Jagger didn’t reply, but Plank’s interest had been stirred enough to abandon his silken voice.
“The witch stole the good of Ladon’s soul,” he said slowly. “It was why he so zealously guarded the apple for mille’nia, so that he could be askin’ for the good of himself back over and over. His soul was broken.” Plank cut off and regarded Jagger.
Ebba’s eyes rounded as she caught up. Before actually meeting Ladon, she’d felt sorry for the immortal beast left forever seeking the lightness in his soul. Jagger had healed his soul?
No one spoke, and Jagger eventually raised a shoulder.
“Aye,” he said. “I healed Ladon. And the price was death.”
She watched the silent pirate closely, hesitant to trust a single word out of his mouth after the latest stunt. “Ye just went up and said, ‘Here, matey, touch this’?”
Jagger’s silver eyes raked her face. “I offered him what he’d been searchin’ for. He begged for freedom in the end.”
“And you saved your tribe?” Caspian whispered. “If they still live, that is. You saved them all, and any of the villagers who still live?”
“Aye, heir. I do not leave my family and friends to die.”
Caspian flinched violently before he turned away, knuckles white where he still clutched the purgium.
“He didn’t only have one immortal creature to heal,” Ebba snapped. “Ladon be a blip compared to the pillars, and ye know it.”
“It’s okay, Mistress Pirate,” the prince said, though he didn’t turn back. “It’s nothing I don’t think of myself. I shouldn’t have run with you that night. I shouldn’t—” He broke off and cleared his throat before stating, “I shouldn’t have done so many things.”
Ebba stared at the dejected set of his shoulders, at a loss of what to say.
But he continued, voice twisted with bitterness. “I shouldn’t have told the navy ship to deter from the usual route. I should have returned to Exosia the first time we anchored in Kentro. I should have told my father what was happening straightaway. I should have been by my father’s side when Pockmark’s crew killed him. I should have fought them and fought for my people. I know all of this. And I can handle it.”
His shoulders shook.
Caspian wasn’t fooling anyone. He couldn’t handle what had happened one bit.
Before Ebba could reach him, Caspian was striding for the bilge.
As soon as the door closed, she rounded on Jagger, hands clenched into fists. “How can ye be so cruel when ye know how he’s hurtin’ inside? Does it make ye feel better to say such things? Dunkin’ someone when they already be sinkin’, ye gutless swine?”
A tiny flicker in Jagger’s eyes made her feel he might regret his words. He looked after Caspian and back at her. Then the flicker was gone, a dark coldness in its place.
“Why are ye even back, Jagger?” Peg-leg growled. “Seems odd-like to me that ye ain’t searching for yer family after killin’ Ladon.”
Jagger stilled. “I freed them from one danger. I am yet to save them.”
Ebba supposed if the pillars were allowed to take over the realm, Jagger was right. His tribe was out of immediate danger but by no means safe. Still, his words didn’t quite ring true.
The pirate was here for something else too.
“Hmm,” Peg-leg said, limping closer, “so ye say. Regardless-like, I ain’t sure returnin’ was the smartest thing ye ever did.”
Jagger lifted his head as her fathers closed in around him, not bothering to move.
“Get him,” Stubby ordered.
* * *
Ebba didn’t take a full breath until they passed south of Febribus without incident.
She wasn’t sure when she’d come to be partially afraid of the Caspian Sea, and of what the waters held, but Ebba couldn’t rest easy among the islands therein anymore. Every passing second, the pillars’ power grew, their taint spreading unchecked. She knew the horror of their power firsthand and would move Davy Jones’ itself to never lose her soul and will to the pillars again. And that went for everyone she knew and loved. Even her enemies didn’t deserve that fate.
What scared her the most though?
The thought that she’d only experienced the very tip of the iceberg; that the terrors she’d been through were nothing compared to what the pillars were really capable of. Verity had told them the pillars’ taint would spread across the realm, overpowering the will of all creatures, mortal and immortal. What would the realm be when only shells of beings remained, and when their only drive was to enact the will of the six pillars?
Ebba ignored the soft moan overhead, and a louder thud as the upside-down Jagger swinging overhead from the second boom smacked into the mast. With his arms latched to his sides, there really wasn’t a way to protect himself when the lurch of the ship catapulted him against the solid wood. His face had to be really sore right about now.
She stole a peek up, and her eyes widened at the purple tinge to Jagger’s face. Looked as though his head was about to pop right off. And if that didn’t happen, Pillage would probably attack him. The ship cat appeared constantly hypnotized by Jagger’s rhythmic swinging. He’d barely taken his eyes off the pirate since he was strung up there.
“Do ye think we should get him down?” she asked Barrels.
Barrels sniffed, pausing in the act of writing a word on parchment for her. “No, I don’t.”
Her father might still be harboring a small grudge over Jagger’s interruption to his lesson the other day—although he had taken on the new approach.
“What does that say then?” she asked him, leaning forward to read the parchment. There were four letters: M-A-S-T.
“Sound it out,” he replied. Using a smaller square of parchment, he covered the last three letters.
Ebba pressed her lips together. “Mmm.”
He revealed the A.
“Mmm-aah.”
Barrels beamed, revealing the third.
“Mmm-aah-sss.” She was one step ahead of him, adding a sharp ‘tih’ sound. Ebba squeezed her eyes shut. “Mmm-ahh-sss-tih.”
Ebba opened her eyes and blinked at the revealed word. M-A-S-T. “Mast,” she exclaimed, shooting to her feet. “Mast.”
“Yes, my dear,” Barrels said, reaching forward to squeeze her hand. “That was fantastic.”
She grinned at him and sat back down, ignoring more overhead moans. “Do another one then.”
“My pleasure.”
Barrels scratched another word down, and Caspian walked over to join them.
The prince glanced up at Jagger, displaying the dark shadows beneath his eyes. “Is skin meant to be that color?”
Since his outburst yesterday, Caspian hadn’t spoken a word. Had he been up all night with his guilt and regrets? She expected so. His sense of responsibility was going to drown him one day.
Ebba craned to see Jagger again. “Nay, I don’t s’pose so. We best be gettin’ him down soon.”
“I’m not sure. He doesn’t exactly seem sorry,” the prince remarked.
Seemed like everyone was harboring some type of grudge against Jagger.
She had to agree with him though. Just like the first time they’d taken Jagger hostage, he hadn’t made a single peep at their treatment of him, except the moaning in the last few hours. No pleas, no shouted apologies, no sobbing or screams. His strength was probably admirable to some people but seemed stupid to her. He could’ve been free a lot sooner if he’d just faked a few whimpers. Not that she could talk. Pretty sure she’d kneed Pockmark.
“What does this say?” Barrels asked.
Ebba glanced down. S-A-I-L. She sounded it out, saying, “Say-eel?” That didn’t sound like anything she knew of.
“Sail,” Barrels corrected her.
Ah. Sail. Ebba glanced around the ship. She now knew rigging, mast, and sail. “How long will it take me to learn all o’ the ship parts?”
“At this rate, my dear, not long at all. And once you’ve done that, p
erhaps we can move on to putting words together or reading some of my books.”
Ebba grimaced. “How about my present from all o’ ye?” That was the only book she was interested in reading.
He dipped his head. “We can do that.”
Barrels collected his teaching supplies, and Caspian sat in his vacated spot. The prince was frowning at the empty space where his arm used to be.
“Feeling yer limb again?” she asked.
He glanced up at her. “Yes. It’s never faded, and I thought it would. But I can feel my arm there, my elbow and hand and each of my fingers as though my arm were never taken.” A slight breeze played with the curls around his ears. “I can feel the wind touching my skin,” he continued in a darker voice, “and I swear I thought I’d trapped it in the bilge door the other day. I felt physical pain.”
“That’d be mighty irritatin’.”
“It is,” he admitted. “More that it’s hard to accept something is gone when everything you feel says otherwise.”
Did he refer to his arm or to his father?
Ebba surveyed the rest of him. His right arm was much larger than it used to be, probably because he only had one limb to do everything now. His chest was larger on that side also, and the right side of his neck. “Ye’ve finally hardened up, methinks.”
He attempted a smile. “Have I? At last?”
An aching ball pained in her chest. She couldn’t take it anymore, watching a person try so hard to keep up appearances. Biting her lip, she shifted closer. “Caspian, ye had no choice but to leave yer people. Ye had to get yer sisters safe. Goin’ off to save the courtesans that Malice took to the mines were a fool’s quest. Ye would’ve surely died. Then what help would ye have been to anyone?”
The prince’s eyes faded, and he stared ahead to where they drew nearer to the Dynami Sea.
“The more I go on,” he replied as the wind swirled around them, “the more I understand there are far worse things than death. Guilt and regret are more powerful than my fear of the end. I should’ve listened to my instincts that night. I should’ve tried to help them instead of running away with my tail between my legs.”
“The odds were impo’sible, Caspian,” Ebba said, her chest tightening. Why couldn’t he see that? There was responsibility, and then there was stupidity.
She had to redirect the current flowing through his mind somehow.
“The odds were impo’sible for Jagger too.” His words were twisted with bitterness. “Yet look at what he has done. He willingly went as your hostage to Neos in the beginning so that he might check on his people; he bargained with your crew on Febribus for his chance to return again. He hijacked Felicity and defeated a beast that killed the tribespeople, or at the very least drove them away, and who wreaked havoc in the Neos village. He did all that without encouragement, when the world told him no, and knowing he would likely die—and did it while controlled by the taint. He made it possible. And I should have done the same. My father would have.”
Ebba thought Caspian’s views of his father weren’t accurate and certainly didn’t mesh with the criticisms he’d voiced in the past. But if he wanted to put King Montcroix on a pedestal, Ebba wasn’t going to destroy the illusion.
By the sound of it, the prince envied Jagger a great deal.
Ebba could follow his reasoning, but she couldn’t see how the situations were the same. “He didn’t fight Ladon. He offered to heal his soul, and the purgium did the rest. You would’ve had to fight hundreds of mindless pirates and the six pillars. And without this root o’ magic we be searchin’ for, ye would’ve lost. Ye’re tryin’ to compare a ship to a fish. Jagger’s battle weren’t the same. It’s just the sadness in ye that won’t allow ye to admit it.”
He stared off into the darkening ocean and made no answer.
She’d been wrong; being at sea wasn’t enough to fix the prince. And after what Jagger let slip, Ebba had an inkling she’d viewed the return of Caspian’s energy and interest entirely wrong. But if he was acting like himself again because of his feelings for her, she wasn’t about to lead him on. That fell on the immoral side of her pirate morals. Except nothing that had happened recently was enough to offset the demons in his head.
Red crept up her neck and into her face. She took his hand in both of hers, trying to swallow back her temper. Maybe a direct approach was best. “I’m sick of ye mopin’ about. I want ye to be happy.”
Caspian pulled his hand free. “I don’t do it to annoy you.”
“But it does, if only because I can’t understand why.” She took his hand again and resisted his efforts to yank it back.
Ebba stared into his dull and shadowed eyes. “Yer alive, Caspian, alive when many others ain’t. The villagers o’ Neos, the tribespeople o’ Pleo, the pirates who be lost to the taint and, aye, no doubt some of yer people, too. But ye’re not—”
Ebba’s mouth dried as the answer occurred to her.
He was overwhelmed by everything he hadn’t done, all his regrets. And she knew that nothing trumped his sense of responsibility, so that was the answer. That was how she could redirect the current.
She tightened her grip on his hand, excitement grabbing her. “Ye do them a disservice by not avengin’ their memory. Fight, Caspian. If ye have regret and guilt, fight so that ye may absolve yerself. Only the weapon we seek can destroy the pillars, so throw yerself into findin’ the remainin’ pieces. Put things to right alongside the rest o’ us. And then, when we meet the pillars again, ye won’t have to run because ye be ill-equipped to battle them. Ye can still save yer people, don’t ye see, Caspian? This ain’t over. The pillars just landed the first punch.”
The prince slowly blinked. He straightened next, his amber eyes glinting in the moonlight.
She whispered low and fast. “Don’t look back anymore. Look forward to what ye can do. The past has set sail, matey, but ye can be navigatin’ the rest. Yer people are waitin’ for ye.”
He swallowed hard, and Felicity rose and fell, continuing her journey, untroubled by their conversation.
“You’re right,” he said hoarsely.
Ebba didn’t dare make a noise and interrupt the whirring of his mind.
Caspian nodded, and his drawn face was determined when he turned to her again. “There is still time to do the right thing and fix this. We must get this weapon and save my people. Even if their souls are already lost to the pillars’ taint, I’ll figure out a way to free them. I won’t let them down again.”
He stood without warning.
“Where do ye think ye’re goin’?” she asked.
“I’m certain I saw an old map of the Dynami Sea amidst Barrels’ collection of papers.”
“I don’t think any map will be accurate-like, matey,” she said, pursing her lips. “No one’s made it out o’ that place afore.”
“Then how does everyone know not to go there?” he countered, lifting both brows.
Ebba wrinkled her nose. “What do ye mean? If seven ships go in and none come out, no one has to be doin’ any tellin’.”
Caspian laughed, and it was so similar to the person she’d first known that her heart leaped into her mouth. She’d done it. Or at least started him on the right route.
She just had to keep him there.
Ebba leaned back on her elbows as the prince disappeared below deck to rummage through what, in her opinion, were the only boring possessions aboard the ship. She tipped her head back and froze as she encountered Jagger’s gaze.
“What’re ye lookin’ at?” she snapped, covering her fright. She’d bloody-well forgotten he was there.
His eyes were bloodshot and swollen. Jagger really didn’t look too well. Ebba was going to get him down.
“He thinks he’ll beat the pillars?” The pirate hacked out a semblance of a laugh.
She rolled her eyes. “Ye think ye’ll beat the pillars?”
“Aye.”
Of course he did. “Ye’d do anythin’ for yer people; Caspian’d do
anythin’ for his. Ye think ye’ll beat the pillars, and so does he. Seems like ye ain’t so different from each other.”
“As dif’rent as night and day.”
“So ye say,” she scoffed. “Even night and day meet twice a day, ye dolt.”
The pirate closed his eyes. “Never said I wouldn’t be meetin’ him.”
When it came to revenge, Ebba could only serve hers hot, but Jagger served his icy, icy cold. For her, the longer she spent around someone she hated, the less likely she’d be to kill them. Ebba couldn’t forget that Jagger didn’t work the same way.
The pirate opened his eyes again.
“Sounds to me like the princeling don’t want to die anymore,” he uttered, a pained edge to his words.
Shite.
Double shite.
Ebba sat bolt upright, breaking off the stare with the swinging pirate. What idiocy compelled her to have such a conversation with the prince in this very spot? Though she couldn’t recollect Jagger moaning or making a single peep during the earlier talk. He’d surely stayed so quiet so he could listen in.
Stubby approached her from the helm, eyeing Jagger askance. “His color ain’t lookin’ great. Let’s get him down.”
Jagger would kill Caspian over her dead body.
She said to her father, “Nay, Stubs. Let’s not get him down just yet.”
Nine
“What’s the sword tellin’ ye?” Ebba asked Caspian as he stared at the veritas. She’d barely left his side since Jagger’s veiled threat two days prior—though the pirate had holed up in the crow’s nest to recover.
His back against the bow’s bulwark, the prince presented the blade to her. Ebba whipped both hands behind her.
“Nay thanks,” she blurted. “Gives me the willies just thinkin’ o’ it.”
Caspian lowered veritas. “It’s really not that bad.”
Ebba eyed the sword. “Aye, but too much truth ain’t good for a pirate.”
He grinned, and she returned it.
“So what does it do?” she pressed him again.
“As far as I can tell, you just hold the sword and think of what you want to know. But it doesn’t always work. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
Dynami’s Wrath Page 7