Cannibal Kings - A Dark Coming of Age Fantasy

ARNOK

"What do you know of the broken seas?"

Arnok grips the hussy by the hem of her collar. When he first laid eyes on her, he could only think, This woman is fiercely beautiful. He is not sure where she came from. All he knows is that she snuck onto this ship, hidden in a wine barrel, sometime between yesterday and their depature from Enya, and that her hair is the most luscious known to man. An even split down the skull between dark brown and blond, curly, cut choppily around her shoulders, but it works. Her face is perfectly symmetrical, with one eye blue and the other brown. A totally inhuman enigma. She must be around twenty or so, but there is no touch of plague on her. Her skin physically glows. No growths molding from her cheeks, no horns atop her head, no nails that are rotting and slowly curving into claws. No, she is womanly.

She smells salty, like the ocean that rocks the Nell back and forth. The Nell, Arnok’s precious ship. Well, not his. Technically, he is only a crew member, an acquaintance of Daidu who got him the job for a less than decent amount of pay, but Arnok takes an immense amount of pride in the Nell nonetheless. The others on the ship seem to like him enough. They are always laughing at everything he does. They call him the Gooner, whatever that means.

His crew watch on the sidelines, gripping the wooden railings, utterly bemused. Arnok and the woman stand at the hem of the ship, ignoring the waves that crash against the sides, rocking it so harshly that most would struggle to keep afoot. But the claws that extend from Arnok’s bare feet prevent him from sliding.

“The broken seas?” he repeats. He laughs lowly. “You speak so cryptic.”

She smirks, staring at him with those gorgeous two-toned eyes.

“Come on, Arnok, put her out!” Damgel yells.

“Slave cellar’s right open!” cries Forja.

“Not before you kiss her!” someone else says.

“Yeah, pass her here, Arnok. Don’t be greedy!”

An abundance of laughter. Crude jokes are made and Arnok turns the woman around, showing off her hair and the neck beneath it. She doesn’t flinch or swat him away like many women tend to do, for some reason. She might be the first woman to ever find him charming.

He leans in and whispers into her ear, “You’re a sweetheart. What’s your name?”

Before she can answer, a familiar, lilting voice booms from the deck above. “The broken seas? I know they lead to a faraway star no one has seen.”

Heads whip around, facing Captain Crimiot as he stands above the deck, his dark hair flowing against the billowing wind, wearing red lapels and a matching jacket, so that he emulates nobility. There are golden cusps around his wrists and golden jewels hanging from his chest, his ears–pierced with a pointed stone, people say. Crimiot came from Mecraentos Kingdom, from the Inner City itself. It’s well known that the toughest men in Mecraentos hardly look it. They are not the biggest nor the strongest, as most are too malnourished to be made of anything but bone. When Arnok, a man who’d worked in the icy tundras of the Cratic, laid eyes on him, he’d laughed. It was a mistake. Despite his demeanor, Crimiot has an inordinate amount of strength. His punches can force a man back thirty legs, sending them literally flying in the air.

Besides that, Crimiot is a… respectable captain, Arnok has to admit. He is competent. He has a good head. Maybe not the best. Maybe he plays things too safe, but he is well-liked by the crew and has managed to greatly expand their clauk flower smuggling business, an intoxicant to people on the Ten Islands. He hasn’t expanded their crew at all, aside from the addition of Arnok himself, but he’s certainly kept his people friendly. A little too friendly, in Arnok’s opinion. The Nell is still too small and unknown to have any say or notoriety in the game of ocean smugglers. Crimiot claims he’d rather have a small crew he trusted with his whole heart than a large, fierce army. Arnok snorted at that one. Crimiot called him a child.

“You may take refuge on our ship,” Crimiot says. “Or, at least, you may take refuge with me. Arnok, let go of the poor woman.”

He does so. She’s not the first pretty woman he would have lost to Crimiot, who racks up his lovers in drones. Every island, every kingdom, every colony they visit women flock to him. Women from the rest of the world are different from strong, Cratic women, Arnok has determined. They like soft edges and easy smiles over bouts of strength. While he can appreciate that, an easy smile does not save you from the violence of the real world. An easy smile may help with a con, but it does not beat a knife or claws or sharpened teeth when it rips the flesh of your woman’s neck. The way that stupid bastard in Sal Gasve did to Vita, Arnok’s first real lover.

“My name is Masja,” the woman says.

“Masja,” Crimiot repeats. He steps down and pushes Arnok aside, as though he were worth nothing more than a corkscrew. “Your eyes. They are… I nearly thought you were myth.”

She waves a hand and manages a small curtsy. Not a real curtsy. A mocking one.

“Suns.” Forja, who has been part of the crew for far longer than Arnok, has managed her way beside him. She’s taller than him and of deeper voice, which bothers Arnok enough to the point that he keeps his distance from her. “Her legs. Look.”

Flowers are traveling up Masja’s boots, her legs, curling around the knees. They are not real flowers. They are made of wooden growths borne of the ship’s planks, steadily crawling higher and higher up her calves and thighs, like plague-growth that appears as black veins on skin. For Arnok, it is most prominent on his back. But something about these wooden plants is severely more sinister than those veins.

“Witch,” Arnok whispers. “She’s a witch.“

“Shut up,” Crimiot says, his gaze not taken off the woman’s. There’s a harshness to his voice that Arnok does not usually associate with the man.

Crimiot reaches out to grab the witch’s hand. Arnok thinks she is going to slap him away but, of course, because he is Crimiot, she does not. He gently kisses her knuckles. “You’re supposed to be dead,” Crimiot says.

“So are you,” she says. “Enlightened.”

A couple of crew members gasp. More laugh at the absurd title. Many give each other looks, as if saying, ‘Did you hear that right?’

Arnok laughs at his captain, a deep guttural sound that is founded entirely upon pure shock. Enlightened? Crimiot is no Enlightened.

“I can show you the remnants of that faraway star,” the witch says. “But it is hardly glowing. I may be the only guide left.”

It’s a code, Arnok realizes. They are speaking in code.

Crimiot nods and offers his arm to her, but not the crook of it. No, he extends his arm out fully. In which, she ducks beneath it, letting her head be caught between the arm. It is a weird, awkward position and yet Crimiot’s face glows in another way that Arnok does not associate with the man. While soft, he is not typically happy.

“We must talk,” Crimiot says. “I have many questions. I thought the Anlat were gone forever.”

“And I have few answers,” she responds as he leads her into his personal cabin-room, the flower-growths snaking back into the ground, ignoring the jests and laughs and many, many shouts of confusion from his crew. He never ignores his crew.

Unless this witch of wood is a goddess, Arnok cannot possibly imagine what she means to Crimiot if he were to blatantly ignore the will of his crew like this. No righteous captain would put aside his men like that, unanswered.

“Enlightened,” Forja whispers. “The flowers.“

“What?” Arnok says.

“You bonehead,” she snaps. “You’re too stupid for your own good.”

“I don’t understand you,” Arnok says.

“She’s Enlightened too, Goon.”

“Impossible. The only thing enlightening about her is her radiating skin.”

Forja slaps him across the face.