43. [Red Tide] Begging For Scraps (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Red Tide, Enchantress of the 4th Renown, The Reef, growing restless

Yodor Dominik, Beastlord of the 14th Renown, Besaden, a man of particular tastes

Turtle Jaw, Quill of the Reef, counting the votes

Vikael Rambrother, Shifter of the 11th Renown, Besaden, one of those do-gooder types

Throne Gazer, Trident Master of the 4th Renown, The Reef, animal lover

***

13 Brittlest, 61 AW

Heartwood, the hidden center of Besaden

197 days until the next Granting

Red Tide met the third champion of Besaden when he appeared in the underground spring, poised on one of the roots that curled above the water with a sketchpad braced against his knees. She knew him for a champion only because of the whorls of Ink that peeked out from under his tunic, otherwise she would not have guessed. He stared at her as she floated lazily atop the water—they were alone—and it occurred to Red Tide that she hadn’t been sized up in quite this way since her days of luring merchant ships to capsize. Well, let the weird little man look. She was a guest in his land.

Eventually, he cleared his throat to get Red Tide’s attention. “Excuse me.” She expected his voice to be tittering and nervous, but it rang deep and confident. “Would you mind terribly if I were to make some sketches of the insides of your legs?”

On her back, Red Tide frog-kicked closer to the champion’s root. “Would you mind terribly if I cut your fucking face?”

He turned around to set his sketchpad at a safe distance, then patted the front of his pants. “I do not have a knife handy. Do you?”

Red Tide barked a laugh. “You mean it, don’t you?”

“If that is the cost, that is the cost,” he replied. “I am Yodor Dominik. Champion and beastlord.”

Ah. So, here was a true beastlord. Red Tide had not forgotten how Meera Rootgarde sharply corrected her use of the term. Not all who lived in Besaden were beastlords. Some, like Vikael, were shifters who could turn into beasts themselves. Others, like Meera, worshipped the plants instead of the creatures who gnawed their leaves. Red Tide had noticed some friction between those types and the third group—the vaunted beastlords who were the first to secure Besaden, and whose very title suggested control over coexistence.

This Yodor struck Red Tide as entirely too self-possessed for someone so small and hairy. He lacked the brutish musculature of many of the Besadenizens, but he was long-limbed and, she suspected, agile, based on the way he balanced on that root with his toes hooked along the bark. He kept his dark hair pinned back neatly and his beard still came in patchy despite the man being in his late thirties. His eyes were wide and shiny, like reflecting pools, and vaguely unsettling.

Even so, Red Tide found herself curling one of her legs into the air. Water dripped from the small bones that protruded from the inside of her leg.

“Is that what you want, Yodel?”

He didn’t correct her, but instead retrieved his sketchpad. “Indeed. No other animal possesses anything like them.”

Red Tide plunged her leg back underwater. “I’m not an animal.”

Yodor smiled at her as if she’d made a confusing joke. “We are all animals, are we not?”

She screwed up her face. “That some kind of fucking riddle?”

He eyed the ripples in the water where her leg had disappeared. “If not a sketch, perhaps you would honor me with a song?”

“I’ve been singing most nights after dinner.”

“No, one of your sea-songs,” Yodor said. “There is one that describes the origin of your people, is there not? A woman caught on the waves, snatched at by the ge’ema above and the ge’oca below. She—how do you say it? She makes the fin to escape their tug-of-war?”

Red Tide scowled. Of course, she knew the song. It was one of the first songs every oca’em child learned. But it wasn’t something for this presumptuous land-walker to be bandying about.

“Long song,” Red Tide said. “You’d drown before it got good.”

“I can breathe the water just like you,” he said, tapping the Ink on his chest. “To be honest, I do not so much care about the words. Are they words? The vibrations. I am more interested in the function of your lungs. Your gills. The combination.”

Red Tide nodded as if she understood. “If I fart, you want to try sniffing the bubbles?”

“No. I make studies of anatomy. For knowledge.” Yodor said this with a sigh, as if frustrated he needed to explain himself. “Your muscular friend was similarly uncooperative. I must say, I am disappointed. I expected you oca’em to be more receptive when I voted for you to join us.”

Red Tide cocked her head. Meera had told her there had been a vote amongst Besaden’s champions and their absent Quill. Three of them had voted to receive the Reef, and two had not.

“You think we owe you something for that?” Red Tide asked.

“Of course not,” Yodor said. “But I had heard you were a transactional people. Particularly the women.”

Red Tide wondered how badly the gods would let her hurt this man, and what that might mean for their negotiations with Besaden. Before she could reach a conclusion, Turtle Jaw’s gruff voice called down from the ledge above.

“I’ve got legs, Yodor. You want to draw me?”

The warden already had his pants half down as he prepared to dive in. Yodor stood abruptly, his glassy eyes losing their focus.

“Perhaps another time,” he said.

The beastlord put his sketchpad into a satchel and then scrabbled up the roots with an agility that seemed almost simian. He traversed the ceiling hand-over-hand, eventually disappearing up a staircase carved into the hard-packed dirt.

“Hope you didn’t mind the interruption,” Turtle Jaw said as he swam over to her. “Didn’t want you to have to bloody his nose.”

Red Tide tossed her head. “I’m no fool, warden. I know we’re here to charm these people. To beg for their assistance.”

“Some truth to that, but not him. Yodor’s the one vote we’ve got in the nets.”

“How’s that?”

“Deep Dweller offered him the chance to study a leviathan, once we bring them back.”

Red Tide snorted. “Probably plans to fuck it.”

Turtle Jaw’s face puckered. “A disturbing image.”

Red Tide rolled onto her back. “We are spending a lot of our last days here, warden. Not a bad place to do it. But I worry we’ll leave with nothing.”

“Well, we’re assured of Yodor’s vote, and Vikael’s, even though Meera will be against.”

“What does Rambrother get from helping us?” The question had been on her mind since she’d met the blustery shifter. “Another reason to fight with his wife?”

“You may find it hard to believe, Red, but there are land-walkers who recognize the injustice of what the merchants have done to us.”

She snorted. “So he’s a hero for lost causes.”

“Same as you,” Turtle Jaw replied, which earned him a look of disdain. “Meera and their Quill, Zayda, will be against. They worry their involvement will put their people in danger and undermine their own wish. A practical concern, obviously.”

“It comes down to the fourth champion, then,” Red Tide said. “The one who turned more beast than man, he was for us?”

“Yes. I knew him a bit from the Grantings. Vicious and always spoiling for a fight.” Turtle Jaw paused. “His replacement? From what I’ve heard, he’s an elementalist. A mage of the dirt.”

“Then we’re screwed, warden,” Red Tide said, shaking her head. “You don’t think this absent Quill of theirs selected one who will do her bidding?”

Turtle Jaw splashed a handful of water in her direction. “That’s not how I chose my champions. Perhaps she’s stupid as me.”

***

As their days in Besaden stretched on, Red Tide began to notice the looks more. When they first arrived, she had been bristling, prepared for the sneers like she’d seen from sailors and coastal land-walkers. Vagrants of the sea. Fishmen. And yet, the Besadenizens treated them with respect—welcomed them, in fact, as honored guests.

But after her encounter with Yodor, she noticed how some of these people studied her with too much curiosity. A zoological exhibit, like the animals she’d heard they kept caged for entertainment in Merchant’s Bay. Every day, there were more and more visitors in the underground spring—none of them so forward as Yodor—but she still heard their groans of disappointment when she plunged under the water too deep for anyone to follow.

One night, as they sat in the glow of lumloe and drank in the cooling air, a massive bird came screeching down through the canopy. Red Tide had never seen anything quite like it. Glistening feathers of gold and black, a curved beak, massive talons. The Besadenizens cooed and cheered and whistled, dancing around the bird as its sharp black eyes followed them. Some climbed onto branches to try stroking its feathers and nearly lost fingers for the endeavor.

“I feel like that bird sometimes, around your people,” Red Tide said without thinking.

Next to her, Vikael smirked. “That is Niko. Last year, he was a man, a champion. Now, he will live out his days as a moonhawk, one-of-a-kind, because they are gone from Emza. He will know no mate and his remaining years will be short as the birds have weak hearts. But for a time, he will be amongst us, and honored.” He glanced at her. “Is that how you feel, Red Tide?”

Red Tide said nothing.

Vikael shrugged. “A good omen for you, anyway. Our Quill is on her way home.”

***

27 Brittlest, 61 AW

Heartwood, the hidden center of Besaden

183 days until the next Granting

Of all the Reef’s champions, Throne Gazer most easily took to life in Besaden. Although the oca’em were not expected to work, Throne Gazer had committed to helping maintain a habitat for oarfoxes. When Red Tide sought him out, she found him digging a trench toward a pond which he would then help to irrigate. Apparently, the oarfoxes liked to build their dens of wood above streams, and these were skills the beasts needed to practice before they could leave Besaden.

The mischievous little creatures barked and feinted at Red Tide as she entered their territory, and she showed her teeth in response. They were like small dogs, low to the ground, with rust-colored fur and hard paddle-shaped tails that they used for digging and slapping.

“Annoyances,” she said to Throne Gazer by way of greeting. “You choose terrible companions.”

“As ever,” he replied.

She cocked her head. “Was that you trying to be funny?”

“Yes.”

Throne Gazer set aside his shovel and leaned back against the side of his trench. He pulled an oatcake from a pouch on his belt and broke half off for Red Tide. When she shook her head, he tossed it to some salivating oarfoxes and smiled as they fought over it. Above them, although the great redwoods were still green and flourishing, the leaves of the smaller trees had begun to change color, flashing vivid yellows and oranges.

“What do you want?” he asked her.

“I’m bored of this place,” she replied. In truth, Red Tide had grown uncomfortable being an honored guest, all this niceness making her feel soft and useless, but she would not admit any of that to Throne Gazer. “What is our plan?”

He breathed out through his nose. “I admit, this delay from their Quill is not ideal. At this rate, we’ll probably have to winter here.”

“That’s two more months,” Red Tide said sharply. “You expect us to stick around, after they tell us no?”

Throne Gazer raised his chin. “You think they’ll refuse us?”

She was surprised that he seemed genuinely interested in her answer. “They won’t risk what they’ve built here. Not for us.”

Throne Gazer nodded as if he’d come to the same conclusion. He waved his hand in the direction of an oarfox chasing its own tail. “They wished those beasts back into existence, you know. A hundred years ago, the northerners killed them all to make perfumes from their tails. Soon, the beastlords will migrate these creatures west and return them to their rightful lands.”

“Where the land-walkers will kill them again,” Red Tide said dryly.

“Maybe.” Throne Gazer ran a hand through his braids. “My mother arranged this meeting because she thought we’d find common ground with the Besadenizens. They are close to the land, as we are close to the ocean. She was right about that, but I don’t think she accounted for the complacency of these people. Once, the beastlords defended Emza’s nature with fierce brutality. Now, they have their sacred forest, and spend their wishes on dogs.”

Red Tide glanced back at the oarfoxes who stood in a ragged line, tongues lolling, as they waited for more scraps. “You don’t seem to mind it here.”

“I don’t,” he replied simply. “I dream of a day our people could live like this.”

Frowning, Red Tide tried to imagine an oca’em version of Heartwood. In a way, that was what the Queen of the Coralline Throne had tried to create by forging her peace with Merchant’s Bay. But that had led to a sad, scrabbling life for her people. Red Tide shook these notions off. She wasn’t made for a future like that.

“Where next, then?” she asked. “When this fails.”

“North, to the other outsiders on this continent,” Throne Gazer said. “The trolkin.”

Red Tide hissed, even though she knew little of the trolkin other than the songs of menace and terror passed on from the cold water pods of the north like Salt Wall’s. They were descendants of monsters, creatures of winter, said to all be half-mad.

“More common ground?” Red Tide asked. “Like us, they are massacred every year.”

“They have one who has been surviving,” Throne Gazer replied. “Mother says she shows much promise. She is champion and Quill.”

Red Tide made a wanking motion.

“You have a better idea?”

“The Penchennese girl said the merchants would be at war with the southerners and the mages this year,” Red Tide said, recalling her exchange with Sylvie Aracia. “She suggested we make use of their enemies.”

Throne Gazer raised an eyebrow. “How did she come by that information?”

“Out of her ass, maybe?” Red Tide shrugged. “How should I know?”

Throne Gazer crossed his arms, drumming his fingers on his bicep. “Do you know why Penchenne became the center of diplomacy for the land-walkers?”

“Do I care?”

“Because those people never take a side,” he continued. “And yet, they very much wish to be more than mere arbiters. If not for Merchant’s Bay, they would run the sea. If not for Infinzel, they would run the continent. I do not wish to be swept up in their machinations.”

Just then, heavy footfalls came crashing through the brush. The oarfoxes all scattered as Vikael trotted into view. His heavy eyebrows were knitted together, and sweat dampened his forehead.

“Our Quill returns,” he announced grimly.

“Finally,” Red Tide muttered.

“And?” Throne Gazer asked, sensing there was heavier news yet to be delivered.

“She brings with her a caravan of traders from the south. Not unusual for this time of year. But…” Vikael made a point of relaxing his fists. “A visitor from Merchant’s Bay travels with them. A champion.”

Red Tide’s eyes flared and she felt Throne Gazer tense at her side.

“He knows you’re here,” Vikael said. “He requests an audience.”