Phoenix Heart: Episode 4: Rope Worker

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  I slipped back under, clawing my way back up to sputter and cough on the surface of the water.

  I was going to die like this.

  I was going to die and then what would happen to Kazmerev? He would be lost with me. I never had thought to ask him if phoenixes could make more phoenixes or if there were just those that already existed slowly winking out one by one.

  It felt oddly important. Or maybe I was so close to death that I couldn’t hold on to normal thoughts anymore.

  My mind drifted oddly as if it wasn’t part of this life and death struggle, as if it had already gone on without me.

  This time when I slumped below the water, I didn’t have the strength to resurface. I fought and clawed, but the water closed over my head, and I sank below the waves, my hair swirling around me.

  Nothing but water and darkness and the end.

  The end.

  I should have told Gundt about the message. Even if I didn’t know if I could trust him. Even if that armband meant he was hunting Mally. I should have told him about the threat to the phoenixes. Because now no one would know. It would die with me. And Kazmerev would die with me thinking I had betrayed him.

  I’d failed them all.

  Darkness closed over me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Pain seared through my skull and I was dragged back up to the surface. I’d been pulled up by my hair. I felt the pull of fingers in the roots of it, but I couldn’t feel my hands. I couldn’t turn to look. I could only drink in the sweet, sweet air in between green waves crashing over my head. Drops of rain hit the sea so hard and fast that they splashed back up, soaking me so thoroughly that I could not blink the water out of my eyes fast enough to see.

  And then something grabbed me under the arms, and I was hauled up and onto a piece of wreckage into the air above. I clung to it with clumsy arms.

  “There you are. Hold on now,” Gundt’s deep voice was comforting but it sounded tense, like he was barely holding on to sanity, too. “Here now. Hold onto Judicus. You’re both too cold.”

  He gave me a little nudge and I found the rope worker pale as a fish’s belly lying across what I thought might be a portion of wall. I huddled against him – grateful for even the scrap of warmth and then I remembered. I couldn’t be poisoned for long. Or cold for long. I just had to find the fire within.

  “Reach inside and feel the good things Kazmerev has given to you and feel grateful for them,” Gundt instructed, strain in his voice as he worked to maneuver our floating wreckage.

  Grateful? In the middle of this storm? Was he kidding?

  I shook, my teeth chattering and body shuddering in the cold. Beside me, Judicus barely seemed to be breathing. I felt his face. His skin was frigid to the touch.

  “It will work, but it’s hard to do the first few times. Reach in deep and find it. It will burn off the residual poison and warm you from the cold.”

  Gundt was using a shattered board to paddle us between floating debris but though his arms strained to fight the water, the surf kept trying to pull us toward the rocks. He shot them worried glances, throwing his whole strength into pulling us away from them. As I watched, debris from our ship’s wreck smashed against the rocks, breaking into fragments. No wonder he was working so hard.

  I looked around, trying to see how I could help.

  “Don’t worry about paddling. I’ll manage that. Worry about warming the rope worker before we lose him,” Gundt called over the waves. “You and I can survive this. He won’t without help.”

  I bit my lip and drew myself carefully towards Judicus. The wreckage was precarious, tipping in every direction. Judicus had tilted his face away from the pouring rain but he wasn’t shivering. He was limp and cold as death. I wrapped an arm around him but I didn’t know how to be warm enough to help him. I didn’t know what I was doing. Was it really so simple as feeling grateful for my phoenix?

  “Trust me,” Gundt called over the waves.

  And that was the thing. I didn’t trust him. Him and his mysterious arrival. Him and his convenient offers to teach me. Him and his suspicious armband.

  And yet.

  He’d pulled me from the water. He was fighting to get us to safety.

  And if he really didn’t care about us, or if he was our enemy, would he care about Judicus? Would he be urging me to help him? Lady Lightland didn’t care about Judicus. She wanted him dead. If Gundt wanted us dead, he wouldn’t have had to lift a finger. He could have just sat and watched it happen. We were only alive because he’d saved us.

  I had to trust him.

  And I thought that maybe I could trust him.

  I took a deep breath, wrapped my arm tighter around Judicus, cradling his lolling head against my chest, and thought about Kazmerev who loved me and who had given his future to me. I thought about the phoenix who listened to my heart when no one else heard me at all. I thought about his steady kindness and faithfulness.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Warmth filled me until the cold and rain didn’t seem to touch my skin and my chattering teeth stilled, my limbs grew lax, and my shivering stopped. I closed my eyes, sinking into the gratitude.

  “There you are. He’s looking better,” Gundt called.

  I opened my eyes to see a little color creeping back into Judicus’s face.

  “Keep it up,” Gundt advised. “I’m making for the lee side of the rocks. We should be safer there.”

  It felt like a long time until he cleared the rocks and let the eddies swirl us to the back side of their dark jagged edges. Something in him seemed relieved to be past them and he relaxed enough to talk.

  “Another ship is wrecked here, too,” he said. “Look, you can see there’s too much wreckage to just be ours. And that mast wedged between those two rocks is not ours, either.”

  He pointed and I followed his finger to where an unfamiliar banner – torn and waterlogged – hung from the end of a broken mast lodged in the rocks.

  “If there are survivors, they’ll be on the lee side, too. But brace yourself. We may not find friends there.”

  I looked at him quizzically. Why go where there might be enemies?

  He caught my look and gave me a rueful smile.

  “We’ve no choice in the matter – not really. Until the storm calms, the sea will fight against me and I don’t have the strength to fight the surf all the way to shore. I can’t even see it in this downpour. Best to shelter as much as we can and wait for nightfall and then we can beg our phoenixes’ forgiveness and ask them to fly us to safety.”

  And by ‘we’ he must mean me because I was the only one at odds with her phoenix. I would have blushed, but I was already flush from heat as I warmed Judicus.

  The heat was clearing the remaining dregs of toxin from my blood. My vision was sharper again. My breathing normal. My hands and feet tingled as the blood returned to them. I could focus.

  The rocks still blocked all visibility to the side we were aiming for. We had to swing wide around them to reach that other side.

  I craned my neck, trying to glimpse the other side of them, but I couldn’t catch a glimpse. We’d round the corner soon and see for ourselves.

  I took a long steady breath and watched Gundt for a moment. He’d proven faithful. He’d proven I could trust him. Surprise tasted like a summer berry on my lips.

  He noticed me watching him after a moment and offered his own opinion. “You’re safe, Sersha. The worst is over.”

  I wanted to believe him.

  I almost did.

  And then we rounded the corner of the rocks. Our piece of wreckage slipped so easily into that horseshoe-shaped shore worn into the back of the ship-killing shoal of rocks that I barely noticed who was waiting for us.

  When I did, my breath caught in my throat and all the warmth of gratitude fled like a snuffed-out candle.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I had expected the wreckage. I had expected the huddled survivors.

  I had not expected Lady Lightland.


  Or Aunt Danna.

  Or Mally.

  Lady Lightland held a pair of knives in her hands – one to each of their throats.

  My mouth formed an “O” at the same moment that Gundt shoved my head down.

  “It’s too late to hide!” a tinkling voice rang over the water.

  I wiggled out from his grasp and peered over the side of the wreckage.

  They had done better than we had. They had four ship’s boats – plus two that still held sailors from our boat tying up on the rocks on the other side of the bay.

  Fury filled me at the sight of those sailors. They’d abandoned us and taken the boats. The villains! Even now, they could be dragging poor souls from the water into the safety of those solid boats, but instead, they huddled here on the rocks, hoarding them for themselves.

  Lady Lightland’s soldiers and crew had already lit a fire with driftwood and established a guarded perimeter on the strange, uniformly shaped beach.

  There was no sign of the Stryxex. Perhaps they had gone out to bring back help for Lady Lightland. If they could only carry one extra person each, she wouldn’t have wanted to abandon everyone else while she went to freedom, would she? Or maybe she did want that, and they’d flat out told her no. Or maybe they hadn’t been near when the ship wrecked. Maybe they’d be back at any moment.

  I shook my head and focused.

  “That woman is dangerous,” Gundt whispered to me. “Whatever you do, don’t let her know you’re a Flame Rider. She’ll try to take you, break you down, and make you serve her. You’ll lose your phoenix and your life.”

  Well – that made me trust Gundt more than ever. Any enemy of Lady Lightland’s was a friend of mine.

  “She’ll try to threaten me and Judicus to make you obey. Don’t listen to her,” Gundt said in a low tone. “I can take care of myself, and Judicus just proved that he can, too.”

  I glanced over at the leader of my coterie. He didn’t look like he could take care of anyone and especially not himself. His magic was more powerful than anything I could imagine, but it left him crippled and ill – missing out on most of life entirely. I didn’t envy him for it.

  I looked back at the people on the leeward side of the rocks. Mally was glaring at me as if trying to communicate something with her eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was – except that she didn’t want me there. Only Mally would glare at you for tracking her down and trying to save her after she was kidnapped.

  But oddly, Aunt Danna was looking at me the exact same way – not as if we had come to help but as if we were the opposite of help – which I guessed we were. After all, Judicus was unconscious again, and both the phoenixes were gone right now.

  I shied away from looking too closely at Aunt Danna. She was bruised and bloody – one of her eyes swollen shut. The sight of it made my breath hitch. Mally – on the other hand – looked unharmed. Her long chestnut curls had been hacked off shorter than her shoulders and she’d been dressed in very fine clothing – embroidered trousers, a brocaded silk jacket with a frothy white shirt under it, tall polished boots, and a flounced cape.

  I looked from her to Gundt and he grunted.

  “They don’t look very happy to see us, do they, girl? But we have no choice. We can’t make it to land, and we can’t stay on this wreckage. It’s barely holding together now. One good wave will tip it and we might lose Judicus. Better to try to talk our way in with these people and those poor captives of theirs, until nightfall. Even if they don’t like us here, I doubt they’ll cut us down.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. Talk our way? I wouldn’t be doing that.

  He frowned at me and then cursed. “I’ll do the talking. And hopefully, you’re wrong. Hopefully, they won’t try to kill us, because I don’t think I can win in a fight against all of them.”

  He’d misread my expression. It wasn’t that I was worried we would lose in a fight – it was that I suddenly had twice as much to lose.

  I felt my other eyebrow rising, though. He thought he could take some of these guards in a fight. He patted his sword – still hanging on his belt despite everything, with the kind of calm assurance of someone who knew how to use it. That was interesting. When I’d envisioned Flame Riders, I’d envisioned people like me who needed a phoenix to escape who they were – whose big hearts were the biggest treasure they had. I hadn’t envisioned tough warriors with their wet jackets straining around muscled shoulders and arms. If I’d been twenty years older, I might have even found that quite attractive. Instead, I just found it puzzling.

  The more I saw of Gundt, the more it puzzled me that he was out here and with me. Shouldn’t he be off doing something a bit more exalted or important?

  But I had no time to dwell on that. Not with Aunt Danna and Mally threatened like that. I watched Gundt speculatively. Was there a way I could tell him that we needed to save them? That they were my relatives? My mind rushed over the signs we’d practiced today. They’d been practical, useful signs about eating and inns and rivers running. Nothing that said, “Can you risk your life to save my relatives, please?”

  We’d almost reached the little beach. I kept glancing nervously to Aunt Danna and Mally. They hadn’t moved since we arrived. And Lady Lightland’s blades were very close to the delicate skin of their throats.

  “It’s too late to fight, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lady Lightland’s voice called out across the remaining distance. “One false move and someone gets a second smile.”

  Gundt growled but said nothing until his boots hit the rocky shore. Then he and I scrambled off the wreckage, hauling Judicus with us. I hated doing that. It put him in danger, too. Even if the wreckage was close to sinking, it was safer than a beach with Lady Lightland on it.

  “Cassanetta,” Gundt said as he set Judicus down on a dry patch of rock.

  He knew her by her given name. My breath hitched in my throat.

  “Still running with the Greensleeves?” she asked. Which meant she knew him better than we did. A stab of cold shot through me that had nothing to do with the chill waves.

  “Faithful in life. Faithful in honor,” he said as if it was a proper response to that comment.

  “I hear that not all are faithful,” she said with a taunting lilt in her voice, cocking her head to one side. “I heard there was a little philosophical matter that morphed into something wrong and split up that secret society of yours.”

  Was that why one of them had attacked us?

  “And where did you hear that?” Gundt asked carefully. He wasn’t moving toward her except to put his body between us and her. Not friends, then.

  “From the Greensleeve I hired to kill you back in Halvered.” She sniffed. “He wasn’t worth my wasted gold, it seems.”

  That explained the man with the powder attack!

  “Now why would you do such a cruel thing, Cassanetta?” Gundt said. I reached for his sleeve and tugged on it. Why did he know her by her first name? Why was he talking to her like this?

  He shrugged off my hand and my heart froze. Was he here to sell us out after all? Had he saved us from the waves only to sell us to her? You didn’t have to like a person to profit from them. Just because she’d ordered him killed, that didn’t make me safe.

  “You didn’t think that I’d spare you, did you Gundt? Why would you think such a thing?” she taunted. “Is it because you’re my brother?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gundt roared, startling me. I fell back, clutching at Judicus as the other Flame Rider hurtled forward, drawing his sword. Lady Lightland’s guards raced to intercept him and the sound of steel on steel rang through the air.

  What was he thinking? He was going to get himself killed. There were too many of them for him to fight himself. Eight ... nine ... ten. I gave up counting and I drew my own weapon, standing over Judicus, ready to defend him if I needed to. But I wasn’t going to rush into battle – not only because I wasn’t skilled enough to help but also because Lady Lightland still had her blad
es against the throats of my cousin and aunt.

  Lady Lightland. Gundt’s sister.

  Or so she claimed.

  I shook my head. There was too much to take in. Too much to absorb. I felt overwhelmed.

  I looked toward the horizon, but I saw no hint of how far off sunset was and in the insanity of the last few hours, I had lost track of time. It should be afternoon. Shouldn’t it?

  Gundt’s blade rang off the swords of the guards and I bit down on my lip, wishing I could call out to him to stop. There were too many of them. He was going to die like this and for what?

  I bit my lip, frustrated.

  “Go ahead. Get some of that anger out, Gundt,” Lady Lightland called. “But if you get close to the captives. I’ll just kill them. Look.”

  To my horror, her blade at Aunt Danna’s throat flicked up and cut a line across her cheek. Aunt Danna hissed, eyes bright and furious. And that was when Mally reacted.

  “You promised you wouldn’t. You promised that if I found the blessing, then you wouldn’t.” Her words were bold, chin thrust out despite the knife at her throat.

  The sound of swords cut off as Gundt withdrew. He stood in a ring of guards, chest heaving. No one was dead. One man clutched a forearm, and another limped slightly. He had a slash on one leg but he didn’t seem to be noticing. His eyes were on Mally as if he’d only just noticed her.

  “The blessing?” he asked in a breathless tone, his eyes wild.

  Lady Lightland smiled. “See? Even my much older, much more foolish brother has heard of the blessing. Even he knows what you can become, Ai’sletta.”

  Gundt gasped. Down the beach, the sailors who had heard were making signs of reverence.

  Mally’s secret was out.

  “Now, look within my precious, and find that blessing,” Lady Lightland purred. “Surely now, with a mad man attacking your guards, with your mother’s very life in the balance, surely now you can find it.”