The Tale Teller

Ch 13

 Darkharbour didn't hold the best memories for Vaun. The last time he had been here, last winter, he had spent weeks in the company of a certain woman as wild as the waves she now belonged to.

Stood here now, he could see her face, the sharp angles and flashes of barred teeth. Lune had been as feral as an anti-social forest fox. She had been a mess of long limbs with strong muscles, and she'd made sure that he felt them when she tugged him aboard her father's docked ship and stripped him bare.

A slight tingle ran through him at the memory, of how her eager hands had felt, how the candlelight had swept across her tanned skin, naked before him. She had given him something few women dared to, claimed his first experience, and when drunk on her wines and high on the herbs her sailor friends smoked, it had been like a dream to Vaun.

If he could do it again though, he wouldn't. As good as being with Lune had been it was nothing compared to the sheer sweetness that had been Celise. It had been a very different kind of sex, but somehow that had made it all the better.

Still, as Vaun glanced across to where Lune's favourite ship had once sat in the harbour he grieved for her. Her death was inevitable for she did little but steal and cheat, and it was always known that her life was made to be short and wild. She was still a life lost though.

She never would have been able to survive the dark days they were starting to live in now, and it was almost a blessing that she left this world before worse had taken her. A guard's dagger to the gut was bad enough, but under their new training, a guard today would have done much worse.

At the thought of their new rules and regime, Vaun had to turn away.

A row of staggered buildings lined one side of the road with the harbour wall opposite. The road was filled with carts picking up the goods the ships delivered. Stalls sat outside the buildings with loud fishwives yelling out the names and prices of whatever they sold. The stench of fish was in the air, mixing with the salt water and the horse manure that soaked the streets. It was no more of a pleasant sight than the lack of Lune's ship, but at least it took Vaun's mind off her.

He had parted company with Branoff and Lissy as soon as they had arrived here, and now, Vaun wasn't entirely sure where to go. Harbour towns were usually good places to collect stories and to share what new ones he had with the sailors. With times how they were, and when so close to Faydura, Vaun wasn't sure if it was safe though.

He had earned a few coins in Whitwich, but it wasn't enough for a bed in an inn. Frankly, his options seemed rather limited.

He looked back to the ships and the sailors all around them. Searching for a familiar face, he found none. These men all spoke in the Albazkur tongue, with tanned skin and rich dark hair and eyes. They dressed in clothes dyed shades that no part of nature could provide here, and wore them pinned in fashions deemed too impractical in these parts. It was true that Faydura favoured the foreign styles, as did the areas surrounding it like Darkharbour, but the men still stood out against the natives.

Vaun could faintly remember a few of Lune's friends. They sailed with her on her father's ship, protecting her as much as she did them. They were a close group, but though they tolerated Vaun, he was never able to tell if they enjoyed his company how Lune did.

Lune liked his stories and the men seemed to too, but she saw an innocence to be tainted, something the men didn't care for, at least not when it came to Vaun.

When Vaun spent his nights in Lune's bedchamber her friends spent theirs in the town's brothels, being entertained by the girls there in the same way Vaun often felt he was entertaining Lune.

He didn't know how they would react to seeing him again, but he doubted they would rush with open arms to a man who was likely one of many to a friend long gone. He didn't know if they would even remember him.