30. [Red Tide] Trees and Treaties (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Red Tide, Enchantress of the 4th Renown, The Reef, never far from her harp

Throne Gazer, Trident Master of the 3rd Renown, The Reef, a secret conservationist

Salt Wall, Berserker of the 2nd Renown, The Reef, the butcher

Cuda Bite, Skulker of the 2nd Renown, The Reef, an enemy to all trees

 Turtle Jaw, Quill of The Reef, kinda likes it out here

***

8 Harvesend, 61 AW

The outskirts of Besaden

232 days until the next Granting

Red Tide strummed the backs of her fingers across her harp. The note she produced sounded keening and tender, like an animal’s tired cry. Her [Hypnotic Object] Ink vibrated against her skin only slightly. Here was a song that didn’t require much effort.

In the grassy clearing before her, Throne Grazer crouched with an outstretched handful of grain. Drawn by Red Tide’s music, the doe approached drowsily. The animal blinked at Throne Gazer and plodded closer, white tail twitching. Red Tide could see the faintest flicker of awareness in those glassy, black eyes—the doe knew this wasn’t right, that she should be running from these unfamiliar creatures.

They did not belong here. The woods were not for them.

Red Tide coaxed another gentle note from her harp. The gray skin on her knuckles was dry and cracked. Her feet were sore—always sore. These irritations did not make it into her music. The doe felt only soothed.

Throne Gazer let the doe eat from his hand briefly before sprinkling the feed into the grass at his feet. The animal bent her sleepy head down to finish the meal, and Throne Gazer picked up his trident. Red Tide wondered what expression was on the man’s face in that moment. The royal nephew and botched revolutionary always kept his muscled back to her on the rare occasions they hunted together. Salt lines permeated his pile of black braids, the skin on his shoulders peeling from sunburn. He didn’t need to bother feeding the animal, but he did anyway.

Red Tide stopped playing the moment Throne Gazer sunk his trident into the deer’s neck. He was quick about the work—one prong into the base of the skull, another into the meat of the throat. The deer ended up bowed at his feet like a supplicant.

“There’s no sport in this,” he said to Red Tide moments later as they dragged the deer through the brush, back to their camp.

“You want a challenge or you want to fucking eat?” Red Tide replied.

They all complained. It was something like the favorite pastime of the Reef’s four champions. They had been traveling north for weeks now through the dry summer months of the north continent. They all chafed. Their gills crackled from disuse. Water—real water, not some piss trickle stream—felt very far away. But only Throne Gazer’s complaints truly irritated Red Tide. He couldn’t even whine like her and the others—about the stink of travel, about sweaty assholes and oozing blisters. No, with Throne Gazer, it was always about the lack of honor in their lifestyle. A few weeks back, they had stolen a wagon and some horses from a dried up farm town and Throne Gazer had the audacity to try to talk them out of it. He claimed it was beneath the dignity of the Reef to steal from the land-walkers. They should buy the cart outright with the riches his mother Deep Dweller had sent or, if the land-walkers refused, challenge them for it in a fair contest.

Oh, piss on that, Red Tide had said. And the other agreed.  

Red Tide supposed he just wanted drama. A chance to prove himself, after it had gone so disastrously for him against the Coralline Elite and Most Loyal Spear.

But all they did was walk—or ride, after they’d stolen the wagon—and Throne Gazer didn’t even have much say in the direction they went.

Besides the farm town, they had mostly avoided the sparse human settlements between the coast and the towering forest that now loomed before them. Apparently, Turtle Jaw had the materials in his sea witch trinkets to cast a glamour that would make them look like land-walkers, but they hadn’t wanted to waste that on some drooling farmers in the middle of nowhere.

Red Tide grunted as the deer carcass bumped across an outcropping of bronze-colored roots. She tilted her head back to take in the enormous trees of Besaden. The trunks were broad enough that the Reef’s four champions wouldn’t have been able to ring them with joined hands, and the canopy above practically brushed the clouds. The setting sun bathed the scene in slats of gold, the undersides of the leaves seeming to twist toward the light. Red Tide would’ve never admitted this to her fellow champions, but she found the sheer size of these trees intimidating. The ocean at least gently cradled a person’s body when its vast depths spread out around them; these trees stood apart, towering and haughty. Silly thought it was, Red Tide kept expecting one of these trees to rise up from the dirt like a giant foot and squash her.  

Up ahead, at their latest campsite, a similar thought had occurred to Cuda Bite.

“Fuck these trees,” he said, tearing a leaf in half. “I hate them.”

Salt Wall came to meet them as Red Tide and Throne Gazer dragged the deer into the small clearing they’d chosen. She waved them away and set about tying the deer’s back legs so that she could hoist it over a branch to bleed and gut it. Of all of them, Salt Wall was the most changed from their journey north. Red Tide didn’t think there was an ounce of fat on the thickset woman now; she was all chiseled muscle and sinew. That wouldn’t do if she was ever to return home to the cold northern waters, but for now she looked absolutely savage.

“This all you could find?” the berserker asked.

Throne Gazer sighed. “Enough meat there to spare us hunting for three days.”

“Sick of deer,” Salt Wall replied. “Tastes like sweat and the last one had blood-bugs.”

“I found some herbs that might help with that,” Turtle Jaw said. The warden approached with his knives out, ready to help Salt Wall carve the animal.

Turtle Jaw seemed most taken with living like a land-walker. He relished the chores of their journey—building fires, foraging and hunting, scribbling little drawings in his maps. Red Tide supposed he had escaped life in the Grotto prison the same as the rest of them. Now that they were out of the reach of the Coralline Throne, this whole thing must’ve felt like a vacation to Turtle Jaw.

“You find anything useful? Like a way through?” Red Tide asked the Quill. “Or you just out there braiding twigs in your hair?”

While Red Tide and Throne Gazer were hunting, the others had been scouting the edges of the forest. They’d spent days now on the outskirts, looking for some kind of path that might lead them deeper into the wood. Their search had drawn them westward where they found a road that, according to Turtle Jaw’s map, would lead them to Magelab should they follow it west. However, that road became overgrown as it neared Besaden, and terminated in a veritable wall of redwoods that actually seemed thicker than anywhere else. Hard not to interpret that as a message from Besaden to its nearest neighbors.

“It’s all trees and hard going,” Cuda Bite answered for Turtle Jaw. He’d sunk into the grass and was massaging his foot. “I think I broke my ankle tripping over a root, Red.”

“He’s faking,” Salt Wall said as she dragged her hook down the deer’s belly. “He wanted me to carry him back and now insists on this ruse.”

Cuda Bite moaned, winked at Red Tide, and then went back to moaning.

Shaking her head, Red Tide noticed that tonight’s fire had been built using a piece of wood torn from the side of the wagon. She turned back to Turtle Jaw.

“So you’ve decided we’re leaving the wagon,” Red Tide said.

“No choice,” he replied. “We’ll start north on foot tomorrow.”

They had stolen two horses along with the wagon. Red Tide was no expert on the beasts, but their two animals gave the impression of surly workers, meant to be run into the ground and disposed of. They had never stopped peering at their new owners with what Red Tide interpreted as suspicion, even after Red Tide spent some evenings playing soothing songs for them. The ge’oca weren’t made for riding horses—too much discomfort to the small bones on the insides of their legs that let them make the fin—and these horses wouldn’t do well on the knotty terrain ahead.

“Could’ve spared us a hunting trip, if you’d decided sooner,” she said, waving at the horses. “Might as well butcher those two next.”

“No.” Throne Gazer had moved to stand before the hoses. He stroked his hand down the length of one of their noses. “These animals served us well. We will set them free.”

“Sure,” Cuda Bite said, “let something out in those woods make a meal of them instead.”

“Perhaps,” Throne Gazer replied. “At least they will be loosed from their ropes when the time comes.”

Throne Gazer set about detaching the horses from their reins. No one bothered to stop him, so that was that. Apparently, the trident master had a soft spot for animals. Perhaps there was a beating heart in his chest, after all.

“I thought these land-walkers loved roads,” Cuda Bite mused. “Carved up all their land. By the tides, the merchants even made roads through our oceans, in a way.”

Red Tide spat at the mention of Merchant’s Bay.

“Not the beastlords,” Salt Wall said. “They don’t trade like the other land-walkers.”

“You’ve met them?” Red Tide asked.

Salt Wall plunked a blob of intestines onto a piece of canvas. “They come to the north sea sometimes. The shore. We don’t know what they do. Count the walruses, maybe. They don’t bother us, we don’t bother them.”

“But we’re here to bother them now, aren’t we?” Cuda Bite asked.

“They know we’re coming,” Turtle Jaw said. He glanced in Throne Gazer’ direction. “It’s been arranged.”

Red Tide took that to mean Deep Dweller had pulled some strings. They were pawns of the sea witch in her quest to retake the Coralline Throne from her sister and restore the Reef. If there was a way out, Red Tide hadn’t found it. She wasn’t sure she was even looking for one.

“A path should open to us when the beastlords are ready to receive us,” Throne Gazer said. His expression darkened and his voice dropped to a mutter. “At least, that’s what mother said.”

“So, we just walk through their woods until they decide to say hello?” Cuda Bite asked.

Red Tide sat down next to the skulker and dug her elbow into his ribs. “You got someplace better to be?”

He scoffed. “Yes! Only a hundred fucking places, Red.”

As they spoke, Red Tide had grown curious about the beastlords of Besaden. What good fortune they’d had to control this forest—horrible as it might be—and be able to keep out the rest of the bastard land-walkers. If the oca’em could only exert the same control over their seas.

“Cheer up,” she said to Cuda Bite, bringing her harp into her lap. “This is the only place where I will sing the song of Cuda Bite and the piles of satisfied women left floating in his wake…”

***

Night rolled in. The deer meat really did taste better with the peppery mint spices that Turtle Jaw had found. The horses, freed from any encumbrance, lingered close to the wagon as if they didn’t know what to do with themselves. The air was noisy with trilling insects that Red Tide had learned to tolerate.

She stroked her fingers across her harp, a sleepy note that momentarily seemed to quiet the bugs. Cuda Bite sat nearby, his eyes heavy as he stared into the fire. Salt Wall already snored, asleep on her back. Turtle Jaw, meanwhile, made notes on one of his maps, sketching out the leaf shape of some herb he had discovered. A companionable night, Red Tide thought, if not for Throne Gazer. He stood apart from them, which wasn’t unusual. But there was a tension in his shoulders and his eyes sought something out there in the dark.

He was the one with the [Alert] Ink, Red Tide reminded herself. She could tell by his posture that it was only a matter of time before he spoke up.

“Someone approaches,” Throne Gazer said at last.

Cuda Bite sat up. “The beastlords?”

Throne Gazer shook his head. “They’re coming from the south, not from deeper in the woods.”

Since they had dispatched with the Coralline Elite back on the beach, the champions of the Reef hadn’t been worried about being followed. Still, Red Tide fingered the bag of coral shards tied to her hip.

“Your Ink tell you if they’re dangerous?” she asked.

Throne Gazer hesitated. “Powerful, perhaps. But not dangerous.”

“Not our people, then,” Red Tide said.

“Land-walkers,” mumbled Salt Wall, only half-awake.

“Drawn by the fire, probably,” Turtle Jaw added.

“Should we put it out? Hide?” Cuda Bite asked.

“Why would we hide?” Red Tide said, her lips curled back from her teeth. “Not scurrying away from some lost land-walkers. I got a cozy fucking spot here.”

“We been trying to avoid them, haven’t we? Stay out of trouble.” Cuda Bite turned to Turtle Jaw. “These people tell stories. Say they saw some oca’em out in Besaden, word might get back to the wrong people. Not like we can silence them the way we did Most Loyal Spear.”

Turtle Jaw folded his map closed. “Not an unreasonable point.”

“Perhaps, but I am curious who else is out here, and why,” Throne Gazer said. He surprised Red Tide by turning in her direction. “Do you agree?”

She shrugged. “Like I said. I’m not hiding.”

They didn’t have to wait much longer for the travelers to make themselves known. Red Tide got the impression that they were making a lot of noise on purpose so that no one would be taken by surprise. She plucked at the strings of her harp, thinking about all the sailors she’d lured into drowning.

“Ho, there, fellow pilgrims!” A man’s voice thundered out from the shadows. “We come in peace! Could not help but see your fire, smell your dinner, and hear your beautiful music! We have barter if you’ve in—”

The man cut off abruptly as he reached the light of their fire and saw five grey-skinned faces staring in his direction. Red Tide took stock of him quickly. He was in his thirties, prematurely bald even for a land-walker, with a horseshoe of curly brown hair over his ears. The man was all torso and arms—skinny little legs jutting out from a brutish upper body. He wore a hand axe on each hip, but was otherwise clad in a simple tunic and breeches. He held the reins of two horses—huge beasts, of much finer breeding than the Reef’s stolen nags—and Red Tide noted one of the horses was burdened with a suit of chain armor. Tattooed on the man’s neck was the symbol of a perfectly balanced scale, an allegiance Red Tide didn’t know. More interesting was the Ink visible further down his chest.

This oddly proportioned land-walker was a champion.

Stalking behind him came a woman, younger, with hair cut short like a boy’s and a severe expression. She wore more ornaments than necessary for a voyage through the woods, and Red Tide sensed Cuda Bite’s fingers twitching at the sight of her.

“Oh, by the ashes, Theo,” the woman said, not quietly enough, “it’s a gang of fish.”

The man—Theo—couldn’t help his eyes from widening. He bowed low and started to back away.

“Ah, pardon us,” he said. “We didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You didn’t?” Red Tide showed him her teeth. “I thought you wanted to share our fire, champion.”

“They talk,” the woman said wonderingly.

“Of course they…” Theo trailed off as he noticed Throne Gazer. The trident master had slipped around alongside them as they entered the camp, and now leaned on his weapon, peering down at them. Theo’s eyes scanned the rest of them and Red Tide saw the moment that he noticed their Ink. He swallowed.

“Penchenne,” Throne Gazer announced, recognizing the scale symbol on both their necks. “Why are you here?”

 “Oh, my,” the woman said, blinking at Throne Gazer.

 “I am sorry for our rudeness, we are just taken aback,” Theo said. “We don’t often have the opportunity to converse with the oca’em.”

“Oca’em, yes,” Salt Wall rumbled, still on her back. “Not fish.”

Cuda Bite elbowed Red Tide. “I think he might want you to give him a cock-shaped sapphire, Red.” He chuckled. “So glad we didn’t hide.”

Theo’s face flushed. “No, no, of course not. We are an educated people who don’t subscribe to such tales.” Despite his hefty bearing, the man spoke with a smooth precision. He’d dropped the jocularity of his initial approach and now talked like a diplomat visiting the Horizdock. “I am Theo Adamantios, Axe Master of the 6th renown, of the open city Penchenne. With me is my sponsor Sylvie Aracia of the high house Salvado-Aracia. We are pleased to make the acquaintance of the Reef’s champions and, I presume, their Quill, under such surprising circumstances.”

“Champions…?” Only now did Sylvie notice their Ink. Her eyes widened and she grabbed for Theo’s arm. “We should keep going, Theo. I’m honestly not that tired.”

“Nonsense,” Theo replied. He reached into his satchel and produced a bottle of dark liquor. “Do oca’em like to drink?”

“We do, indeed, axe man,” Red Tide replied.

Theo seemed a bit more at ease as Red Ride accepted the bottle, in direct opposition to Sylvie’s growing discomfort. “As for what we’re doing out here,” he said to Throne Gazer, “I’d wager it’s the same as you all.”

Throne Gazer cocked his head. “Oh?”

“Hopefully there’s enough for all of us,” Theo said, gazing off into the woods. “When the gods put Ink up for grabs, they aren’t always generous.”