Richard Byers - The Reaver

“I can’t do anything about the former. I never studied that form of magic. But I can address the latter.” Kymas turned to Umara. “Kill the slave.”

She felt a twinge of distaste. As every Thayan understood, the lowly lived and died to serve their betters, but unlike some aristocrats, she took no pleasure in the gratuitous mistreatment of slaves. But she supposed it wasn’t gratuitous if her superior commanded it, and it might actually be an act of mercy to put the wretch out of his misery.

She murmured rhyming words that filled her mouth with a metallic taste, then breathed on her hand at the end of the incantation. The taste departed, and her hand changed. Catching the light of a nearby storm lantern, her skin glinted. Her fingertips tapered into points, and a ridge like the edge of a knife protruded along the bottom of her hand from the tip of the little finger to the wrist.

As it did, the slave finally shook off the dazed passivity Kymas’s gaze had induced and realized what was about to happen. Goggling, he tried to recoil, but the vampire and Ehmed were in the way, and the latter shoved him stumbling back in Umara’s direction. She sliced the side of his neck.

Blood jetted, and the slave fell. Kymas waited for him to stop shuddering and then said, “My turn.”

The senior wizard made a little snapping motion with his arm, and a wand carved of bone slid out of his voluminous sleeve and into fingers just as ivory-pale. He raised the implement over his head and chanted in the language of Thanatos.

The words and the feeling they engendered, as though the night was a huge black fist closing around the galley, made Umara’s ears ache and her temples throb. And she was not alone in her distress. One onlooker vomited. Another sailor scurried into the bow to get as far away as possible. His retreat represented a breach of discipline, but he was evidently willing to risk a flogging.

The corpse twitched, then shuddered. A pale yellow luminescence flowered in its eyes.

“Stand up,” Kymas said, and the zombie did. “Everyone, behold an improved oarsman. It doesn’t need nourishment or rest. If I wished, it would row without stopping for years on end, until its joints simply fell apart. If I filled the benches with others like it, I would no longer have to worry about making good time.”

One of the sailors clenched his fist and touched it to his heart. It was a way of asking the Black Hand to shield him from misfortune. No doubt his fellow mariners likewise recognized that Kymas was threatening them and not merely the slaves.

Kymas smiled. “But alas, the transformation involves a tradeoff. As living men, you possess skills that would depart your bodies along with your souls, and I would hate to see my mission fail for lack of access to those abilities. For that and other reasons, I’d prefer to leave you as you are provided you can muster the will to row for longer periods at a stretch. Can you?”

For a moment, no one answered. Then a man said, “Aye.”

Kymas smiled. “Splendid. By all means, have your suppers before you return to the oars.” He turned to the zombie. “You, come with me back below.”

Where, Umara reflected, the gruesome sight of the creature would provide the same sort of motivation to the slave rowers, and after that, Kymas would bid it return to its station. She wondered how well its bench mate would tolerate having to toil beside it.

When Anton tried to rise from the pallet Aggie had made for him, his body was as stiff as an iron bar. That, along with exhaustion and the relief of resting warm, clean, and dry at last, made him as disinclined to stand up as ever in his life.

Grunting, he struggled to his feet anyway, then contemplated the garments hung near the fire. Any item he put on now would likely still be damp come morning. He supposed it didn’t much matter. The rain would find its way inside his cloak soon enough, perhaps before he and Stedd had even left the village.

Still, he simply pulled on his breeches, threw his mantle around his shoulders, and drew up the cowl. Then he opened the cottage door, slipped out, and eased it shut behind him.

Every step squished mud up between his toes, but at least the rain had let up some and merely pattered on his shoulders. He was glad, but months into this sodden catastrophe he knew better than to take that as cause for hope that the precipitation might actually stop. The weather was simply teasing him.

When he reached the shore, he sheltered beneath an apple tree. Except for a couple of stunted green pieces of fruit rotting on the branch, it wasn’t bearing. Maybe salt water, diffusing through the soil from the encroaching sea, had poisoned it.

He gazed out across the waves rolling in beneath the cloud cover. Everything was black except for the flicker of lightning far to the northwest.

That dark vista was essentially what he’d hoped to see. Yet for some reason, it set a hollow ache inside him. He supposed it was just another manifestation of his fatigue.

Still, tired as he was, it would be more prudent to stand and watch for a while than just take a single look and return to the cottage. He knuckled his eyes, and then a voice said, “What are you doing?”

Anton turned to see that Stedd, wrapped in the hooded mantle the villagers had given him, had crept up behind him. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“I woke up and saw you sneak out,” Stedd replied. “What are you looking for?”

“The lights of the Iron Jest . Or of any other ship that might be hunting us. Now go back to bed.”

Instead, the boy moved up to stand and look out over the waves beside Anton. “Are you angry at me?”

“I was for a little while,” Anton admitted, and then, mindful of his resolve to stay on good terms with his unwitting captive, added a lie: “Not anymore.”

“Because I got you into a fight? You didn’t want the waveservant to drown Aggie, either. I could tell.”

“That doesn’t mean I would have chosen to risk my life-and yours-to save her.”

“People have to help each other. It’s what Lathander wants. It’s what Umberlee doesn’t want.”

“If you say so.”

Stedd frowned up at him. “Don’t you believe Lathander’s back?”

Anton shrugged. “How would I know one way or the other?”

“Because I healed you.”

“And the magic had to come from somewhere. I follow the logic. But healers aren’t all that uncommon, they claim to derive their abilities from many different sources, and in my experience, some of them aren’t especially nice people.”

“Do you think I’m ‘nice’?” Stedd replied.

Anton snorted. “I didn’t let the sahuagin have you, so apparently I don’t mind you all that much. But here’s the nub of it. I’m helping you for your own sake, not some god’s. I don’t care if Lathander has returned or not. I don’t believe any deity is going to put himself out to make my little mortal existence any better. To the extent they notice us at all, the gods want us to serve them, not the other way around.”

“That’s the bad powers like Umberlee. It’s not Lathander, or why did he save Aggie?”

“ I saved Aggie after-skip it. I don’t want to hear that the Morninglord inspired me or gave me strength or whatever rebuttal it is that just popped into your head. I want to know if you understand how lucky we are that this dismal little place is so completely out of touch. If the waveservant had been on the lookout for you, or if any of the locals knew about the price on your head, our afternoon could have turned out very differently.”

“I have to speak up for Lathander even when it’s dangerous.”

“Who’ll speak for him if Evendur Highcastle gets his slimy dead hands on you?”