The Duelist 9, page 9
And Sha-Kane was my father-in-law.
I suppose having a lot of in-laws was to be expected when I had multiple spouses.
“I’m still technically here on Ambassadorial business or whatever,” I said as I landed back in the rowboat. Regent Sskern had practically forced me to take up the basically-made-up title, but I intended to fulfill the responsibilities he’d entrusted me with. “We can open up the Manta to the Omites and have a big party-- and welcome Kohen, since he’s the new Overseer.”
Not to mention, my Crew was still a little shaken from my having to play Asshole Asher. We could all use a bit of levity to reground ourselves and put that ordeal behind us. I’d had to terrify and basically gaslight my closest friends, and something like that wasn’t just going to go away in an instant.
“Sounds like an excellent idea, Alex,” Sha-Kane said with all the approving tones of a father figure. Even if he’d never actually parented anyone, I knew he would slip into the role of Shay and Horus’ father with ease, once he found the way to tell them the truth.
“I’m glad you think so, Councilman,” I said with a grin, and I picked up one of the oars. “So, let’s get back to shore and get to work!”
Chapter 7
Since Horus was still a little shaky from having been drugged by his secret long-lost father, Sha-Kane and I were the ones who rowed back the little boat to the shore of Lake Lakuna. As the Midnight went from the hulking vessel that towered so high above us as to block out the sun to looking like a toy far out in the bay, my mind raced with the possibilities for our upcoming celebrations.
We all deserved a break, and we definitely deserved a party. Right now, we had a lot worth celebrating. Not to mention, once the drinks started flowing, I imagined Bodin would be a little more forgiving of the details of whatever caused him to fake his death, expunge himself from his family histories, and cause Captain Nemis to go on a rage-filled manhunt after him.
And once the party was over and everyone was relaxed, Nemis would probably have calmed down enough for us to be able to speak to him without trying to kill Bodin, But For Real This Time.
“We should probably bring Captain Nemis off the Soaring Light later,” I said to Horus as I rowed. “There’s no one on the ship who can bring him food or water.”
“I don’t imagine his pride is doing too well, either, having been left on his own ship as a prisoner to be forgotten about,” Horus added, and he rubbed at his feathery crest on the spot where he’d hit his head on the deck.
If I was being honest, I didn’t really care about Nemis’ pride, and he could stand to have it taken down a peg or two. As someone who hadn’t had any family growing up, his frustration kind of confused me. I got that he was mad his cousin, Bodin, lied about being killed, but surely Nemis should have primarily been relieved? He’d gained back a family member who’d been believed lost forever.
But none of my relatives had ever come back from the dead before, so maybe I was wrong. I didn’t really know how I would react in such a situation until it happened to me.
Then I remembered, it kind of had.
Somehow, I’d managed to push the bounds of my time-trance ability, beyond slowing time, beyond stopping time, but to the point where I could reverse it. That was seriously cool, and it had saved Horus’ life, which was definitely a major win, but it also made me feel a little uneasy.
Maybe I’d watched too much sci-fi, but all I could think was how some things, like the natural and linear progression of time, and the cycle of life and death, weren’t supposed to be messed with. I was a high-ranking Duelist, an Ambassador, the head of a growing family of loyal friends and wonderful wives, but I was still just a mortal and a human, and something like life-and-death, or turning back time, seemed a touch too close to godhood.
Absolute power corrupted absolutely, and I had no desire to fall into the same traps that made Ashers like Archus Doler and Rogue mages like Aiken turn mad and power-hungry.
I couldn’t do that to my friends and family. I wouldn’t.
When the three of us got back to the shore, the last of the Okoba sloth-people were just finishing their flush out of the remnants of the pirate crew from the trees. The pile of maybe-dead-but-probably-just-unconscious men from Luhrmann’s old crew was quite considerable, and I could see the lemur-faced figure of Overseer Kohen speaking to one of the Okoba, who was probably a mid-level official. Kohen gestured to the pile a few times, then waved his arms, but the discussion seemed more lively than heated.
“Kohen!” Sha-Kane called out, and as the rowboat got into shallow enough water and grounded itself against the sand of the shore, the osprey-man stood up and jumped over the edge. He jogged over to his friend and immediately inserted himself into the discussion, probably to tell Kohen and the Okoba official that I was prepared to give them the Midnight to transport the surviving crewmembers to Alem for trial.
As soon as the treasure was moved off it, at least.
Zoie, Shay, and the others were nowhere to be seen in Tatabo Harbor, which presumably meant they’d all returned to the Manta. I wanted to go find them as soon as possible to tell them about my and Horus’ plan and get their help in putting together a party worthy of what we were celebrating, like Amaya and Anwaar’s safe return, Jenner being healed, and of course the news that Zoie was pregnant.
I still couldn’t really believe it. Adopting Rylan had been one thing, and I loved him as fiercely as I would a biological child, but the idea of getting to be there from the start of a child’s life? Getting to see them take their first steps and say their first words? It boggled my mind. I felt elated, almost like I was drunk or light-headed.
“You okay there, Chief?” Horus’ voice drew me back to the present, and I turned to see he had climbed out of the rowboat, but I was still sitting with the oars in my hands.
I gave a small laugh as I set them down and climbed out to stand beside the falcon-man on the beach.
“Just thinking about how we can throw the best party the Okoba have ever seen,” I told him and punched his arm for good measure. “I suppose I should speak with Elder Elmer to double-check I don’t include any cultural no-nos.”
“You’ll want Madam Morta there, too, then,” Horus advised me. “Or you’ll be there so long you’ll miss all the planning and the party itself.”
I chuckled, because he was probably right. I’d always thought Arvid was a little slow-- not in a mean way, just not fast-- but he was Michael Schumacher compared to most of the people on this island. I was still getting the hang of their very languorous way of speech, but the syllables were stretched out so far I couldn’t quite make out the actual words.
Thankfully, Madam Morta had offered to be a translator between me and Elder Elmer, and I made a mental note to try and find the bat-woman as soon as possible.
I could see the Manta ship hovering over what had once been the place where Rickety House sat, but now it was no more than a pile of sea-weathered splinters. The prospect of planning a fun little party with the family inside, my family, sent something warm and comforting through my chest.
“Alex Brightwood!”
The thoughts of cheerful event planning were abruptly shoved to one side as I turned to see Madam Morta rushing over to me. Behind her, Ozrid and Elder Elmer followed, considerably more slowly.
I wondered for a moment how Morta had come to be in Elmer’s service, given she wasn’t Omish herself. She’d explained Okoba marriage practices to me when we’d met, when I’d been in my underwear in a healing hut and she’d been tending to my wounds, and I knew the Omish tended to be in arranged marriages from birth, so it was unlikely that she was married to one.
Maybe she just really liked the people and the culture on the Island of Om, the way some people back on Earth would move to another state or country. Expats couldn’t be a uniquely human thing.
Wait. Was I an expat? I supposed I was. I hadn’t been born in Aventoll, but it was my home now, where I lived and worked.
I’d considered moving abroad, back in my old life. It had been precisely because I hadn’t had much in the way of family or friends to tie me to my home, but I’d always been too intimidated. By the money it would cost, by the complex bureaucracy of applying for visas or even just moving to a different state, by the fact I only spoke English, which would limit where I could go massively.
But none of that mattered now, and I turned to the bat-woman with a pleasant smile.
“Madam Morta,” I said warmly. “Elder Elmer, Ozrid. How can I help you?”
Elmer stepped forward and began to make a series of complex hand gestures, and Morta immediately leapt in to translate for me.
“We heard about the situation regarding your friends, the Order Acolytes,” she translated, and I listened, of course, but I found myself slightly distracted by the way the Elder’s hands moved. “And how the pirate crew our people are removing from our sacred forests were involved. I hope-- we hope-- you and yours are all unharmed?”
“We’re all perfectly fine, Elder,” I answered with a smile, and I decided not to mention how Horus, who was standing at my side, had almost died-- had actually died-- in his Duel against Aiken. “Your concern is touching.”
Madam Morta smiled at me in a way that reminded me of an elderly auntie who was always too cheeky and loved to embarrass the parents of her great-nieces and nephews.
“Actually,” I went on. “My family and I are having a little party this evening, and we would be honored if you would attend. A sort of… do-over, to make up for the last celebration we shared in. Now that the Order Acolytes are safely with us again, and the scourge of the pirates has been cleared from our oceans and your forests, we feel we have more reason to celebrate than before.”
Elmer smiled a very slow smile and gestured at Morta again.
“We would be most honored to attend your celebration, Ambassador Brightwood,” the bat-woman translated. “Provided you can assure us there won’t be a repeat of that… mishap with the escaping pirates?”
I couldn’t tell if the pause in Morta’s words was because Elmer had somehow signed in a way that meant she needed to leave a pause, or if he’d signed a much cruder word, and she’d tweaked the translation at the last second. Either way, I made sure to put on my most winning diplomatic smile.
“I can promise there will be no such mishaps,” I said firmly, and then I remembered how I’d kneed Luhrmann in the gut and let one rip directly into his face.
Not the most sophisticated battle tactic in the world, but it had been pretty funny. The bastard deserved that and worse.
Elder Elmer made a wheezing sound I only recognized as laughter because I’d heard him laugh before. Otherwise, I might have thought he was being suffocated by some unseen force.
Madam Morta let a small, wry smile pull at her lips as she continued to translate the sloth-man’s hand movements.
“It is auspicious your strange house-ship should be here on the shore of the lake,” she translated. “Long ago, the tribes of Okoba would meet on this very spot to eat and celebrate together, and it has been many seasons since this tradition was observed.”
“It has?” I asked in surprise. The Omish hadn’t given me the impression they cared about petty territory disputes. They were perpetually calm, if not always super warm and friendly. “How come?”
“The Overseers,” Manta explained. “The last several Overseers would not allow the celebrations to take place. They would always claim there was more work to be done, that the best way to honor nature was to keep working to dutifully make the best use of what it has to offer our people.”
“That was Krev Alda,” I told her and the Elder with a scowl. “He was a Traveler with the ability to change his face. He’d been masquerading as several mid-level officials for decades in Aventoll. Just enough status to make things interesting, but not so much that he draws attention. It would have been in his own petty, self-serving interests to keep your people working too hard in the quarries. He only cared about himself.”
“Then it’s fortunate you killed him in a Duel,” Horus said firmly. “And Councilman Sha-Kane seems fond of Kohen, so I’m confident we can vouch for the new Overseer’s integrity.”
Hearing Horus call him ‘Councilman Sha-Kane’ felt very weird, considering what I’d just learned, but I knew better than to tell the falcon-man why. I’d given Sha-Kane my word, and I knew that sort of news would completely upend Horus’ world. I couldn’t just spring it on him out of nowhere.
How would I even go about doing it?
‘Oh, hey, Horus. Did you know Archus Doler, the guy who was a horrible, abusive father to you basically your entire life, isn’t actually your dad?’
Yeah, definitely not.
“If the new Overseer has the approval of you, Ambassador, then I’m sure my people and I can rest easy,” Madam Morta translated, and Elder Elmer bobbed his head in a slow, confirmatory nod.
“Your confidence flatters me, Elder,” I said politely. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start preparing for our celebrations this evening.”
“Take Ozrid with you to help,” Elmer said via Morta. “He’s strong, and I imagine he would be pleased to see his brother, too.”
Ozrid made a groaning, grunting noise that might have been a begrudging affirmation, or an exasperated ‘do I really have to?,’ but he lumbered over toward us, so he was clearly going to come regardless of what he thought about seeing his brother.
“We look forward to the celebrations this evening, Ambassador,” Madam Morta relayed to Horus and me. Then Elmer stopped signing, but she continued. “And once again, thank you for all you have done in service of Om.”
I realized this was from Morta herself, not Elmer, and I smiled.
“It’s really nothing, Madam,” I told her. “It’s my duty as an Asher to protect the people of Aventoll. Classically, that might have meant demons, but the worst monsters are often the ones that don’t look like monsters.”
In some cases, like Krev Alda, this could be taken very literally.
“Then thank Mercedes we have Ashers like yourselves to keep us safe.” Morta smiled at Horus and me and gave a short bow to us both. “I look forward to the celebrations this evening.”
Elmer nodded in agreement, and the two of them then set off back toward the forest, while Horus, Ozrid, and myself all made toward the Manta. Ozzy, being Omish, lagged a little behind, and normally I would have slowed my pace to compensate, but I needed to talk to Horus about something in private first, before we got back to the Manta and got swept up in preparations.
“When I first came to Om, and first met Morta, Elder Elmer had her play translator for me.”
“Like she did just then?” Horus asked, and he was clearly a little confused as to why I was mentioning something so obvious.
“She said Elmer wanted her to do it because… time worked differently,” I explained, and I couldn’t help but frown a little. Something was hovering on the edge of my thinking, some realization I was just on the cusp of. “She said… our time works against us sometimes.”
“‘Our’ time?” Horus repeated. “Not time in general?”
“Are the Omish especially long-lived compared to other species in Aventoll?” I asked the falcon-man, and he shrugged.
“Their lifespans are on the upper end, I think, but nothing drastically different,” he answered. “Why? What’s rattling around in that Traveler brain of yours?”
I wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it, but I had a feeling my time-trance ability was somehow related to this. I’d begun to experiment with making a ‘bubble’ of time and pulling someone into the time-slows and time-stops with me, so they were unaffected, like I was. And I’d sort-of managed it with Nova when she’d been listening for Eng’s Heart.
Maybe I could shrink the second bubble, the one that affected things, and use it so I could converse with Elder Elmer at a better speed. To him, it would seem like I would slow down, but to me, he would speed up.
“Just an idea on how to improve diplomatic relations,” I muttered a little distractedly. “I don’t want to have to work through a translator if I can help it. Word choices can have big effects because of the connotations of individual words, or subtle mistakes in translating immediately.”
Everyone on Aventoll, for the most part anyway, spoke the same language, whatever that language was. It sounded English to me, but I could still remember those strange sounds and words I’d heard from those two children when I first arrived here and swallowed some of the Ocean and its Knowledge.
“You’re taking this Ambassadorship very seriously,” Horus said, and his expression was caught halfway between amused and impressed. “Considering it’s kind of a made-up position.”
“I’ve been given a job to do, and it’s actually a good job that’ll help people, so I’m gonna do it to the best of my ability,” I said. “I’m not gonna be one of those Ashers who coasts on status and just cares about his own amusement. I have the power to do some real good in the world.”
Horus snickered, but his expression was definitely impressed now.
“We do have that power,” he agreed, and he reached up to clutch the Duelist Stone hanging around his neck. “I want to use it productively. I don’t want to be the kind of Asher my father was.”
My tongue almost physically burned with the desire to tell the falcon-man he didn’t have to be so haunted by Archus Doler. Even if Doler had been Horus’ and Shay’s real father, they didn’t have to define themselves by him, in opposition to him. They could exist as their own people and cast Doler aside entirely.
But also, Archus Doler wasn’t their real father. Yet he still held so much power over Horus, and I could see how worried Horus was that he might one day turn into a brutish, callous asshole.
“You won’t be,” I said finally. “I know you won’t.”
Horus looked at me, and he seemed a little wary. Some dark thoughts had crept into his mind and threatened to take root, some devious little ‘what if?’
