90 Soeland Patrol Ship

After delivering the impatient Eriettan lordling to Calay,
Tavishel was more anxious than ever to prowl the seas for Urecari criminals. As destrar of the isolated island reach, he'd never been fond of big cities. Tavishel craved neither power nor its trappings, and he had already lost everything he'd truly cared about after the gray fever took away his family.

Now he satisfied himself with inflicting pain upon the enemies of Aiden—and the world was full of them. Tavishel had only to sail the open seas until he found a Uraban vessel. He needed someone to blame for the ache inside him, whether or not there was any real connection.

Some of his crew wanted to set course northwest for the Soeland islands, but Tavishel's own reach did little to call him anymore. Drawing a breath of the fine salty breeze, he said, “Two more weeks, lads, then I'll take you home to your wives and families. Just bear with me a little longer. We have Aiden's work to do.”

The ships caught the strong southerly current that took them back toward the Edict Line. The hiss and whisper of waves split along the bow and rushed past the sides of the ship. The destrar studied his charts, taking position measurements so he could see when they crossed the invisible boundary. Though King Korastine and Soldan-Shah Imir had sealed the agreement long ago by applying their own blood to the wood of the ancient Arkship, Tavishel did not feel bound by those terms, because the Urecari had broken them so many times.

Over the next week, hunting in enemy territory, Tavishel and his crew seized three more Urecari boats. The prisoners were kept in chains belowdecks, fed fish offal, and given tepid water to drink. The Urabans grimaced in disgust at the fare, but they slurped it down when they grew hungry enough. It was a waste just to kill all of the enemy captives; better to send them to the work camps in Alamont or Corag, where they could make amends.

Tavishel returned to the Tierran coast with his captured fishing boats and miserable prisoners. At the harbor town of Windcatch, they herded the weakened captives to handlers who would escort them inland to the nearest camp. He exchanged the foreign vessels for all the supplies he needed. Though the harbormaster kept an account for him, the Soeland destrar knew that no good Aidenist would ever turn down reasonable requests for supplies or materials. If he and his crew had kept the booty for themselves, they would have been wealthy men, but Soelanders did not do this work to acquire fine objects or gold; their treasure consisted of performing good deeds in the name of Aiden.

While docked in Windcatch, he gave his crew a day of shore leave and rest, but Tavishel had no taste for the local kelp liquor and no curiosity for news or gossip. With the afternoon to himself, he wandered into the hills and found the village cemetery.

Tavishel stood among the markers, looking at the wooden posts carved with names and symbolic fishhooks. All these people… and so many slain by vile criminals who followed Urec's Log. The destrar understood Windcatch's pain and loss all too well. Surveying this hillside with all its grave markers, he was reminded of a stony windswept cemetery in his own home of Farport on the main island of Soeland Reach.

Because the scattered shores of Soeland were bleak, and the weather cold and difficult, Tavishel's brand of Aidenism was darker than the more forgiving beliefs preached by soft presters in wealthy towns. He himself was a religious man and had taught himself to read the entire Book of Aiden.

His beard, once dark and magnificent, was now the gray of woodsmoke. Tavishel used a wide, very sharp gutting knife to shave his scalp, so that no one knew his hair had begun to thin. He remembered that he hadn't wanted to look old for his wife, but she hadn't minded either way. He should have paid more attention to her….

In times past, he had spent much of the year captaining a whaling ship. Each season, he said goodbye to his wife and children and returned months later with a hold full of oil and preserved whale meat. One year, though, not long after the burning of Ishalem, Tavishel came home from his voyage to find his wife and children all dead from an epidemic of gray fever. The sickness had killed a quarter of the villagers on the main island, and the fires from burning fever-houses had stained the sky. Farport itself looked like a ghost town.

Tavishel had arrived four weeks too late to say farewell. His entire family had perished. He hadn't seen them die, hadn't been able to read aloud from the Book of Aiden as their bound and weighted bodies were given back to the sea with the outgoing tide.

Stone cairns outside of Farport commemorated those who had died—their own cemetery, just like this one in Windcatch. The gray fever was an impersonal thing, sweeping in and killing good and bad alike, Aidenist or Urecari, wherever it touched. That hadn't seemed fair to him. Tavishel needed someone to blame, so now he took out his anger by hunting down the followers of Urec, making them pay because they must have invoked the wrath of Ondun.

For so many years, Tavishel's ships had chased, caught, and killed whales; now he hunted Urecari vessels. Blood still flowed, but there was a difference: the whales had done nothing to deserve their deaths, but all Urecari most certainly had.

Seeing the sun near the horizon, Tavishel walked away from the cemetery. Since he was the Soeland destrar, he had dutifully taken another wife back in Farport, but had sired no further children. That part of his life was over.

He felt very little love inside himself, not for his second wife, not for the Soeland people he ruled, not for anyone. But with the continuing war and his mission to protect Tierra, Destrar Tavishel did feel a kind of peace, because he knew he was doing the right thing. He vowed to continue his work. He wanted to sail again, soon.