Across the Long Sea by Sarah Remy Read Free Book Online Page A

life.”
    Liam studied the dead man on the bier. Mal wondered what the boy saw. An old sea lord, gnarled and past his prime, or a man still strong of bone and sinew, marked by loss and battle, but quick of mind and heart? The body was naked but for loin wrappings, long limbs peppered with the small scars one received on the water. Larger scars, remnants of battle, marked his chest and right side; war hadn’t felled the Selkirk, nor had grief.
    It had taken something as simple and mundane as a fishhook to put the man in his shroud.
    â€œDid it hurt, my lord?” Liam wondered, ghoulish in youth. “Or was it like the Red Worm, and quick?”
    â€œIt would have hurt, at the last,” Mal replied. “But once his organs failed, he wouldn’t have lingered long.”
    â€œHe was a canny man, was he, the Selkirk?”
    â€œVery.” Mal touched his father’s brow again, this time in benediction. His father had known enough to send his youngest son away to the king, even if it meant leaving Selkirk without true heir.
    â€œI’m sorry, my lord,” Liam said. “Even if he spoke unkindly of you, still you loved him. So, I’m sorry for your loss.” He picked up his bowl, silently extended the sponge.
    â€œThank you.” Mal didn’t ask how the boy knew the keep’s history; tongues wagged, especially during mourning.
    W HEN THE S ELKIRK was properly laid out and anointed, eyes pressed closed, weighted down with the true gold coins kept since his birth for exactly that purpose, Mal sent Liam to bed. The boy went without fuss, yawning.
    Mal returned to the window, to the scrape of the wind and the crash of the waves, and the perfume of roses blooming in the dark. There was a moon in the sky, near full, lighting the deep off and on as high clouds scuttered across the yellow face. The heat off the lantern warmed the nape of Mal’s neck.
    â€œHe was proud of you, my lord.”
    Biaz was a wise man. He’d scuffed the tips of his own sandals against the stairs as he climbed, giving Mal fair warning.
    â€œWas he?” Mal studied the moon. “He never wrote, you know. Not once after I’d fostered to Doyle, or after, when I was made vocent. Mother penned a missive every season, of course, but the Selkirk cut me from his heart.”
    The housecarl moved to stand at the window, shoulder against Mal’s, swollen brown fingers gripping the sill. He looked down at the torches on the beach, and Mal felt his pride in the swell of his rib cage.
    â€œAfter your brother Rowan was lost,” Biaz said, “your father had interest only in the business. He threw himself into the trade with a passion I hadn’t seen since the war. And he did well by it; we’ve seven ships now, my lord, and three of them the fastest brigs in ser­vice.”
    â€œSeven,” Mal echoed, surprised. “Where’d he find the coin?”
    â€œIt’s said a Serrano can charm the balls off a bull,” Biaz said. “And that was certainly true of your father. He negotiated exclusive trade rights with Gheislain, and again with the tribesmen off the Black Coast. He knew how to grease a port master’s palm, did your father, and how to pay off the pirate kings, and he turned near every coin he earned back into the business, where he could.”
    â€œThat can’t have made him popular in Low Port.”
    The housecarl shrugged. “Sea lords are a jealous sort, you’ve the right of it. But they’re also fiercely loyal, and the Selkirk, he knew well how to earn their loyalty and keep it.”
    â€œWith more coin?” Mal hazarded, amused.
    â€œSome of that,” Biaz admitted. “But also the charm. He knew how to look a person in the eye and make him think he was the only man in the world mattered. Rowan was the same, he was.”
    â€œI remember.”
    â€œYou, though, my lord,” Biaz took a long breath. “You’re