Gild (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 1)

by Raven Kennedy

  We all rush around the narrow galley like chickens with our heads cut off, throwing things together with shouted directions barely more detailed than, “Go make the fucking biscuits,” despite the fact that none of us have ever worked in a kitchen and have no idea how to make anything.

  The room grows hot and humid from the steam and smoke, sweat gathering to mix with the rainwater on our already wet bodies. It’s uncomfortable to say the least, but Cook doesn’t give us an inch to slow down, and none of us dare to look idle.

  The entire hour is anxiety-ridden and feverish, and it seems like we make enough food to feed the entire ship twice over. When the ship rocks to a sudden stop, our only warning is the booming growls of the fire claws that preclude it.

  Everyone lurches on their feet as our momentum comes to a skidding halt, but we barely have time to get our bearings before Cook is yelling at us to start bringing up the serving ware above deck.

  With tin plates and tankards in hand, we file out, following our watchdog who leads the way. When we get upstairs, I find that the storm has ebbed, leaving only a stubborn wind behind.

  We follow the pirate through puddled spots on the deck, to the door located to the right of the ship, all the way to the back, past the captain’s quarters. Inside is a small dining area, though it’s packed tight with rows of wooden tables and built-in benches. There’s barely room enough to walk between them, but we all slip down the aisles sideways, quickly unloading everything.

  I somehow end up beside Mist, and the woman gives me an ugly glare sharp enough to prick my skin. She slams down her plates in front of me, apparently unwilling to stand next to me any longer than necessary.

  She elbows her way past me to leave, the other saddles shooting me looks as Mist storms out. With a sigh, I pick up the pile of dishes she left and start to distribute them on the table. I’m the last one to finish, the rest of them already filing out to return to the kitchen and get the food. I follow several steps behind them, and the pirate watching us smirks as I walk past.

  I still haven’t been able to take out a single knot in my ribbon. Aside from them being wrapped so tight, they’re still damp, and it’s making the task that much more difficult.

  Frustration makes my lips press into a thin line, yet that frustration sizzles out when I get onto the main deck and notice that the saddles have stopped dead in front of me. And there’s also something...different.

  It takes a moment for me to realize that it’s the silence.

  The constant noise of shouting and growling, as well as the sound of the ships skating across the Barrens with the pelting rain and whipping wind is gone. All is quiet. I skirt around the saddles, squeezing between their group and the railing to get a better look, to see what’s brought on this muted stillness.

  When I push my way to the side, my eyes sweep over the scene. All the Red Raids are gathered together at the middle of the ship, each and every one facing the lowered gangplank.

  Captain Fane stands at the center, his band still hanging around his neck but his hat proudly sitting on his head. Quarter stands slightly behind him to the right, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  Tension—the kind specific to anticipation—is pushing its presence around to everyone. It’s pushing even more incessantly than the bitter wind, keeping us still and silent. My heart starts to beat quickly, nervously, though I have no idea what awaits.

  But something...something is coming.

  I glance around, confirming that no one is looking my way, everyone too caught up in whatever the captain is waiting for, on whoever sent him that messenger hawk. Even the guard dog pirate is standing on the other side of the saddles, watching the ramp. I can’t waste this distraction.

  Wedged on the outskirts between the side railing of the ship and the saddles’ turned backs, I turn my body slightly. I’m still cold and damp, but at least my time in the kitchen dried me slightly, and the wind now, although cold, is whipping around my limp hair and dress, drying even more of me.

  Using the diversion, I concentrate on my ribbons again, attempting to untwist the gnarled loops. The ends struggle to move, pulling weakly, tiredly. Captain Fane knotted them so tightly that every tug hurts, like pressing on a bruise.

  Taking a risk, I carefully bring one hand behind my back and shove it under Quarter’s sash. The fabric is taut, but somewhat stretchy, so I’m able to delve beneath, my searching fingers finding the cluster of tangles.

  With a quick glance, I angle my back even more to the railing, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible as I bring my second arm behind me. Fingers meeting, I feel for the largest, most tender knot. With my face left carefully blank, head pointed in the same direction as everyone else, I start to work the tangles, praying to the Divine that no one looks my way.

  But amidst that heavy tension of wait, something changes. Something interrupts the hush.

  The sound of booted steps starts to clamor up the wooden ramp. One set, then two, then more, all of them walking in near perfect symmetry up the gangplank, their footsteps growing louder and louder as they get closer.

  Stomp, stomp, stomp.

  The Red Raids go rigid, and the pirate captain stands up a little bit taller. I start to tug more frantically, the feeling of impending danger spurring me into a frenzy to get myself undone.

  Accompanying the footsteps, I can hear metal armor, rattling like the tails of desert snakes. And where chain mail and chest plates are, swords and daggers won’t be far behind.

  I keep trying to get unbound, but I’m struggling to make even a single loop loose enough that I can pull it properly. My heart pounds in time with their steps.

  I need to get free, I need to get these knots out, I need—

  A dozen soldiers appear on the ramp, marching straight onto the ship, two by two. They stop in front of Captain Fane in a formidable formation that flares out like a pyramid.

  It’s an imposing sight. Black armor as dark and flat as burnt coals, brown leather pants and straps that crisscross over their chests. Onyx sheaths are belted around their waists, their sword hilts made of gnarled deadwood tree bark contorted wickedly. Heads covered in helmets, postures threatening, my mouth goes dry at the sight of them.

  Because there, carved at the center of their midnight chest plates, between the leather straps, is their kingdom’s sigil. That twisted, misshapen tree with thorned roots, stripped of all leaves, four crooked branches reaching out like the devil’s claws.

  These are Fourth Kingdom’s soldiers. King Rot’s soldiers.

  And they’re an awful long way from their borders.

  My hands go still on my ribbons, my eyes go wide. King Ravinger’s army is the most feared in all six kingdoms. I’ve heard plenty of stories telling of their viciousness on the battlefield. I find myself wanting to inch backward, as if I can try to fade into the shadows, though my feet are frozen where I stand.

  No one speaks. No one moves. Even with the twelve soldiers standing there, Captain Fane waits, though I don’t know why.

  My brows pull together in a questioning frown, until I hear it—a single pair of footsteps.

  A thirteenth man stomps up the ramp, passing his soldiers who stand at attention on either side of him like brick walls. He’s tall, his very presence demanding of attention. Yet despite the fact that he’s wearing the same black armor and brown leather as the others, he has a very distinct difference.

  “Are those...spikes?”

  I hear the hissed whisper from a saddle to my right. I hear the murmurings of cursed and evil. I hear them explain how King Ravinger created him from the rotted wastes, turning his body into something unnatural for one purpose: to command his army.

  But they’re wrong.

  The commander with spikes jutting from his spine and arms isn’t cursed. The male who stops at the front of the group, so tall that Captain Fane has to tip his head up to look, isn’t some result of King Ravinger’s powers perverting his body.

  No, the man st
anding there, whose body basks in menace, is one thing and one thing only.

  Fae.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  There weren’t always six kingdoms in Orea. At one time, there were seven.

  A thousand years ago, Seventh Kingdom ruled at the edge of the world. Past the Pitching Pines, past the frozen mountain of Highbell, far past the Barrens and even the arctic sea.

  Way out at the end, so far that even the sun and moon only skimmed its horizon. So distant that the flat earth ended in a precipice with nothing below. Seventh Kingdom lived in perpetual gray, no light, no dark, no beyond. But it was here where the bridge was found.

  Lemuria. The bridge that led to nowhere.

  The bridge was just a track of gray, empty dirt that stretched over the edge of the world, past what the eye could see. That strip of land kept going, with nothing below or around it, nothing existing at all except for the dark, sightless void.

  It was said that if you were to step off the bridge, you would fall forever, and not even the Divine gods and goddesses could find you to give you the reprieve of death.

  But Seventh Kingdom’s monarchs were scholars. They didn’t believe in myths or unknowns. So they sent soldiers and explorers onto the bridge of Lemuria to find out what was beyond, to discover where the bridge led.

  For years, hundreds of Oreans journeyed on the bridge, only to never be seen again. Most believed it was a fruitless endeavor, one the monarchs should give up. A suicide mission. A task soon given to thieves and debtors instead. A venture that never led to anything.

  Until one day, a woman walked back across.

  She wasn’t a soldier or an explorer or a scholar or a thief. She wasn’t sent by the monarchs. She was a stowaway. An orphan girl whose father had gone over the bridge and never returned.

  At age ten, she slipped past the guards who stood at the start of the bridge and ran silently, determinedly, into that void to search for her father.

  No one ever knew. No one ever saw.

  She walked through time and space, battling madness and starvation and thirst. Where all others finally caved and tossed themselves off the bridge, giving in, she pressed on. Where every other Orean man had failed, she succeeded.

  Saira Turley did the one thing that no others had—she walked the bridge of Lemuria, and came back to tell the tale.

  But she didn’t return alone.

  Because the bridge, that narrow road in the nothing, led to a new world. A world of magic.

  She might not have found her father, but Saira did find Annwyn—the territory in the realm beyond.

  The realm of fae.

  Saira fell through their ground and landed on their sky. Bird, they called her. Broken-winged bird.

  A group of fae took her in, cared for her, and she was amazed at these people with their remarkable power. She found a new family in the magical paradise, made a life there.

  But her heart was always in Orea, the place where her mother was buried, where she had fond memories of her father.

  When she turned nineteen, Saira fell in love with a fae male—the prince of Lydia. It was said that their love was deeper than all the seas of Annwyn, that music was made from the song of their hearts.

  And before they married, the prince gave her a wedding gift.

  He couldn’t bring back her father for her, but he could bring back her home. So the prince took her to the bridge of Lemuria once more, at the edge of their glittering sky, and he bound it.

  Through space and time, he found the thread that connected their realms through this voided bridge. With his great powers, he yanked it closer to Annwyn, to the fae kingdom, so that Saira could return home to Orea whenever she wished.

  Orea and Annwyn became sister realms. It was a celebration for all seven kingdoms when fae and Oreans united.

  After that great joining, Lemuria was no longer that voided, endless path of death, but a true bridge between the realms, one that only took minutes to cross.

  And for hundreds of years, we coexisted. Mingled. It’s where Orean magic still comes from, mixing with the fae. But year by year, that magic dies out a little bit more because no more fae come here. And no more Oreans cross into Annwyn. They haven’t for three hundred years.

  Because the fae betrayed Orea.

  A new monarch rose, long after Saira Turley and her prince drew their last breaths. A king who spoke against cohabiting with Oreans, against mixing with lesser beings. He snapped the thread that Saira’s husband had tied with love, severing the bridge, and cleaving the realms in one mighty swipe.

  Seventh Kingdom, vulnerable there at the edge of the world, was swallowed whole from the force of the magical cut. The land and people were never seen again. And the bridge of Lemuria fell into that void, crumbled to nothing.

  So Orea has the fae to thank for the magic that still exists here. But it’s a bitter gift that’s laced with betrayal.

  Because there is no Seventh Kingdom anymore. There is no peaceful alliance. There is no bridge to Annwyn. There are no more fae.

  …Or so people think.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Drums.

  My heartbeat feels like drums beating through my veins, too loud, too fast, too harsh.

  I’d always thought that the stories of the commander, even the written accounts in Highbell’s library, were exaggerations. Dramatics to overemphasize the terror of his presence and justify people’s cowardice when they buckled in fear of him.

  The commander—who people call Rip for his predisposition to literally rip soldiers’ heads from their bodies—became a modern legend, someone to be feared, just like King Rot himself. But I didn’t expect Commander Rip to actually be this frightening.

  Of course, there were rumors that he was fae—more fae than any other Orean. But again, I thought they were just that. Rumors. Gossip. Embellishments. More exaggerations spread, probably by King Ravinger himself, to make his commander seem that much more frightening.

  But now that I see him for myself, I can tell that he’s not just another Orean with a watered-down magical bloodline from long-ago fae ancestors.

  He’s more.

  The spikes prove it. Most written accounts made it sound like it was just a part of his armor, another dramatic elaboration. But I can tell that it’s not. The spikes, the height, the menacing presence, it’s all real.

  I don’t know what to think of it.

  My eyes can’t seem to leave him, and I find myself counting the black spikes that trail down his spine. Starting from between his shoulder blades to his lower back, he has six of them, each one shorter than the one above. They’re curved in a slight downward arc, popping right through his armor, a vicious gleam to them that reflects the red-burning lanterns.

  The ones on his outer forearms are much shorter, but look no less sharp and deadly, four leading from above his wrist to below the curve of his elbow.

  I’m too terrified to wonder what he looks like without his helmet. Some accounts have said he has horns on his head or vile scars ripped down his face. Some have alleged that he has fangs, while other written records swear that he can kill a person just by looking at them with his burning red eyes.

  I don’t want to find out if any of those are true.

  But what I do want to find out is why he’s here, in the Barrens, meeting with the Red Raids.

  “Captain Fane,” a low, deep voice rumbles out. The saddles beside me stiffen at the sound.

  “Commander Rip,” the captain replies in greeting with a slight tilt of his head. “I’m surprised to see you so far from Fourth. Your message was unexpected.”

  “Hmm.”

  Captain Fane’s attempt to fish for information is fruitless, but he doesn’t seem deterred. “We heard there was trouble at your borders.”

  The commander cocks his head. “No more than a nuisance. But the king doesn’t tolerate attacks on his land.”

  “Of course not. No true leader does.”

  I nearly swallow my own
tongue at Captain Fane’s obvious suck-up.

  “How are the Barrens and Breakwater Port? I assume pirateering is still paying well.”

  The captain smirks. “Can’t complain.”

  “You’re not usually this far north in the fall.”

  It’s not a question, but even I can hear the demand for information.

  Captain Fane shares a brief look with Quarter before replying. “We had a tip. It pulled us back this way, and fortunately, it paid off. We’ll return to the docks soon enough.”

  My hands, still frozen on my ribbons, drop down to my sides.

  We had a tip.

  A tip? A tip to bring him here? Frowning, I look at the captain, as if staring at him hard enough will give me answers.

  “Interesting,” Commander Rip replies. He shifts his arms, the scarlet light catching on those spikes of his, drawing the captain’s eye. “And would this tip have anything to do with the dozen messenger hawks you sent out a couple of hours ago?”

  Captain Fane stiffens. “How do you know about that?”

  Instead of answering, the commander holds up his fist. He opens it, letting a piece of rolled parchment fall to the deck...followed by his soldiers behind him also opening their hands and tossing down eleven more.

  The captain’s expression turns outraged. His mouth opens and shuts, a gaping fish without water. “What...How did you—”

  The commander tosses up a pouch in the air, and Quarter barely catches it in time. “Compensation. For the hawks.”

  Quarter and Captain Fane stare at the commander, completely caught off guard.

  “You intercepted all of my messages?” the captain demands, fury coating his throat.

  The commander tilts his head. “I did.”

  Captain Fane’s jaw tightens, wooden teeth grinding. “And do you want to tell me why? That’s an act of enmity, Commander. My Reds have killed for far less.”

  The threat does nothing to affect the commander or the soldiers behind him. If anything, it’s the Red Raids who appear nervous, exchanging glances with one another, as if dreading a fight between them and Fourth’s soldiers.