The Storyteller: The Monster Hunter's Tale

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Fifth Birthday

The construction of the jetty was finally underway when Tu rowed up for her sixth visit. Tu’s gold from two years ago had been a major talking point in Jita. There was enough to buy a jetty and labour, certainly, but should they buy better wood to make the jetty last longer but risk building it themselves? Or should they buy the same wood that the other small towns used and hire people who knew what they were doing? Finally, shortly after Tu’s last visit when the captain had expressed disappointment at the lack of progress, Sula had made the decision for them. They purchased wood from Llayad and labour from Ryas to build it properly, though everyone in the village helped out.

‘Impressive,’ Tu allowed, standing with hands on hips as she surveyed the huge wooden posts sticking in two neat rows out into the bay.

Sen and Kaiji beamed.

‘We helped!’ Sen chirped. ‘We were stirring up the, um, the slushy stuff that makes the posts not fall over.’

‘The cementer,’ Kaiji supplied, knowledgeable. ‘Papa says you can bring the Horizons right up to it next year! And he says we can go on board if you let us. So, can we? Can we go on board?’

‘Please?’ Sen pleaded.

‘Pleeease?’

Tu laughed aloud. ‘Of course! That was my plan all along,’ she said with a wink.

‘Yaaay!’ Sen linked hands with her friend and danced around in a circle with her. ‘Come on, let’s tell Sula.’ And away they ran up the beach to where Sula was overseeing progress.

‘Sula! Sula! Tu said we can go on the Horizons when it docks next year!’

‘Can we, please, Mama?’

Sula folded her arms and rested a shoulder against one of the pylons. She squinted over their heads into the sun at the captain sauntering up behind them.

‘Are you ready to take Sen, then?’ she asked, and Sen’s heart skipped a beat.

Tu shook her head. ‘Not yet, just while we’re docked.’

Sula’s squint turned into a hard glare. ‘Why not?’

Sen chewed her bottom lip in the awkward silence this question created and she looked longingly out to the ship in the bay.

Sula shrugged and shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘Horizons is a more… dangerous ship than most.’ She gave a curious frown. ‘Why? Are you so keen to be rid of her?’

‘Of course not,’ Sula snapped, stiffening at the mere suggestion. ‘You say she’s trueborn—’

‘Because she is.’

‘—and yet she’s not set foot on a deck since she was a week old. I want her to have a life. However much gold and pearls you pour into this village, we’ll never be even half as profitable as the Horizons. She was already born on your deck, so she was always going to live there. Why not take her back? You want a life for her, too, don’t you?’

Tu’s face had darkened in a way that made Sen just a little bit scared. When Kaiji reached for her hand, she gladly gripped it back.

Sula pushed herself away from the pylon and took a step towards the captain. Tu’s jaw clenched, but she said nothing, only gave her head a tiny shake in warning.

‘I’ve heard some things while the trades have been here,’ Sula went on. ‘None of them will outright say anything about you. I don’t know if they’re scared of you or if they admire you, or if it’s a bit of both. But who drops a full bag of pearls on a random stranger the first time they meet? Who just happens to find one of the biggest gold nuggets you’ve ever laid eyes on just lying in a cave, and then gives it away to a bastard fishing village with no future? Sen is a trueborn daughter of your ship, and yet you won’t take her.’

Sen stared wide-eyed up at the captain. She had never seen Tu angry before, and she knew she was seeing it now.

‘Who are you?’ Sula demanded. ‘What do you want from us?’

Tu flicked her eyes down to the children and visibly softened. She took a deep breath and slowly released it before speaking. ‘I know what’s in your head, Sula, and you’re wrong. On my home ship, Tranquilo, I was a treasure hunter, as I said. We mostly operated around Tisadez, sometimes trading with the locals, other times seeking the gold or gems ourselves. Half of it, of course, went back in taxes to Ryas—though my father, Hask, was a slightly dodgy captain and only went to pay them every two years instead of every year. I don’t think we were ever given a black spot on the tax roll, but I’m sure we ran it as close as Father could run it. Anyway, the rest of the treasure we would take to wherever we wanted to trade it—upstream in Raykin to upgrade rusted steel, into Llayad to buy wood to repair the ship, or straight back to mainland Kazin for an indulgent week of reward.’

‘So why leave?’ Sula pressed. ‘Sounded like a pretty perfect life.’

Tu shrugged uncomfortably and moved to lean her back against a pylon. ‘I didn’t get on with my family.’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘My father wanted me to follow in his footsteps, so he and my mother, Tiseh, both tried to force me into marriages I didn’t want. When I was sixteen, as soon as we docked in Ryas for the bi-annual tax run, I abandoned ship and signed up with the first crew that would take me: Shōbōsho, and you know how that ended.’

‘Leviathan,’ Sen remembered. The tension seemed to have melted away now that Tu was back in storyteller mode, though Sula still stood with her arms folded in judgement.

‘That’s the one,’ Tu confirmed, then shook her head wistfully. ‘I loved that ship. I was only on board for a year before the leviathan attack, but I learned so much. A monster hunter’s job is to patrol the major shipping routes and make sure they’re safe for the traders and treasure hunters, ships that aren’t equipped to fend off the bigger sea monsters.’

‘Like dragons?’ Kaiji guessed. The dragon story had been her favourite of all the stories Tu had told them. She often told it back to Sen when they were going to sleep at night.

‘Surprisingly, never saw any sea dragons,’ Tu said with a shrug. ‘But in just that one year we hunted down two megalodons, dozens of great white sharks, five giant squid and even a kraken. I wasn’t strong enough yet to load or fire the harpoon, but I was good at aiming them. We reeled them in, killed them and salvaged their skulls to take back to Ryas as proof we’d killed them. It was a strange feeling, being paid by Ryas every year instead of paying them. I liked to pretend it was all Tranquilo’s earnings going straight back to us. Then the leviathan came and that was the sad end of Shōbōsho.’

Sen swallowed. ‘Is the leviathan still out there?’

Tu gave a toothy grin. ‘That beast was the first target for my new ship, the Ruby. It was a monster hunter, too, and a good twice the size of Shōbōsho. The captain made it her mission, so we sailed straight back to Ryas, gathered a whole fleet of tax-funded ships and headed back out to the place we had seen it last.’

‘And you killed it?’ Sen squeaked, hopefully.

Tu’s toothy grin spread. ‘We threw the greatest harpoons at it, all covered in jellyfish and octopus venom, launched balls of flaming pitch at its face, and yelled the foulest and rudest of insults at it. And we killed it.’ She flexed her arms. ‘My proudest moment at sea. It took us a full day to hack its head off, but we managed it and tied it to the back of three ships, Ruby in the lead then sailed triumphantly back into Ryas.’

Sen clapped and jumped excitedly. ‘Take that, leviathan!’

Tu grinned dangerously. ‘You don’t take on Captain Tu without expecting consequences,’ she said with a wink.

‘But you weren’t captain yet,’ Sula interrupted.

Tu turned her grin on Sula. ‘Not yet. I was on Ruby for eleven years, and I was saving my tax-earned coin that whole time. I indulge a little now, but like I say, I feel I’ve earned it. Six years ago, I became captain of my very own ship, with my very own crew, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.’ She spread her arms expansively and looked proudly out to her ship. ‘I already have the world.’

‘So, you’re still a monster hunter, then?’ Sula pressed.

‘Still a hunter,’ Tu confirmed with a nod, then crouched down to Sen’s level. ‘Which is why I just don’t feel safe taking you on board until you’re big and strong. You understand that, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Sen agreed, though she wasn’t happy about it. ‘The sea is scary.’

‘It is, and even scarier when you’re actively chasing the things that make it scary.’ She glanced up, wordlessly, at Sula.

Sula let out a breath, brow still creased in a frown. ‘Why not just tell us that before? Why wait five years to tell us what you do?’

‘Trying to keep my stories child-friendly,’ Tu said, straightening with a shrug, then she ruffled Sen’s hair. ‘Let her have a gentler childhood before throwing her to the sea. In any case, she seems to have made quite a bond with you and your family, and I don’t want to break that before she’s ready.’

‘Now, that much is certainly true,’ Sula agreed quietly. ‘But I still don’t entirely trust you. What about what the trades have been saying? Or not saying, more to the point. You’re only young. You’ve only been a captain for six years, but suffice to say your name carries weight. Last week, one of the workers said if we’d only dropped your name when we were buying the wood, we could have gotten the best jetty wood around.’

Tu smiled and ducked her head modestly. ‘That’s true enough. But trust me when I tell you, you three know far more of my story than any for whom my name carries weight. To them it’s just my reputation.’ She smiled, somehow warm and yet just a tiny bit dangerous. ‘But you know me better than that.’

STUFF

o Sula y u no trust the impossibly rich sea captain?

o Weekend is catchup time. EXPECT INCOMING.

Comments

[drazzi.livejournal.com]

Good on you Sula, take that whole village under your control.

Sen wants to explore the ship as much as bb!Tyb wanted to explore the Drac. But she had to wait longer, poor girl XD

Uuuuuhh.... that got awkward :x And the poor little girlies know it.

Megalodons :x Even just a mention, so creepy.

Those patient girls waited a year to hear the end of the leviation story - how long until Sula gets the actual answer to her question-- oh until the end of the chapter :3

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Sula could totally be a captain if she weren't a bastard. She lives vicariously through Sen, now, hoping she'll be a captain in her place.

She got an answer but she's none too happy with it =/