#they gave him a wife (unnecessary!) who apparently left him (for unknown reasons).

[theinfinitedivides]

"you love her, don't you?"

"who, Naina? nahi, ma, i don't love her. not Naina."

"i never said it was Naina."

[ask-de-writer]

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT : Part 77 of 83 : World of Sea

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to World of Sea

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT

Part 77 of 83

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

140406 words

copyright 2020

written 2007

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

//////////////

Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users   of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may   reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information   remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in   my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical   compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

///////////////////////

New to the story?  Read from the beginning.  PART 1 is here

///////////////////////

Kurin turned to face the pure white Great Sea Dragon by the rail.  “Blind Mecat, you and I talked once about whether I could trust what Captain Barad told me.  What did you tell me about trusting him?”

Blind Mecat’s mellow voice answered, “I said that you would have to make up your own mind, Little Fish.  I also said that I trusted him.”

“Thank you, Cat.  Now, Captain Barad, why did you get the Ord and whose idea was it?”

“Mister Morgu first approached me about getting revenge on the Longin about nine Wohans ago.  The Ord was to be the agency of that revenge.  The plot was to kill you as a covert means of striking at the Longin. The circle of the conspiracy was very small.  Only myself, Mister Morgu and one other, chosen by Mister Morgu and unknown to me, actually knew the real reason for obtaining it.

“Everybody else believed that it was for the fishing experiments that it actually was used for.”

“A moment, please Captain.  Captain Sarfin, these parchments detail the exhaustive experiments carried out.  Their failure, along with the reasons for it, and the disposal of the Ord.  Your honor will notice the highlighted passage where one spine was reported as lost overboard.  Note also the witness statements that Mister Morgu was involved in that loss.”  Sarfin took the new batch of parchment and spent a few minutes reviewing it with Captain Sula.

Sula looked up grimly and said, “You are admitting to the plot against Kurin?”

“We are not done yet, Captain Sula,” said Kurin softly.

“If you wish to spare his life, I hope not,” Sula said dourly.

“Captain Barad, please continue,” Kurin asked.

“Even I did not know who Mister Morgu recruited or how he did it.  I left those details to him.  I did not know about the making of the deadly awl in that sewing kit.  Chena’s death came as complete shock.  It was a totally unnecessary test, and done without my consent.  When Merk, Master Selked’s apprentice was found dead the next morning, I guessed who had made the deadly tool but still did not know what it was.  I just let the normal course of events conceal the cause of his death.

“I stopped by the sickbay to look in on Tanlin’s condition and there I found Kurti being put on the invalid list for a resistant lung parasite infection.  I took her in as my cabin- girl because it was the lightest duty on the ship and she,” Captain Barad paused and his shoulders shook as he appeared to fight for control, “hated being useless.  She began by mending things in my cabin.  Apparently, she approached Master Selked for a sewing kit and got the deadly kit in all innocence.  She never needed the awl for the light work that she did.

“We kept her illness secret from the crew and hoped that one of the treatments would take.  I’d have married her were it possible but she was Grandalor born and the Law is clear.  Besides, we had no time.  Her fatal attack had a sudden onset, as some parasite bored into a vein and her lungs began to fill with blood.

“The whale sang for her, leaping and calling for hours.  Tanlin woke as Kurti failed.  Tanlin had lost all memory of the people of the Arrakan fleet.  She remembers all else.  Blind Mecat says that those memories are gone forever.  In every other respect she is whole.  At first, because of the great similarity between them, I looked in on her progress and tried to help.  It was swiftly apparent that she and Kurti were nothing alike, still, as I worked with her, I fell in love again.  All of this time the kit sat on the shelf in my cabin, and neither I nor any other guessed it’s deadly nature.

“I had never thought to love anybody after Teralat died of fire cough twenty five Gatherings ago.  Suddenly, I fell in love twice in quick succession.  There was no impediment to marrying the Lady Tanlin, and I did so.  We had an Arrakan style Wedding Feast at the Longin food booth.  That is crucial to understanding what followed.

“This is the part that the Court will find hard to accept.  I was bothered by the plot to harm Kurin.  It preyed on me.  I took my wife and Master Selked into my confidence about the scheme.  Each had serious and different objections.  

“Master Selked pointed out that my hate was for Captain Mord Halyn, not the Longin.  Further, I was holding a grudge for the one time that I had bested him completely.  No real basis for a grievance.

“Lady Tanlin’s objection was likewise fundamental.  Captain Mord and Kurin were both invited guests at our Announcement Feast.  Under Arrakan Law and Custom, all grudges between invited guests and the celebrators die at such a feast.  If they do not, all the vows taken at the feast are forsworn and the couple must part and can never marry each other again.

“To keep my wife, I declared the plot done and issued Logged orders that if the deadly spine be found, it must be turned in to Doctor Corin for destruction.  Any other use being mutiny.  Remember, I did not know that it had been made into a sewing tool.

“During this same time, the sorry mess with Silor Elon was playing itself out.  I felt that I owed him an assist because he was my eyes and ears aboard the Longin for the last five Gatherings.  We went and picked him up.  I was going to send him to the Arrakan fleet, where I do believe he would have done well.  I should have just let him sail away.

“Mister Morgu somehow recruited him.  Morgu did know about the kit but had lost track of it.  He ran a number of audits and inventories of the tool stock, apparently trying to find it.  He finally realized that the kit in my cabin was the only kit not checked and sent Silor to get it.

“When Silor, who had been ordered to stay out of sight, jumped ship with Mister Morgu, Tanlin realized that something was very wrong and came to me in the Captain’s Council.  That was when I left my proxy with Captain Mord.  I was trying to let you all know that my grudge with him was over.

“My whole crew searched the Gathering, trying to find either Mister Morgu, Silor or both.  We failed.  Later, we found that they had hidden inside one of the floats of the Gathering rafts.  The next day, we caught up to them just moments after they had accomplished their goal.

“All that we could do was watch and pray to the Dragons that Kurin had not eaten the poisoned part of her lunch.  When she collapsed into Captain Sula’s arms, we knew that we were doomed.

“Neither myself or my ship are popular.  I was certain that the rush to rid the Naral fleet of us would have little to do with Great Law or fleet Law.  Events have proved me correct.  You have earned your name as Sarfin the Wise and even you failed to see the flaws in what you all did.

“I had arraigned a link up with the Fauline in her Spring Waters.”

Sarfin interrupted with, “They lay a charge of ramming to enforce piracy against you.”

“I know that, your Honor.  It is not true.  You know that they had a hull-secured loan with us.  Due to a survivorship clause in favor of the Naral fleet, that loan is registered in the fleet Archive.  They were over two Gatherings in arrears.  The unpaid interest alone was somewhat over ten thousand Strong Skins.  I also know that they failed to pay their full share tax this Gathering, pleading poverty.

“They gave us a payment of one thousand Strong Skins, two thousand five hundred glue blocks and a small, one and a half ton, Hag.  They had it in their holds during the Gathering where I learned of it from an informant in the Fauline’s crew.  

“They lied to you about inability to pay their share tax.  They also gave us information about the blatantly illegal Edict of Outlawry and the search for us.  In return, we gave them a full quitclaim on the loan.

“At that point, they seized both myself and the Lady Tanlin.  They also attempted an attack on the Grandalor with a prize crew smuggled aboard ostensibly to help load the payment.  Our crew took exception to the attempted capture, took the prize crew prisoner, and rammed the Fauline at an oblique angle with a bowsprit hook-out.  This damaged the main mast’s running and standing rigging, disabling the ship.  After our crew got us back safe aboard, we saw the Coriolis storm coming, so we rendered aid.  We fixed the rigging and some minor hull damage.  

“We did not charge for that.  The price of not doing it would have been a ship and all the lives aboard.  Some things are too costly to leave undone.”

Urson interrupted sarcastically, “So says the most notorious Captain of the whole fleet.  I have known Captain Skua for many Gatherings and I find his account to be far more credible.  It is, after all, only your word against his.”

“We do have three impartial witnesses,” said Kurin calmly.

“They are separate from either ship.  They observed the encounter and are present to testify.”

“Impossible!” snapped Farrol.  “No other vessel was in sight to provide these mythical witnesses!”

“Dark Iren, are you, Blind Mecat and Frath mythical?” Kurin called out lightly.

“The last time that I looked, no.  None of us are mythical,” Dark Iren replied in a voice seemingly too soft for so large a creature.

“A question of fact, not opinion, then,” Kurin said with the surety of one who already knows the answer.  “Did your Orcas report the encounter between the Fauline and the Grandalor to you?”

“Indeed they did, matters of conflict between ships can have major ecological consequences.  Such confrontations are reported in full detail.”

“Did Captain Barad’s account seem substantially true to your reports?” Kurin inquired.

“All of his facts and the order of them are accurate.  My reports were more detailed, of course.”

“Thank you, Dark Iren,” said Kurin and turned to Blind Mecat and Frath. “Blind Mecat, were you accompanying Frath as he was steering the recent Coriolis Storm?”

“Of course, Little Fish.  You know that.  I asked Frath to steer it nearly nine hundred miles out of its planned path in order to have speech with Barad and Tanlin.  I had to be there for two reasons. One I just gave you, the other, and most important, was to ensure that the storm would still meet its ecological goals.”

All of the audience except for Sarfin, Barad and Tanlin were outraged. “Ecological goals!  That storm hit and scattered our fleet!”

Sarfin threw a bucket of icy water on them by calmly asking, “And whose world is it?  Do you really think that Sea manages itself?  These Dragons make it possible for us to live at all.  Trust them.  They actually do know what they’re doing.”

Frath said, “Thank you, Captain Sarfin.  I do try to miss fleets when I can.  Humans are now widespread across the surface of Sea and it is not always possible.  The storms are necessarily big.  Curiously, Tanlin upbraided me for exactly the same thing even though the Naral fleet was trying to hunt her down and kill her.”

“Where were you, during the encounter between the Grandalor and Fauline?” Kurin requested.

“Blind Mecat and I were about twenty yards under the surface, directly beneath the ships,” Frath answered.

“Then you couldn’t have seen or heard what happened aboard either of those ships!” Farrol exclaimed in triumph.

Blind Mecat replied, “Incorrect.  Sight is a limited sense at best.  Our hearing and echolocation are both very precise.  Two echo pings occupying less than one tenth of a second in total are sufficient to locate every object larger than one inch in length on both ships. The same two pings also allow us to count the number of persons, find their location, orientation, state of health and when they last ate. This includes those up in the rigging.”  She regarded Farrol for an unnervingly sightless second and added, “We’re not just big, we are very good predators.”

TO BE CONTINUED

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Return to the Master Story Index

Return to World of Sea

[ask-de-writer]

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT : World of Sea : Part 77

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

140406 words

copyright 2018

written 2007

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

//////////////

Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions. All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

///////////////////////

New to the story?  Read from the beginning.  PART 1 is here

///////////////////////

Kurin turned to face the pure white Great Sea Dragon by the rail.  “Blind Mecat, you and I talked once about whether I could trust what Captain Barad told me.  What did you tell me about trusting him?”

Blind Mecat’s mellow voice answered, “I said that you would have to make up your own mind, Little Fish.  I also said that I trusted him.”

“Thank you, Cat.  Now, Captain Barad, why did you get the Ord and whose idea was it?”

“Mister Morgu first approached me about getting revenge on the Longin about nine Wohans ago.  The Ord was to be the agency of that revenge.  The plot was to kill you as a covert means of striking at the Longin. The circle of the conspiracy was very small.  Only myself, Mister Morgu and one other, chosen by Mister Morgu and unknown to me, actually knew the real reason for obtaining it.

“Everybody else believed that it was for the fishing experiments that it actually was used for.”

“A moment, please Captain.  Captain Sarfin, these parchments detail the exhaustive experiments carried out.  Their failure, along with the reasons for it, and the disposal of the Ord.  Your honor will notice the highlighted passage where one spine was reported as lost overboard.  Note also the witness statements that Mister Morgu was involved in that loss.”  Sarfin took the new batch of parchment and spent a few minutes reviewing it with Captain Sula.

Sula looked up grimly and said, “You are admitting to the plot against Kurin?”

“We are not done yet, Captain Sula,” said Kurin softly.

“If you wish to spare his life, I hope not,” Sula said dourly.

“Captain Barad, please continue,” Kurin asked.

“Even I did not know who Mister Morgu recruited or how he did it.  I left those details to him.  I did not know about the making of the deadly awl in that sewing kit.  Chena’s death came as complete shock.  It was a totally unnecessary test, and done without my consent.  When Merk, Master Selked’s apprentice was found dead the next morning, I guessed who had made the deadly tool but still did not know what it was.  I just let the normal course of events conceal the cause of his death.

“I stopped by the sickbay to look in on Tanlin’s condition and there I found Kurti being put on the invalid list for a resistant lung parasite infection.  I took her in as my cabin- girl because it was the lightest duty on the ship and she,” Captain Barad paused and his shoulders shook as he appeared to fight for control, “hated being useless.  She began by mending things in my cabin.  Apparently, she approached Master Selked for a sewing kit and got the deadly kit in all innocence.  She never needed the awl for the light work that she did.

“We kept her illness secret from the crew and hoped that one of the treatments would take.  I’d have married her were it possible but she was Grandalor born and the Law is clear.  Besides, we had no time.  Her fatal attack had a sudden onset, as some parasite bored into a vein and her lungs began to fill with blood.

“The whale sang for her, leaping and calling for hours.  Tanlin woke as Kurti failed.  Tanlin had lost all memory of the people of the Arrakan fleet.  She remembers all else.  Blind Mecat says that those memories are gone forever.  In every other respect she is whole.  At first, because of the great similarity between them, I looked in on her progress and tried to help.  It was swiftly apparent that she and Kurti were nothing alike, still, as I worked with her, I fell in love again.  All of this time the kit sat on the shelf in my cabin, and neither I nor any other guessed it’s deadly nature.

“I had never thought to love anybody after Teralat died of fire cough twenty five Gatherings ago.  Suddenly, I fell in love twice in quick succession.  There was no impediment to marrying the Lady Tanlin, and I did so.  We had an Arrakan style Wedding Feast at the Longin food booth.  That is crucial to understanding what followed.

“This is the part that the Court will find hard to accept.  I was bothered by the plot to harm Kurin.  It preyed on me.  I took my wife and Master Selked into my confidence about the scheme.  Each had serious and different objections.  

“Master Selked pointed out that my hate was for Captain Mord Halyn, not the Longin.  Further, I was holding a grudge for the one time that I had bested him completely.  No real basis for a grievance.

“Lady Tanlin’s objection was likewise fundamental.  Captain Mord and Kurin were both invited guests at our Announcement Feast.  Under Arrakan Law and Custom, all grudges between invited guests and the celebrators die at such a feast.  If they do not, all the vows taken at the feast are forsworn and the couple must part and can never marry each other again.

“To keep my wife, I declared the plot done and issued Logged orders that if the deadly spine be found, it must be turned in to Doctor Corin for destruction.  Any other use being mutiny.  Remember, I did not know that it had been made into a sewing tool.

“During this same time, the sorry mess with Silor Elon was playing itself out.  I felt that I owed him an assist because he was my eyes and ears aboard the Longin for the last five Gatherings.  We went and picked him up.  I was going to send him to the Arrakan fleet, where I do believe he would have done well.  I should have just let him sail away.

“Mister Morgu somehow recruited him.  Morgu did know about the kit but had lost track of it.  He ran a number of audits and inventories of the tool stock, apparently trying to find it.  He finally realized that the kit in my cabin was the only kit not checked and sent Silor to get it.

“When Silor, who had been ordered to stay out of sight, jumped ship with Mister Morgu, Tanlin realized that something was very wrong and came to me in the Captain’s Council.  That was when I left my proxy with Captain Mord.  I was trying to let you all know that my grudge with him was over.

“My whole crew searched the Gathering, trying to find either Mister Morgu, Silor or both.  We failed.  Later, we found that they had hidden inside one of the floats of the Gathering rafts.  The next day, we caught up to them just moments after they had accomplished their goal.

“All that we could do was watch and pray to the Dragons that Kurin had not eaten the poisoned part of her lunch.  When she collapsed into Captain Sula’s arms, we knew that we were doomed.

“Neither myself or my ship are popular.  I was certain that the rush to rid the Naral fleet of us would have little to do with Great Law or fleet Law.  Events have proved me correct.  You have earned your name as Sarfin the Wise and even you failed to see the flaws in what you all did.

“I had arraigned a link up with the Fauline in her Spring Waters.”

Sarfin interrupted with, “They lay a charge of ramming to enforce piracy against you.”

“I know that, your Honor.  It is not true.  You know that they had a hull-secured loan with us.  Due to a survivorship clause in favor of the Naral fleet, that loan is registered in the fleet Archive.  They were over two Gatherings in arrears.  The unpaid interest alone was somewhat over ten thousand Strong Skins.  I also know that they failed to pay their full share tax this Gathering, pleading poverty.

“They gave us a payment of one thousand Strong Skins, two thousand five hundred glue blocks and a small, one and a half ton, Hag.  They had it in their holds during the Gathering where I learned of it from an informant in the Fauline’s crew.  

“They lied to you about inability to pay their share tax.  They also gave us information about the blatantly illegal Edict of Outlawry and the search for us.  In return, we gave them a full quitclaim on the loan.

“At that point, they seized both myself and the Lady Tanlin.  They also attempted an attack on the Grandalor with a prize crew smuggled aboard ostensibly to help load the payment.  Our crew took exception to the attempted capture, took the prize crew prisoner, and rammed the Fauline at an oblique angle with a bowsprit hook-out.  This damaged the main mast’s running and standing rigging, disabling the ship.  After our crew got us back safe aboard, we saw the Coriolis storm coming, so we rendered aid.  We fixed the rigging and some minor hull damage.  

“We did not charge for that.  The price of not doing it would have been a ship and all the lives aboard.  Some things are too costly to leave undone.”

Urson interrupted sarcastically, “So says the most notorious Captain of the whole fleet.  I have known Captain Skua for many Gatherings and I find his account to be far more credible.  It is, after all, only your word against his.”

“We do have three impartial witnesses,” said Kurin calmly.

“They are separate from either ship.  They observed the encounter and are present to testify.”

“Impossible!” snapped Farrol.  “No other vessel was in sight to provide these mythical witnesses!”

“Dark Iren, are you, Blind Mecat and Frath mythical?” Kurin called out lightly.

“The last time that I looked, no.  None of us are mythical,” Dark Iren replied in a voice seemingly too soft for so large a creature.

“A question of fact, not opinion, then,” Kurin said with the surety of one who already knows the answer.  “Did your Orcas report the encounter between the Fauline and the Grandalor to you?”

“Indeed they did, matters of conflict between ships can have major ecological consequences.  Such confrontations are reported in full detail.”

“Did Captain Barad’s account seem substantially true to your reports?” Kurin inquired.

“All of his facts and the order of them are accurate.  My reports were more detailed, of course.”

“Thank you, Dark Iren,” said Kurin and turned to Blind Mecat and Frath. “Blind Mecat, were you accompanying Frath as he was steering the recent Coriolis Storm?”

“Of course, Little Fish.  You know that.  I asked Frath to steer it nearly nine hundred miles out of its planned path in order to have speech with Barad and Tanlin.  I had to be there for two reasons. One I just gave you, the other, and most important, was to ensure that the storm would still meet its ecological goals.”

All of the audience except for Sarfin, Barad and Tanlin were outraged. “Ecological goals!  That storm hit and scattered our fleet!”

Sarfin threw a bucket of icy water on them by calmly asking, “And whose world is it?  Do you really think that Sea manages itself?  These Dragons make it possible for us to live at all.  Trust them.  They actually do know what they’re doing.”

Frath said, “Thank you, Captain Sarfin.  I do try to miss fleets when I can.  Humans are now widespread across the surface of Sea and it is not always possible.  The storms are necessarily big.  Curiously, Tanlin upbraided me for exactly the same thing even though the Naral fleet was trying to hunt her down and kill her.”

“Where were you, during the encounter between the Grandalor and Fauline?” Kurin requested.

“Blind Mecat and I were about twenty yards under the surface, directly beneath the ships,” Frath answered.

“Then you couldn’t have seen or heard what happened aboard either of those ships!” Farrol exclaimed in triumph.

Blind Mecat replied, “Incorrect.  Sight is a limited sense at best.  Our hearing and echolocation are both very precise.  Two echo pings occupying less than one tenth of a second in total are sufficient to locate every object larger than one inch in length on both ships. The same two pings also allow us to count the number of persons, find their location, orientation, state of health and when they last ate. This includes those up in the rigging.”  She regarded Farrol for an unnervingly sightless second and added, “We’re not just big, we are very good predators.”

TO BE CONTINUED

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