frowned up at me. "Why?"

"Because he might -"

Ichor sat straight up, gasping, for all of a second before he was on his feet and taking swings at Val. Val dodged them, managing to make it look easy. It couldn't have been, not with Ichor as he was. I knew from past experience how much faster men were after death.

I sighed. "That."

Ichor soon realized that trying to hit Val was a futile sport and gave up, but his body was still burning at a pace he hadn't existed at in some time. Perhaps never. He took off down the hall, eyes wide, slamming into walls with the force of his inertia.

We listened to him race down the hallway.

"Shouldn't we go after him?"

I shrugged. He had nowhere to go, and doubly nowhere to hide. It was better to let him burn off the excess oxygen he suddenly found himself with, then go and talk to him.

Besides, he was naked. At some point Val would be called to deal with the crazy naked man running through the streets anyway.

Val straightened his clothing. "Well I, for one, don't want him running amok with my civilians."

I shrugged again. I didn't seen Ichor as the type to randomly attack people. Although he had attacked me, but that had not been random, and he'd had the decency to apologize.

Besides, most of the men I'd brought back had wanted nothing to do with people when they'd come back. They'd said they'd smelled of sweat and life, felt sticky against their very existence. It had been torture, for a long time, to exist around them.

There were so many fucking people on Barrow.

I sighed and stood. "We'd better go find him."

"That's what I've been saying!"

I rolled my eyes over to him and shot him a long look. He pulled himself off the stone and started down the hall. "Fine. But you'd better clean up that fucking salt circle. Or else people are going to ask questions."

People were going to ask questions about the missing man, about the open door. I stared balefully at the salt, the humidity making it nearly solid.

I closed the door with a snick and walked down the hall, knowing it would have locked behind me. Now there was one less thing to ask questions about. In the end, I thought the salt circle answered anything the men might think to wonder; if it didn't, they lacked either imagination or information. Either way, they bored me.

Val was waiting for me at the entrance of the prison. "Did you clean up the salt?"

"No." I moved forward, looking for the least populated area. Ichor would go where there was no one. "Where is there a large open space? Not filled with." I waved my hand. "People?"

"White Beach. Or the top of the mountain." He frowned at me. "Do you have any idea how expensive that salt was?"

"No." Unlike others, I didn't put a price on men's lives. I started off towards the beach. He had just come from the sea; the air would hurt him, the people would frighten him. He would return to the sea. I know I would. I thought of something as I moved my way through the streets. "Do you know how expensive my life was considered? The first time I was sold?"

I felt Val looking at me. "No," he said slowly. "How expensive?"

"Not expensive as you'd think." For the Crown, I thought. For me, the price was steep. "You can't reuse the salt anyway."

Val sighed. "I know. But still."

But still. I moved with Val towards the beach, hoping that when we got there we would find our newly live man and no one else.

But my life is rarely so simple. Ichor was there, yes, a dark lump against the bright white sand and gentle waves, but there was another figure. Thin. Pale. Hair so light they nearly blended into the beach.

The figure sighed as we approached. "You have some nerve," they told me.

"Sneg?" Val asked, eyes taking in the all-white clothes, the waist-length blonde hair.

"Sneg," I confirmed.

"'Sup," they responded. "When the fuck were you going to tell me you used to be the King?"