Crown of Stars (Page 35)
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Alain didn’t like it, but he understood he had no viable alternative. The world could not be changed in one day or one year and it was possible it could not be changed at all. It was just possible that this trivial and even selfish act of kindness toward a crippled, illegitimate orphan outweighed a hundred more apparently momentous acts involving the great and powerful of the land. Dog, as they were all calling the boy now, was sitting in a corner slurping down porridge and had shown no fear in the barracks with men coming and going and talking in loud voices, jostling, coughing, laughing, and singing out crude jokes.
“Someone has got to wash him,” added the captain. “Calos, you take care of it, as you brought him in.”
“Jochim, you take care of it,” said Calos. “What of this man, who says he was a Lion?” He gestured toward Alain, who stood quietly to one side.
“Let me see those dogs you say come with him,” said Captain Lukas, and he strolled with exaggerated casualness over to the door and squinted along the porch. Sorrow and Rage regarded him with their dark eyes. When they saw Alain, they thumped their tails on the plank sidewalk but did not otherwise move.
The captain looked at those dogs for a long time. Then he looked at Alain. The captain recognized him. Alain saw it in the smile trapped on his lips, in the way he scratched at his forehead to give himself something to do while he considered, in the way he tapped a foot three times on the porch as he reached a conclusion.
“There’s to be a sweep of the southwest quarter this afternoon, Captain.”
“Proceed as usual.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“If you will.” The captain indicated to Alain that they would walk together. “Surely you have come here in order to see Lady Sabella.” Without allowing Alain a chance to answer, he began issuing orders to the dozen men hurrying out to accompany them.
“Eh, those Varre boars! Look, there goes the ass-licking captain now!”
Alain glanced at the captain, but he took no mind of the words. In fact, Captain Lukas seemed not to have understood them at all. As if they were speaking in a language he could not understand, but one that Alain could. The swirl of movement, of men going about their business and dogs hanging back to allow the hounds to pass without challenging them and a horse backing nervously away from the entrance into the stables, so disoriented Alain that he felt the world spinning around him. He staggered and reached out to catch himself
they skate into Rikin Fjord across a skin of still water so clear that he dreams he can see fathoms into the deeps, down to the ancient seabed carved aeons ago out of glittering rock. But that is only an illusion. What he sees are the backs of a swarm of fish schooling around his hull.
One surfaces
“Beware!” calls Deacon Ursuline, among his counselors.
Papa Otto calls from the stern. “A swarm has gathered here. I don’t like the look of these! I think they mean to do us harm!”
As if the words are sorcery, the boat heels starboard. His heels skid backward and he grabs the rail to stop himself from falling onto the deck, but just as he gets his feet up and under him, the ship heels again, seesawing to port side so abruptly that he cannot stop himself. He pitches forward, loses his hold on the railing, and plunges into the cold blue water of the fjord.
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