by Bex Hogan
I bristle slightly, guilt making me defensive. ‘Yes, really. And question them, Bronn. There’s no need for anything more at this point.’ He knows what I mean.
‘Five minutes ago, you were blowing up their ship. Now you have a problem with me interrogating them?’
‘Battle is different,’ I say, not wanting to admit the truth to him. I know I’m being inconsistent, but I cannot account for what came over me. Now I’m keen to make amends for my previous bloodlust. ‘They’re our prisoners now. And I’m not a big supporter of torture.’
I’m not certain I’ve ever seen Bronn look so agitated. ‘Who said anything about torture? I simply want to provide them with some incentive to talk.’
That was what Raoul said as he thrust a gun to my head. There are some incentives I’m not willing to permit. Even for scum like Ferris. ‘Please, Bronn. Can you just do as I ask?’
He looks at me confused, like he can’t understand my erratic behaviour. I don’t blame him. Eventually he sighs. ‘As you wish.’
I watch him as he walks away and hate the rift I can sense widening. All we seem to do these days is disagree, approaching every problem, every choice, from polar positions. But there’s little I can do about it now. My priority is to make my decision to attack Ferris worthwhile. I want answers only he can give me.
Once I change into a dry outfit, I make my way straight to the brig, to the further of the two cells, where Ferris has been put by himself, his fellow survivors all sharing the other. Bronn isn’t to be seen, so I’m guessing he’s taking them one by one. To question.
Ferris is shackled to the hull of the ship and is going nowhere. He’s regained consciousness but looks like he wishes he hadn’t. At the mere sight of him a rush of hatred flares up inside me, the same desire to punish him that led me to risk all our lives. I fight it back. Killing people was Adler’s way. I won’t let it become mine. Not again. I took Briggs’s life while lost in vengeance. It’s a path that leads nowhere good.
‘Sorry about your ship,’ I say without a trace of remorse.
Ferris raises his head slightly and glares at me. He says nothing.
‘Looks like a nasty cut,’ I continue, gesturing to the gash above his eye. ‘I could give you some medicine if you want? Maybe some rum for the pain?’
Ferris narrows his eyes. ‘Your price?’
‘I simply want to know where I might find your friend.’
He curls his lip, revealing several rotting teeth behind it. ‘I have lots of friends. You’ll have to be more specific.’
I know damn well that he knows who I’m talking about.
‘It’s Karn I want,’ I say. ‘You’re only here as a substitute, and a poor one at that. Tell me what I want to know, and you’ll be free to leave.’
Ferris clenches his fists, and fights against his chains, longing to hurt me. I don’t flinch. ‘I will tell you nothing.’
‘That would be unwise,’ I say, taking a step closer, wanting him to know I don’t fear him. ‘Do you know where this ship is headed? The West.’
There it is, the flicker of fear shown by all sailors at the mention of Western waters.
‘If you tell me everything you know about Karn, then I might be able to arrange for you to leave us before we cross the divide. If you don’t …’ I let the thought hang in the air for a moment. ‘Did you hear the rumours about water raptors?
The look on his face tells me he did.
I lean forward to whisper softly in his ear. ‘They weren’t rumours. And they have quite an appetite.’
I move back, and for a long moment we hold each other’s gaze, neither one of us blinking, or wanting to be the first to break.
Ferris folds before I do, and a spark of victory ignites inside me. ‘You’re better than I gave you credit for,’ he says. ‘Not quite the child everyone thinks you are.’
‘Then talk. Give me information and win your freedom.’
‘But there’s something you’re not good at,’ he says, and I can feel my victory slipping away. ‘You’re a terrible liar.’
Trying to keep the upper hand, I say, ‘I’m not lying; we are going West.’
‘I believe you. But I don’t think for one second you’ll be feeding me to any water raptors. Not your style.’
Frustration makes my temper flare. ‘And what exactly is my style?’
His horrid, sneering smile returns. ‘You’re just a bit too bloody honourable for the likes of that.’
‘I just destroyed your ship and most of your crew,’ I growl at him. ‘Don’t tell me what I will or will not do.’
But it doesn’t matter. I’ve lost him. Rightly or wrongly, he’s simply not afraid of me.
The urge is undeniable. I want to take my dagger and strike him with it. Carve my name into his skin and brand him as my enemy. Let the air shiver with his screams as I bleed him into subservience.
I swallow it back like bile. ‘You will tell me,’ I say. ‘Maybe not today, but you will.’
I swear it as much to myself as to him.
Later, Bronn seeks me out to ask how it went.
‘He’s keeping his silence,’ I say. ‘For now. How did you get on?’
‘Same.’ He sighs, and I can tell he’s wrestling with whether to be honest or not.
‘Spit it out,’ I snap, not in the mood for playing games with another man.
‘I can get them to talk,’ Bronn says. ‘Milligan wasn’t the only one on the Maiden who knew how to loosen tongues.’
Milligan. The mere mention of the old surgeon’s name sends shards of alarm to spike my chest. She wasn’t trying to coerce secrets from me when she tortured me. She just wanted to hurt me. She succeeded. There is a reason I don’t want to resort to her methods.
‘No,’ I say a little too fiercely, curling my fingers into my palm. The nails she removed still haven’t fully grown back. ‘We do it my way.’
‘Your way won’t work,’ Bronn says, and he’s as frustrated as I am.
‘You don’t know that.’
Bronn runs his hands through his hair and turns to leave, but I hear what he mutters under his breath as he goes. ‘Yes I do.’
As much as it bothers me, what’s worse is discovering he’s right. Over the next few days I fail to extract a single piece of worthwhile information from Ferris. The mood on board the ship deteriorates and a dark cloud descends over my crew, maybe because of the obvious tension between Bronn and me, or perhaps because we’re close to Western waters. No one really knows what to expect when the line is crossed, or what new nightmares we’ll experience, and the mood grows ever more sour.
Days pass and eventually we cross the divide into the Western Sea. Bronn and I attempt to navigate, but we’re struggling with the charts, finding it hard to decipher the route we should be taking to reach the Eighth Isle. The last time we made this journey, the ocean took us there without our say, but this time she doesn’t intervene. Nothing seems to align with the notes we made when plotting our way back East, or the ancient maps we used the first time, and there’s a growing feeling that we’re lost.
Then the winds drop.
Suddenly and unexpectedly the waters still and our sails wilt. We’re going nowhere.
To start with no one panics. It’s hardly the first time the weather’s let us down, and we wait for the wind’s return. But as days pass without the slightest breeze unease spreads like a plague throughout the ship.
‘It’ll return eventually,’ I say to Bronn one evening, as we stand on the still deck, desperately craving the merest hint of a storm.
‘We’d better hope so,’ Bronn says. ‘And when it does? What course do we take? We’re lost and we didn’t have the food for even a day’s delay.’ And he smashes his fists down on to the railing.
I look up at him, wishing the friction between us would vanish.
‘Are things that bad?’
He glances over at me. ‘Not yet. But if this carries on? I don’t want our prisoners to starve before they tel
l us anything.’
I can’t mask my surprise. ‘You’re not feeding them?’
‘Of course I am. But it’s barely anything. I can’t justify giving them too much when our own crew are barely surviving.’
Deep down I know he’s right, so I say nothing. Especially seeing as we could have plundered Ferris’s ship for supplies if I hadn’t been overcome by revenge and blown it to pieces.
Weariness gnaws at my bones. This has all gone horribly wrong. I hoped this journey would be magical, filled with learning and time alone with Bronn. But all that’s happened is we seem to have drifted further apart. And I don’t know any tonics to fix us.
‘The wind will return soon,’ I say, feigning as much positivity as I can muster. ‘As soon as it does, we’ll bear north-west and I think we’ll reach our destination. Meanwhile, cut my own rations in half and share the rest among the crew. I’ll return to studying my books – I don’t need much food to sustain me if I’m doing that.’
Bronn gives me a strange look, like he’s reaching a decision of his own. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘What does that mean?’
He hesitates. ‘Are you sure that magic is the answer? Can you not raise your army without it?’
We seem to be going round in circles again. ‘Yes, I’m sure. Look, I know you don’t like magic—’
‘Can you blame me?’ Bronn’s face is creased with concern as he turns to confront me. ‘Considering the effect it has on you?’
I stare at him in surprise. ‘What effect?’
‘You don’t know?’ He laughs humourlessly. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
‘What effect?’ I repeat, my voice as cold as the night air.
‘Name one single time when using magic hasn’t led you to do something completely reckless. I mean, the water raptors? I was there, Marianne, I do remember the hell you unleashed. And …’ He sighs. ‘I don’t know, since we got those books you seem like a blade freshly sharpened. Ready to draw blood at the slightest touch.’
My instinct is to argue, to tell him he’s being ridiculous. But I hold my tongue, because the truth uncoils like a sleeping serpent in my chest. He’s right. I did summon the water raptors with all the anger and hatred I possessed. And after using magic to descend the mountain, I became arrogant and left Lilah without a part of her mind. Always it seduces me with its power, always it calls to the part of me that I’m not proud of, the part of me that wants to hurt rather than heal. Is it possible that the closer I get to the magic I long for, the worse are the decisions I make? Have days of sitting alone, absorbing the books and their knowledge, warped my own sense of power and importance? Did Old Tatty not warn me about this very corruption?
Bronn takes my silence for hostility, though. ‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ he says, and he’s as weary of our fighting as I am. ‘All I’m saying is be careful. You may not yet know all the risks of magic.’
Once he’s gone, I take myself to hide away in my cabin, his words echoing in my ears. Confusion draws in like clouds before a storm, feeding my ever-present frustration. I need the magic. I know I do. But I must be stronger, fight its control. And so for several days I’m drawn back to my manuscripts, searching for any potion that can draw the truth from my enemy, or even a spell that would summon a storm and move us closer to our destination, all while desperately trying to quench the alluring warmth every word brings to my bones.
I don’t see Bronn in that time. Gretchen brings me my food and updates me on the obvious – that we’re still not moving anywhere.
So when there’s a knock on my door one night, I’m fully expecting it to be Gretchen bringing some message or other and am surprised to see Bronn standing there instead.
‘Hello, stranger,’ I say. It’s good to see him.
He looks less pleased to see me, however.
‘What is it?’ I ask, my spirits already sinking deep into my stomach.
‘Permission to speak freely?’
His formality shakes me, even causes me to laugh with disbelief. ‘You don’t have to ask,’ I say. ‘You can say anything to me.’
He’s nowhere close to laughing. ‘I interrogated Ferris.’
I’m so stunned it takes me a moment to gather my thoughts. ‘You did what?’
‘We were running out of time and we needed him to talk. I did what was necessary.’
I can’t believe it. He disobeyed my orders. He went behind my back. Again.
‘He sang a full song,’ Bronn says, as if I care right now that he was successful. ‘I know where we can find Karn.’
‘I’m sorry, are you justifying what you did?’
‘Yes, damn right I am.’
‘You’re unbelievable. Do you have so little respect for me that you would disregard my judgement?’
‘We tried it your way; it wasn’t working. You don’t break your prisoners by talking to them. What was it Adler once told me? Bleed your enemy before your enemy bleeds you.’
‘So now you’re telling me you want to be more like Adler?’ I want to scream. ‘Who, by the way, you would never have challenged like this.’
‘I’m doing everything I can to protect you from becoming like him.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘You told me once you feared the darkness inside you, feared becoming what you hated. I keep trying to protect you from having to make decisions that would lead you there, but you resist me at every turn.’
Frustration bubbles inside me, hot like a cauldron. ‘You have to stop this,’ I say, turning away from him. ‘I’m not a child who needs sheltering from all the horrors of life; I’ve seen plenty of them. I know you spent so long trying to keep me safe from a distance; it must be a hard habit to break, but there’s no distance now.’ I look back at him, my hand pressed against my chest. ‘I’m here, with you.’
Bronn laughs. ‘No distance between us? There’s a gaping chasm!’ He runs his fingers through his hair, trying to calm himself. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you even want to be the Viper any more.’
The red virtually flashes in front of my eyes. ‘Is this jealousy, Bronn? Are you mad at me because I’m the Viper, not you?’ I regret the words as soon as they’re spoken, because Bronn has never been anything but supportive. The jealousy is all mine.
I know that I’ve crossed the line as soon as the words are out. I see his anger rise like the clouds before a storm, a rolling darkness covering his face, and I know I’m not going to like what he’s about to unleash one bit.
‘Do you have any idea how hard I try not to be jealous of you?’ His voice is quiet and far deadlier than if he was shouting. ‘Do you know how many things I’ve done over the years I’m ashamed of? Terrible things in the name of the King and the Viper. I stayed for two reasons. One was you. The other was because I found somewhere I belonged. Adler turned a scared little thief into a warrior, and while I may have hated what he made me into, I also loved being good at it. What else was there for a man like me to aspire to, other than succeed him? What other place in the world is there for a killer like me? And yet I knew that was your path, not mine, so I stepped back. I accepted a long time ago that the future I wanted belonged to you, not me.’
His words hurt and I hate him for saying them. For tearing apart this wound between us, spilling painful truths out into the open where they can no longer be ignored and can never be forgotten. But, for now, I hold my tongue. Bronn’s just getting started.
‘Do you want to know how hard it was to watch you marry another man?’ The issue of Ferris is now a distant memory. Bronn’s fists are clenched, his muscles taut, every inch of his body holding back the force of the rage he’s been fighting for so long. ‘I have broken my body, been beaten half to death – hell, I’ve been tortured before – but never in my life has anything hurt quite as much as standing there while you vowed to love someone else.’
His anger has fully ignited my own, and all the fury that’s been building inside me for weeks, for months, for years, s
pews out. ‘It hurt you? What do you think it did to me? Do you think I enjoyed it?’
‘How could you do it? How could you say those words, knowing you didn’t mean them?’ He’s shouting now too. ‘I know it was your duty, I know you don’t love him, but it destroyed me. And I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t make things worse for you, because you were being so bloody noble. I can’t be the bastard who makes you feel bad, who’s eaten up with jealousy that the one person who matters to me keeps doing things that make me feel worthless. I don’t want to be that man.’
His pain is devastating, but it also enrages me. ‘Then don’t be! It wasn’t about you.’
‘No, it’s always about you. Your pain, your sacrifice, but you’re not the only one suffering.’
‘Fine.’ I can feel the heat rising, the unravelling of my control as it gives way to rage. ‘You want to talk about you? Why would you tell those lies about me at the trial?’
He looks astonished. ‘Because you told me to trust you, to play along.’
‘Play along, not destroy me!’ The memory of his words claw at the inside of my mind. ‘Admit it, you wanted to be Viper, and saw a way to make it happen without having to get your hands dirty.’
‘You think I’d sink so low as to throw you overboard to get what I want?’
‘Well, you’ve done it before!’
There it is, all the messy history finally laid out before us. All the resentments, the recriminations, everything that we’ve done to each other and had to brush aside, it can all be traced back to that one moment after Bronn’s initiation, when I was still a girl in skirts clinging to our friendship and he pushed me into the sea and broke my heart. It hurts to realise that despite everything that’s happened since, a part of me never moved beyond that day.
Bronn rubs his face with his hands.
‘We can’t keep doing this to each other,’ he says, and the fight has left him. He sounds utterly defeated, his pain, his tiredness etched into every line of his face.
I’m hoping he’ll walk to me, hold me and reassure me that we can overcome all this, that there’s nothing so insurmountable that we can’t face it together, but he doesn’t. Instead he walks to the door.