What You See

I've never had a man or woman lust after me when we were sober. Oh, I've had my share, sure, it's part of the sealover's life, even in the Saan Imperial Navy - more, actually, because I was in the Southwestern Fleet and we were away from Armada Harbor ten months out of the year. The Saan would be mortified, but then again they're Saan and seriously risk bleeding to death when they pop their cherries. They have excuses for being joylessly conservative. Humans don't. But I'm rambling.

I've known my ladies' pleasures, as the song goes. Sometimes I paid for them in cash, and sometimes in board, and sometimes in witty banter. But I've never known them for free. I've known rakes who can pick any pretty thing out of a crowd and seduce them. They've never picked me. One of these days, my family's going to arrange to marry me off to somebody if I come home. I don't mind, because odds are nobody's going to propose to me out of the blue.

At home they'd probably say I'm hideous. And let's be honest: I'm never going to look right in a courtier's outfit. Too much salt on my skin, too tanned, a limp from a bullet that's still in my thigh - you can feel it if you press down at the right point. Hair is too stringy and not smooth, because that's what happens when it gets washed in brine, or sometimes piss because it's cleaner than the salt water. And my eyebrows are still there, not plucked out and painted halfway up my forehead, because there's the scar there too from when I cut down the rigging on a ship and a stray rope burned a black stripe on me that never healed quite right.

The last time I was with my family, Rerko came in decked out in silk and nightingale feces and brought out the most delicate porcelain cup of some faintly-scented ocha. And so I slammed my fist down on the table, made the cup bounce fully a foot into the air and drew a terrified squeal from her as she scrabbled to not have a full steel koku's worth of porcelain cup shatter and spill the ocha all over the sweets.

That's my idea of humor. Maybe that's why I was sent to the Saan Imperial Navy (Southwestern Fleet) and she was married off to some first-generation notable noble nobody who'd just moved down to Armada Prefecture. Last I heard she was pregnant again. Hope it's a boy this time.

I'm rough around the edges. It's what makes me a bad candidate for marriage but a good candidate for the Navy. It was also a point of pride, somewhat, that I won every position I'd ever held by honest work and exceptional service and not by buying a post or "exceptional service." (Although I was reprimanded once for taking it too hard on one woman who had become third mate by fucking the captain. I have no regrets. I'm in charge of leading boarding assaults; my subordinates should have their best muscles on their arms, not between their legs.)

And I'd like to think I'm attractive by my own standards. Not pretty, sure, but attractive. Strong, experienced, and I have the scars to show for it.

I have several changes of clothing in my trunk. Most of them are oilcloth and sharkskin, and one is a material that I swear up and down is magical. The tailor said that it wasn't, it was made from cobwebs and tree sap, but I'm not buying that: it's made by alchemists somehow. Dark colors all of them; dark colors absorb sunlight more and dry faster.

Over that I wear my armor: the do and the kote. They bulk me up a bit; the Yabanjin say that I look better in armor for some reason. The do displays the Charkozu mon: a lacqured, wine-red hammerhead shark motif.

The kote match the color, but they display something that identifies me a different way: finger-wide razorblades worked into the material. They aren't ornamental. They're weapons; you can slash tendons, sever ropes, slice through the seams of armor. With practice, you can cut a throat with them.

I don't practice. I mastered them long ago; they are an extension of my body the way my fingers are. I can almost feel with them. Combined with a naginata, they mark me as a student of the Kumate Chorjish Iron Lion Legacy, whose teachers can trace their origin to the Monastery of the Iron Heart where Reshar himself once studied.

And unless the circumstances demand it, I always carry my naginata. It's a trademark. I have other weapons, too: a pair of kunai, a tamo stick that I got from sources I'd really rather not discuss here, and so forth. Hair pins when I absolutely must, but diving into the ocean for boarding assaults makes my coiffure an exercise in futility.

But my favorite weapon is the naginata. It's a very feminine weapon; historic, I know, but even though there's a historic reason for it being associated with women I still think it's a feminine weapon, the way that, say, an ono isn't. It's ironic, maybe, that the most feminine thing about me is something I use to kill people and occasionally cut seabiscuit with.

But enough about me.