Page 3 of Bound and Tide

He grimaced at the statue in the square’s center. It stood twice as tall as a man, chest puffed out, not a shred of humility. God, then, he assumed. Humans sure liked their gods, the Empyrean ones anyway, which also meant they detested the infernal.

Noxscura itched at his palm when he spied the temple just beyond the statue. The pitch of its roof caught the midday light, the stone above its open doors etched with something undoubtedly virtuous in Ouranic beneath a relief of the rising sun.

“Do behave,” he muttered to the dark arcana, and it did, which was lucky. The last time his mother was taken from him by a living King Archibald, dark gods rend his soul in the endless Abyss, Xander’s magic had thrown a tantrum, but at least the resulting discord was contained to the creation of a desert oasis. This time, she wasn’t simply locked in a stone, and he wasn’t simply annoyed, so if his noxscura got out of hand in a city that undoubtedly housed a fair few holy knights, things would not be simple at all.

Xander closed a fist around the magic crawling beneath his flesh, weaker and yet more chaotic than it should have been, and straightened his coat. Thankfully, most humans were simple enough to assume a man wearing white couldn’t possibly be a blood mage. The fact that white complemented the richness of his dark skin and the silver of his hair was a happy accident.

A number of small idols were placed all along the holy statue’s base. To most, they were just trinkets that had been prayed over and left in offering, but Xander was practiced in manipulating the intent and reverence fed into them. He swiped a few just as a priest stepped out of the temple’s doorway and called in the street urchins for a meal.

What do you think you’re doing?

Xander started and pressed a hand to the vial of blood hidden beneath his coat. He was garnering a few looks, but no one had spoken to him. Just his mind then, overwrought and exhausted.

As a brackish, chilly breeze swept over the square, he gestured for the griffin to follow him away from the temple and down the main thoroughfare. “We ought to find someplace more suitable for lodging,” he murmured, avoiding the priest’s eye. The creature padded along at his side, snapping its hooked beak at a set of burly men in holy garb.

Xander had made the painful mistake of asking Birzuma about Bendcrest only once when he was much younger. “A mire of human scum,” she’d said, “but since you’re so curious, why not do your own research?” She’d told him there were tomes in the tower room he was most tentative to enter alone. As curiosity was wont to do, though, it urged him to brave the lightless chamber that was overstuffed with eerie, cursed spoils, and somehow he ended up locked inside an armoire. Hours later, once his throat had gone raw from screaming and palms bruised from pounding, his mother let him out. Whether his question had anything to do with his accidental confinement or not, he never asked after the city again.

But he would sometimes happen upon mention of Bendcrest in other reading, eyes always catching on its name and not just because he covertly scoured indexes, so he was familiar with the city’s operation. The locals relied heavily on the waterway that spilled up from the Maroon Sea, shops and homes sprawling out along either side of a serpentining river. There was of course fishing and trade, and Bendcrest was home to a plethora of well-built wharfs where larger sea-faring vessels would have to barter their goods onto smaller local ships to travel the narrowing river into Eiren’s heart. Logging occurred farther upstream, the nameless forest that flourished to the north of the city arcane and thick.

The river’s shape was reflected in the deeply emerald sea serpent depicted on the city’s otherwise blue crest. Hung from each lamppost and fluttering in the breeze, they were Bendcrest’s only color as autumn had taken the blooms from the flora and set the sky grey with the clouds of coming winter.

On his flight in, Xander passed over a district dotted with massive manors, many jutting out over the river on stilts. Acquiring accommodations in one of those homes by way of his manipulative magic would perhaps be too complex for his current condition, so he’d landed in a comparatively banal spot. Each new road he traveled down was banaler until he turned a corner, and the unimpressed curl to his lip shifted itself into fascination.

A sprinkling of brilliantly red berries dotted slick green leaves in sharp clusters down one side of the road, and on the other, window boxes spilled over with yellow and violet pansies blooming far too late into the season. Along the street’s center sprouted slim, white-barked trees with a sprawl of maroon leaves at their crowns. It was a bright spot in the bleakness, and as luck and plot would have it, there stood an inn at the road’s end.

He caught the proprietor of The Sleepy Salmon outside, offered him coin, and left his things and the griffin on the stoop. There were some words exchanged and perhaps also a threat or two, but nothing gold couldn’t satisfy. Xander’s mind was occupied elsewhere, so he couldn’t be expected to humor the help. So what if his request for directions to the preeminent wharf came out like a demand? He had things to get done.

Worthless things.

Xander blinked and walked a bit faster, as if he could somehow get away from the voice before it—

Almost as worthless as you.

“Well,” he grumbled under his breath, “for now, maybe, but I am working on it.”

Chapter 3

ON THE ORIGIN OF BLOOD MAGES

Bendcrest’s docks had a uniquely atrocious odor, like a man who’d been ridden very hard and stored in a barrel of vinegary squid. Xander came to a stop along the water’s edge and pressed a hand to his stomach, watching the river churn. Nausea roiled in his guts as others walked by completely unaffected.

Gods, what was he doing here?

Failing to free me. Again.

Xander flexed his fingers, veins running over the back of his hand like many rills running away from their origin. He imagined the noxscura clinging to his blood, distressed at the turmoil simmering beneath his skin. He had freed his mother from the occlusion crystal of Archibald’s—a decade-long process—but then in a cruel twist she’d been immediately banished, taking with her his arcane grip on his powers.

But he could get it back—he would get it back—and then he would work on summoning her. Probably.

A shrill chirp jolted Xander out of his deliberation, and he sneered at the jackdaw that had landed on a nearby post. The black bird’s beady eyes stared back, unblinking, its weird little head cocking. Xander scoffed and traipsed away from the creature who so badly wanted to be a raven it was embarrassing.

Across the wharf, there were a few scant lean-tos where dockworkers toiled, and one large structure that was clearly the destination he sought. The sort-of building was speared up through its middle, one of Bendcrest’s banners stretched out like a sail, and if he tipped his head, he supposed the strange, pinched shape running all along its top suggested it could have been a boat. A big one, though, and upside down too.

“Quite a lot hidden underwater. Impressive how deep they can go.” Xander chuckled. “Ah, if I haven’t heard that an uncountable number of times myself.” There was no one around to appreciate his quip, not even the griffin, though a hunched man shouldering a hefty length of rope was headed his way. He opened his mouth to repeat himself, but then so did the man, and something tarry and putrid was spat at Xander’s feet. It sloughed through the deck planks with a sickening plunk into the waters below.

Xander evaded the sticky-looking stain with a long stride and a curled lip, marching up to the board outside the upside-down-ship building. Postings weathered by brine were tacked atop one another. There were always jobs to be filled on a dock, that he had heard, because it was laborious and often deadly work, but the postings were covered in the furious scribbles of, No Shyp Jumpers and Fayr Wehthr Saylors Ned Not Aply!

“Reliability’s in short demand,” he muttered, unsurprised, and went inside to finally be met with some organization. Desks dotted the dimly lit interior, heavy wooden boards of the ship’s deck low overhead. A cage was laid into the ceiling’s middle, light filtering downward through the tightly crossing bars and casting shadows into the far corners of the narrow chamber.

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