“No Cacarolisse?”
Nem Hala sighed at Kjaelle’s question and shook her head. “Whatever Pelas said to prick her anger goes deeper than you think. She’s walled off her thoughts to me, and the times she’s done so are exceedingly rare.”
Kjaelle winced. “Is he on the island?”
“No. He has a holiday home on Half-moon, but I don’t sense him there, which explains why she’s not returned.” Nem tied a bright turquoise headscarf in place, her greenish-brown curls puffing up from the edge of the cloth and fluttering in the morning breeze. She tucked stray strands beneath the front, then untangled the stubborn ones from her wind-caught earrings. The hoops had beaded strings hanging from them, pale green seashells that matched her loose slip dress attached to the ends, and when they struck, they rang like chimes.
“I’m curious what he knows of this,” Qira said. He sat against the Loose Ducky’s starboard railing, lower arms resting on his knees, his hands dangling between. He wore a baggy white shirt and blue pants that fit before his injury, but now made him seem too thin. “I wouldn’t have thought anything, considering.”
“No? I assume he’s already visited Kjiven, and that would give him quite the introduction.”
Qira raised an eyebrow while Katta wobbled his head around in acknowledgement. Vantra hoped they would elaborate, but none did. Why would the Lord of Pineapple visit Kjiven? Because he warped the Labyrinth? By his name, she always assumed he was a nature deity of some sort, so understood the need to pay a not-so-nice visit.
“I plan to visit Greenglimmer and speak with the Badeçasyons you mentioned. I’ll ask Erse if Pelas has peeked in.” Weather absently studied the rapidly retreating dock as she finished untangling her hair. She had joined them during departure, looking tired, though her sleepless night had not caught her. Nor Qira nor Katta, for that matter. Ghosts rarely slept, so working through the night and into the morning did not affect them. But the syimlin? Magic power had no bearing on weariness nor the fatigue injury brought.
“Ask Strans of Twisted Vines, too,” Katta said, drawing his hair from the top of his head into a loose tail so his long bangs did not blow into his eyes. “He and the Labyrinth are monitoring the rainforest much closer than they previously did.”
“Death might have already sent Kjiven to the Fields,” Kjaelle said, snagging her locks and pulling them over her shoulder before forming a tie to keep them from flitting around. Funny, how two syimlin conversed with them, but they did not ask Weather to control the wind and used mundane methods to deal with the breeze instead.
Funny, how her perception of syimlin had drastically changed over the course of her travels with Darkness and Light. Other than the keeping of secrets, they were nothing like she imagined; not puffed up with superiority, but laid-back, preferring easy smiles rather than constant anger at minute offenses. The myths did them a disservice, and she disliked how their Talin-bound followers warped their personalities to better align with how a deity should act, rather than how they behaved.
“No,” Katta denied. “His destination is the Mausoleum until his mind heals—if it ever does. I suspect Erse will devise another punishment, especially since Kjiven’s not strong enough to remain in the Fields, and Elora knows it. It’s why she continues to badger Erse about forgiving him.”
Weather curled her fingers behind her neck and stretched. “I’ll visit today.”
“You’re that worried?” Katta asked.
“I don’t want that machine to continue whatever it’s doing, and the Badeçasyons are my best hope in understanding what it is and does. What if it produces that gunk fouling the water, or kills the sea life where the beam points?”
“After the attack at the event, I don’t blame you for being over-cautious,” Kjaelle said.
“I’d blame it on Katta and Qira’s terrible luck, but this time, another’s hand throws the dice, and as we’ve seen, they’ve no care for the innocents who get in their way.”
The reminder pricked her worry. Vantra silently floated from the small group and to the door leading below deck. She needed to check on her caroling more than she needed to listen to syimlin ponder what that device was, and how long it would take for Weather’s most persuasive interrogators to pry information from the captured ghosts’ mouths.
The caroling, propped up by pillows and Zibwa’s magic, sat on the bed Kenosera used, his head sunk into his body, his mouth open. She took his snoring as a good sign, but worry plagued her, that he had yet to wake. The healer, sitting on her bed, cross-legged, reading a book by the light of a single sconce, glanced up, then removed his earplugs.
“I’m sorry he’s so loud.”
He chuckled and shrugged, lowering the book. “I never realized carolings could snore. It’s an experience, listening to him. I now understand why Kenosera and Yut-ta decided Lorgan’s cabin was a better place to rest.” He leaned back against the bulwark and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sleep heals, and he’s deep in slumber, so don’t worry.” He raised his hand and drew a finger across his water-blue headband. “I believe he rummaged around in Nem’s roses. The cut had traces of thorn at the edges.”
Roses? Vantra pursed her lips, then unhooked the hammocks that spanned the side between her bed and the door, making it simpler for her to snag her main pack resting beneath them. She hefted it onto the bed next to Fyrij, and untied the flap to the caroling’s special pocket. Zibwa pinched his nostrils and reared back when she flipped it up. Wondrous, something vile sat inside. Grumbling, she wrapped the strings around her finger and pulled the top open; sticky black threads spanned the gap. With a grimace, she extended her right thumb and forefinger to thin, pointed ends, then plucked out a purple rose, its bottom coated in the gunk.
“I was wondering what that smell was,” he admitted. “I thought something ship-y, as it was faint until you opened the flap.”
“Fyrij collects things and stuffs them into this pocket,” she muttered. “But the qualifications to capture his attention are pretty and shiny. This gunk is neither.”
Zibwa set the book down and rose, eyeing it. “How much of the contents do you think he collected on Bask-ilisk?”
“All of it. I cleared out the pocket before we went ashore. He was with us until the banquet, so he must have snatched what’s inside while we were there.” She raised the rose to observe the bottom better. “I think this is the same sticky mess from the priest’s alcove.”
“I believe you’re correct.” Zibwa held out his hands, and a bluish-green box formed between them. “I’m afraid Fyrij’s going to donate his pretty to our cause. Nem might have to, too, if this mess coats her roses.”
Vantra settled the bloom in the box; a lid zipped over the container before it disappeared. He gently grasped her hand and held a finger to her pointy ones; healing magic poured through her, a precaution.
“I think you may have to get another pack,” he said. “I don’t trust that the gunk won’t cause problems.”
“It won’t be the first time I’ve had to replace one.”
He chuckled. “When Qira and his acolytes told me Fyrij dove into trouble as easily as he breathed, I thought they joked. But he leans into the adventuresome troublemaker. I see why Qira’s so fond of him.”
She nodded as he patted her hand and let her go. “Thank you for healing him. And staying, to make certain nothing bad lingers.” She needed to come up with a proper prayer and offering, but as they sailed away from shore and any altar, the act would have to wait.
“I’ve no want to see Qira’s singing partner find his end before I can listen to their duets.” He winked with a smile. “Besides, it gives me a reason to be near enough Qira to check on him. He’s stubborn when it comes to injury—I discovered that after he destroyed the Light temple. He hasn’t changed much, over the millennia.” He humphed. “But, I suppose, neither have I.”
That made sense. Light prickled when he thought someone underestimated him, and healing grievous wounds would prove no different. She turned back to her pack, tempted to dump the contents onto the bed, but carefully removed them, just in case the black gunk had soaked through. Nothing seemed tainted, but unease zipped up her spine as she slid the random tools, notebooks, and the medical supplies away.
Thank Sun she kept the Sun altar, badge and shard separate from the pack with Fyrij’s special pocket. “Do you have—” She eeped and jumped.
Standing next to the tall elfine was a shorter, harried sprite. He had pale morning-blue skin and darker teal eyes, with layered, blue topaz hair that fell over his shoulder and down his chest. He sported a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee that came to a fine point. A ginormous, sea grey floppy hat with a teal and violet feather sat atop his head, the brim dipping to hide his right eye. A knee-length, shimmery green vest held together by three straps parted at his waist and fell to his knees, beneath which he layered a silken, sea grey shirt and darker pants stuffed into shined black boots.
A dangerous glint filled Zibwa’s eyes, and Vantra pressed a hand into her chest; who was their unwelcome guest?
“What did you do?” the healer asked, biting off the words.
“I did nothing!”
He had an accent she associated with elden sprites from the Lake Tembrel region of central Talis; smooth and heavy on the breath. But he was no ghost.
“Cacarolisse doesn’t abandon Weather for nothing.”
The sprite pressed his lips tightly together before replying. “Cacarolisse misunderstood—”
His eep echoed Vantra’s as the Weather acolyte flew into the room.
If she still lived and saw the wild-haired, fire-eyed woman floating anywhere near her, she would have screamed and fled, terrified her end drew near. Instead, her feet remained rooted as Cacarolisse cocked her arm and struck; the sprite dodged, and her hand slammed into the hull, leaving a dent.
“Cacarolisse,” Zibwa said with sharp disapproval. The sprite continued out the door, and she whirled, flames of poisonous green sifting around her as she chased him.
Fyrij twittered in fear. Vantra scooped him up and held him close as Zibwa studied the dent, then pivoted and followed the two out the door. She kissed her dear one on the brow; he cheeped at her, then swiveled his head to stare at the hall, as if to ask who that was.
“I have no idea,” she whispered. Unwilling to leave him in a room with nasty gunk while strangers prowled the ship, she whisked after the others, nearly running into Jare and Greyshen, who did not look pleased to abandon their rest time.
“Have you seen LP?” Jare asked.
“That was LP? I mean, Lord of Pineapple?”
Greyshen patted her shoulder, chuckling, and headed to the stairs. Jare shook his head and followed. Glancing at the dent and reminding herself she needed to tell a crew member about it, she trotted to catch them.
“Cacarolisse was glowing green,” she told them.
“That’s not a good sign,” the Light-blessed said, nonchalant.
“She dented the wall of my room.”
He peered over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “A worse sign, but she’s not aiming at me.”
Greyshen clucked his tongue. “We expected he would hunt us down. However dapper our Lord of Pineapple is, Cacarolisse is immune to his charms, and when she’s angry? Well.” He motioned behind them. “I’ve experienced her rage once. We captured a wayward acolyte who stole an artefact to pawn and begin a life outside Weather’s service. He could have simply left and asked for help in doing so, but he chose differently. She melted the bars on the cell to get to him, and without Katta’s intervention, she might have visited the Fields herself.”
“Neither Erse nor Katta will ever sunder her,” Jare disagreed as the Shade opened the door and the brighter light of above deck smacked their perceptions. “You know that. Besides, she’s put up LP for tens of millennia. She’s due a rage or two.”
Was she? Vantra found that odd. How much did Jare dislike the Lord of Pineapple, that he thought her anger justified?
Weather had one arm clamped around Cacarolisse’s shoulder, the other her waist, holding her tight as the Lord of Pineapple hid behind Katta. The enraged nymph looked as menacing as the mythical shrieking ghost that haunted glens and dales, but the Lord of Pineapple was a deity. Even lesser syimlin had mantles powerful enough to defeat mortals—that was the point of the Banquet, after all.
The air turned green, and the target of her anger whimpered. “You misunderstood—”
“I misunderstood nothing!”
“Cacarolisse,” Weather said, grave warning in her tone.
“You said daughters of sons would come to play. You said—”
All syimlin eyes snaked to him, and he half-laughed in anxious worry. “Uh, well—”
Heat swam through Vantra as he tried to weasel out of admitting to what he said. Daughters of sons. Dammit, what connection did the Lord of Pineapple and Machella have?
She understood Cacarolisse’s fury, for it pounded through her, too. She whirled and headed below deck, her mood shattered. Daughter of the Sun meant nothing. Yes, she still looked to Sun, an ingrained part of her childhood that had not faded as a ghost, but the connection had led to her death. Sun didn’t miraculously appear to save her from her mother’s enemies.
She traveled with a Sun altar, badge and shard, which proved useful, but they were not Sun himself. Sun had . . . Sun had . . . abandoned her to her fate.
Pressing her nose against Fyrij’s head, she listened to his soft, confused cheeping, forcing herself to calm down because he needed gentle care, not her turning into a seething wreck.
She slowed and entered the cabin, attempting to kick her whirling thoughts into oblivion, and stopped. A crimson light emanated from the second pack containing her Sun altar, shard and badges, bathing everything in an eerie glow. The gunk had crawled out of the pocket and oozed down the side, an oily rainbow sheen spreading across the leather from where it touched.
Eww, what was it?
Fyrij twittered in alarm as she formed a shield around the pack before it could slink onto the blanket, slid another beneath the bottom, and shuddered as the ooze pulled its front half from the surface, small protrusions punching at her. She sent a quick prayer to Zibwa; he needed to see this.
“That’s unexpected.”
The healer’s hands kept her from flying through the ceiling in fright, before he gently urged her to the side of the door and entered, his full attention on her pack. The group from above crowded the doorway behind Katta as he stepped inside, eyes narrowed in thought as he studied the mass.
“Fyrij, what did you pick up last night?”
Her little caroling issued a worried tweet.
“No, you’re not in trouble, but the black gunk oozes from your special pocket.”
Fyrij flapped around, trying to see Katta, so Vantra repositioned him for a better view. His head whipped back and forth between Darkness and the nastiness, and his frightened twitter proved he did not expect whatever he shoved in there to move.
“Calm down,” Zibwa said, the words spoken in a lazy drawl. He eyed the caroling as the avian relaxed, then the pack, nodded once, then shook his head. “I see. Whatever you picked up must have been contaminated before you placed it in the pocket. So what did you pick up? We saw the purple rose, and the gunk was on the bottom of it.”
“He snitched a rose?” Weather asked, amused rather than angry.
“He loves the pretty stuff,” Qira said, leaning heavily against the door frame. “And if it’s shiny, doubly so.”
“Let us hope they aren’t the source,” Zibwa said. Weather’s humor fled.
Fyrij twittered, and Vantra wished she could understand him. She had only done so once, and the ability faded after she revived. Why was that? She wanted to speak with her little caroling, too!
“The rose, a shiny and a bright leaf from a waterfall, another shiny. Do you know what those shinies were?”
He hunkered down, so his face barely peeked out from his fur.
“Did you steal some jewelry?” Vantra asked, exasperated.
He sad-croaked and sank lower.
“Well, let’s see what falls out.” Zibwa pulled a long, thin knife from the air and pushed it through her shields. He had done that the night before, proving he did not need her trigger to interact with her Sun defenses. The other syimlin likely used her mark out of politeness, and that depressed her.
The gunk globbed onto the tip, and he raised it before retrieving another, matching blade and slitting the pocket down the middle, then the sides. Lumpy black stuff glumped away from the pack’s side and rolled down into a mass atop her shield, vibrating, stringy lengths spanning from the leather to the bit on the other knife.
He dug the free tip into the mass and pulled out a ring coated in the stuff. A Darkness shield encompassed it, and, cut off, the exterior gunk faded into ashy grey and fell apart into soft particles. More of the stuff poured from the jewel on the ring and slowly filled the shield.
“Fyrij, did you snitch that from the ghosts you screamed at?” Vantra asked. While feeling terrible about pushing him, they needed to know.
“He says no,” Katta said softly. “The only ring he took was lying on a rock outside a waterfall in town, and no one near.”
“I’ll have my priests look for similar objects,” Weather said. “And not just on Bask-ilisk. We need to know if they’re targeting all the priest alcoves throughout the Windtwists, or just the ones here.” She gripped Qira’s arm before disappearing, taking a still-fuming Cacarolisse with her.
The Lord of Pineapple breathed a sigh of intense relief and wilted.
“Why do you think you’re off the hook, LP?” Qira asked wrily.
“You are not Cacarolisse,” he pointed out.
“She dented the wall,” Vantra said. Everyone crowded to look but the Lord of Pineapple, and Jare snickered. The sprite glared at him, which he ignored.
Jare did not like him, and she could not say, her first impression was stellar, though she wondered if his casual use of LP was due to Qira, rather than his own dislike. Why not call him Pelas, like Weather did?
“I need to tell Dough,” she fretted.
“I have no idea if she violated the integrity of the hull, but as far as I can tell, we’re not leaking.” Qira peered around the corner. “Zibwa, Kjaelle thinks Sojavan needs to study what we find.”
“He’s a good choice,” Zibwa agreed. The knives disappeared, and he straightened. “Fyrij, how do you feel?”
He poked his head up and twittered. The healer set a finger against his forehead and a deep, foliage green encompassed the avian.
“I sense no foulness, so whatever you picked up did not contaminate you. That’s good; I’m sure a blast of Vantra’s Sun wouldn’t feel good, considering you’re recovering from other injuries. But if you notice anything odd, tell someone. Don’t be stubborn about it, like Qira.”
“Hey,” Qira said, pursing his lips to the side. Fyrij swiveled his head to look at Light, then chirped, as if he knew that already.
Zibwa hefted the shield containing the pack. “Vantra, you should cast Clear Rays on what you took out of it, just in case.” He met her eye, then his gaze drifted to those at the door. “I sat with this for hours and didn’t sense anything of that gunk but a faint odor until Vantra opened the pocket’s flap.”
“They’re adapting their Touch to hide from us,” Jare said.
“I’m afraid so. They desperately want to conceal what they do.” Zibwa vanished in a swirl of green.
The crimson glow did not abate, so Vantra handed Fyrij to Katta and made certain Clear Rays Touched everything in the room, with intense attention paid to the bed. Kjaelle brushed past, retrieved the altar, and held it until the glow disappeared. Only then did she let the spell fade.
“This enemy is that powerful?” LP asked, studying the bed with a deep, troubled frown.
“I think the Beast’s returned,” Kjaelle growled. His eyebrow popped up to his hairline in shock.
“It’s someone with beghestern death magic,” Katta said as he smoothed the blanket, checking to make certain that nothing of the contamination remained. Vantra planned to replace the bedding, apologize to Dough, then burn it. “Whether the Beast has somehow miraculously returned from the Void, or we face one who wears his guise, we’ll find out.”
“No wonder Cacarolisse was upset,” LP murmured, so much sympathy in his tone, Vantra wondered what past experiences he pondered. He readjusted his hat and smoothed his bangs to the side, revealing his right eye.
“You’ve talked to Machella, haven’t you?” Qira accused.
“I’ve spoken with her after random encounters over the years,” he said sharply. “And you know, her oracles never enchanted me, considering her source. But there was something in her manner during her last visit. She is afraid.”
“Afraid?” he snorted.
“Why don’t we borrow Dough’s office to talk?” Katta asked.
“I’ll take care of things here,” Kjaelle said, leaning over to eye the dent. “Remind me never to piss her off. That’s a hard blow.”
“No one but me will ever elicit that rage,” LP said with dignified aplomb before pulling back from the door. Vantra had no idea how to take that remark, and Katta’s pursed lips as he held his laughter in check did not help. He handed Fyrij back to her, and she cuddled her little bundle of fluff and fur as they made their way to Dough’s office, mulling her first impression and what he hid that might change her opinion.
