by PT Hylton
Eril leaned forward. “You realize I’m going to have to kill you, right?”
“I don’t see it that way, sir. You’re the warlord of this army. You don’t have to do anything.”
Eril chuckled. “I suppose you’re right. I don’t have to. I get to. Executions always raise morale among the troops, and they’re pretty fun for me, too. The only question is, how will we do it? Drawn and quartered? It’s a classic for a reason.”
“Perhaps we could tie him down and let a boar devour him, sir,” offered one of the guards.
Eril scratched his chin. “Hmm, that has potential. Any other suggestions?”
Now that the warlord had opened the floodgates, the ideas came fast and furiously. Everything from death by a thousand cuts to crushed by rocks to burning at the stake was thrown out. If Fannar hadn’t been the person whose death they were discussing, he might have been impressed with the variety of execution methods they came up with.
As it was, he was more frightened than appreciative.
The warlord seemed to have narrowed the possibilities to two—hanging him up for the vultures to peck to death or drowning him in pig’s blood—when Fannar interrupted.
“Sir, I’m curious… Don’t you even want to know what I’m doing here?”
Eril shrugged. “Not really. Maybe you regret deserting and are trying to quietly rejoin. Or maybe you’re working with my enemies. But I don’t think either of those are the case.” He gave Fannar a sly smile. “See, after we caught you, I sent my guards to scour the area around the camp.”
Fannar felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“And you’ll never guess what they found. Three fighters hiding in the hills. And these weren’t just any fighters. One carried two swords and a bow. He managed to put arrows in ten of my guards before we took them down. Another seems to have magic that controls rocks. He took out five more guards. And the third…” He turned to the woman. “Remind me about the third one again?”
“He was very annoying, sir,” she answered.
Eril turned back to Fannar. “The third was very annoying. As far as I’m concerned, all three deserve to die. But the point is, they were hiding in the cliffs waiting for you to return. You’re a Barskall—if you were heading into enemy territory and they weren’t allowed to join you, that can only mean one thing.” He glared at Fannar. “You’re their leader.”
Fannar was taken aback. Gideon, Elliot, and Olaf had been captured? While he was still trying to process this information, Eril spoke again.
“I think I understand. You’ve come to this land because it’s weak. You want to make a name for yourself, so you’ve collected a few good fighters. I understand you. I really do.” His gaze became stern. “But when you come into my camp to try to recruit my soldiers, you’ve gone too far.”
Fannar blinked in confusion for a moment. Then something occurred to him. This was something he could use. “You’re right, sir. That was my intention, but I only ever meant to recruit a few. You never would have missed them.”
Eril scowled. “Many or few, I don’t care. I’m going to treat you the same way I would any rival warlord who entered my camp. I’m sentencing you to death.”
“Very well.” Fannar allowed himself a slight smile. “Then, as a fellow warlord, I formally challenge your sovereignty.”
Eril’s eyes widened. He stood up from his throne and walked toward Fannar. The thick muscles in his arms rippled as he wrung his hands in frustration. He stopped in front of Fannar, towering over him. “You dare? You dare challenge me to single combat?”
Fannar nodded. “As a rival warlord, it’s my right, and you said you were treating me as a warlord.”
Eril looked around the room to see if anyone would object to Fannar’s words. None of them did. There was no way the warlord could back down now, Fannar knew. Not if he wanted to keep the respect of his most trusted advisors.
“Fine. We’ll meet in battle an hour after dawn. Though I warn you, I intend to make your death slow.” He turned to the woman. “Take him to a tent so he can prepare himself.”
Against all odds, Fannar had managed to survive this meeting. Now he just had to defeat a Barskall warlord in single combat.
***
Abbey stared at the man for a long time without saying anything. So long, in fact, that he started to question her.
“You are Lara’s daughter, aren’t you?”
She nodded, slowly recovering from her surprise. She was afraid to ask the next question, afraid of what the answer would be, but she had to ask. “How did you know her?”
He chuckled. “I was her teacher. Among other things.”
“Careful,” Abbey warned. “That’s my mother you’re talking about.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed as he took in Dustin. “You’re running with a Storm Caller?”
“Running with?” Dustin asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The man shook his head sadly. “Theirs is a pathetic and superstitious form of magic. Do you know they actually believe their magic comes from the sea itself? As if the ocean were just one big pool of magic, and they were the only ones special enough to use it. And those staffs? Pretentious assholes, the whole lot of them.”
Hekla clicked her tongue in disgust. “Something tells me this guy isn’t going to leave this room alive.”
“I won’t argue with you there,” Dustin muttered.
Abbey took a deep breath. “Your name’s Carter, right? I need to talk to you about Simon.”
Carter waved a hand in disgust. “Everybody always wants to talk about Simon. I’m half-sick from talking about Simon. How about we get back to that mother of yours? The body on her. She could take the simplest peasant's dress and fill it out so that every curve made me want to—”
“Okay.” Dustin held up a hand. “Listen, you crazy old bastard, I was going to do my best to keep you alive until the end of this conversation, but you’re not making my job easy.”
Abbey ignored Carter’s lewd comments. “Simon claims he’s my brother.”
Carter barked with laughter at that. “Of course he does. That’s his way, isn’t it? And I suppose it’s true, in a way.”
“What does that mean?” Abbey asked. She was trying not to read too much into his words, nor interpret what they might mean. She needed to hear him say it.
“It’s like I’ve been trying to tell you,” Carter insisted. “To understand that, we need to talk about Lara.”
Abbey nodded, her heart beating fast in her chest. “Okay. Tell me about my mother.”
“And try to avoid saying anything that will make Abbey cut your throat,” Dustin pleaded.
“Lara was just sixteen when I first met her. I was about ten years older. I noticed her right away.”
“Gross,” Hekla interjected.
“She was just a serving girl at my family’s home in Arcadia, and I was one of the first students at the Academy. I quickly rose to the top of my class, fire magic being my specialty. Everything was going well. But after I graduated, things changed.”
“How so?” Abbey asked.
“I was powerful and ambitious; a combination Chancellor Adrien did not like. We butted heads a few times. So rather than risk a confrontation I knew I would lose, I offered to do a job I knew needed to be done, one that would take me far away from Arcadia.”
“And what was that?” Abbey wondered.
Carter smiled. “I offered to hunt down the Founder.”
Abbey tilted her head in surprise. The Founder was the man who’d brought magic to the world and helped end the Mad Days. He’d also helped found Arcadia, then he’d traveled, bringing the gift of magic to other places including Holdgate. If not for the Founder, storm magic would have never been developed.
“I knew the job would take years, if not a lifetime, but I also knew someone so powerful couldn’t be allowed to roam the world freely. That kind of power needed to be reined in. So, I left Arcadia with a small company of my closest
friends.”
“And your favorite serving girl?” Dustin guessed.
Carter nodded. “You’re not as dumb as you look. Yes, Lara came with us. And five years into our travels, when Simon was born, she vowed to take care of him.”
“Whoa, hold on!” Abbey exclaimed. “Was Lara… Was my mother…” She couldn’t get out the words.
Carter’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Was Lara Simon’s actual mother? Not even close! She wouldn’t let me touch her, though I certainly tried.” He let out a cackle.
“Again, gross,” Hekla said.
“Simon’s mother was some barmaid I impressed one night. I’d developed some unique magical techniques by then, including the firehand.” He raised his right hand and green flame erupted from it.
Abbey started to draw her sword.
“Relax,” Carter said, extinguishing the fire. “Just a demonstration. I have to remind myself I can still do it every once in a while. The way Simon keeps me locked up here, I sometimes forget I was ever good for anything. Anyway, when I found out I had a son, I took the boy and got rid of the barmaid. Lara agreed to help raise him. She was the only mother Simon ever knew.”
Abbey’s palms were covered in sweat. Simon wasn’t her brother by blood, but part of her understood why he’d said they were siblings. From the sound of it, he’d had more time with her mother than she had.
“Anyway, that was the way it went for the next six years. We traveled to exotic regions searching for the Founder. We found plenty of Unlawfuls—untrained savages using magic—and we dealt with them the only way you could deal with such people. I taught Lara some magic during our travels, even though I knew Adrien wouldn’t have approved of me doing so. She had a real knack for it. Not so much the fire magic, but she was dangerous as hell with ice.”
“So what happened?” Abbey asked.
Carter sighed. “I supposed Lara started to feel guilty after a while. She had too big a heart, your mother. She felt sorry for the savage Unlawfuls, as if they deserved her pity. One day she just up and left. As much as I cared for her, I’ll never forgive her for abandoning my son. He loved her as much as any child has ever loved a mother, and she left him.”
Abbey’s mind reeled from this new information. Did her father know all this? Was he still keeping things from her, or had her mother lied to her father? “That was the last time you saw my mother?”
Carter nodded. “I was brokenhearted when I heard what had happened to her. Such a shame. Those damn Hunters.”
“Yeah,” Abbey said distractedly. Her mind was already circling back to Carter’s son. “Is that why Simon is doing this? To get back at me because my mother abandoned him?”
Carter thought about that a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. He genuinely feels a connection with you. He’s trying to make you better, I think. He wants the two of you to work together. He thinks that if he burns the Kaldfell Peninsula down, maybe the two of you can rebuild it together.”
Abbey shook her head at the insanity of it all. “He’s going to attack Holdgate. What’s the plan? When’s he going to take his army there?”
Carter cackled with surprise. “You don’t know? The army’s been on their way to Holdgate for the past week. They should arrive any day now. By the time you get back, it’ll have been destroyed.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Captain Syd,” the man called through the hatch. “Simon requests the pleasure of your company. If it’s not too much trouble.”
Syd was sitting next to Dag, schooling him in some of the basics of stormship sailing to pass the time. The kid had a quick mind and he was inquisitive, asking plenty of follow-up questions about positions on the ship. He was clearly considering the various paths his career might take, which was pretty impressive considering they were locked in an enemy cargo hold with no guarantee they’d ever escape.
She once again reminded herself to compliment Abbey on her selection next time she saw her.
When the guard called her name, she carefully suppressed her smile and slowly walked to the ladder as if it were a journey she was reluctant to make. She didn’t have to fake her pained response when she reached the top of the ladder and stepped into the sun for the first time in days.
They led her to the captain’s quarters, where she found Simon sitting behind the desk.
“Ah, Captain, please have a seat. I hope you don’t mind me saying you look a bit peaked. And you don’t smell great either.”
She sat down, frowning. “I’ve been crammed in a cargo hold with forty people for three days, Simon. Smells happen. By the way, does this ship have an actual captain?”
“Yes, he’s around somewhere. The poor guy’s learned to stay out of my way, I suppose.” He waved the thought away. “But enough about him. We’re here to talk about you. I’ve heard things, Captain. Troubling things.”
Syd wasn’t much of an actress, but she did her best to look surprised. “What kinds of things?”
He leaned forward and smiled broadly. “The way I understand it, you managed to signal another stormship just before I sank The Foggy Day. A piece of magitech, I believe?”
Syd let her mouth fall open.
Simon chuckled. “Don’t look so surprised. It took me all of three hours after your capture to find the weak links among your crew and convince them to pass along the gossip in the hold. All for a little hardtack, I might add. So my question for you is, does this other stormship have a way of tracking you, and what did you do with the magitech?”
Syd managed to keep a straight face for all of ten seconds, then she burst out laughing.
Simon’s smile wavered. “I’m sorry, what am I missing here?”
She raised a hand to wipe a tear from her eye, brought on by the laughter. “You sea-damned idiot. There was no signal. It took me all of three hours to realize you’d compromised some of my new recruits, so I started feeding them bad information.” She shook her head sadly. “I’ll tell you something—those kids would believe anything. I was considering telling them I had a magitech device that could control whales and I was going to signal the whales to attack the ship. I decided that was too over the top, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Now why in the hell would you feed me lies?” he asked.
She glared at him, looking right into his eyes. “Because you burned my ship and killed friends of mine, you bastard. I’m your prisoner, so I don’t have a lot of power here, but I’ll do anything I can to make your life even a little bit more difficult or annoying, and I’m going to do it as hard as I can.”
For a moment, she thought he was going to strike her. Instead, he raised his index finger. “You know something, Captain? I like you.” When he saw the skepticism on her face, he continued, “No, I really do! You’re tenacious, and you’re nearly fearless. I want you to remember something. Just because we’re enemies now doesn’t mean we always will be.”
“Somehow I don’t think I’ll get past what you did,” Syd told him.
Simon shrugged. “I’m sure it seems that way now, but things change. This is nearly over, Syd. There’s going to come a time in the very near future when Holdgate as you know it no longer exists. Then I’m going to build it back, better than before. There will be no stormships, not as there are today anyway, but I will need good captains. I hope you’ll consider serving in my fleet when the time comes.”
“I’m going to go ahead and give you a hard ‘no’ in advance on that one,” Syd replied.
“Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see what I’m going to do for your friend Abbey.” He looked out the porthole into the distance beyond. “You know, Captain Tor wasn’t worthy of her. Nor was Dahlia. Not really. And yet they still managed to make her stronger, to help her grow her legend. Just imagine how strong she’ll be after she faces me, an opponent who can truly challenge her.”
Syd thought about that a moment. “So you’re saying you don’t want to kill Abbey?”
Simon laughed. “Good gri
ef, no! I want to help her. Change can be painful, but it’s inevitable. The people she surrounds herself with, the enemies she faces—none of them are worthy of her. I’m going to change that.”
Syd gritted her teeth. She’d had enough of listening to this man. “Can I go back to the hold now?”
He sighed, but nodded to the men waiting by the door. They grabbed her by the arms and hauled her to her feet.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking on my own,” she barked at them.
When she’d almost reached the door he called to her again, and she stopped.
“Captain Syd, I’ve been meaning to ask you… Why do you shave your head?”
She thought about telling him it was none of his business, but then she decided there was no harm in it. “It used to be a promise. I swore to keep it shaved until I found my brother. Now that I’ve found him, it’s more of a reminder.”
“Of what?”
“That even in the darkest times, when everyone around you says you should give up, there is still hope.”
“Goodbye, Captain Syd. Enjoy the hold. The next time we see each other, the world will be very different.”
“Let’s hope so,” she said. The sailors led her out of the captain’s quarters and back to the hold.
***
Just as Jarvi had predicted, Karoline was awake when they arrived at her home. She was a small, thin woman who looked like even one of Viktor’s weak winds might be able to knock her over. Her eyes were lively and alert, however, and hinted at a wicked sense of humor.
She greeted Jarvi with a wink and invited the seven of them inside. Jarvi led the conversation, telling her about what they’d seen and the reasons they were there.
She shook her head sadly when Jarvi had finished. “Dark times. Very dark times.”
“Any suggestions?” Benjamin asked. “If there’s anything at all you could do to help us, we’d very much appreciate it.”
She was quiet for a long time, as if deciding how much to tell them. Finally she said, “I’ve been keeping tabs on this Simon ever since he somehow convinced the city council to give him Kraken, our flagship. Before that, even. Him and that damn magic school.”