The Waves’ Heir
“‘There is an ancient Suli saying that goes: “When the Waves’ Heir has crowned himself, the blood of the people shall roam no more.”… It is said, in ink and human story, that the son of the sea shall protect its waters in life and in death.’
I was so excited to take part in this year’s ( and last year’s?) GrishaVerse Reverse Mini-Bang! I got to do two pieces, and work alongside some amazing, very talented people! Speaking of, you should definitely check out the art upon which this fic is based as well as the other fic.
Materialki: @it-takes-acquired-minds (here)
Etherealki: @alonlyfangirl (here)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Full fic under the cut
When the waves rise gray and roar solemnly with storm, it is said that they are calling out for their heir who has yet returned home. It is said, in ink and human story, that the son of the sea shall protect its waters in life and in death. In southern tapestry, his hair flows the same blue as his blood. Up north, his body has the same inky scales known to the Sildroher. In the utmost west, his bronze skin can be formed to ice and rain. In the east, his skin is translucent, his fingers webbed and his head adorned with a living crown of ice, fire and impossible waves. His legacy is one of promise, and one of speculation.
In truth, human whispers cannot mimic the subtle speakings of water. If you ask the waves, they will tell you that their son is not blue of hair nor of blood, and that his body bears no scales, neither can it turn to water of solid or liquid at will. In fact, they may tell you that they do not have a son. Rather, that their heir is no more than a quiet woman, and that the same inky black rumor of her scales in fact flows through her hair, and that the bronze skin that turns to liquid is just simply bronze and flushed red by sun; that the crown upon her head lies, unmade, upon the deep sands of the True Sea, and that her ephemeral legacy is painted upon the seafoam and plastered across the heads of sailors.
The waves, however, have long since stopped responding to the questions asked of them by mortal men, who plague their surfaces with armor of groaning weight and fire of war; who turn the blue crystalline mirror of the horizon into a black and tarry poison. Stories, like many other things, become stuck in this surface of ink, and become unable to travel, or to be told.
There was a time, before, when the waves were not weary with whom they shared their stories, a time when the sands did not heave under the groaning weight of buoyant metal and gunned ships. This was a time of wood tainted with the scent of saline. A time of cloth sails that billowed in the wind, bearing sigils of great history and equal emotion.
One such sigil was that of the blue serpent. Its coiling seasnake bejeweled a deck that heaved under the weight of hefty boot and heftier gold. It carried more money than men; an army of treasure opposing a mere club of sailors.
It was wealth that, most of all, littered the masts and hull. The ship that bore the sigil featured various engravings of its symbol, serpents coiling around each mast until reaching sails of the finest quality. Even the bow of the boat could not escape the serpent’s wrath - a fine figurehead, sculpted in white and washed in blue, slithered in front of the ship, a warning to all those it approached.
The serpent, however, did not calm its fury for man. Below the main deck, in the damp hold that creaked with each rise and fall, laid the serpent’s real treasure: children. They came from all over, east and west of the True Sea. There were tall and short, dark and fair, boys and girls. Yet despite their variety, they all summoned a single likeness: there was darkness in their eyes. The child’s sparkle, the same one that the waves themselves often longed to see, had been thieved and replaced with a dull dimness that belonged to fear. In fear, the hold was silent. Not even shaky breaths nor sobs were risked, lest the serpent be disturbed and provoked to attack.
In truth, the serpent was nothing more than a sigil. His attacks and fury were not his own, but were instead that of the Serpent Captain - his true name long since lost upon the edge of a bloodied cutlass. He was more terrifying than a sea beast ever could be. He was huge, and incredibly strong, with a ruthlessness that manifested itself in the dark rims of his irises, the malicious coils of his oil-black hair and the veins that rose in his neck, upon which there was a vivid tattoo of his ship’s sigil, a serpent inked in deep blue that coiled up his carotid. For not only was he as merciless as a sea serpent, but he was as ugly as one too.
The waves have heard many tales of the Serpent Captain. He has ridden the True Sea for many years, coiling himself around the slaver trade and making illegal business in every country. It is said that the parents of taken children would hear a laugh, hoarse and guttural like that of a cawing gull, in the dead blackness of night, and then their child would be gone. The waves, of course, cannot reach the inland to say if this is true, and more can any of the children, for all who step off the ship have since been silent - or had.
The Serpent Captain imposed silence as a curse and punishment that he himself was the victor of - the dictator, and terrifying tyrant. He did not know that silence was also a weapon. It was a lesson the waves and Saints knew he would learn in good time.
As the serpent cruised southward, unnoticed alongside it rose a second, far humbler ship, whose masts were not adorned with extravagant engravings, nor was its tween deck privy to unfathomable spoils. It appeared from the ocean mist, as though materializing out of the spray of the True Sea itself, and rode with a grace that made it seem one with the water. It stayed steady, but most of all - silent.
It creaked in tandem with the waves, becoming visible to the serpentine crew only when it came so close as to cast a deep shadow over the main deck. At such a proximity, the white lettering on the ship’s side became glaringly visible, just as the sun is in the sky. The Serpent Captain sighed a curse, then muttered with horror the name that gleamed in white cursive: The Wraith.
There was a rush as crew members dashed to ring the ship’s bell, to issue some kind of inescapable warning. The sound of tolling was immediately followed by the splatter of blood against metal. The three had been cut down, and their bodies lay in half upon the sullied deck.
Their screams carried upon the whistling wind, and the echo of the bell soon died out. Silence remained again, and on its depths were the souls of a dozen slavers, whose blood was now ingested by the water.
The Serpent Captain was strong, but he was no fool. And sometimes, the smart thing to do is to turn to cowardice. And so, as the silence filled the captain’s office with a deafening solidify, this man of infamous repute could be found huddling behind a desk that was cluttered with trophies of his exploits: a ring from the hand of a wealthy Kerch merchant whom he’d sold to; a piece of cloth sewn into Zemeni patterns which he’d ripped from the hands of the child of a prominent diplomat; a Shu falcon sculpture. In their ordered rows, they formed a barrier, so that someone looking in would be barred from seeing the fear upon the Serpent Captain’s face.
A barrier of ego and clutter could not defend against the silence for long. After moments, perhaps minutes, the door swung open. Silently, in the doorway, stood a dozen men and women, porting the loose linen and armed with the sharp silver of pirate-sailors. They dragged the Captain by his oil-black hair while he mewled.
Trailing onto the slick red deck, the Serpent Captain was met with dozens more of these sailors. They, as the children, appeared from all corners of the world. They, too, varied in age and origin, though many seemed to bear the branded forearm of slaver indenture - and all bore the glittering jewel of weapon metal. Among them were the cowering, tearful crowds of children, arms clean of branding but littered in cuts and bruises. He recognised none of them, but knew them all to be from the hold, not for the condition of their well-being nor the stench they collectively gave off, but for the mix of rage and fear at which they stared him down with, and for the faint glimmer in their eyes that seemed to be growing brighter each moment.
The Captain’s eyes, however, grew red and teary as he was dragged off his own deck and onto the Wraith, thrown over the slight gap between the two and landing in a dull thud on the neighboring deck.
It is such an odd sensation to face death head on. The Serpent Captain had always known he would have to, perhaps at the hands of some treacherous crew member or some devout chief of law. He had not, in all his years, imagined death to be so young.
Alas, against a wall of golden sunlight, death stood at a small height and gazed upon him with eyes not yet creased by age, but depthened by time. Her hair, young and deep and without a line of stress-gray, covered her shoulder in a loose braid, her face framed by the escaped pieces. Her clothes were thin and light, not at all reminiscent of the thick darkness we may associate with death and its responsibilities. Most notable of death, though, was that she glittered. First, that her face, ears, neck and wrists bore rings of gold. Then, that the rest of her body - her waist, thighs and boots - was adorned with daggers and swords that glittered like diamonds in the sun, casting rainbows across wood and sea better than any jewel.
And though the Serpent Captain may not have thought it then, the waves shall tell you that death was beautiful. That she, too, had a ruthlessness in her, but that it was not the cause of a lack of heart, but rather through an incomprehensible excess of love. Her lips, though now parted and stoic, were well accustomed to the tug of a smile, and that her bronze skin was made radiant by the caress of the naval sun.
The waves shall also tell you that this young girl was not death: she is far more memorable. They shall tell you that she was cunning and courageous and incredibly compassionate, and that they are extremely proud of their daughter. They shall tell you that, as her ship is one with them, she is one with her ship, and that they share a name.
There is an ancient Suli saying that goes: “When the Waves’ Heir has crowned himself, the blood of the people shall roam no more.” Upon The Wraith, it is embodied by a block of wood - attached to a mast - the words engraved in Suli script, lettered in gold, the edges embellished with carved flowers. This block was the last thing the Serpent Captain saw before his throat was slit.
His blood spattered out, creating a road like that of a breaking wave, pooling on the deck as an idle lake. As it sprayed, it seemed to become stagnant in the air, taking humanoid form. All at once, the splatter of blood seemed to form dozens of small human mannequins that collectively cried out in a triumph and power that outweighed nature in a staggering degree.
When the Wraith sheathed her dagger, its shine now dulled by a thick and viscous red, the humanoid blood ceased its shape, and fell to the wood in a silent tsunami.
From then, tales of the Wraith spread far and wide, a greater trade than any merchant or ruler could dream of. The Wraith became a vessel of not only the Wraith’s crew, but also of hope and freedom. Sailors and slavers alike would speak in hushed tones about the Wraith of the Waves, manned by the daughter of the sea itself.
The waves, however, spoke in no such tones. They preached with great pride the achievements of their daughter, and whenever a traveling Suli family would reach the Ravkan coast, they would make sure that their daughter’s mother and father too knew of her victories, and too spoke of her with pride.
