Across the Long Sea by Sarah Remy Read Free Book Online

bier to the window, placed his hands on the wide graystone sill, and looked out on the sea. Torches burned along the waterline, thrust amongst the rocks and into the sand, set carefully away from the pier itself. Lads and lasses stood watch, buckets of seawater at the ready in case wind sent a spark skyward.
    A single unguarded ember could lay waste to tall ship and trade goods alike.
    Mal counted three ships moored in the deep water. It was too dark to make out either their colors or captain’s flag.
    He realized he’d have to walk the pier in the morning, shake hands with captain and crew, ask the right questions, show an interest. Because it was expected. They’d be kind to him, because he was newly made Selkirk, the last of the line. But they’d be wary, because he’d long ago taken on a different role: the right hand of the king.
    Salt air and smoke stung Mal’s eyes. He smudged moisture from his lashes with the back of his hand, then went in search of Liam.
    â€œW HAT ’ S HE SAYING , my lord?”
    Mal dipped a corner of sea sponge in the bowl of rose oil Liam held cupped in his hands. Mal squeezed the sponge until jagged pores absorbed the oil, brushed overflow back into the bowl, then used the sponge to paint rose-­perfume sigils on his father’s forearm.
    â€œNay, nothing,” he replied absently. “His shade has gone on. There’s no evidence of it here. The temple’s empty of ghosts. The priests prefer it that way.”
    â€œOh.”
    Mal looked away from his work, studied the boy.
    â€œWhat is it, lad? Are you seeing something I’m not?” He’d become more comfortable with Siobahn’s loss, but he still caught himself second-­guessing his intuition, and that was more worrisome than he liked to admit.
    He’d spent his entire term as vocent working with Siobahn at his side, relying on her strength more even than his own. He sometimes still felt unmoored without his bride, a callow youth feeling his way forward into uncharted territory.
    You’re no less a v ocent without her , Avani had written over the winter, when he’d used ink and parchment to confess his doubts. The bhut was but a manifestation, a channeling of all that makes you magus.
    Avani, who still held faith that her foreign Goddess would right all wrongs, and understood too little of what it meant to be vocent.
    â€œNo, my lord.” Liam answered, startling Mal from recollection. “But you looked fretful. I thought perhaps his spirit was moaning about, all sour and lost as they sometimes are.”
    Mal’s small smile was far more real than the tight grimace he’d shown his mam.
    â€œHe was my da, Liam,” he said, looking down on his father’s blunt, slack face. “He used to sit me on his lap after supper, and tell me tales of rogue seamen and lost treasure and the battles he’d fought on the deep sea.”
    Liam peeked around Mal’s shoulder, thoughtful.
    â€œAnd that’s what kilt him, my lord? That tiny prick on his thumb?”
    â€œAye.” Mal squeezed the sponge again, painted Selkirk’s brow. “See, there, how the flesh is puffed around the entrance, how the veins are black up and along the arm, all the way past his elbow?”
    â€œOf course, my lord.” Liam bent closer to the punctured thumb, nearly sloshing rose oil as he did so. Mal captured the bowl, set it on the bier alongside his sponge, and picked up his father’s hand.
    He traced the line of vein beneath skin, his fingers pale against his father’s sun-­darkened skin.
    â€œThe infection started in the wound,” he explained. “And poisoned the blood. The poison spread along the veins, toward the heart. Sepsis , the priests call it.” He set the hand gently back in place. “Generally treatable, if caught well in time. Even after the infection has spread, amputation of the thumb or hand might have saved his