Phoenix Heart: Episode 4: Rope Worker
Page 6
“I don’t even know what it’s supposed to be,” Mally said, her lip trembling. Her show of aggression melted into vulnerability and I felt a stab of fear shoot through my leg. Not good. If Mally was letting go of her armor then things were really bad.
I took a careful step to the side, hoping to edge nearer. Something caught my ankle and I glanced down to see it was Judicus’ hand. He looked up at me and winked and then went limp again.
How long had he been faking for? That was good, right? He was a secret weapon just waiting for the right time – if he still had the strength to do anything at all.
“You don’t mean that she’s the ai’sletta?” Gundt asked and there was something about his voice that drew every eye to him. His face was limned in reverence and the moment that his sister said, “Yes,” he dropped to his knees, sword raised in both hands as if he were offering it to Mally.
Darkness and madness! The fool. Frustration roiled through me. If he really cared about her, he should be trying to free her, not making empty gestures of reverence.
Furious, I took a step forward.
No reverence for me.
I knew exactly what Mally was – a young woman with a knife at her mother’s throat. And I knew what she wasn’t – invulnerable.
I strode to where he knelt before anyone had time to react. The guards surrounding him were gaping while Lady Lightland laughed, her eyes only for her brother. Which left none to watch me.
“See, Ai’sletta?” Lady Lightland said in a tinkling voice. “See? You really can use it. What are the odds that my brother – sworn to find the ai’sletta and protect her with his life – oh yes, that’s what his ridiculous little club does, though they’ve never actually managed it – what are the odds that he would stumble upon you here? What are the odds that his ship would break up right behind yours?”
I snatched his sword from his hands. I would have grabbed his collar and hauled him up, but my hands were too full of sword and knife, so I planted a light kick on his rear, forcing him to stand to avoid another blow. He spun in fury and gaped when he saw it was me. Angrily, I shoved the sword back in his hands.
“Oh, it’s you. The mute,” Lady Lightland said in a bored tone, noticing me for the first time. “And now you’re defending my useless brother like you keep defending that tarnished rope worker, Judicus Franzer Irault. Do you really think your cousin wants to go back to your pokey little village? Tell her, Ai’sletta.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Mally said, meeting my eyes savagely.
But I couldn’t tell if she meant she wanted to stay with Lady Lightland, or if she was just trying to keep me out of trouble and either way, this was ridiculous. Like I would leave her here. Like I would just walk away. The desperate, meaningful looks my Aunt Danna kept shooting at me told me that she, at least, needed me to get Mally free from here. She, at least, was still counting on me.
I hadn’t been paying attention to the sailors until now. I’d been too focused on my family and my friends and the woman who I figured I could call my enemy without any fear of being proven wrong. They had arranged themselves in a rough knot, leaving Lady Lightland and her people between them and us. But now, one of them spoke.
“What is the ai’sletta supposed to do, then? What’s this blessing she has? Can she get us to safety?”
“Luck,” Lady Lightland said. “She can turn the tides just by being there.”
And suddenly, everything started to make sense.
Chapter Fifteen
That’s why she was so valuable to anyone who wanted to use her to make an empire. Imagine having Lady Luck herself there to turn the tides of your battle? And we’d already seen the results, hadn’t we? Why else would our ship have crashed in the same place as hers? Why else would I have pulled Judicus up from death’s door again and again when she was near? Why else would her mother have been stolen and brought to her by the very people who held her captive? Why else had raiders come to snatch her only to peacefully leave when she was on her way?
But it worked the other way, too, didn’t it? For her boat had smashed right into another boat in the darkness – and what were the chances of that? Judicus had come to her village just in time for Lady Lightland to send her raiders there. Not every example of her luck turning things was for the best, was it?
Maybe our arrival right now was another thing she would place on the bad side of the scales. Maybe she was mentally cursing us for being here at all.
“And you’re going to give her to the Grand Hadri so he can conquer the world?” Gundt asked in a quiet voice – too quiet, as if he were testing his sister. “And then you can be the Ducana of Lightland with his blessing?”
“Perhaps,” Lady Lightland said with a closed-lipped smile and a glance over her shoulder at the watching sailors. Or perhaps not.”
“I think ... not,” Gundt said and lunged toward his sister. He was blocked before he could get close, the guards swarming him, but he was holding his own with the blade, knocking them back like this was a brawl in the common room with a few boys too deep in their cups, not a real fight at all.
I had to put my own blade up to block an accidental blow, but they weren’t trying to attack me – thank goodness. I edged around them, trying to get toward Mally. It was harder to find a clear place than I’d hoped. The beach was narrow and rocky with only a small strip of gravel surrounding the towering center rock. It looked almost like a shrine – but who would set a shrine in the middle of the sea?
Lady Lightland looked side to side, worried suddenly, and Mally shut her eyes, screwing up her face in concentration.
She must have been trying to find that luck inside her – that blessing – but some people make their own luck – like Aunt Danna.
I’d been wondering why Aunt Danna was so quiet. She wasn’t one to keep her thoughts to herself.
A look of concentration filled her face and I realized that in her bound hands, she held a dagger. She must have slipped it from Lady Lightland’s belt during all this distraction. She had it halfway up before Lady Lightland noticed. Aunt Danna plunged the knife toward her at the same moment that Lady Lightland screamed.
And then everything was happening at once.
Mally stumbled backward, Lady Lightland’s knife no longer at her throat. She fell back against the rocks in a strange nook there that almost looked carved, her hands splayed against the rocks.
Aunt Danna’s lunge sent her dagger slashing along Lady Lightland’s side at the same time that the other girl roared, slicing out with her dagger and slitting my aunt’s throat.
A silent scream tore through me and I rushed forward, dodging behind a grasping guard.
My aunt slumped to the ground and Lady Lightland fell to one knee.
Not Aunt Danna! No!
Aunt Danna was a rock. A living piece of immovable certainty. She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t.
I was almost upon her when I was hit from the side and knocked off my feet. One of her guards had noticed me.
I was only seeing sand and sky and then I hit the earth hard and lost my knife. It took me a moment to blink back the pain and scan the area around me. Screams and grunts shattered the air.
My ribs ached and dark spots danced across my vision, but I forced myself to my knees. I had to get to my cousin. I wasn’t even sure why, but I knew somehow that if I didn’t get to her, we’d lose her again.
I found my feet at the same moment that Lady Lightland did the same. Her eyes were wide as she looked over my shoulder and then my eyes widened, too. Behind her, the sailors stood frozen in the act of charging forward. Darkness wrapped around them in wide ropes.
Judicus!
I spun and saw Gundt still battling Lady Lightland’s guards, but now half of them were wrapped up, too. Past them, on that last little lip of beach, Judicus stood, swaying, face pale, hands held up as he worked his ropes.
“Judicus Franzer Irault,” Lady Lightland spat. “Always in the exact place I don’t want you to be.”
“You think you’ve won, don’t you?” Cassnetta said, and she was laughing, I realized. Slashed along the side, bleeding, her people tangled up in magic, and she was laughing. “That’s adorable.”
I took a stumbling step toward Mally and then my eyes went wide.
She was still and drained of color, looking at the body of her dead mother, her eyes glazed with tears and her breath coming far too fast. But that wasn’t what shocked me. That was normal. My own eyes were wet with unshed tears.
What wasn’t normal was that her fingers were sunk into the rock, into perfectly circular cuts that had slid into the rock like a pushed door. I squinted and realized they were encircled by some kind of faded carving – and so was the alcove she was standing. How many hundreds of years – thousands of years? – must that rock have been beaten at by tides and seas to be so worn I could hardly see the bas relief anymore?
What luck would it take for your hands to accidentally find those exact spots?
I hurried to Mally’s side and she looked up at me, mouth working but no words came out. I reached for her at the same moment that Lady Lightland spoke.
“You’ve underestimated the ai’sletta. And you’ve underestimated me. Do you really think we crashed on these rocks by accident?”
And then the ground began to shake beneath us.
Chapter Sixteen
“Do you really think I wasn’t orchestrating this from the beginning?” Lady Lightland asked as the ground continued to shake.
I fell to my knees, hitting the sand. It gritted against my knees and for a moment I lost track of everything and then the sound of water flowing surprised me. I clambered to my feet, fighting my sodden dress and feeling my way up the worn rock beside Mally. She was sobbing, keening like a wounded animal.
I hadn’t noticed when the rain stopped – though it had. It was still windy and gloomy enough not to make it obvious that the deluge had passed. And the sound I was hearing was not the constant battering of waves. It sounded like a waterfall, like water pouring off of something.
I looked out to sea – confused and then gasped.
Our island was rising. Water flowed off the edge of the rock. Little pebbles and shale from the beach rained down with it and as I watched, Judicus scrambled back from the broken edge, his ungainly long limbs pinwheeling as he fought for solid rock.
He found it, clinging to the vertical side of the dark stone.
My heart froze within me.
What was happening?
Someone screamed – and I realized it was one of the guards falling off the edge and then another. I couldn’t take it all in, it was happening so fast. Judicus fought for a handhold. Gundt fought a guard as they both tried to stand on one narrow spit of rock. I reached for Mally – desperate not to lose her, too – but she snatched her hand back, unwilling to let me touch her.
My heart was in my throat. I gripped the rock nearby, breath speeding as my eyes flicked from face to face. The only face I couldn’t look at – wouldn’t look at – was Aunt Danna’s though I caught a single look at her glassy eyes and bile rose in my throat.
Another scream as someone failed to find purchase. Not a sailor. They were still held in place by Judicus’s ropes.
I pressed my back firmly against the rock.
What now?
Lady Lightland balanced on the edge of the hard stone on light feet, her golden hair streaming around her, her arms lifted.
Tiny stones cascaded from around her perch but she didn’t so much as blink at them.
“Ai’sletta, I told you that you would work marvels. And all it will take is a little sacrifice. A little determination.”
Did she not realize she had killed Mally’s mother? That my aunt still lay at her feet? I didn’t let myself think about how it had happened. Wouldn’t allow myself to think about my cousins – motherless now. About myself, no longer with access to someone who had known and loved my parents. I fought down a lump in my throat.
And then I saw them.
They rose out of the sea, looking as if they had been formed of stone. Water poured off every crack and ripple of their forms. They looked like monsters of the sea, shaped by the hand of a giant carver and set to life by magic. But whoever had carved these stone figures had taken liberties. Wide mouths filled half their forms and were layered with stone teeth. Whorls and ripples replaced real legs or fins and tiny eyes were nothing more than slits.
What was this madness? My eyes were so wide they couldn’t open any more than they already were. A gasp was stuck in my throat.
There were so many more than I could easily count. They marched steadily from the sea.
But all Mally had done was touch two places in the wall. That was all! She couldn’t have known this would happen.
“The Creatures of Sydonon,” Gundt gasped. “I thought they were legend.”
“Are they legend?” his sister asked, “Are they lost to us? Or did it only require a little luck brought to the ancient altar of Sydonon to raise them once more from the depths?”
Without warning, one of her men attacked Gundt and all questions were lost to his grunts as he fought the enemy back. Were her guards crazy? Why bother to fight now? When we were on the backs of stone creatures?
I looked out over their rocky backs, my eyes growing wider and wider and then – just a little further out where the waves beat white lines on the horizon, there was something else.
Sails, I thought. Sails glowing a light pink color against the darkened sky.
Who in the world could that be? For just a moment, I wondered if it could be someone coming to save us. And then I remembered there had been no one to save us any other time. Why would there be someone now?
Aunt Danna had wanted to save Mally. And look what had happened to her!
There was no one to fight for us except ourselves.
I was still frowning when the island shuddered again and then began to rock side to side, almost like a tray set on the back of a horse.
There was a scrabbling sound and then Judicus made a low, panicked sound. I saw as his fingers began to slip and I didn’t even think. I ran along the wobbling stone, skidding when I fell and skinned my knee, but I was up again, stumbling forward when the rock leaned a second time.
I caught his flailing hand as he started to tumble down the rock, my other hand grabbing a stony outcropping. The rock bit into my hand. Pain flashed through me. I couldn’t hold on. I couldn’t.
Screams rang out behind me, but I couldn’t turn to look. Every scrap of my energy was spent in holding Judicus in place.
“I lost them,” he gasped, a look of horror on his face. “All those people.”
I wanted to scream to him not to talk, just to climb. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to even if I wasn’t voiceless because it took all my energy to hold him and even then, he was slipping.
Another wave of screams that faded out as if someone had ... don’t think of it, Sersha. Don’t.
Just hold on, Sersha.
I couldn’t do it.
I heard Judicus groan but now my eyes were shut, and I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t breathe.
Another scream and a sound like something hitting a solid surface. My belly churned.
How many people had died today? Inside sinking ships, dashed on the rocks, slipping under the sea and now, falling to their deaths? How many?
I didn’t want to lose Judicus, too.
His hand slipped. I strained to hold him tighter, my other arm and feet scrambling to find better leverage to hold him up.
I gasped, tears blurring my sight. There was nothing else to hold on to.
I was going to lose him.
I couldn’t look.
And then I was stumbling back as someone else grabbed a hold of Judicus and pulled. I landed on my seat, eyes springing open. Gundt fell bes
ide me, panting as he pulled Judicus the rest of the way up the edge.
Gundt.
Who we hadn’t trusted.
And who just saved our lives.
Again.
And then there was a scream like an angry bird and something that wasn’t quite darkness but was definitely not light descended, talons outstretched, beak opened in a scream.
Chapter Seventeen
No, no, no! Not again!
They were going to take Mally again. I knew it in my bones.
I abandoned Judicus to Gundt and scrambled to my feet, clawing at the rock as I tried to stand before the Stryxex reached us. I felt my nails shredding, but I couldn’t look to see how bad they were. I slid and skidded over the rocks, swaying as they fought the movement of the rocks below.
My eyes locked on Mally. I wasn’t going to let them snatch her again, not after everything we’d gone through to get her back. She needed me. She needed us. I wasn’t armed. I had no way to stop them – and yet I couldn’t just stand there powerless again and watch her get swept away.
She glanced at me, wide-eyed, and then her eyes narrowed.
“Leave me be, Sersha. Everyone around me just dies.”
She was crying, her body shaking in great heaving sobs. But there was no one between us – no one to stop me from going to her. The sailors had fallen when Judicus did. His magic had failed when his life hung in the balance and he’d lost his grip on them. And Lady Lightland’s guards were either stunned or had fallen from the shaking rock.
“Don’t come for me,” Mally said in a trembling voice.
I shook my head, taking another shaky step. The ground rocked precariously, and I nearly lost my balance. I had to rip my eyes from my cousin to concentrate on what I was doing. My breath sucked in sharply through my lips.
I just had to get to her. I just had to touch her – stop her from doing something mad.
If only I had a voice. If only I could use my words like tools to curl her heart back toward me. If only I could shape them to shape her. But I had no words and the emotion I tried to put into my firm gaze was not enough.