Sea and Shadow, Prologue & Chapter 1

Prologue and first chapter from the YA fantasy novel I’m writing. 

Prologue

“I don’t like it, Captain.  Those clouds ain’t right.”

Thirty days at sea, the Anglevere clipper Mary Drake bobbed on the waves on the way to the island of Nauwani, her stopover before the final push to the Spice Cities, a bank of high dark clouds before her. She was one of the few remaining sailing ships in the line, and this was to be her last voyage before retirement and replacement with a steam ship.

Her captain, Ben Heidel, standing at the wheel, looked over at his first mate.

“That’s as may be, Jim,” he said, “but we haven’t fresh water and food enough to delay, and the men are already too anxious for land, wine and women.”

“The men are anxious for other reasons too, Captain,” Jim replied, giving Ben a long look.  “As well you know.”

“Children’s stories,” Ben scoffed.

Jim eyed him skeptically.  “Aye,” he said.  “Keep sayin’ that, and you just might believe it.”

“Tell the crew to prepare the rigging.  We’re going through it.”  He looked at Jim meaningfully.  “We’ve weathered worse.”

“I hope you’re right, Ben,” his old friend replied.

Ben returned his gaze to the sea in front of him as Jim barked out orders to the crew, the men scrambling on the deck.  Truth was, he wasn’t nearly as confident as he feigned.  There were strange things in the water, shadows slipping under the boat that fit the description of neither man nor beast.  He loudly dismissed the murmurings of the men as fancies, but he’d seen them too.  And worse –

No, he couldn’t allow himself to think on that now.  He had to concentrate.  Ahead in the clouds, sparks flashed, the sky turning a sickly grey-green.

– worse was that last night she’d come to him in his dreams, Lucilla had come to him, dressed as she had been that day in spring, her eyes so bright, her hand warm against his cheek, but it couldn’t have been her –

The wind began to whip up.  The waves built, crested over with white.  The men worked, but he could see the fear in their eyes.  He hoped they couldn’t see the fear in his own.

– because she was dead, buried these past nine springs in the little graveyard at Stone Hill, the flower he’d placed on her tomb surely withered and gone by now but yet in her other hand she’d held it, and as his eyes grew wide and the words caught in his throat she leaned over and whispered to him, saying –

“Father o’Light, Scally, watch the rigging!”  Jim’s cries sounded like they came from far away.

The skies parted, rain pouring down, sloshing over the decks as the ship was tossed higher and higher on the waves.  The air crackled with electricity, streaks dancing across the sky.  Ben watched as if hypnotized, a curious sense of lightness coming over him, a feeling that his body, that all this, was already miles away.

A sailor – was it Scally? – fell from the ship with a cry, but there was no saving them now.  There was no saving any of them, Ben realized with a dull acceptance.  He took his hands from the wheel.

– “It has been too long, my love.  Do you remember that summer’s day on the lake when first we kissed?” –

He did, of course.  Light preserve him, he still did.

“Ben, for the love o’the gods, what are you doing?”

Jim was shaking him by the shoulders.  He was at the railing.

– and then she passed her hand down his neck, his chest, whispering “And that night, under the stars, do you remember that too?” –

Of course, of course my love, how could I ever forget?

“Stars preserve us,” Jim cried out.  “What manner of children of Darkness are these?”

There they were, down in the water, the shadows that had been following them.  But they weren’t shadows.  He could see that now.  The other men were gathered at the rail too, and Ben knew what they saw.  What Jim, his eyes widening and deadening at the same time, knew too.

– her hands wandering lower and lower, until he was utterly lost, her voice continuing to soothe him, to seduce him, saying, “Soon you won’t have to remember anymore, love…” –

They were the dead.

– “Soon we will have time to do it all again,” she cooed, his breath coming faster, eyes fluttering, “All the time that is and ever was.  We’ll be together,” oh, heaven, oh, sweet, sweet heaven –

And they were coming to take them all home.

– “Soon.”

An observer standing on the small atoll a few miles away would have seen, in the midst of blazing sunlight, a ship under a most unusual dark cloud, tossed on a strange electric storm.  The observer might have heard the cries of the men on board, would certainly have seen a mighty wave come out of the deep and sweep over the boat.  And then the observer would have seen the skies clear and the ship, all color now drained from its flag, a grey ship on a blue sea, sail placidly on.

But of course there was no one on the atoll to see.  No one to mark the events at all, save one lonely bird who dipped down to snatch a flashing silver fish, then veered upwards squawking, startled at a curiously shaped shadow suddenly appearing beneath its prey, and flew away to hunt in safer waters.

1

Sebastian Penhaglion, twenty-one-year-old son of the Earl of Port Richard, known by courtesy as Lord Castelvayne, and by discourtesy as Lord Wastrel, was drunk again.  The sight of him stumbling through the streets of Port Richard, the bustling harbor on the northwestern shores of the island of Nauwani held in trust for the Crown of Anglevere by his father, Earl Frederick, and his father, and his father’s father, a line of fathers going all the way back to the days of poor old King Richard Lackfoot himself, was not unusual.  

What was unusual was the mode of dress Sebastian sported.  Or rather, the lack of it, which caused the proper ladies living above the street to quickly close their shutters, and the improper ladies working on it to laugh and call out various suggestions Sebastian would otherwise have been amenable to if not for his tragic (but temporary, he would assure you) lack of funds.  Still, he did his best to appear gracious, smiling and waving to them with his one free hand.

The night hadn’t started out this way.  In fact, Sebastian had thought it was all going rather well.  He had a flagon of Coldport stout at his right hand, a beautiful lady of somewhat questionable virtue at his left, and a suit of undoubtedly winning cards in both.  He’d laid the cards on the table, his blue eyes flashing with triumph, taking a swig of the stout and winking at the lady, a smile on the face many disinterested observers had all agreed was quite handsome.  He could already imagine the feel of the gold scattered across the middle of the table in his purse.

Then the man across the table put his cards down with a gap-toothed grin, and that’s when it all started to go a bit pear-shaped.

He wouldn’t miss the clothes so much, really.  The ring was a slightly dearer loss, but he had others with more sentimental value attached.  Even the walk through town starkers toward home didn’t bother him so much; after all, he’d never had complaints from his bed partners before.  His curly blond head would be sore in the morning, to be sure, and certainly a disapproving letter from Father would be on its way once word reached him across the sea in Crown Harbor.  Sebastian would be the gossip of society for days, but then again he always was the gossip of society.  Frankly, Sebastian thought his antics performed a vital service.  If it wasn’t for him, the swells of Port Richard would have no topic of conversation apart from the maddeningly ever-pleasant weather.

Actually, though, he was finding the weather at the moment quite cold, making the walk to Fairview Hall seem even further than usual.  Not for the first time, Sebastian cursed the ancestors who had decided to build their home so far from the center of town.  Normally he would have taken the car in, but once again the damned thing wasn’t working, and the only mechanic on the island had taken off on a fishing trip to Lanani with the island’s sole magistrate, an inconvenience for cars and criminals alike.  Father would have said it was what Sebastian deserved for buying such a foolish and expensive toy.  He would have, that is, if he’d known about the car, but for the moment Sebastian had managed to keep that particular indiscretion from him.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Sebastian arrived at the door to the house. Faint candlelight still glowed inside – Harrison, the butler, must have been waiting up for him. The battle over installing electricity at the house was one Sebastian had not yet won.

“Ah, Harrison,” Sebastian said as the stern-faced butler opened the door to his knocking, studiously avoiding looking down at Sebastian’s nethers.  “I seem to have misplaced my clothes.”

“Indeed, sir.”  Harrison’s voice, as ever, maintained its calm tones of competence, the lined face that seemed unchanged since Sebastian was a toddler registering nothing but composure.  It drove Sebastian mad. Sometimes he wanted to reach inside Harrison’s chest and see if there really was a heart in there, or if he was like the automaton Sebastian had seen exhibited at the fair last year, all gears and clockwork, performing its specified task over and over again without emotion.

“Could you be an excellent chap and fetch me my dressing gown?” Sebastian asked.  “I’ll be in the drawing room, having a brandy.”

“Very well, sir.”

“Oh, and could you start a fire for me when you come in?  It’s blasted chilly out there.”

“Of course, sir.”

Harrison dutifully turned and went up the stairs to Sebastian’s bedroom.  Tick-tock, tick-tock, Sebastian thought.

He settled into the large red chair in the drawing room, pouring himself a glass of brandy from the decanter on the side table. The liquid wasn’t a roaring fire, but it did an admirable job of warming up his insides all the same.  Sebastian laid his head back, allowing his legs to sprawl outward indecorously.

“Hello, Bastian.”

The sound of his seventeen-year-old sister’s voice nearly caused Sebastian to jump out of his skin.  He quickly closed his legs.

“Father of Light, Sorcia,” he exclaimed, “what are you doing up?”

“Waiting for you,” she said.

“Well, I’m here, so you can go back to bed now.”

“Not until you tell me what happened to your clothes,” she replied as she eyed him, curling up into the chair opposite.  “I’m sure it’s a fascinating story.”

“And I assure you it isn’t.”  Sebastian scooched uncomfortably on the chair, trying to ensure at least a minimum of modesty.  “Why don’t you make yourself useful and start a fire?”

“Why don’t you?  I’m not cold.”

“Because there are bits that I’d rather not have exposed to an open flame right now,” he retorted.  “Or to my baby sister.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“I should certainly hope it is.”

“You’re so conventional sometimes, Bastian,” Sorcia replied, laughing.

“I would thank you to stop besmirching my bad name,” Sebastian huffed.

Sorcia giggled, the skin around her dark eyes crinkling with amusement, then hopped off the chair to start the fire.  To casual observers, she seemed as different to her brother as the night to the day.  Where he was pale and pink despite years of living in the tropical sun, she was tanned the color of honey, like her Nauwani mother.  His hair came out of his head in tight sun-kissed golden curls, hers in waves so black they almost looked purple.  Sebastian’s eyes were the cold blue of the northern sky of their father’s homeland, Anglevere, a place Sorcia had only read about in books and heard about in tales.  Sorcia’s were the bronze-brown of the hungry nut-bird that the locals chased away from their crops.

But to those who looked closer, the family connection became clearer.  Both brother and sister were tall and lithe, a trait they’d inherited from their father.  Both had the same high foreheads, straight noses, sharp cheekbones, and indefinable air of intelligence, although in Sebastian the sense was of intelligence left fallow, while in Sorcia it seemed tense, waiting to be sprung, like a trap.

The flames crackled up from the wood as Harrison entered the room with Sebastian’s dressing gown pinched between his fingers.

“Here you are, sir,” Harrison announced, with the distinct air of someone taking out the garbage.

“It’s about bloody time,” Sebastian barked, snatching the dressing gown from Harrison.  He motioned for Sorcia to turn her head as he got up and wrapped the red silk around himself. “Had it escaped? Did you have to stalk it through the jungle?”

“I’m afraid to say that sir’s room was in a slight disarray, making it more difficult than usual to find,” Harrison replied dryly.

“Where was the blasted thing?” Sebastian asked, tightening the sash.  “Not on the hook on my door?”

“No sir,” Harrison answered.  “It was on the tree outside your window.”

“Ah, yes.” Sebastian turned sheepish.  “Sorry, Harrison.”

“Not at all, sir.  Will that be all for tonight?”

“Yes, thank you,” Sebastian said, settling back in the chair.

“Goodnight then, sir.  And goodnight to you, miss,” he said, turning toward Sorcia, who gave him a smile.

“A tree?” Sorcia asked, as Harrison’s footsteps echoed away.

“One of my, ah, friends put it there.  You know how they are.  Pranksters.”

“Would this be the same ‘friend’ who was creeping out of your room late last night?”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.  “You know, I really worry about your insomnia.”

“If I were you, I would be worried about Miss Langley’s father instead. I’ve heard he was a champion boxer in his youth.”

“We were very discreet,” Sebastian assured her.

Sorcia raised an eyebrow.  “Says the man who walked home naked.”

“Ow!”  Sebastian clutched at his chest in mock anguish.  “A hit, a palpable hit!”

“Stop the amateur theatrics,” Sorcia said, smiling, then looked at Sebastian seriously.  “And promise me that you’ll try to behave.  At least for a while.  I’m tired of staying up nights worrying about you, quite literally.”

“All right, I’ll try.  For my favorite sister.”

Sorcia rolled her eyes.  “I’m your only sister.”

“That we know of.”  Sebastian grinned wickedly.  “Father might return home with another one.  Maybe one I’d like even better.  Maybe she’d be mute!  Ah, imagine, a silent sister…”

“Imagine, a brother with a broken nose,” Sorcia retorted, balling up her fist.

Sebastian touched the end of his snout. “I think a broken nose might give me character.”

“I think you have character enough as it is.”  Sorcia got up from the chair and kissed her brother on the forehead.  “Good night.  Don’t drink the whole bottle of brandy and pass out in the chair again.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He raised his glass to her, his eyes already drooping.

She sighed.  “I’ll come in and wake you for breakfast in the morning.”

“Good night, second favorite sister,” he called out after her.

Sebastian finished the brandy as the fire died down, feeling the warm drowsiness of the alcohol overtake him.  If Father could see me now… he thought.  But Father was miles and miles away.  Always miles and miles away, punctuated by snatches of time at home, indulgence tempered by a constant sense of disappointment.  He wondered sometimes how Father would have been if Mother had lived, how he would have been if Mother had lived.  But then there would have been no Sorcia, and Sebastian couldn’t imagine life without his sister.

Anyway, it was no use wondering over the whys and what ifs.  Not when there was tomorrow.  Another game to play, another girl to kiss, another glass of brandy to be drunk.  He was young and rich and handsome and titled.  What more could anyone want from life?

What more indeed.