Page 2 of Prima (After the End #8)
Chapter One
The present (ten years later)
At the edge of western Pacific Ocean, about twenty-one degrees north of the equator
The October sky is guava pink. Where the edge of the sun dips into the horizon, the sea glows like honey.
The golden hour, the term pops into Ren’s head.
He stops scrubbing blood from his hands and stares into the distance.
Some sunsets have this power over him. When the sky is that rare shade above a radiant sea…
it’s as if his mind latches onto a three-note refrain from a song the rest of which he can no longer recall, knowing only that it’s beautiful and that he’d once, long ago, heard it in its entirety.
But there’s no time to sift through his fragmented memories.
He finishes washing his hands, tacks his boat to windward and trims the sails.
Fatigue saps him—he’s barely slept since he passed Dragon Gate, two enormous concrete pylons that somehow remain standing, even though the oil platforms they once supported rusted to nothing centuries ago.
No vessel longer than ten meters, the Sea Witch’s edict decreed, and no weapons of war.
It is perilous, cutting through the Disputed Waters in such a small, undefended craft.
He exhausted most of his supply of tranquilizer darts the night before on tiger sharks dead set on ramming The Blue Sampan.
And now he’s dulled the blades on his vambraces against a crazed gaggle of sea serpents that threw themselves over the railing.
Nobody—or at least nobody south of Dragon Gate—knows why the creatures of the Disputed Waters are so territorial.
In Dawan it is simply considered part of the Sea Witch’s powers, that her domain is defended by the ocean itself.
He suspects something more biochemical, but he’s not a trained biochemist.
He cleans and sharpens the blades of each vambrace in turn. With a snap of his wrist, the still-extended blades of the right vambrace retract into the metal plates that cover the back of his hand. With another snap, the plates themselves slide down to his forearm to allow his hand free motion.
Wearily, he rinses sea serpent blood from the deck.
Does he have time to take a nap? He can sit down and close his eyes for a few minutes.
He almost does that, but something catches at the periphery of his vision.
He turns his head. Is that a…. He squints.
It is, a primitive-looking log raft, with a small, broken mast.
The Sea Witch’s emissary.
Nobody—or, again, nobody south of Dragon Gate—is entirely sure what games New Ryukyu is playing with Dawan, but two out of three factions have interpreted the news in a similar manner: The Sea Witch is not holding auditions to select a husband from among the sons of the Potentate, but to choose a side to back in the Dawani struggle for succession.
Ren used to have a very different assessment of the situation. But now…
Now he’s less sure.
Two of the three factions have already sent their candidates north. And those candidates subsequently returned—or were returned—to Dragon Gate. Were they rejected? Or will the Sea Witch refrain from making a decision until she has looked over the whole lot?
With no visible means of locomotion, the raft glides across the open sea. As it approaches, silhouetted against the line where the sea meets the painted sky, he feels a strange distress, an asphyxiating weight upon his chest.
He grips the railing, breathing hard.
The next moment he is jolted out of his irrational emotions: There’s someone on the raft and she’s very nearly naked.
His reaction is not marvel, glee, or even surprise, but a biting suspicion. Is this how one fails to secure the Sea Witch’s aid? By succumbing to the charms of her envoy?
But why is there this envoy in the first place?
He sails near the raft without slowing down and throws a bowline on a bight around the mast. The mast is broken at waist-height but the boom is still rigged to the mast and the tackle holds the loop of the bight securely enough for him to tow the raft behind The Blue Sampan.
This close, he can’t help but see the woman, her face buried in a folded arm, her long hair spread over her shoulders and spilling overboard. She is naked except for a bunched-up sarong draped with extreme precision—and artistry—over her bottom. The flame-colored fabric scorches in the setting sun.
The expanse of bare, lovely skin, the deep indentation of her waist, those long, smooth legs, and the sarong that reveals more than it conceals…
A tableau that could serve as the cover of a pornographic novel.
He, with his monk-like existence and a wealth of experience fending off female advances, should have viewed any number of beautiful, uninhibited nymphs with equanimity.
He should have experienced even a twinge of aloof compassion: It can’t be all that comfortable holding that seductive pose, her weight pressed into rough logs.
Polite detachment eludes him. His body clenches with a desperate hunger, the kind that sometimes awakens him at night, a need that no solo release can ever fully banish.
A moment passes before he can speak. “Madam, are you in need of aid?”
She extends a hand and pulls the sarong higher. He averts his gaze as she sits up and ties the sarong around her torso.
“I’m quite all right,” she answers.
He is wary of looking at her again—his abrupt, needless reaction still reverberates—but he must study her as both a potential adversary and a potential ally.
She continues to fuss with the draping of the sarong. Her black hair, falling in a cascade, obscures her lowered face. She has not bothered to make her hair matted and clumped, like that of an actual shipwrecked person. No, it is clean and smooth.
After one last shake of the edges of the sarong, the woman tucks her hair behind one ear and looks up.
Doe eyes, pillowy lips, a faint flush of pink upon her cheeks—he hasn’t even computed whether she’s beautiful, conventionally or otherwise, before the inside of his head erupts like an entire city descending into a rock-throwing, shop-sacking riot.
He can’t move; he can’t do anything but stare mutely as the stranger on the raft rises to her feet, her eyes never leaving his.
He doesn’t like to draw notice and has always been alarmed by prolonged attention from any quarter.
But her regard does not cause dismay; it merely makes him feel like a submarine caught between too many depth charges.
And somehow he can’t seem to care that he has entered currents that can crush him like a tin can.
They do not speak but continue to observe each other, her gaze extraordinarily solemn.
Abruptly she turns her head so that her hair once again obscures her features. Does he hear droplets falling onto her raft? He does, but surely that must be seawater trickling down from the ends of her hair and not—
She flings back her hair, sets one foot slightly behind the other, bends a little at the knee, and leaps the four meters that separate her raft and the stern of his boat, landing with barely a sound on the deck.
She straightens. They stand nearly nose-to-nose—he’s tall for a man and she’s almost the same height.
Again, an uproar in his head.
Her eyelashes are wet, tiny glistens of moisture that glue individual lashes into long spikes. She lifts her hand, as if she is about to touch him.
And she is beautiful, the haloed, otherworldly beauty of dreams made real and miracles coming to pass.
Her hand, reaching toward him, is narrow-boned, the nails clean and trim. It is not delicate—it has been rope-burned, nicked, and chapped. But it has also been assiduously cared for; most of the marks have faded, and her skin appears soft and fine-grained.
Without realizing it, his own hand comes up.
She takes a step back; her hand drops to her side. “Good evening. I believe I have the pleasure of meeting the nineteenth prince?”
The chaos in his head is ongoing—a melee in every street. But at her distance and formality, something cracks—the strange spell she cast on him, a sweet, profound melancholy that wrapped him up as if deep in a dream.
His hand, still in midair, lowers. He, too, takes a step back, drenched in cold reality: She can conduct herself however she chooses, but for him, the supplicant, there is very little room for error.
“I am Nineteen.” His name does not matter here, only his lineage and rank. “And I have the great fortune of receiving the…”
“Minister plenipotentiary appointed by the Secretariat. Sun is my family name.”
She smiles, revealing round, perfectly symmetrical dimples. Despite his wariness, his heart quakes—enchantment or not, she is breathtaking.
Yet somehow, beauty is not her most striking quality. There is an assurance to her that seems to have nothing to do with the pedigree of her menfolk: She is accustomed to wielding power in her own right. She wears that power lightly, but she wears it without apology or hesitation.
His brother Five has access to newspapers from New Ryukyu and Ren has seen the seven-member Secretariat photographed in the thin broadsheets. Those images conveyed the basic structure of her face but captured nothing of her aura.
Not only an envoy, but someone who, until recently, set course for the entire nation of New Ryukyu? What is going on?
He inclines his head. “May I offer you some refreshments, Lady Sun?”
He expected to be taken up to a larger New Ryukyu vessel but brought along some snacks to serve in the unlikely event that he would have to host anyone in his glorified dinghy.
“Or perhaps you would prefer a wash first, since you were out in the elements?”
She laughs, a delighted sound. Did he dream that moment a minute ago when he thought she’d shed tears? The woman in front of him is full of irrepressible verve.
“I was out in the elements, wasn’t I?” she asks gleefully.
Conspiratorially? Is her question a wink at him?
"Of course you were, my lady,” he murmurs.