A quick excerpt from the first chapter of the book I’m working on. I feel like if I don’t announce the title soon, I’m going to get stuck with this one.
You don’t argue with a name like “Lucky” if you were lucky to be alive. Because all things considering, he shouldn’t have been when his father found him floating in that shipwreck, a tiny thing no older than a few days at most. Lucky to have survived the worst of the storm that tore the rest of his family into pieces, that a forlorn traveller seeking his fortune in Baidh happened to have looked over the railing at the last moment to spot him. Lucky that after the others had turned away, a young man chose to jump into the sea, saved his life, and raised him as his own.
Fate could be kind like that, when others call it fickle. For every child lost to the warlords’ quarrels in Jin-Sayeng to the east or taken as a slave along the coasts of Dageis to the north, there are others found abed at home. Warm sheets, fire at the hearth, a father who never lifted a finger against him, who beat him with kindness and wise counsel instead of a cane. Luck.
But that was old news to Luc. Twenty years had come and gone. He was no longer a babe curled up on his father’s chest, listening to old lullabies of a land he had never seen. Nor was he the same child growing sick of hearing how blessed he was that a man who had nothing to gain would choose to keep him. Tall, long-limbed, with wavy black hair that he kept in a short crop, the only thing that marked him as a foundling these days was the brown skin of his Gorenten blood. He had learned to deflect the looks with a grin—a foolish sort, non-threatening. He was told it wouldn’t be an issue in the bigger cities, but at least in the town of Crossfingers, he stood out like a sore thumb.
