Free Antiphon by Ken Scholes Page B

reflection dancing upon the surface.
    Following the wide stone stairs down to the docks, he collected his tackle in the bait shed at the bottom and nodded to another guard.
    I’ve become obsessed.
The thought struck him, and Vlad felt some part of his old self stirring to life to examine this new realization. Standing apart from it, he saw clearly how unlike him this fixation was. He’d come here every day for months under the guise of fishing when heknew—and suspected his family knew, too—that he really was searching for ghosts in the water.
    No, he thought,
one
ghost in particular. And today, after so many days of sitting and watching, it was time for a new tack.
    Bucket, rod and tackle clutched tight, Vlad climbed down the wooden stairs to the lower docks and paused to take in the stillness of the predawn water. There, at the end of the lower dock, a skiff lay tied and ready. He walked to it, laid his tackle within, and climbed into the small boat.
    As a boy on the Emerald Coast, he’d learned to sail at a young age. But growing up in House Li Tam left little room for those luxuries in the face of a first son’s training. In the end, he’d picked up most of his nautical experience fishing with Petronus and his father during the year he’d spent with his family in Caldus Bay. Of course, these memories lay over sixty years behind him now. Still, his feet remembered themselves, and as he found his place upon the rowing bench, his hands found the wooden oars and knew their work.
    “Grandfather?”
    Vlad looked up toward the whispered voice upon the dock. “Yes?”
    In the dim moonlight, he saw yet another guard emerge now from shadow. “May I find someone to row you?”
    Vlad smiled to himself. It was a simple inquiry, but the statement beneath it was clear to him.
You are Vlad Li Tam, lord of House Li Tam. You should not be rowing about the sea alone in a tiny skiff.
    “No need,” he said. He pointed to the mouth of the natural harbor. “I’ll not go far out of sight.” Still, he knew that once he put his back into the oars, a bird would flash back to their watch captain, who would in turn inform Baryk.
    Protocol, of course, would be followed.
    Dawn was hours away yet when the cracking of his back and shoulders joined the whisper of the oars into water and the creaking of the wooden boat. Overhead, stars throbbed heavy in a velvet sky and the slice of moon lent the faintest blue-green limn to the warm water. Careful to stay beyond eyeshot of the anchored iron ship and its own watch, Vlad took the skiff around the edge of the harbor and savored the feeling in his arms.
    It wasn’t until he cleared the mouth and turned south along the shoreline that he finally paused and blinked at the empty night around him.
    Why am I here?
He’d started slow. First, an hour at the dock. Theneventually, half of a day. And lately, it had been the full day. Baryk and the others were handling the investigation and patrols, and Vlad knew they noted his increased withdrawal from that work. He even suspected that Baryk’s desire to leave was driven in part by Vlad’s gradual descent into this obsession.
    Now, in the middle of the night, he found himself at sea. Months on the dock were no longer enough to satisfy his longing to see it again.
    “Where are you?” he asked the waters in a quiet voice that frightened him.
    And as if in answer, the water suddenly shimmered around him with a blue-green glow that stopped his breath.
    Bringing the oars into the boat, Vlad carefully gripped the gunwale and leaned over the side. There, in the deeps, he saw it and felt the rush of joy and relief flooding him at the sight of it.
    Ribbons of light twisted around an undulating, pulsing being that slowly ascended toward him. One tendril, long and slender as an arm, reached upward to float just beneath the surface, and Vlad felt the boat tip when he stretched out his own arm to let his fingers move across the water. The light withdrew, and he