Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Reynald freed the mooring line, climbed into the boat, and started tying and untying various ropes. The sail caught the wind, unfurled, and the boat slipped into the current, still slightly rough from the recent rain. Reynald secured the lines and moved to the big wooden rudder at the stern, about a foot from where I sat on my bench. The corpses, trussed up in canvas, lay on the bottom of the boat like cordwood.
We sat silently, watching the estates of Anchor Drop slide by, darker shadows in the night, marked by an occasional lantern. The sky above us was smudged with clouds.
When Reynald told me he’d bought a boat, I defaulted to one of those small fishing boats people towed behind their trucks all over Texas highways as soon as the summer heat started. Which was ridiculous, but that was where my brain went. What Reynald had purchased was nowhere near that.
The boat looked like something ancient Vikings might have taken upriver to raid the English monasteries. Except it was less of a dragon boat and more of a swan. It sat low in the water, a graceful, sleek wooden vessel about thirty feet long and seven feet wide with a single mast supporting a complex moss-green sail. Its sides curved from the raised stern, swooping low in the middle, then rising again at the bow, crowned with a small figurehead of a horned sea serpent. The serpent sported a mouth of scary teeth, and they weren’t wood. Someone had ripped those fangs out of the mouth of an actual marine monster and glued them in. You had to admire the dedication.
The boat sped down the river. We rounded a bend, and the current dumped us into the much wider, calmer Dokkon, the main river of Kair Toren. The cold breeze flung moisture and a hint of salt in my face.
We skirted a wooded island with roofs peeking through the trees, passed a big trader ship with a bloated hull, and then two people in a small fishing boat. They didn’t pay us any mind, and I didn’t look too closely at what they were doing either.
The river widened. Docks crowded the banks, with wooden ships of all sizes moored for the night. A sea of dark masts and stowed sails rose on both sides. A few more minutes, and the Dokkon carried us out to sea.
The ocean spread before our boat, endless and calm. The clouds melted away, and an enormous sky reigned above, studded with glittering stars. Three moons spilled their light on the water: Prata, a giant silver crescent with gold tiger stripes; Drao, a much smaller ruby-red waning gibbous; and Broe, the smallest of the three, a grass-green, last-quarter moon. The view took my breath away. I smelled the briny salt water, I felt the wind and the steady movement of the boat under my feet, so it had to be real and actually happening. But it was so . . . magical.
We turned left and kept going, farther from the mouth of the river, within the view of the coastline.
Ahead something shimmered in the water like a spill of faint fluorescent paint. Reynald steered for it. The swirls of faint blue and pink drew closer and closer, rippling through the water. The boat slid through them, and I saw the outlines of glowing algae suspended like a floating island over the ink-black depths. Tiny fish with luminescent fins darted through the frilly leaves.
The boat slowed to a leisurely drift.
Reynald let go of the rudder, fiddled with the lines, and sat on the other bench across from me.
“It’s lovely,” I told him.
He nodded. He seemed lighter, almost carefree. “I’ve always liked the ocean.”
“When did you learn how to sail?” He had been born in the northern highlands, a rough region bordering Selva’s mountain range. Once upon a time his people had been sea raiders who invaded Rellas and settled deeper inland, but they’d given up their sea legs a couple of centuries ago.
“During the Corios campaign.” His voice was quiet and light. “They had us raiding the coastal forts in small boats, trying to keep the defenders guessing when and where we’d show up.”
Corios, meaning the “middle sea,” was a landlocked sea about twice the size of Lake Superior. It cleaved the continent in two, separating Rellas in the west from the Crimson Empire in the east, and it was a bad-tempered sea. Its storms sank a lot of ships, to the delight of the marine monsters swimming in its depths.
“The second week in, our captain took an arrow to the chest and went overboard. The wind blew us farther from the coast. We drifted for hours before we figured out how to work the sails. I decided that sailing was something I should know how to do.”