The Lost Hero: Chapter 18

It had been years since Juen had seen the ocean. She had forgotten the power of the wind, how clean and brisk it was. She stood on an outcrop of rock and watched the waves crash far below.

“Amazing.” Fulin, one of the Athusan soldiers, shaded his eyes against the sun.

“First time?” she asked.

He grinned. “The Watch is the furthest I’ve been from home.”

Their party followed a crumbling track along the cliff as it dipped down to the narrow, rocky beach below. The seagrass hissed, tough stalks bent under the endless wind. It even lifted her braids with the strongest gusts.

Enon skipped ahead, running back and forth with excited shouts as he counted seabirds and picked up curiously shaped rocks.

“Look at the tiny boats!” he called to them. The sea shimmered and flashed and the colored sails stood out against it like bright pennants.

A small fishing village greeted them with cheery nonchalance, as if thirty-odd soldiers arrived most sunny afternoons looking to charter a ship. But their eager helpfulness vanished when they learned where Juen was headed.

“We don’t deal with Luksans.” The fisherwomen dropped a fish head into a barrel and selected a new fish from another. She flourished her knife, neatly decapitating it. “We don’t sail those waters.”

“Then who does?” Sorrint demanded.

The woman eyed him. “Nobody who values their life.”

Juen frowned. Relations between the two races had never been easy, but she didn’t think it had devolved to outright hostility.

“Territorial,” the woman continued. “Claim we’re destroying their ancient fishing grounds. As if our line boats could do such a thing! But they think all humans are the same. Us or those outfits down Durin ways, doesn’t matter to them.”

Juen thanked her and passed over some coins. They were whisked away into an apron pocket. “Thank you kindly, lady. Stay with us tonight, we’ve this fresh catch for your men.”

“I would be most grateful. Thank you.”

The Athusans were not thrilled to add smoked, dried fish to their rations. But it made a welcome change from dried beef and deer. Even the small coastal deer had a salty tang when roasted.

Sorrint did not like the exposure of the dunes. “There is nowhere to retreat,” he explained when Juen asked him about his restlessness. “We’re visible for miles. Even the Watch has canyons, valleys, places of refuge.”

Enon picked blades of grass and made whistles with them pulled taut between his thumbs. Juen had never seen such a thing.

“How do you do that?” she asked, part interest, part friendly overture. The boy cast her a scornful glance. She broke off a blade of her own and held it out. “Show me?”

Irritated by her girlish uselessness, he showed her how to hold her fingers. To her surprise, a short squeak escaped.

Enon watched her practice, his brow wrinkled. “You never seen that?”

“Never.”

“None of the boys in your city know how, then?”

Juen looked down at his still plump face. “They may have, but I was not allowed to play with them.”

“Why not?”

“I was the princess.”

He didn’t understand. “I’m a prince of the house.”

“Yes, but…” How to explain to a boy who put lizards in water pails and ran barefoot through the streets of his city? “I just wasn’t allowed. To play.”

They had fallen behind the group. Enon stopped and gaped at her.

“At all?”

Her affection for her father gave her a twinge of guilt. He loved her dearly, but there were things about her childhood she would never put her children through. If she lived to produce any.

“Well, I did play. But not outside. And certainly not with anyone not of noble blood or the child of a magistrate.”

Enon was appalled. “You never played outside?”

“We rode, of course, but only in the riding park. And we walked in the gardens in fine weather.” Today was not ‘fine’ by any description. Mist gusted by them, coating their faces and turning their cloaks damp.

He gave her a thoughtful look. “No wonder you’re so bad at everything.”