I wanted a ship for my birthday. You'd think that wouldn't be too tall an order when you come from the most famous ship building family in the Northern Sea. But evidently proper twelve year old Ladies-in-training don't get ships for their birthday. They get journals to jot down all their hopes and dreams for the future.
Maybe that's what Talya's writing in hers. I don't care what the Dxun she writes in hers, aye? If I have to do this to make Mother and Papa happy I'm going to make mine a proper log book. I'll chronicle all of my adventures. That is if I ever get to have any kriffing adventures.
Aye, Talya. I wrote the word kriffing right there on the first page of my shiny kriffing new log book!
Now if only something would happen that I could kriffing write about! But then… a lot of things happened this summer, not to me specifically although I suppose some of them affect me. The rest of Onderon though… It all started with the blood moon…
No one really noticed when the children of the north's greatest houses all disappeared from Trevon Blackwell's betrothal feast.
Normally such disappearance would terrorize parents who feared pirates docking at Blackhold raring for the chance to snatch a noble child and practically guarantee themselves a fat life. However when in the hall of the most disgraced family in the north, there were far more entertaining things to do than watch children. Like look at the bloodstains still maring the floor of the entrance hall, or snicker at the visibly pregnant bride-to-be.
The missing children had gone looking for the former, spurred on by Sanya Harkon and her wild stories.
It might have been a blood stain, or it might have just been that the stone that the Flints had quarried, when they built the Hold thousands of years ago for Aloisius Blackwell, was just a little darker in that spot. Sanya didn't really know. It was her first time on the Lord's island just like it was most of the rest of the younger kids. They didn't know any better either.
She gathered them to sit in a circle around the dark spot on the stone floor, plopping down with her legs crossed like a little southern savage. Her sister Talya cleared her throat and nodded to Sanya's knee that was exposed by her hiked up dress.
Sanya rolled her eyes but she did arange her legs into a more ladylike position, covered modestly by her skirt. Then when all the others were settled and she had their attention she began her tale.
"Not so very long ago, Lord Blackwell tried to marry off his daughter Dina to the son of Lord Kira." Wasn't that how all the stories started? So-and-so gave their daughters and sons in marriage alliances, and the alliance blew up in a tremendous wreck for one family or both or someone else entirely. "They were gonna unite the north and the south."
"But they didn't," a Bralykburn boy interrupted. "No Blackwell ever married a Kira."
"They were supposed to." Sanya shot him a glare. "Dina had the beast master blood. She could make the brylks come just by calling."
"Just cause she was a beast master doesn't make somebody a Dxun worshiper like the Kiras!" Interjected one of the younger Flints and got a few gasps in response.
Sanya couldn't remember his name but she knew that his older brother was a beast master. Of course he would want to stand up for family.
"Well, maybe," she shrugged. "But they also say she spent most of her journey up in the main top as far as she could get from the blessed salty sea. Looking out for her first sight of the monsters that would take her even closer to the demon moon."
A couple of her audience members made a sign to the salt gods and she held back a grin. Truth was Sanya enjoyed the view from a main top as much as any sailor and the freedom of seeing the whole blue Northern Sea spread around her.
"But her family couldn't just open betrothal negotiations with the Kiras," said a Flint girl who was a little older than Sanya, probably only among the rest to keep an eye on her younger cousins and siblings. She blushed when the attention of the others was turned in her direction. "Even if the bride was amiable to the match."
"Aye." Sanya nodded, sympathetically. All northern girls, the noble ones anyway, were expected to marry whomever their families chose for them. "That's where the Shechels came in."
At the mention of the name a few more made signs to the salt gods. Sanya leaned closer to them and lowered her voice, dramatically. "The Shechels made their living by carrying messages back and forth up and down the river from the Blackwells to the Kiras. Secret messages, plans to end the feud and join their houses. But the Shechels couldn't let that happen. If the Kiras and Blackwells were friends again, they wouldn't have any more need of a go-between."
"So what'd they do?" Another Flint asked. "Send bad messages?"
"Worse." Sanya grinned. "When Dina's ship reached the Shechel lands, right at the rivermouth, the clan boarded and killed every man aboard. They cut the crew down, sliced Lord Blackwell's throat like a bright red smile, ripped Dina down from the main top and stabbed her straight through the belly, to make sure that she'd never give the Kiras an heir."
The children cried out in shock and horror.
"When the ship washed up at Kira fortress, they found the dead men scattered across the deck. And they found Dina, still alive. She lived just long enough to tell the Kiras who did this to her and they commed her brothers to deliver the gruesome news and said they would gladly feed the murderers to their beasts."
If Talya were telling the story she'd go on to describe how Modon Kira wept over his betrothed's body, how he buried her in his own family's tomb, and how he gave up the throne to spend the rest of his days with the beasts thinking of what might have been. But Sanya wasn't about to waste time with a tragic romance where there was perfectly good violence to talk about.
"The Blackwell brothers took their vengeance into their own hands and sailed their navy down to the river," she whispered. "And they set upon the Shechels in the middle of the night."
Suddenly Sanya leaped to her feet to act out the carnage. "They took out the guards quickly with a slash and a jab and then made their way silently to the very heart of the holdfast where they found Lord Shechel in bed with his mistress."
"' This is for our sister !' the younger Blackwell brother screamed as he dragged the woman up by her hair and stabbed her in the belly." Sanya mimed the stabbing savagely. "And then the older brother forced Lord Shechel to his knees. ' And this is for our father, you kriffing bastard !' And he chopped his head clean off his shoulders in one swipe!" She made a grotesque sound effect.
"Sanya!" her sister scolded.
Several of the children cried out or covered their eyes. A couple of the little boys cheered and one of the Kretash cousins, beautiful eyes wide with excitement, urged her on. "What'd they do with all the others?"
"Well they rounded them all up, all the men and the women and even all the children and little babies," Sanya explained.
"Not all of 'em," the Bralykburn boy frowned. "My Great Grandmother was a Shechel."
"Aye," reminded the Frasier next to him. "But she was already married to your Great Grandpapa so she doesn't count."
"Aye!" Sanya brought the focus of their attention back to herself. "If they were already sworn to another family and weren't at the holdfast when it happened than the Blackwells didn't care so much. But everybody who was at the holdfast, those who had participated in the massacre or went along with it and all their loved ones were herded aboard the Blackwell ships and brought back here to rot in the dungeons right below these very stones." She pressed both her hands against the floor as if she could feel the presence of the prisoners still languishing beneath them.
A few members of her audience squirmed in their places.
"Are they still down there?" the littlest Flint girl cried. Her older sister or cousin or whatever pulled her a little closer and shushed her.
"Nah," Sanya said to the girl a little more gently but then she grinned evilly around at the rest. "Because the Blackwell brothers had something even worse planned."
"Nya, we're in their house," Talya tried in vain to restrain her twin.
Sanya ignored her. "When the brothers brought the Shechels out of the dungeon they hadn't seen the sun for so long they were blinded. But when their eyes got used to the light, they saw that the Blackwells had taken them to a set of stairs that led right into the sea. And right in front of them was Lord Shechel's head mounted on a pike, his mouth still hanging open in a silent scream!"
The children gasped again. "But what's that got to do with the Blood moon?" one of the girls ventured after the initial horror of the thing had passed.
After a pause for dramatic effect Sanya continued. She loved how they all hung on her every word. "Lord Kira was denied his vengeance for the loss of his bride. He had wanted to drag the Shechels along behind his dalgo and then have his beasts gorge themselves on whatever was left. The Blackwells simply chopped off a few heads and let the rest of the clan walk to their death down the sea stairs."
She glanced toward the main hall where all their parents were feasting. "Lord Kira left his throne in Iziz. They say he and his son and grandson after him have spent all that time calling on the powers of Dxun, imploring that justice would be done. And then only a few months ago, we all saw it, the moon turned red and something fell to Onderon. Whatever it was destroyed the whole Skelda Clan. The whole clan but for one… and tonight she sits beside the Heir of Blackhold. Carrying his child?" She shrugged. This last bit she had overheard the grownups whispering. "Or perhaps her child is the son of the Lord of the Demon Moon!"
The crowd of children broke out into their own whispered conversations and Sanya thought her job well done until Talya demanded her attention. "Nya!"
"What?"
"Papa is looking for Harron. They need him for something."
"Alright, I'll go and find him." There was only one reason she could think of why her parents would need the twins' elder brother. They must be negotiating his betrothal with one of the other houses. And of course they'd want Sanya to be the one to go searching for him. Talya they'd want to keep close to show off to the families' eligible bachelors. See we also have daughters. Just look at this lovely little lady and the other is her identical twin .
Sanya couldn't be too hard on her parents. She knew they wanted to make the best match possible for each of their children. It was just that out of all the most noble families of the north most of them in this generation had decided to have sons, leaving the Harkon twins as the prizes most sought after.
Sanya would rather not get married at all. She wished not for the first time, that she had been the one born a boy. Harron would be more happy staying at home and raising his norcogs. She'd begged them time after time to let them trade places, to let her sign on the voyages as cabin boy and learn everything there was to learn about the ships her family built and the sea on which they sailed.
" Let Harron stay home with his cogs and give me the midshipman's commission !" They only laughed. There's no such thing as a cabin girl or a midship woman .
She had snuck aboard once, hid in a rope locker until they were already well underway with the wind in their sails. She'd been six at the time. Harron was eight. By the time they'd found her out it was too late to sail her back home.
No fancy dresses to stuff her into meant she got to knock around in sized down sailors' slops. And while Harron puked his rations over the rail, Sanya was learning the ropes, bravely making her way up through the rigging to the main top and the mizzen top. A young able seaman called Leon Hardicort had been tasked with keeping an eye on her but he also taught her things.
" You can be my first mate when I get my own ship ," she told him.
Leon shook his head with a grin. " Nah, they don't have mates on pirate ships cause everybody's equal ."
She liked that idea even better, a girl and being equal with the men.
He explained to her further, " You've got your captain who says where they're gonna go and who they're gonna fight, and you got your quartermaster who carries out the orders as spokesman for the crew, and the boson who keeps everybody in line and following the code ."
Her family had laughed when she informed them upon her return that she had decided her future would be a life of piracy. Her brother even suggested unhelpfully, " Maybe you could marry a pirate. The Bralykburn heir is only a little older than you ."
" Maybe you could marry your norcog bitch ." She threw back at him and regretted it immediately, because the comment earned her the worst spanking of her life and the promise that she would no longer be allowed to spend time among the sailors and their vulgar speech.
Their ultimatum had only strengthened her resolve. Sanya spent every free moment she had at the shipyards or the docks learning everything she could, along with an increasingly colorful vocabulary, not that she'd ever be able to use the information.
She sighed as she wandered the halls of Blackhold. Her brother had to be around here somewhere, as did the Bralykburn heir. Yutton was his name. He was fifteen now and would probably be wanting a wife soon enough. Not that her parents would sign her over anytime soon. She and Talya weren't quite twelve and they wouldn't be married until they were at least sixteen.
Talya would never be given to a pirate. She was the perfect little lady. She could ensure them a proper match with the once most powerful family in the north. Well they had been the most powerful family, and would be again even with the current scandal. The Blackwell's older son may have brought home a pregnant southern witch but they still had the younger.
The sound of a scuffle pulled her attention from she and Talya's eventual fate. Sanya ran to investigate, not knowing exactly what she was going to find. Sure as anything it had something to do with her brother.
"Take it back!" the strangled adolescent cry echoed from down the hall.
"Not until you take back what you said about my sisters!" That was Harron, chivalrous as ever.
She followed the sounds of the fight, a meaty punch and a groan.
"What? That anyone would be a fool to marry one of them?" The skinny, dark-haired boy drew back his fist again with almost a grin on his face. "Not kriffing likely."
Sanya already had her knife out of her boot and ready to throw before she rounded the corner into the room. It was another skill she had been practicing for years with Leon and it didn't take her long to size up the situation and pick her target. She let fly with the weapon and was rewarded with a yelp of pain and a thunk as the blade buried itself in the wall behind the combatants.
Harron looked at the knife that had struck half a dozen centimeters from his nose and then back at his sister. "You could have killed me!"
She she stood there glaring at them with her hands on her hips. One of the buns had come loose from her hair and the long red locks spread over her shoulder. She swept the hair back out of the way. "What? I hit what I was aiming at."
The other boy, a little taller than her brother, with dark wavy hair, touched his cheek. His fingers came away smeared with blood. Not a lot of it. It was only a scratch. Though if he had moved his head at all after the knife left her hand she could have taken off his ear. Or taken out his eye, but that wasn't the point. The point was she had stopped the fight.
"Mother and Papa are looking for you," she told her brother.
He swore in Onderonian but he wore an expression that might have been relief that she had ended a battle he couldn't possibly have won. Still before he left the room he pointed a finger at his combatant. "This isn't over." He had to shoulder his way out of the room through a crowd of boys that had gathered.
Sanya went to retrieve her weapon from the wall. She didn't look up at the boy who's blood still clung to the edge of her blade but she could see from the corner of her eye that he had opened his mouth to speak.
Before he got the chance one of the other boys called out, "Blackwell, who gave you the gash?"
Her eyes widened. She had physically wounded a member of the house! Insulting them was one thing, telling stories true or no about their dubious past was another, but drawing blood was something entirely different. Although, as she looked closer and saw the skin beginning to swell and purple around his eye, she knew that she wasn't the first Harkon to give him a good blow. She almost grinned and what surprised her more than anything was the wink she got in return.
It made her angry. Hadn't he just said that anyone would be a fool to marry a Harkon twin? And he, Jamos Blackwell, the most likely candidate to be betrothed to her sister? Nobody insulted Talya in front of her and got away with it.
"Ah, Yutton my friend. Have you yet to be introduced to Sanya 'the knife' Harkon?"
"The knife, eh?" The older boy towered over her. At fifteen he had just begun to fill out in the chest and shoulders, thanks also to his hard work on many sea voyages.
Jamos, on the other hand, barely fourteen, was thin as an oar, tall from a growth spurt but with very little muscle on him. As far as Sanya could tell anyway. He might be a wiry one but she knew from a glance who she'd rather have on her side in a fight.
She clenched the weapon in her hand, ready for whatever might come next and stood up to the bigger boy. "Aye."
Yutton grinned at her spunk. "Bet you couldn't hit the same mark again."
"I kriffing well could," She retorted and got a round of laughter from the group of boys that now surrounded them.
"By all means, Lady Knife." The young Bralykburn gave her a mocking bow. "Give us a demonstration."
They were all bigger than she was. She knew they could hurt her if they really wanted to. However they were also, most of them, from families that wished to have somebody like her to give them an heir. Well, if this was her chance to show them that she was more than just a bride to be taken as a prize, so be it.
She stepped back to the spot where she had stood when she first threw her blade, raised the weapon, and then lowered it again and asked, "Am I aiming at the hole in the wall or Blackwell's head?"
That got a laugh and a look of consternation from Jamos before she raised her arm again and launched the knife at the wall. It stuck in about two centimeters to the right of the original mark. She was a little disappointed but the throw still earned her a whistle, a couple of cheers and a pat on the back.
"Not bad." Yutton admitted.
"You think you could do any better?" She challenged. From there the contest evolved, and Sanya was in her element. She was finally being treated as one of the boys. Maybe to them it was just a novelty but she hadn't felt this free since she was on the deck of a ship as a member of the crew.
She couldn't see the escalating frustration in the heir of Bralyk Keep as she repeatedly beat him at every turn. Nor did she pay attention to the look of half-admiration the Blackwell second son was giving her. Why didn't he challenge her, the coward? He just stood there watching, his cheek still bleeding. She had probably given him a scar. He would probably have it for life. And yet he didn't demand satisfaction. She didn't let his scrutiny distract her from her opponents.
If you have read Some Say I've Got Devil, Polaris, and the continuing saga of Candle on the Water a lot of these family names should be familiar to you the Blackwells, Harkons, Flints, and Bralykburns, along with the Kiras in the southern jungles surrounding the city of Iziz all figure in those stories and most of them grew up hearing the legends of the infamous Sanya Harkon. Some of the first names might be familiar as well, as those families tend to name their children after their ancient ancestors.
I must say a HUGE thank you to Lux's Sister who first invited me to come north and marry my Shara into her Blackwell clan. She has been an invaluable part of the creation of this story and so I must again share any credit with her. Drop us a note and let us know how we're doing! Thanks!