SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

The ship touched down and the whole of her shuddered once as the weight came to rest, the great wings folding in one after another until the roar dropped back to a hum.

Alfred walked him as far as the head of the bridge and not a step past it.

”Right. Off with you, before I change my mind and keep you for ballast.” He jerked his chin at the ground. ”Some of us have a home to get back to that isn’t a heap of black rock stuffed with relatives who’d sell one another for firewood.”

”You have a ship and a bad back,” Trafalgar said. ”That’s not a home. That’s a hospice with wings.”

”It’s got better company than yours.” Alfred’s mouth twitched. ”Go on. Your women are freezing out there waiting on you, and if one of them catches a chill standing about, I’m the one you’ll pin it on.”

”I’d find a way, yes.” Trafalgar stepped onto the bridge. ”Try not to fly into a mountain going home, old man. I’ve grown attached to the ship.”

”Not the pilot?”

”The ship, I said.”

Alfred barked a laugh and thumped the frame twice with the flat of his hand, which was about as close as the two of them came to anything softer, and that was the whole of it. Trafalgar went down alone.

Behind him the great vessel drew its bridge back in, lifted off the flattened grass in a wash of torn snow, and climbed away into the grey until the hum of her thinned out to nothing.

He turned, and the cold lost some of its bite, because Mayla and Cynthia were already crossing the yard to him.

Years ago this yard had been a windswept stretch of nothing with a half-empty house behind it, and he a stranger to the people who’d come with the land. Now the sight of the two of them walking out to meet him did something to his chest that the whole of the Morgain castle, for all its blood and history, had never once managed.

Mayla reached him first, unhurried the way she did most things, both hands folded over the swell of her belly, her smile doing more to warm the yard than the thin sun overhead ever could. Cynthia came a stride behind, arms crossed against the chill, taking him in head to foot the way she’d look over a shipment for damage.

”You didn’t want to say goodbye to Alfred?” Mayla asked, glancing past his shoulder at the shrinking ship. ”I’d have liked to see him. It’s been an age.”

”He was in a hurry, he said.” Trafalgar lifted a shoulder. ”Been away from his own bed longer than he can stand, and dropping me was the last thing on his list before it. You know how he gets about that ship.”

”I know how he gets about most things.” Her smile pulled wider.

He bent and kissed her, unhurried as well, one hand coming to rest a moment over hers on the curve of her belly. Then he turned and kissed Cynthia, who allowed it and handed him a flat look afterward with a great deal of fondness hidden at the bottom of it.

”You look terrible,” Cynthia informed him. ”Whatever they had you doing out there, it didn’t agree with you.”

”I missed you too.”

”I mean it. You’ve lost weight, and there’s a look about you that wasn’t on you when you left.” Her eyes ran over him once more, practical and not remotely fooled. ”We’ll feed that out of you. Later. First, tell me you came home in one piece under all of it.”

”One piece. More or less.” He turned back to Mayla, and his voice dropped into something gentler without him choosing it. ”And you? How’s the little tyrant behaving?”

Mayla’s hand moved once across her stomach, slow. ”Restless. Kicks like it’s already halfway through an argument with someone.” Her eyes went soft on him. ”Better now that you’re in front of me and not on some mountain I can’t reach.”

”He gets the arguing from his mother.”

”He gets it from both of us, and you know it.”

Cynthia let them have the moment before cutting back in the way she did when there was news to move and no reason to sit on it. ”Bartholomew sent word. He’s coming out tomorrow.”

That pulled Trafalgar’s attention around. ”Is he now. How’s he holding up?”

”Better than any of us guessed, honestly.” A dry note slid into her voice. ”Whatever it was you set him to, it seems to be taking. He’s found his feet at the Academy faster than he ever found them as a student. Turns out the boy who couldn’t survive three girls at a food stall makes a decent instructor once there’s a lectern between him and the attention.”

Trafalgar’s mouth curved. He could picture it far too well. ”Good. He needed something that was his.”

”We can hear the rest from him in person tomorrow.” He looked up at the sky, empty now, the cold pressing in properly, and back at the two of them. ”Come on. Inside, both of you, before Cynthia turns out right about someone catching a chill and I never hear the end of it.” Something behind his ribs came loose that had been fisted tight for weeks. ”And leave dinner to me tonight. I’ve had my fill of ship food and castle food to last the year, and I want to make something with my own hands for once.”

Mayla’s brows rose, pleased and faintly wary at the same time. ”You’re cooking?”

”Yeah, I’m cooking today.”

”The last time you cooked, Cynthia opened three windows.”

”The last time I cooked, I was distracted.” He was already turning toward the warm gold of the mansion windows, one hand finding the small of Mayla’s back to guide her out of the cold. ”Tonight I’m not.”

Whatever waited for him past tonight, the visitor in the morning and the plots turning in the dark and the training that was coming to break whatever the mine had left standing, all of it could keep until the sun came up. Tonight was his. He had bled enough to earn one evening of it.