She placed her hands on the sides of the ladder, smooth from years of her sliding down.
“Will ye learn to read then? So ye can read that book from yer crew?” Jagger asked her.
He was closer. Ebba tensed. “Aye, that be the plan.”
“Bet ye can’t do it.”
Ebba blew out a breath and whirled back. “That ain’t goin’ to work on me, ye weasel.”
Jagger was directly behind her, and she blinked up at him, not liking how on edge he was. He was making her edgy.
He slowly lifted a hand, and Ebba watched him warily, ready to do a human-sized repeat of Sally’s head-butt to the gut.
Jagger picked up her braid where she’d left in the decorative array of shells for a second day. She held her breath as he touched over the shells and tugged gently on the end of her dreads.
“Let go of my hair,” she said, her voice not as fierce as she’d like.
Through the strands of his own flaxen hair, she saw his lips curve before he replied, “Are ye scared o’ me then, Viva?”
Ebba tilted her chin. “Nay, Jagger. Yer tactics don’t work on me. But ye can let go o’ my hair all the same.”
He glanced away from her hair. “Ye think I have tactics?”
In one word? Aye. “Let go,” she ground out.
The pirate lowered his head, holding her gaze. “I’ll oblige.”
The words tickled her memory for some reason, but Ebba ignored the odd feeling to pull free. She climbed up the ladder, burningly aware of Jagger’s regard from below as he climbed after her.
She pushed open the bilge door and then slammed it shut behind her. Hopefully in his face.
Barrels beckoned her from the step down into the helm. Half a dozen books lay scattered before him, as well as his quill and ink station and several scrolls of parchment. Letters. Words. She’d never had a use for them before, but she did now.
Ebba took a step in her father’s direction and jerked to a halt. I’ll oblige. Her eyes dragged back to the bilge door as it opened to admit Jagger.
He didn’t immediately see her. Or rather, the pirate seemed preoccupied with sucking in great gulps of air and tilting his head to the sun.
The way he’d tugged on the end of her braid had been oddly familiar. I’ll oblige. The same words Caspian said to her last night just before they kissed, just after he’d tugged her braid in the same way Jagger had just now.
Jagger lowered his head and smirked when he found her there.
“Ye saw us,” she eventually said, certain acknowledging it aloud would steal some of his amusement.
Ebba wasn’t embarrassed about the kiss itself—she’d enjoyed it and felt . . . excited to have kissed someone. But knowing Jagger had watched her kissing Caspian unsettled her in a big way. More than he usually did by just being in the vicinity. Had he laughed at them while watching her bumbling attempts? Had he secretly called her ‘fish lips’ in his mind? Was his cruel smile there because of the taint within him, because he enjoyed inflicting misery on occasion, or because of something else? The edge in his eyes under the gleam made her hesitant to assume his motivation for mentioning the kiss was so clear-cut.
“I saw ye,” he replied tersely.
Her eyes narrowed. “Ye saw us kissin’.” The word seemed forbidden. She glanced back to make sure Barrels hadn’t heard her.
The pirate’s smirk turned to a wide smile. “That wasn’t a kiss, Viva. Not even close. Maybe I’ll show ye sometime.”
Six
The strong wind was a welcome-home gift from the sea. So far, they’d made good time. All the better for it, in Ebba’s humble pirate opinion. Every tainted pirate or otherwise—if there were any left with their will intact—would be fleecing the Caspian Sea for Felicity on the pillars’ orders.
Tonight, they’d sail past Neos before sailing south of Febribus to enter the formidable waters of the Dynami Sea.
“My dear, if you do not concentrate, you’ll always struggle,” Barrels reprimanded from where he sat next to her on the single step that led into the helm.
His neck was flushed, and she could tell, despite his mild words, that he was irritated. During the first lesson, she’d been torn between watching Jagger sit far too close to Caspian and learning. Yesterday, between food and learning. Today, she was torn between boredom and learning. So much for one lesson each month.
“S’cuse me,” she said, tearing her eyes from where Pillage lay beside her father. The cat hadn’t started anything since one of her fathers freed him from the trunk, but she couldn’t let down her guard. “What were ye sayin’?”
He reached over to set his stained quill in the inkwell on the deck. “We were running through the vowel sounds. Which are?”
Ebba already knew the twenty-six letters in the alphabet. Apparently, that wasn’t all ye had to know. “Ah, eh, ee, oar, oo.”
“Correct, and the rest of the alphabet are consonants.”
Her face slackened as she stared up at him. He looked back at her.
“Yer teachin’ her wrong,” Jagger called from the opposite bulwark. He held loosely to the rigging, swaying with the lurch and pitch of the ship.
“Excuse me?” Barrels sputtered.
Ebba didn’t turn to look at the flaxen-haired pirate, but called back, “He be teachin’ me just fine-like.”
The red flush creeping up her father’s neck rose to his jaw. Barrels wasn’t as happy-mannered as Grubby, but he wasn’t prone to bouts of temper like some of her other fathers. He considered such outbursts an embarrassment.
Jagger might’ve touched on the one subject guaranteed to rile her bookish father.
The pirate ambled over the deck to where they sat, standing over her. “Viva’s a person who learns by the feel o’ a thing, and from a likeness to objects that make sense to her.”
Barrels voice could have frozen the entire ocean. “And I suppose you are about to inform me what ‘makes sense’ to my daughter.”
“Survival,” Caspian said, approaching from the bilge door behind.
Was everyone listening to her lesson?
Ebba glanced at the prince and smiled anyway. He beamed back.
She was glad he wasn’t acting strange after their kiss on Zol. Actually, with a closer look, Ebba noted the healthy flush in his cheeks and the sharpness of his gaze. Her smile widened, and his did too. Perhaps being back at sea was all the prince had needed to make him happy. Ebba hoped so.
Nothing had changed on her end after the kiss—she’d half wondered if it would. He was still Caspian, though, and there clearly wasn’t any tension on his end. Ebba just knew what his lips felt like now. Which . . . was making her think of them. She dropped her gaze to his lips.
“Survival, you say?” Barrels said, scratching his chin and leaving a black smudge.
Ebba jerked out of her stupor.
The red flush on Barrels’ neck had receded, and she threw the prince a grateful look for intervening. Her fathers considered Caspian a part of their crew. They’d saved his life, and he’d saved theirs. Somewhere during the discovery of the taint and everything that had gone with it, he’d been unofficially welcomed into their tightknit family.
Jagger had not.
Barrels would take comments from one man that he wouldn’t take from the other.
“Put the learnin’ in terms she understands.” Jagger spoke again, standing over them.
Barrels appeared to drag his eyes back up to the pirate. “I’m all ears.”
Ebba refrained from remarking that Barrels didn’t sound like he was all ears—more like he was all daggers.
Jagger gestured to the lattice of rope squares overhead. He crouched before the inkwell and drew out a sheet of parchment from where they were pinned underneath the ornate wooden and brass block. Taking up a quill and dipping the tip in ink, Jagger scratched out a word.
Ebba peered over his shoulder, reciting the individual letters in her head. R-I-G-G-I-N-G.
“How many vowels in the
word ‘rigging’?” Jagger asked her.
That was how you spelled ‘rigging’? Huh, it looked different to how she thought it would. “Two,” she said, half in question, half in answer. “The two I’s.”
Jagger nodded. “The rest are consonants.”
“Always?” she asked. “Everything but the vowels?”
“The letter Y can be both,” he replied. “Kind of like how the foresail is useful for extra speed and stability. The Y has two jobs.”
That made a heck of a lot of sense, but Jagger’s ego was big enough as it was. She grunted.
Jagger folded up the paper, concealing the word etched there. “How do ye spell ‘rigging’?”
“R-I-G-G-I-N,” she recited.
“That be riggin’, not rigging,” he countered. “You missed the G.”
Ebba shrugged though her mistake hadn’t been purposeful. “That’s how I normally say it. Seems okay-like to me.”
Barrels grasped her hand. “You spelled ‘rigging’.”
But the happiness didn’t reach his eyes. “We’ll resume the lesson tomorrow,” her father said softly, gathering his books and quill station.
He hurried to the bilge door and disappeared below deck.
Ebba shoved Jagger. “Good one, ye dolt. Ye hurt Barrels’ feelings.” She wiped her hand on her slops after, just in case some of his taint had gotten on her skin. His eyes weren’t black, but she really didn’t want to be tainted again. Part of her was glad the pirate was sleeping above deck for that very reason. There weren’t enough hammocks in the hold with him and Caspian here anyway, but Jagger had almost leaped at the chance to sleep above deck, saying he’d rather sleep there than next to a murderer’s son. Thinking back on it threatened to unbalance her temper all over again, but with Jagger above deck, it was easier to sleep at night, knowing he was out of killing distance of Caspian.
“Ye were goin’ around in bloody circles,” Jagger shot back, standing again. “It was doin’ my skull in.”
“Then ye could’ve gone away somewhere else.” Ebba stood as well, tilting her head to scowl at him. “He’s been waitin’ forever to teach me to read.”
His jaw was clenching. “A thank ye would be nice.”
Ebba was going to attack him. Either that or pull her dreads out.
“Oi,” Peg-leg hollered as he approached them from the box. “I’m thinkin’ we should double check the d’rection quick-like afore we go too much farther. Just in case the next part o’ the weapon has moved. I ain’t enterin’ the Dynami if I don’t have to.”
She didn’t break off her glaring match with Jagger.
Caspian stepped forward and gripped her arm. “Perhaps we should do it now while we’re all assembled?”
Not wanting to alert the pillars to their location, the three of them hadn’t repeated what they’d accidentally discovered when she tried to stop Jagger from killing Caspian back on Exosia. Peg-leg was right though. Ebba didn’t want to unnecessarily enter the Dynami Sea either—the angry, black sea that pirates never entered because no pirate ever came out again.
Ebba threw a final scowl at Jagger, turning away. “I have the dynami,” she said, gesturing unnecessarily to the tarnished silver tube tucked in her belt.
“I have the purgium,” Caspian said. “The sword is down by my trunk.”
Jagger was already moving to the bilge door. “I’ll get it.”
Ebba watched him disappear below deck. “That was awfully helpful o’ him.”
“I agree,” Caspian replied after a lengthy pause.
Veritas was the royal family’s sword, but Jagger’s father—general of King Montcroix’s army before he was murdered by the king himself—had carried it for many years. Is that why the pirate was so eager to hold the blade?
She could understand that.
Jagger emerged, one hand holding the sparkling hilt of the truth sword.
Drawing in a breath, Ebba prepared herself for what happened next.
Unlike when two of the objects were held by one person, what they were about to do didn’t hurt. But the phenomenon caused when the three of them touched did weird her out some, simply because they had no idea why it happened. Ebba wasn’t immortal, and yet magic could shoot out of her body? That didn’t sit right with her.
Jagger stood in front of Caspian, staring flatly at him. Rolling her eyes, Ebba quickly placed herself between the two men. She placed one palm on Jagger’s chest and the other on Caspian’s.
Just like the first time, torrents of white light blazed outward, an inferno aura that lit the sky in all directions, casting their skin in an unnatural, otherworldly glow. The gentle heat crept up Ebba’s arms, spreading across her chest and bathing her in bronze. Her dreads hovered about her shoulders as though lifted by a breeze. Jagger was awash with a silver hue that made his eyes appear otherworldly while Caspian was lit with an ethereal gold glow.
More important was the thin yet unbreakable beam of light shooting from their trio into the distance. As their ship continued on its current path, the angle of the beam’s trajectory grew sharper. Like the last time they’d touched, the distal end of the beam was fixed on a point out of sight.
To the next part of the weapon—or so Verity had theorized.
The beam was pointing firmly east and slightly north of their current location, straight into the Dynami Sea.
Ebba lowered her hands, feeling a twinge of loss as she broke the connection between herself, Caspian, and Jagger. By comparison to the glowing explosion of a moment before, the world now appeared almost dull.
The three of them stood still in the wake.
Caspian was frowning. “It happened just like the first time. I’d almost convinced myself that it never happened.”
“Still in the Dynami.” Jagger stared in the direction the beam had pointed.
“I’d really like to know why and how that be happenin’,” Ebba said shakily, glancing up at the men either side of her.
Peg-leg hobbled over. “Pass me the majiggy, lass.”
She sucked in her gut and slid the dynami free of her belt, handing the tube to her father.
He tucked the cylinder into his own belt and limped forward, clutching Jagger and Caspian in what appeared to be a grip bordering on painful.
The prince grimaced, dropping his shoulder in a failed attempt to dislodge her father. Jagger stood still, though Ebba smirked as a wince flickered across his high-boned features.
“No light,” Stubby said, watching the trio. “Give it to Grubs. He be the youngest.”
Peg-leg wiped the hand that had touched Jagger on his slops. Seemed like all of them were taking the same precautions against the taint.
Locks snorted, the tiny scars on his face stretching. “Ye’re thinkin’ the magic has an age limit?”
Stubby ignored Locks and nudged Grubby to take hold of the dynami. None of her fathers would touch the purgium. They had no way to predict what sacrifice would be demanded if they should touch the thing while still carrying the taint from Mutinous Cannon. What if the healing needed was so great the purgium demanded death in exchange as it had with Ladon?
Then there was the veritas, which no pirate in their right mind would want to touch.
She’d touched the truth sword once, and the experience still gave her the willies. What if the blade showed her something terrible? Or forced her to admit something she was pretending? Of course, a small amount of truth was necessary for survival. Complete ignorance could quickly get you killed and hurt others’ feelings. But to know everything? Surely that wasn’t good for any person. King Montcroix had stopped touching the sword—preferring to let his general hold it. Honestly, Ebba couldn’t blame him.
Grubby slid the dynami behind his ear. The tube was too large to be placed there and forced his ear out at an unnatural angle, but he didn’t seem bothered as he took Caspian’s hand and then Jagger’s.
Plank threw Ebba a look, and they both turned away from the trio to hide their smiles. It would neve
r occur to Grubby that holding hands might be overstepping the mark with the two younger men. The prince was smiling kindly, however, while Jagger’s face was almost soft as he watched her father.
No glow blasted off into the distance.
Grubby stepped back, grimacing at the hand he’d used to touch Jagger. Her father quickly wiped his hand off on his dirty tunic.
Stubby scratched his chin, glancing at Plank. “Just Ebba, Caspian, and Jagger, it seems.”
“Aye,” chorused her other fathers, except for Barrels, who still sulked below deck.
Ebba took the dynami back from Grubby. “But why? We didn’t know each other until recently. It was just chance that I met Caspian. And chance that Jagger was the guide needed for Neos. And chance that I got taken by Malice.” She trailed off. That was a lot of chances, now Ebba thought about it.
“Jagger’s and Caspian’s parents knew each other,” Plank pointed out. “Maybe that be part o’ it.”
The change in Jagger was like lightning in the air a moment before it strikes the ground. Everyone turned to watched as he whipped the sword up, resting the blade against the prince’s throat. Jagger’s expression was pure menace. Caspian’s amber gaze more resigned than intrigued.
Ebba choked on a scream, frozen to the spot.
Caspian sighed heavily. “Are you going to kill me then, Jagger? If so, just get on with it. I’m sick of the threats.”
If Jagger did, she would use the dynami to drown him and then throw him all the way to the oblivion.
The pirate smiled, his expression marred by the narrowing of his gunmetal eyes. “Ye know the deal, heir. I’ll only kill ye when ye wish to live. Maybe that’ll be next week, mayhaps next month. Or maybe when ye feel the touch o’ the woman ye love.” His eyes darkened as they shifted to Ebba, who blushed at the blatant jab. “But I wanted ye to feel this blade against yer neck while ye were still alive, to feel what my parents did when yer father slaughtered them.”
Locks grunted in the following quiet. “That be a serious resen’ment, lad.”
“Aye,” Stubby said, lips pursed. “I wonder if yer parents would be wantin’ ye to harbor such hatred.”
Dynami’s Wrath Page 5