Me.
These hands. My hands.
While I balked at the symbols and implications, the woman repeated her genuflection, bowing low, chanting the ancient words, opening her arms to the sky overhead. Her skin was not like my skin; no dark tattoos or neat white scars. Even as I looked, though, pale, unblemished arms turned warm and tan, and patterns in some kind of deep, indigo ink like henna traveled upward, ringing wrists to elbows. Now I was a different woman, before the same altar, offering up the same words in a new, melodious voice.
Dae Caedan. Dae Catori.
The serpent skull smiled up at me, seeming to laugh and laugh.
Seasons passed—I changed. The moon and sun rose and set, and the hands outspread before me shifted: old hands; young hands; scarred; thin; bloodied; white; brown. Some painted, some inked; adorned with rings of bone or wood or woven leather. The tokens arranged in the seven-sided ritual space changed in shape and size, new collections replacing those of times passed.
All except the skull.
A serpent. Akolet, the sacred serpent. Lord of barren lands, poisoned people. Holy deity of the Ruined Sands.
These hands. My hands.
A sharp pain struck my ankle, jolting me from the vision.
"Schala?"
The caracal kitten had sunk her juvenile fangs into my heel, tugging at me, her lambent green eyes beseeching.
"But... you are..."
The spell broke. A groan escaped me as the strange scene dimmed, and in a slow, dizzy spiral I tried to find myself again in the darkness.
I'm falling to pieces... I'm losing control. I feel mad. I feel...
Alone.
My knees struck the wood of the crate beneath me. I crouched on it, gripping the side of another crate, resting my brow against it. Schala butted her head against my hip and let out an unhappy miaow.
"What was that?" I whispered. "Who..."
Here are your people.
Serpent worshippers? Followers of Akolet?
I closed my eyes and shook my head. "No. I refuse to believe it. I refuse!"
I pounded a fist on the crate. Then, overcome, I struck it again, uttering a frustrated growl through my teeth, and again, wishing for the first time ever that Alaric were still alive, so I could punch him right in his smug face.
A scrape and a rattle caught my attention. I looked up just in time to see the mirror totter and tilt—then it was swinging down at me, and I ducked just in time to avoid it cracking over my head. It struck my back and tumbled, shattering on the floor.
"Eye of Akolet..."
Carefully I crawled down from the pile of crates, avoiding the glass. Schala followed me, and I pulled her down into my arms before she could bound onto the floor.
"More ill omens," I muttered at her, scratching her between the ears. "More bad luck. I don't think those eggshells worked at all."
When I stepped out into the passageway, I found the familiar corridors of the orlop awaiting me. I trudged my way to the ladder leading up to the middle deck, avoiding the rower's gallery, where the steady beat of the drum and the high-spirited chant of the rowers was well underway.
Should I tell Bannon? Or will he only think I've been sleepwalking, or that I've become hysterical?
I hated the thoughts, even as I indulged them. As I returned to our cabin, greeted by morning sunlight streaming in through the porthole, burning away the morning fog, I put Schala down and let out an irritated huff. I'd no doubt be missed from my morning work assignment, but I couldn't find the strength to care. Not after what I'd just been through. Not after what I'd just seen.
Not serpent worshippers. Please, let it not be true, let me not be the child of more serpent worshippers!
I sat on the bed, leaning elbows on knees, and propping my chin in my hands.
As the thin mattress sunk under my weight, something tumbled from the meager pillows and rested against my thigh. I picked it up—
A bolt of terror shot through my chest, and my throat tightened.
The skull of a desert cobra.
Chapter Fourteen
By the time I'd found Bannon and led him down to the orlop, the cargo hold with the apples and cherries had disappeared.
"It was here!" I paced the exterior passage, searching for the door. None of the storage spaces had doors, though. All of them, open archways, their cargo secured by ropes and nets. No doors, and no box of ripe red fruits and walnuts... no shattered mirror.
Bannon peered into each hold, searching for the room I'd described, but I didn't need him to confirm what I'd already seen for myself. The things I'd seen were not there.
I hadn't shown him the serpent's skull. I'd hidden it away in a canvas sack in our cabin, sick at the sight of it. Maybe when I looked into the sack again, the horrible token would also be gone, just a figment of a bad dream.
I sank to my knees, exhausted with the wild swing from confidence and conviction to crumbling doubt. My heart raced. I thought it might beat hard enough to break my ribs.
"The cherries..."
I spread my hands out before me. "Look, my barbarian... the stains are still on my fingers."
Bannon crouched, taking my hands in his. I closed my eyes, sure he would tell me he saw nothing. I even wished he would, and wished he'd become angry, and assign me punishment. Whip me, flog me, bind me and command me to kneel all night in bound contrition. I couldn't stand the restless, untethered imbalance inside me. I needed him to ground me again.
"Strange," he murmured, touching the dark blots of cherry juice on my fingertips. "But there could be no cherries nor apples in our cargo hold. Where would we have taken them on? They aren't native to the desert continent."
I met his gaze. "Alaric's mirror. Someone left Alaric's mirror there, too, unsecured. Why would they do that, Sir? It was certain to shatter, and it did."
Bannon rose, and with one firm hand guided me to my feet as well.
"Come," he said, and I followed.
He took me back to our cabin, and as I watched, he opened the trunk set at the foot of the bed. In it lay my furs, packed as I remembered. Even before Bannon unwrapped them, a sour, nasty anxiety pooled in my gut.
Alaric's mirror lay in my Master's lap, as it had been, swaddled in the safety of the thick blankets. It gleamed, intact, nearly perfect except for the chip at one corner.
I flinched in suspense as Ailsa let out a wild, fearless cry, raising her shield to block the axe her father lobbed at her head. The harsh tock of wood cracking against wood echoed across the deck of the Drekakona, as the medicine woman deflected the weapon, following the move with a lunge and swing of her own axe, bringing it up in a powerful arc to strike Bannon hard in the flank.
I'd already mentally calculated counter maneuvers and dodging tactics, when Bannon caught Ailsa's axe with the palm of his hands, avoiding the whack on the ribs.
"There.," he said. "See the opening I've left her. A deadly mistake to make. The Sanraethi battle axe demands a strong swing and powerful momentum. Unfortunately, it can leave your entire body vulnerable if your opponent survives to strike back."
Ailsa dropped back, firming her grip on the weapon—only a blunted, wooden toy made for practice—and beat it against her shield twice in a gesture I'd seen other Sanraethi soldiers use, a sort of salute to their leader. The sailors had given us space on the mid-deck for our exercises, allowing me, Ailsa, Bannon, and Rayyan to review the first lessons in Sanraethi axe combat.
"Come, Sadira." Bannon reached out a hand to me. I obeyed, and Rayyan retrieved the wooden axe Bannon had thrown, returning it to him. Bannon put it in my hand, pointing out the position of my grip.
"Hold it here, and you'll have the greatest control. Too high, and you sacrifice reach and force. Too low, and you'll find no precision."
As I tested the weight and heft of the weapon, Bannon selected a shield—also a simple, undecorated piece meant only for training—and put it in my other hand.
"All right, now, you'll lung and s
wing at her, slowly, and you'll see how she moves to block."
Our training with Bannon had begun at the noonday bell. After the maddening events of the morning, I'd barely had the stomach to finish a single bowl of fish stew in the galley before joining my Master at the mid-deck for instruction. Rayyan wore a deep expression of interest, but for the second day, a mixture of exhaustion and chagrin curdled in my gut, making it difficult to concentrate.
Normally physical training calmed me, though, centering me in the moment, grounding me in my own body. Similar, sometimes, to being bound with rope or disciplined with tests of endurance, like kneeling. If I hadn't felt so tired, perhaps I'd have enjoyed it more.
Bannon guided me through the motions, hands on my wrists. I closed my eyes for a moment, inhaling a deep breath as I appreciated the firm, broad frame of his body around me.
"Strike like this..."
He stepped forward with me and aimed the blow at Ailsa's left hip. We did it slowly, giving her ample time to step back, and she rebounded to touch her axe against my exposed upper flank.
"So, what can you do to cover yourself from such a counterstrike?"
Rayyan screwed up his face in thought. I considered the position of my body and Ailsa's, and frowned.
"If I were using my khopeshes, I'd follow up the first swing by pushing forward and slashing with both swords across her own exposed side when she advances at me."
"If you can switch motion quickly enough, you can do something similar here. But it's got to be fast."
He demonstrated, leading me, demonstrating a smooth switch from the downward arc to the forward press and parry.
"But what if she guards with her shield and then bashes you with it?"
After we'd stepped out the movement in careful practice, he left me and Ailsa to drill while he paired off with Rayyan.
Ailsa, shrewd and practical even at nineteen, kept her feelings about me mostly to herself. She'd never shunned me like the other barbarians, accepted my aid in times of need, and had even gone out of her way to tend to my injuries and illness. Her duties as healer took precedence over her personal feelings, and in that sense, we'd been able to work together without incident. At the same time, I had no reason to think she liked me, either. As we worked through our combat forms, alternating attacker and defender, her expression remained stolid, and she said little.
Better than trying to learn from Mara, at least.
As she lifted her shield to easily deflect an overhead blow, Ailsa gestured to me with a tilt of her chin. "You didn't make it to your shift at the oars this morning. If you think you're going to pull off swings like that, you really need to build up your shoulder muscles."
My grim worry stirred back to life with unsettling ease. "I... got lost in the passageways."
She arched an eyebrow. "Pretty hard to lose your way from the officer's cabins to the gallery. The stairway is practically right outside your door."
Gritting my teeth, I grumbled, "I know."
"Sadira was waylaid," Bannon put in as he and Rayyan took a pause. Ailsa and I relaxed our stances as well, setting down our shields. Ailsa was right: my arms burned from the strain, even from the simple wooden training axe.
The expression on Ailsa's face immediately made me worry she'd taken her father's statement to mean something salacious. "I was on my way to the gallery," I said quickly. "But then I... I fell into some kind of vision. The corridors all looked different, and somehow I found my way to one of the cargo holds."
Bannon's lips pressed into a fine, thoughtful line, but he said nothing. The disappearing cargo hold with the impossible cherries and apples troubled him, I knew. He'd seen the evidence—or at least some evidence—and couldn't be any surer about the mystery than me.
"Hm." Ailsa flipped her axe and caught it in a well-practiced motion. "You are sure this vision wasn't simply a dream? Perhaps you were sleepwalking."
"No." I took up my shield again, ready to resume our drills. "Something led me to the hold. Something on this ship has been haunting me for days."
"Ah." She regained her own ready stance. "Do you know what?"
"No."
We played out the forms again, and she led me through a second sequence with a wide, wheeling spin.
"One of the sailors' evil spirits, I suppose," I said. "Ashe warned me about them after I sheared my hair."
"Yes, bad omens." She gave a dismissive wave of her axe. "After what happened in Vashtaren, and with your former king, I daresay the reason behind your bad dream is far more mundane."
I scowled at her. "You think I'm mad."
"I think you've endured a great deal of harrowing experience at the hands of a madman," she amended, gesturing for me to adjust my stance as I moved toward her. "And the echoes of that experience are the things that haunt you, not some silly, angry spirit dreamt up by an imaginative sailor."
Rayyan executed an admirable block as Bannon swept toward him with a powerful underhand strike. "Respectfully, Lady Ailsa, you of all people ought to trust Sadira when she speaks of dark magic and hauntings. You were right there with us when the black magician's revenant soul crawled back from the grave."
"Right," I agreed. "Both of you saw the monster. You saw the horrible eye at its center, like a festering mutant heart."
"Yes, we did." Ailsa ducked my next swing but missed my swift follow-up; triumphantly, I tapped the edge of my wooden axe at the inside of her knee, and she gave a little start. It pleased me to see the spark of approval in her eyes.
"Very good," she complimented me. "Let's reverse roles now. I'll advance—you defend."
I nodded and adjusted my form.
"Lord Khan possessed a dark power we never expected," Bannon admitted. "In Sanraeth, magic is thought of as only tricks and illusions, the workings of a festival entertainer. Divination and true enchantment are rare to find, and usually manifest only among the miracle workers of the church. Khan drew his wicked ability from an evil source, and yes, he tormented the whole castle for his vengeance. But I saw his mind, in the end. He burned. Whatever power he had left, that last, horrible monster devoured."
"Perhaps, then, there are other dark spirits at work," Rayyan proposed, before I could say anything. I shut my mouth, biting my tongue against my own retort: the hateful sense of spite in the slamming of the doors back in the castle; the determination in the rigging ropes to twist me into my former master's beloved rope suspensions; the horrible, demanding force of the creature assailing our cabin door in the night.
Bannon might be certain Alaric's soul was gone for good, but I wasn't. Even if the black magician himself had passed into oblivion, the entity now haunting me felt somehow, intimately connected to him.
"But you have no enemies here," Ailsa assured me as she tested my defense with an aggressive push one way, then the other. She lowered her voice and added, "Don't let yourselves be swayed too much by sailor's lore. We are no longer prisoners in the poisoned world of the serpent Akolet. The Goddess Sherida shines upon us, seer of all. There are no wild spirits or angry demons out to wreak vengeance on you, Sadira."
"Then the cherries?" I asked. "The apples? What about the—"
I caught myself before I said serpent's skull. I still didn't want to admit its appearance to any of them. Not even myself, really.
Ailsa dropped her fighting stance, raising her shoulders in a shrug.
"You have lived an entire life on your knees. It may be some time before you no longer feel like a slave."
I relaxed my stance as well, setting down my shield and bringing a hand up to my neck. Her eyes followed the gesture, and I knew she was thinking of the leather collar just like I was.
No longer feel like a slave? She means no longer a submissive pet. No longer the beast in need of taming.
She thought me mad because of the cuffs and chains I chose to bear. Because of my love of pain... and my desire to be controlled.
I couldn't look her in the face. I couldn't look at Bannon, who must also
see what his daughter, the shrewd healer, saw. Shed of my collar, released from my prison, here I stood, meeting my freedom with outlandish fantasy and paranoia. Visions of dark shadows leading me through a maze below decks? Mirrors toppling and shattering before me when all the while they lay safely in their crates, unpacked and unharmed?
"The stains from the cherries..." I mumbled.
Bannon rested a hand on my shoulder. "Perhaps they came from the resins or paints the deck crew have been using. You might have brushed up against something freshly coated with a dark treatment, and not known so."
I covered my face with my hands. "I'm not mad! I swear I have not just imagined these things!"
Ailsa came nearer, giving my bicep a gentle squeeze. "You would not be the first refugee from Lord Khan's kingdom to suffer such trauma, Sadira. I've spoken with many like you, plagued with nightmares, and violent fits of anger or sorrow. Especially those who served in the harem. You have no enemies on this ship."
"I'm not mad," I repeated. "I'm not."
Am I?
Chapter Fifteen
The hammock of ropes around me shifted and bobbed, alerting me to the approach of another climber. I'd been lying back in a shroud of ratlines above the foredeck, hanging off the forward archery tower. In the quiet dark of evening, this spot remained quiet and mostly undisturbed—which was exactly the reason I'd chosen to hide away there.
Bannon had found me, though. He hauled himself up toward my hammock from the middle story of the archery tower. He didn't move as easily among the ropes as I did, but he moved with a sure, strong confidence I'd recognize anywhere.
"Found the stargazing spot, have you?" He pulled himself up alongside my comfortable pocket of rigging ropes and rolled over to drop into place beside me. He must have already known about this calm resting place.
"It is quite a good vantage point." I shifted positions to give him more room and gestured at the speckled night sky above. "Clear and free of sails, ropes, spars..."
Beauty's Secret (Beast and Beauty Book 2) Page 12