Chapter Text
Zhao Xin was born in the cradle of the ocean, rocked to sleep by the crash of waves against the bow. His first steps were taken on board a ship, a small coastal craft that his parents worked on, developing his sea legs before his land ones.
Every vessel Zhao Xin stepped on board of became an extension of his body. His balance adjusted, his eyes focused, and his breath came easier. He felt most at home when he could taste the heavy salt spray on his tongue, when the horizon blurred into a void of blue, sea and sky meeting and melting together.
His hands were rough from repeatedly untangling and tying nets of coarse rope and the skin on the back of his neck was perpetually sunburned. His mother bemoaned the state of his hair whenever he returned home from a voyage, his locks brittle with salt and knotted like a bouquet of seaweed. She’d sit him down to wash it herself, her hands carting through his tresses with the same gentle deftness with which she pried hooks from the jaws of fish.
Zhao Xin belonged at sea, but he carried the same fondness for Raikkon that anyone with an idyllic childhood felt for their hometown. It was busy in the way all port cities were. A constantly rotating stream of ships of all colours and makes, people who spoke over each other in a dizzying array of languages from all across Ionia, and, more recently, all of Runeterra.
When Zhao Xin had first begun working as a cabin boy on the Viscero, only a few years before, it hadn’t been surprising for it to be the largest boat in Raikkon’s harbor. Nowadays, docked next to the towering Noxian brigantines and heavy Bilgewater galiots, the Viscero looked downright tiny.
“Times are moving fast, my friend,” Yang Bo, Zhao Xin’s fellow cabin boy aboard the Viscero and closest friend, told him when he remarked on it. “Or maybe you’re just getting old.”
They had a shore leave for a week while the ship sold off its last haul and restocked provisions. Zhao Xin spent most of it hanging around Yang Bo, who spent his time back in Raikkon helping his aging parents with their own fishing.
Zhao Xin’s parents were fishermen too – much of Raikkon’s population was – but they mostly worked contracts on smaller coastal vessels, day trips with regular hours and a fairly steady paycheque. Yang Bo’s parents didn’t take contract work at all. The Yangs and a few other families in the area raised cormorants, seabirds that did most of the fishing for them, though the profits that could be made from such a venture were less predictable than the Zhao’s steady wages.
In this moment, though, both he and Yang Bo had taken a break along the bank of the water, far enough from the harbour that the blaring horns seemed muffled, though the incoming ships were still visible over the scraggly shrubbery. Yang Bo took a long drag of his hand-rolled cigarette and blew the smoke out into Zhao Xin’s face.
Zhao Xin covered his face with his sleeve and glared. The scent of danbagu smoke was ever present near the docks, and Yang Bo was just one of a hundred sailors who was never seen without a cigarette or pipe in hand. Or he was trying to seem like them, anyway. The cigarette looked large in his small hands, the way he inhaled clumsy and almost comical, baby fat still stubbornly clinging to his cheeks.
Ever since the first Noxian ships docked on their shores, danbagu spread from the hands and pockets of sailors into the lungs of natives. It was a foul, medicinal scent, only made manageable by the sea-salt wind that served to quickly blow it away.
Zhao Xin knew that Yang Bo grew his own danbagu in the sandy loam behind his family’s home – a handful of seeds pressed into his small palms by a foreign sailor in return for a pouch of fragrant tea leaves.
“We’re the same age,” Zhao Xin said, frowning at him.
“We’re both old, then,” Yang Bo replied. They were barely fifteen. “No one dreams of being a fisherman anymore. Look at my brother – all he does is study. He wants to move to the mainland for university.”
“You should be proud.”
Yang Bo snorted, taking another drag of his cigarette. “Everyone our age is doing it. Do you see anyone new out here, when we deign to return to land? No? It’s just me, same as always.”
“I see plenty of new people,” Zhao Xin argued, just to be pedantic. He inclined his head towards a Noxian ship approaching on the horizon. Yang Bo followed it with his eyes, sharp as his cormorants.
“More every day.”
“Mm.”
Zhao Xin let the conversation die. He was no good at speaking with people – his sheltered and transient childhood at sea had left him talented with rigging and net-tying but poor with his words. Yang Bo never seemed to mind. Zhao Xin watched as he bent down to untangle one of his birds from a piece of rope, swearing around the cigarette held between his teeth.
“How have they been?” He asked. It seemed only polite.
When they were docked, Yang Bo was almost constantly surrounded by his family’s small flock of cormorants. The first time Zhao Xin saw him with them, he was shocked at how easily he handled them. He’d watched with awe as Yang Bo urged one to regurgitate a fish, caught from swallowing by the band around its throat. He caught the hacked up snapper, its silver scales catching the light, into a woven basket, before hand feeding a smaller fish to the bird and sending it back out into the water with a point of his bamboo rod. The motions came to him so smoothly and gracefully. It was an ease Zhao Xin recognized in himself – the kind of talent that can only come about from being born into it.
He had gotten used to the cormorants in the intervening years, the spectacle of the craft faded and made mundane. Mostly, he just thought that they smelled bad. Everything on the coast smelled bad, Zhao Xin believed. Out on the open ocean, even the scent of the fish that filled the baskets faded into the background, subsumed by salty fog. On ground, however, the briney, wet animal scent blanketed the coast like a cloud. No wonder Yang Bo’s brother wanted to move inland.
“They’re fine,” Yang Bo said. He stroked the now-untangled bird along the underside of its neck affectionately. “Pídàn was only born last Winter. She’s still getting her sea legs.”
Zhao Xin looked down at the bird – Pídàn – and tried to remember being young and unused to the rocking of the Viscerio or the grit of sea salt on his skin. He couldn’t.
The blaring of a Noxian horn sent Pídàn scrambling again, fluffing her feathers and ducking her head into Yang Bo’s robe.
Both boys turned their heads towards the sound, a shadow cast over their bodies by the Noxian ship approaching. Zhao Xin shivered, the air suddenly cold as the heavy evening sun was blocked. Yang Bo’s eyes followed the ship as it docked, stone-faced. He took a long drag of his cigarette.
“Ugly, isn’t it?” He said.
“Why is it armed?” Zhao Xin asked. He couldn’t take his eyes off the sight of cannons winking through the half-open gunports along the hull of the ship.
“They all are,” Yang Bo replied. “The whole fleet. Dual-purpose, supposedly. Noxian advancement at its peak.”
“Paranoia, more like,” Zhao Xin replied. “They’re merchant ships.”
Yang Bo shrugged. “Not everywhere is as peaceful as Raikkon.” He took a final drag of his cigarette before dropping it to the ground and stubbing it out with his boot. “Suppose it doesn’t hurt that no one wants to deny a boat armed to the gills their rights to free trade.”
And that was the kicker, wasn't it? Ionia could call itself isolationist on paper, could resent and fear those foreign ships in their harbour as much as they’d like, but no one wanted to risk their nation’s tenuous peace over a couple hundred crates of Delverhold iron or casks of sweet eiswein.
Maybe those inland, the government officials and scholars, felt it was the coastal citizen’s job to enforce their nation’s laws, but Zhao Xin wasn’t surprised that they didn't. If the pure size of the ships wasn’t an implicit threat in itself, the cannons would be.
Zhao Xin struggled to dig up much emotion about it aside from a kind of detached apathy. Not liking something didn’t make it any less inevitable. Perhaps it was because he lived in the oceans of Ionia more than Ionia itself – he had always felt a barrier between himself and the average, landbound citizen. He had thought Yang Bo felt the same, but the sharpness of his gaze spoke to a more personal bitterness.
It was Yang Bo that spoke next, loading woven baskets onto his small raft along with his birds. “I heard your parents are retiring.”
Zhao Xin hummed. “They’re getting older.”
He thought of his mother’s hands, gnarled and windbitten from years of tying knots in coarse rope. His father’s aching knees and bad back.
“Are you going to stay in Raikkon too, then? To look after them?”
It was a fair question, if invasive. Zhao Xin was his parent’s only son.
“Are you?” He deflected. Yang Bo just rolled his eyes, raising his bamboo staff over his shoulders and adjusting his grip as his birds perched upon it.
“Maybe.”
Zhao Xin wrinkled his nose and tried to tamp down his disappointment. If Zhao Xin belonged to the ocean, then Yang Bo belonged to his birds.
He hesitated. It wasn’t as though he didn't know his answer, but – there was a freedom in privacy. In secret-keeping, no matter how inconsequential or mundane. There was no privacy on a ship. Zhao Xin was learning that perhaps there was no privacy on land either.
“I will,” he settled on. “I’m going out on the next voyage though – a couple months, at most, and then I’ll come back and get work on a smaller ship, just day work, but better than a cabin boy’s wage.”
On the Viscero, held inside his and Yang Bo’s shared cabin, barely a broom closet in size, was a triptych of carved wood. When unfolded and displayed, it depicted the Devoted Shrine Maiden, kneeling solemnly, bracketed by the two aspects of the Taker – a small smiling child crowned with ram’s horns, and a hunched and wretched beast. It was an unusual shrine for fishermen – one might have even called it grim. Death and duty, hand in hand, with no space left for luck or fortune. When Zhao Xin prayed for guidance, it was the Shrine Maidan, the personification of that solemn duty, that he sought out.
He was not surprised at the outcome he ultimately found himself committing to. The duty of a firstborn son to his parents had been written into myth, into scripture, and into the very fabric of Zhao Xin’s bones.
Yang Bo nodded, as though he’d already known Zhao Xin’s answer, and was simply confirming it for himself. “Saying goodbye to the Viscero.” He whistled. “You are a good son. I know you love that ship.”
Zhao Xin swallowed a wince against the sharp pain that shot through his chest. He did love that ship. It was a second home to him. “When I first saw it, I thought I’d buy it one day.” It was an embarrassing admittance, but he knew Yang Bo would understand. “Or you would, maybe.”
Yang Bo barked out a laugh. “How much money do you think my girls bring in?” He reached up, balancing the pole across his shoulders, and scratched one of his cormorants under its neck. It preened happily, ruffling its feathers and readjusting its perch on the pole. “Not enough for a chuán, I’ll tell you that much. Besides, what would I do with all that?”
“Fish from it, I presume,” Zhao Xin said mildly. Yang Bo looked offended.
“My girls can’t handle the open waters like that – they’d get scared.”
Zhao Xin eyed his birds, watching one groom itself delicately. “They’re seabirds.”
“They’re domesticated seabirds,” Yang Bo corrected him. “They sleep outside the hen house in baskets full of wool and were weaned on soybean curd from my hand. They wouldn’t know what to do in the open ocean. Besides, they’re sensitive to the cold.” He cooed the last word, making kissing motions at the bird closest to his head.
Zhao Xin kept his thoughts to himself. “In any case, I suppose they’ll have to find a new set of cabin boys. Though it may be difficult, like you said. No one wants to be a fisherman anymore.”
Yang Bo inclined his head. Having apparently decided that he’d slacked off enough for the day, He began herding his cormorants down off their perch and on to the edge of the raft.
“You want to tag along?” He asked.
Sometimes Zhao Xin would. He imagined his life spread out like this, him and Yang Bo, fishing off the coast of Raikkon forever. It really wasn’t so bad. The fading light glinted off the water, the horizon blurred. If he let his body sway in the wind, it sort of felt like he was still on the deck of the Viscero.
“Not today,” he said, waving Yang Bo off. “I still need to go to the market before I head home.”
Yang Bo nodded and used the bamboo pole to push himself off the bank, rowing his raft through the still and tranquil waters.
“Fair winds then, Captain Zhao.” Yang Bo gives Zhao Xin a final, somewhat mocking salute.
Zhao Xin watched Yang Bo until he was barely a speck, birds darting off intermittently and returning to him with their throats full of fish.
Zhao Xin’s final voyage on the Viscero started like any other. He waited on the boarding ramp for Yang Bo to finish ruffling his birds’ feathers and kissing his parents on the cheek. He handed his bamboo staff back to his father, who led the cormorants away from the busy ramp with a point. Zhao Xin had said goodbye earlier in the day, his parents having left for their own work at dawn.
Once the Viscero set off, he and Yang Bo were rushed from place to place, tying nets and unfurling sails and mending leaks in the clay casks of huangjiu that one of the sailors smuggled on board. The rest of the crew was made up of mostly older men who Zhao Xin did his best to stay out of the way of. He’d worked this ship enough to know what needed to be done and how to efficiently do it, just as he’d known most of the sailors who worked aboard the craft, knew how to slip around them unobtrusively when they needed focus and when to offer up his extra hands and strength.
The Viscero was good to them, sailing smoothly along Yao Lu’s, the ship’s navigator, marked path, Raikkon slowly disappearing into the horizon like a mirage. Zhao Xin let himself breathe in the salty air, allowed the tension in his shoulders to drop. He readjusted the sails to the men’s instructions and helped them string the nets out behind the ship. The water was clear and Zhao Xin took a moment to watch the shadows of fish below the surface, darting about under and around the mass of the ship.
The crew of the Viscero was bare bones, years of voyages exactly like this whittling down the number of people needed for peak efficiency. It made Zhao Xin feel integral and needed, allowed him to take pride in even his most menial work.
Later, Zhao Xin will be grateful that they were so few, though he’ll also wonder – if they weren’t so easily overpowered, if something could’ve been done.
It’s hopeless pondering. The past cannot be changed, and some things are inevitable. As all of Ionia will one day learn, the brutality and effectiveness of Noxus is one of these inevitabilities. There is no escape from the iron grip of the empire. There is no other fate for Zhao Xin, nothing but the end of a blade at his throat with the hilt of another in his hand.
Back then though, the sky and ocean reflected each other, wide and open and blue for as far as Zhao Xin could see. It felt like a gift, like a final, beautiful snapshot of the life he would be leaving behind when he bids goodbye to the Viscero and docks in Raikkon permanently to provide for his parents.
The storm appeared as though summoned by his optimism. If the clear sky was a gift, this was a punishment. For hubris, maybe. For resenting his duty, perhaps. A reminder that the freedom the ocean offered came with a cost. Did he really need to take this last voyage? Was he so in need of the money, or was this an indulgence of his pride? Of his already building-nostalgia for the halcyon days of his seafaring childhood?
The storm told Zhao Xin this: It is time to grow up. It was his warning, the gunports winking open. The cannonshot, the killing blow, would come later.
When the storm cleared, Zhao Xin stood on the deck of the Viscero and breathed in the air – ozone and salt. He was soaked to the bone, but a quick headcount revealed that no one was lost in the chaos. He let out an exhale of relief.
Already, the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds, the winds slowed and the sea turned gentle, as if there was never a storm at all. Zhao Xin sighed, wringing out his shirt with hands.
Yao Lu had already made a beeline for the binnacle near the wheel of the ship. The compass, thankfully, seemed undamaged, though the look on Yao Lu’s face didn't bode well.
“How bad is it?’ The captain, a greying man with leathery skin named Guang Haoyu, asked.
Yao Lu didn’t mince words. “Off course by at least ninety-five degrees. Maybe more, I need to recalibrate this. Westward.”
Zhao Xin grit his teeth and took a deep breath. It was bad, but it wasn’t the end of the world. They could reroute and still make it back to port on schedule, just with a slightly different haul. The trawlers would have to be readjusted. They were further out into the Guardian’s Sea than ideal – but that could be a good thing. A few of the men brought harpoons, though they hadn’t expected for them to be used, but it could be profitable to go after something larger than planned.
The Viscero was no whaling vessel, and Zhao Xin had no interest in such hunts, but there were sharks in these waters, depending how far south they’d drifted, and maybe some species of tuna too large to tangle in their nets.
“Captain?” Yao Lu asked, and Guang Haoyu stroked his beard thoughtfully.
“Chart a course Southeast,” He said, then hesitated. “South by East. We should take advantage of the blindside best we can. We’ll lose out on days of fishing if we attempt to return to our original course as quickly as possible.”
Yao Lu nodded. He didn’t hesitate.
Later, Zhao Xin will wonder if he should have. He’ll wonder if anyone on deck knew that they were in Noxian waters – if anyone had any idea of what that could mean. If anyone thought it was worth bringing up at all, if they bit their tongues at the last second. Sure that their captain knew what he was doing. Sure that he carried some favour with the gods. Or perhaps simply sure that the things that were to come didn’t happen to men like them.
Here is a spoiler: Nothing can be done. No level of reminiscence or regret can undo what is already unfolding, already written.
I’ll spare you the image of the Noxian ship that crept behind them, blotting out the sun and carpeting the Viscero in darkness. I’ll spare you the sight of soldiers grappling on to the deck, spears in hand and foreign words at their lips. A match cast, or perhaps a torch. The deck went up in flames. Yao Lu – a spear through his breast, a burble of blood from lips, painting a river as it pooled in the wrinkles of his chin. Guang Haoyu – bleeding from his temple as he kicked at his captors, swearing at them in a language they didn’t care to understand. Yang Bo – a purpling eye, a fearful shout, shackles around his wrists.
And Zhao Xin, wielding the handle of a mop like a harpoon, like a spear, like a last resort.
The Noxian went down, the blood soaked through Zhao Xin’s shoes. He panted, unable to pull his eyes away from the sight of its spread, thick and viscous. His hands shook as he stumbled backwards, cowering from his own brutality at the helm of the only home he had never known, ripped from it like a babe from the womb.
This is the cannon shot, he thought, delirious, as he was dragged onto the deck of the foreign warship.