Under Fallen Stars - Mel Odom [139]
Jherek's throat hurt when he tried to talk, and his eyes burned from the effort it took to keep his words from breaking. "I can't talk to her about it."
"Why?"
"Because it would hurt the friendship I have with her."
"Is it so bad, young warrior?"
Jherek looked past the paladin, making sure none of the sailors were close by. Troge, the first mate, was making his rounds, checking his night crew and the lanterns that hung from Black Champion's yardarms and masts to light her and to mark her for other ships in the water at night.
Closing his fist over the object in his hand, Jherek pulled up his left sleeve, baring the flaming skull tattoo masked in chains. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.
Glawinn only had to glance at it briefly. "It's the mark of Bloody Falkane the pirate, also called the Salt Wolf."
"Aye," Jlierek said bitterly, "and known widely abroad enough that even someone from the Dalelands has heard of him."
"You're not old enough to have been one of his crew."
"No," Jherek agreed. "My fate is worse than that. I'm his son."
Glawinn didn't let any surprise show. He said, "I never knew he had a son."
"It wasn't," Jherek replied, "something he seemed especially proud of." He rolled his sleeve back down. "And what do you think of me now, Sir Glawinn, when you think back on those nights you've spent training me with a sword? Did you ever think you might be training a pirate captain's son who might someday hold that sword and all that skill at your throat?"›
The paladin's eyes narrowed. "That's not something you'd ever do."
Jherek shook his head. "How can you be so sure about that?"
"I know you."
"You don't know me. The tattoo proves that."
"I know you," Glawinn said, "I admit the tattoo is something of a surprise. Tell me about it."
Standing there gripping the railing, his fist tight about all that he was about to abandon, Jherek did. He told the story of his life on Bunyip, and of what little he knew about his father. He spoke of the sea battles he'd seen, the deaths he'd watched, and the tortures he'd seen inflicted.
And he told of the time when he was twelve and his father had first placed a cutlass in his hand and told him he was going to be part of a boarding crew. He'd escaped in the night and somehow made the long swim in to Cape Velen fourteen miles away.
"When I got to Velen I was starving," Jherek said, "but I couldn't even steal food. Instead, I lived on berries and eggs I found down by the beach. I hired myself out first working the docks to move cargo, then any job I could get in Velen. Eventually I got a job with a shipwright. I love working wood, and I've got a talent for it. That's what got me the job of repairing Madame litaar's roof."
He told the paladin of Madame litaar, how she'd taken in an orphan boy who was sleeping in an extra room in the shipwright's building during the months it took to repair her roof.
"Months?" Glawinn asked. "For a roof?"
"It started out as the roof but it moved on to other things. A new fence. A new porch, front and back. New tables and chairs. Madame litaar has a list of projects she always wants done. I'm a good woodworker."
"You must be."
"I lived in her house for years, and she wouldn't have treated me any better if I'd been her own son." As he said that, Jherek was surprised to find that he still believed that.
"Why did you end up in Baldur's Gate?"
Jherek told him of Breezerunner and the Amnians, and how Madame litaar seemed certain that whatever destiny he had lay in Baldur's Gate. "Even Malorrie thought so."
"Malorrie's the man who taught you your skill with the blade?"
"Actually, Malorrie's a phantom," Jherek replied. So he told of how Malorrie had been the first to really find him living on the beaches. He'd broken his leg a short time after arriving in Velen and it had been the phantom that'd taken care of him. He told of the nights they'd spent in the shipwright's building learning all the combat skills