David Farland - Sons of the Oak

One night they stopped to take on water and fresh supplies at an island called Prenossa, a place where the fresh stores included mangoes, dragon-eyes, breadfruit, and a dozen other things that Fallion had never tasted before.

That night, Stalker took a seat in the local inn, a bawdy place by any standard, where the tables were cleaner and the women were dirtier than most. His seat. His place of business twice a year when he visited the island. He bartered some of his goods with the locals, traded for fresh supplies, then leaned back to get comfortably drunk.

Fallion sat beside him, learning how the trades worked, discovering what fair prices for goods consisted of here. Metal was expensive, food cheap.

Fallion basked in the captain’s presence. Stalker treated Fallion well, and he seemed like a fair man despite his tough talk. Fallion liked him. Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like to have Stalker as his father.

Then Blythe and Endo blew in through the doors. Fallion didn’t like either of them. Both men were cold, hard. They pulled up chairs. Endo looked at Fallion and said, “Get lost, kid.”

Fallion looked to Stalker, to see if he really did need to leave, and Stalker nodded. “Give us a moment?”

Fallion went out under the starlight. A fresh breeze blew through the palm trees, and Fallion walked for a while over tropical beaches where ghost crabs and scorpions fought over scraps that washed up on the beach. After weeks at sea, it felt strange walking on land again. He kept waiting for the world to tilt.

It was just about to do so.

Inside the inn, Blythe gave Stalker some news: “We lost time in that squall. ’Eard a rumor, I did. The black ship was ’ere two days ago. It’s one of Shadoath’s.” Blythe held back the rest of the news, waiting for a reaction.

So, Stalker considered, it was one of the Pirate Lord’s ships. That couldn’t be good. But Stalker was under Shadoath’s protection. He paid thirty percent of his income for the run of the sea. “Any notion what she’s after?”

“A pair of princelings,” Blythe said, eyes glittering. “Don’t know ’ow, but they tracked ’em to us.”

Perhaps they only suspect, Stalker hoped. Could they really be sure?

“Shadoath is willing to up the reward. Five ’undred gold eagles for the boys.”

Five hundred was a good offer, considering who they were dealing with. But if she offered five hundred, then they were probably worth ten times that much to her. Shadoath was a woman of unsurpassed cruelty. She ruled the sea with an iron fist.

But now that it came down to it, the thought of selling the boys to her rankled Stalker. Maybe he’d have sold to someone else, but not to Shadoath-not after what had happened to his own children, six years past, when Shadoath’s hand had first begun to stretch across the seas.

He was away from home at the time, on a trading junket, when his children were taken. At first he thought it was kidnappers, holding them for ransom. It was a common practice among pirates.

Indeed, Stalker himself had spent two years as a hostage on a pirate ship. Looking back now, it had been a grand adventure.

But Stalker’s children were placed in greater peril than he had ever been. With the first ransom note he’d received a foot, dried in a bag of salt, to prove it.

Shadoath tortured his children until Stalker agreed to pay for protection for the rest of his life. That’s where his thirty percent cut went. But it didn’t go to ransom his children and buy their release.

No, the torturers had gone too far. His daughter had lost a foot, and her mind. His youngest son had had his neck broken and could not even crawl. Stalker was forced to pay not for the release of his youngest son and daughter, but for their merciful executions.

Otherwise, Shadoath would have continued to torture them for years without end.

That was the kind of woman he was dealing with.

Stalker was himself the grandson of a pirate, and he’d spent his early years aboard pirate ships. But he’d never seen cruelty that equaled Shadoath’s.

Stalker hated the woman.

“So what you think?” Blythe asked. “You ready to sell them boys?”

Stalker forced a smile. “I’m not sellin’ to Shadoath. Other lords will pay more. Their own folk would best Shadoath’s price ten times over.”

Blythe and Endo looked at each other.

“You’re not goin’ soft on the boy, are you?” Endo demanded. “That’s not wise-not wise at all.”

The threat behind the words was palpable. If Stalker wouldn’t sell, Endo would go behind his back.

I should kill them now, Stalker thought. I should draw my knife and gut them where they sit.

But he’d never killed a man for merely thinking about betraying him, and though his anger was thick in his throat, his hand didn’t stray to his dagger.

“Be patient, lads,” Stalker assured them. “This isn’t a game that plays out in a day or a week. We can tuck the lads away in Landesfallen, nice and safe, and bring them out anytime. The price will only rise as the weeks pass.”

“Patience may be fine for you,” Blythe said, “but it’s the sound of coins in my purse that I like.”

It had only been a few weeks since Stalker had paid them both. They hadn’t been in port long enough to spend their cash, and so he didn’t offer more.

“Hang on,” Stalker urged them in his sweetest tone. “We’ll be as rich as princes a’fore long.”

Blythe left Stalker’s table and took a seat in the inn, a thick mug of warm ale in his hands.

He wasn’t a patient man.

He wasn’t stupid, either. Blythe glanced back over to the captain’s table. Fallion had come back, was sittin’ there peerin’ up at Stalker like he was some damned hero.

Stalker liked to think that he was the smart one, but Blythe knew that you didn’t say “no” to Shadoath. And you didn’t beg her to wait, or ask for more money.

If she offers you a deal, Blythe thought, you’d best take it before she slits your throat and boils up a pudding from your blood.

Stalker is a fool.

He knew that Stalker paid Shadoath for free passage. But that’s what he got, free passage. Nothing more.

The captain was going soft on Fallion, Blythe suspected. Or maybe he just hated Shadoath too much. But he couldn’t save the boy.

Maybe there was a chance that Stalker could buy the lad, but it would cost him dear, and he didn’t have that kind of money, not anymore.

He’d paid it all to the torturers, to end his own children’s pain, paid it all to save his oldest, the one that the torturers had left unmangled. But in the end, Stalker had bought nothing. His oldest son couldn’t live with the horror of what had happened, the shrieks of pain. And after Stalker bought his son’s freedom, he’d come on his first venture across the sea, and each night he woke in the cabin, screaming. One night, somewhere north of Turtle Island, out in the Mariners, he’d thrown himself overboard.

Now Stalker was too broke to buy a pair of princes.

But Blythe had it figured. He could take the reward himself, keep it all.

That was the smart thing to do. You couldn’t stop Shadoath. You couldn’t run from her. So you might as well get a little something in your purse from the deal.

He left the inn in the moonlight, stepped in the shadows at the side of the building, and waited for a few minutes to make certain that none of Stalker’s men followed him with a dagger for his back, then headed down the street.

There was a shack that the sailors all knew, a place where a man could get a bowl of opium to smoke, sleep with a whore, or purchase just about any other vice that one could dream up.

The proprietor was a tiny woman, an Inkarran dwarf with a crooked back.