It didn’t take long to get into town – twenty-five minutes maybe – and Taki was glad that he had thought to excuse himself early from Jena’s fond hugs as he knew his body wouldn’t have withstood it if he had to rush.
She’d been reluctant to let him go, but he’d told her that he didn’t mind the work much as long as it kept them together. She’d insisted that she could take care of herself, that he didn’t need to worry so much, but Taki told her that was what big brothers were for, after all – to take care of all the little ones that came after.
He exhaled reassuringly, knowing that Solaris had curled up again outside her bedroom door once he’d left, and pulled on the handle of the Red Scorpion’s back door. The scent of stale beer and cigarettes beat out the aroma of sea-salt lingering in Taki’s heart, but he plunged through it regardless. The owner nodded at him from a distance, and Taki shrugged off his coat, hung it on the peg, and put the white apron on over his head instead.
Afterwards, he slipped in through the connecting door to the tavern and slid in behind the bar counter, immediately seizing two raised glasses and thrust them directly under the tap of one of the larger kegs. Smoothly, he glided them down the counter to the waiting hands, and then he turned to the man taking a seat on one of the empty stools.
‘What can I get you -?’ He stopped, his eyes focusing on a tall, well-built man with flecks of silver in his hair. ‘
You?’
A cool laugh past over the man’s tongue. ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘Isn’t this a coincidence? So we meet again, Odin of Aridia.’
Taki glowered, taking an empty glass from another regular and refilling it.
‘That’s not my name,’ he said.
The man feigned surprise. ‘Oh?’
Taki exhaled loudly. ‘Do you want a drink?’
He unclipped his black cloak and folded it over the counter. Underneath, he was wearing a shirt of the same colour.
‘Sure,’ he said.
Taki took a glass from the shelf and filled it, putting it into the man’s hand afterwards.
‘I thought you worked over at Tuya?’ he said, taking a gulp.
‘I work at a lot of places.’
The man chuckled. ‘So it seems. But when do you find the time to sleep?’
‘I get a few hours.’
‘Really?’
‘Boy, I need another keg up here.’
It was the owner. Taki nodded straight away, and as he crossed in front of him heading towards the cellar, the man thrust out his hand and caught the back of his head.
‘And I told you not to bother the customers,’ he growled.
Taki flinched at the callous contact, only briefly thinking to pass his eyes over the stranger sitting at the counter to see if he’d seen it happen. But somehow he knew that he had. He could feel him watching him with that single stabbing eye from across the room. Taki sighed and turned away. ‘Yes, sir.’
When he got back the man was still there, sitting on the stool in front of the bar with the glass, now empty, in his hands. He looked up and smiled.
‘Ah, just in time,’ he said, raising the cup.
Taki took it from him and refilled it in silence.
‘You should have said no, you know.’
‘What?’
‘To retrieve the keg. You should have said no.’
Taki felt wretched that he was unable to keep hold of the man’s gaze.
‘In your condition you shouldn’t be lugging heavy things around.’
A blush burnished his pale skin. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he snapped. ‘I told you before, I’m fine.’
The man shrugged. ‘You favour your left side quite noticeably. You can say what you like, but I think you’re in a lot more pain than you’re letting on.’
Taki shrugged also. ‘What does it matter if I am?’ he said. ‘It’s not like there’s anyone around who’d actually take notice if I suddenly keeled over and died.’
‘That sounds very sad.’
Taki bashed his fringe away from his eyes irritably. ‘Whatever,’ he sighed.
He spent the next hour filling and refilling glasses. At ten he helped the owner haul out a couple of sailors who’d past out behind the bar, dumping them in the street and watched, without a word as the rain came down, while the owner emptied their pockets. For the next fifteen minutes or so he passively mopped up their vomit. By eleven he’d brought two more kegs up from the cellar and replaced them with the empty ones. All this time, the strange man dressed almost entirely in black had sat there at the bar by himself. Occasionally, Taki spared him a glance, his curiosity getting the better of him, but he just continued to sit there, sipping slowly from his drink, with his eye shut. He’d removed his sword from his hip, laid it on top of his cloak, and every time Taki past it he found his eyes drifting down the length of its finely gilded sheath.
‘You seem to be rather interested in her.’
‘What?’
With his eye still closed, and without raising his head, the man laughed a little with his lips pressed together. ‘I call her
Yasukai,’ he said. ‘Do you like her?’
Taki nodded. How couldn’t he. Its sheath was black, but its absent colour gleamed in the candlelight like sunlight through crystal. It was the covering of a blade that had saved his life earlier, and although the man hadn’t said, Taki knew in his soul that the dragon painted elegantly in white on one side, its mouth wide open in a wild roar, was actually a
Sea Dragon.
‘I had it made of Empire design.’
A few people sitting close by stopped talking and glanced their way. Taki dropped his eyes aside and turned to clean out two more glasses until they looked away.
‘You shouldn’t speak so loudly,’ he said, afterwards.
The man simply shrugged. ‘Does it bother you?’
‘It bothers the other customers.’
‘I see.’
Taki sighed, and turned back to face him, absently rubbing the back of his neck tiredly. ‘Did you find your friend by the way?’
‘Unfortunately not.’
‘Raccard was no help to you then?’
The man laughed, looking up at him for the first time in hours. ‘Regrettably, no.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You didn’t ask for my help, I recall.’
Taki shrugged. ‘Even so.’ He sighed and massaged his neck again. In addition to the ache pulsating there, his muscles were starting to stiffen up. ‘Well, if you sit around here long enough,’ he said, ‘just about every sailor in Sheer and Vedra will pass through at some point. Maybe even your friend.’
The man subconsciously adjusted his eye patch. ‘I don’t really have that sort of time. My ship leaves for Amada at dawn.’
Fleetingly, Taki’s eyes brightened. ‘Amada?’
‘You know it?’
‘Of course,’ he said, embarrassed at his unsuppressed enthusiasm. ‘It’s the largest International Sea Port this side of the Crescent Sea.’
The man smiled. ‘You are very well informed.’
Taki waited for him to swallow down the last of his beer, before taking the glass and offering him another one. He asked for something a little stronger, so Taki pulled the cork out of a whiskey bottle and poured a small amount into the bottom of a shot glass.
‘So,’ he said, handing it to him, ‘what’s your friend’s name?’
The man relapsed into silence for a few moments, staring into the amber coloured liquid in his hands before raising his head and saying, ‘Shield.’
Taki jumped back, rocking the whiskey bottle by his elbow. He hadn’t meant to, but the name alone had come as such a shock to his ears that his body had spasmed involuntary.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘You mean … Kiefer Shield?’ Taki said, feeling his jaw tightening.
‘Ah, so you know him then?’
Taki turned his head away, forcing his hands to keep busy by collecting some empty glasses from the bench before they formed fists and found themselves through a wall.
‘Yeah,’ he said, swallowing the taste of vomit. ‘Murderer. Thief. Traitor to the Nations. Think I’ve heard it mentioned. All round bastard, right?’
The man adjusted his eye patch again. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. In any case, it’s important that I find him. Do you know where he is?’
‘Yeah. Try the place he’s been for the last six years.’
Strangely, the man laughed quietly under his breath. ‘Ah, still in prison, is he?’ Taki said nothing. ‘The thing is,’ he continued, gulping back the last of the alcohol, ‘I heard he got out early.’
‘What, for good behaviour?’ said Taki sourly. He rolled back his eyes, and served a pint of beer to another sailor. ‘Give me a break.’
‘That’s what I heard.’
Taki clenched his jaw. ‘Well, it’s wrong, old man. Maybe next time you’ll do your research properly. Course, if you like wasting your time then that’s up to you.’
For a moment the man didn’t respond, but he continued to stare at Taki with his one dark eye, deadpan, until Taki withdrew his own gaze.
He sighed then. ‘Yes. I suppose I should have been more vigilant of tall tales.’
‘Besides,’ said Taki, containing the rage in his heart, ‘if he had been let out of Rigar, Sheer would be the last place he’d come.’
‘I heard he had a wife and kids here,’ answered the man.
Mindlessly, Taki snatched the empty glass from the man’s hand and stuck in under the water tap to clean. ‘Yeah, well. Not anymore.’
A small group of military seamen came into the tavern a little while later, loud and familiar, and already drunk. Most of them settled in the corner, but three of them slumped over the bar counter beside the man in black. They were some of the same men he’d bumped into on the cliff path earlier that day.
‘Hey! It’s the captain!’ one of them sniggered, pointing.
‘Nice apron!’
‘It’s got butterflies on it!’ giggled another.
‘And a little ribbon!’
Taki’s fingers flexed. But only for a second. He could see the owner from across the room glaring at him.
‘Hey, Takishi?’ Roades yelled across the bar as if he couldn’t hear him. A few other people looked up. ‘Are you gonna serve us or what?’
‘Beer!’ chorused the rest of the gaggle, slamming their fists down on the counter.
Taki bit down on his tongue and turned to the taps. He could feel that strange man with silver flecks in his hair watching him.
‘What?’ he spat, without turning.
‘Takishi?’ he said.
‘Taki.’
‘That’s a very unusual name, isn’t it?’
‘What of it?’
The man threw up his hands, and Taki pushed a couple of glasses into the waiting hands of the seamen. They taunted him some more, but he ignored them and picked up another glass to fill.
‘Did your father name you?’
Taki caught his breath, and the glass slipped through his fingers, shattering into a thousand shards at his feet. The man had caught him entirely off guard for the second time. There was an uproar of scornful laughter from Roades’ group, and suddenly he was knocked forward by the owner’s violent hand clouting him hard across the back of his head.
‘Idiot, boy!’ he bellowed, thrusting the broom into his hands. ‘Clean this mess up!’
Taki nodded, exhaling jaggedly afterwards as he pushed a hand up through his hair to calm himself. He was still watching him. That man.
‘I don’t have a father,’ he said quietly when he neared again.
‘Don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘How come?’
‘Some people just don’t.’
The man nodded and yielded his gaze. ‘Just you and your mother then?’
For a moment Taki couldn’t breathe again. Words hitched in his throat. How was it that this man was able to make him feel like this? How was he able to push all the buttons that distressed him so intensely?
‘No,’ he said, his voice distorted a little as though he wasn’t in total control of it.
‘No mother?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, it must be very lonely,’ the man said.
‘I don’t get time to be lonely.’
The man nodded a little, modestly, as though he understood what Taki had meant completely and what he felt inside, which was ridiculous, he thought afterwards, because only he knew what fuelled the hatred contained in his heart.
‘Are you on for much longer?’ he asked.
Taki glanced at the clock on the wall and sighed noiselessly. ‘A few hours, I guess,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said the man, getting up from his stool, ‘I hope they go fast for you. You’re beginning to look a little withered.’
Taki blushed and absently put a hand to his bruised cheek.
‘As for me,’ he continued, picking up his beautifully made sword and attaching it again to his hip, ‘it’s time I was going.’
He swirled his cloak around his head and fixed the fine cord under his chin, taking some coins from his pocket then and letting them jingle together on the counter where Taki’s hand was resting.
‘Thank you for the drink,’ he said, bowing his head a little in appreciation. ‘I enjoyed it immensely.’
And then he turned around and headed for the door.
‘Wait!’ Taki called after him. ‘Who are you? You never told me your name.’
The man stopped and turned his head back, a small but distinct smile arching his lips.
He laughed in his throat.
‘It’s like you said,
Takishi.
I’m the King of the Fairies.’
And then he left, the sound of a sword gently tinkling behind him.
***
