Wielder's Prize

by Elle Cardy

  Jasmine couldn’t comprehend his words. He was lying to her. It wasn’t possible.

  “Your mother abandoned you to me. She was the one who gave you your true name. It was the only thing she did for you. That, and give you a single meal and a bath apparently.”

  Jasmine’s eyes widened. “Madam Bruosh is my mother?” This was too much information to process. None of it could be true. None of it made sense.

  “I thought you were a mere aggravation before. Each day you grew less like the boy you were meant to be and more like the woman who will curse my crew with distraction. I tried to convince your mother to take you off my hands. I even paid her a small fortune for the inconvenience. The wench took the fortune and gave you back. Now I know better. You are far more than an aggravation. You are an impossibility. What did the ancients use to call people like you? Ah yes, you are an Abomination.”

  The word echoed through her like a death knell. There was something familiar in it, something horrifying. A massive dark shape shifted in the void within her. She gasped. The void was still there. The beast still hunted for her. Her fingers curled around the long fibers of the carpet in an attempt to hold herself in the world. She couldn’t fall. She couldn’t let the void take her.

  The shrill of a cutlass sliding out of its scabbard brought her back with a jolt. She looked up at the captain and saw murder in his eyes. She scrambled away as the captain’s booted foot kicked her in the ribs. The force snatched her breath and sent her into the legs of the treasure table against the bulkhead. The table leg broke against her back and trinkets, statuettes, and pearls rained down on her as the table collapsed. Her hand closed over the seahorse statuette and, before she could think, she threw it at Kahld. It sailed through the air in a silver arc, missing its mark and clanging harmlessly against the far bulkhead.

  Darkness filled the captain’s sea green eyes. He would gut her here on his fine carpets as if he gutted a fish. He wouldn’t blink at the blood. He wouldn’t care he killed his own daughter. He would complete the task with the coldness of a surgeon.

  She had to get away from the madman. Pain lanced through her with every breath she tried to take. She couldn’t run. She had to hide. But she didn’t know how. Her panic made it impossible. Fear paralyzed her.

  Captain Kahld stood over her and raised his cutlass. It glinted in the sunlight and flashed in her eyes.

  Be hidden, she breathed.

  The cutlass swung. The cold metal sliced through her arm, swept through her chest and cleaved her heart. The blade traveled straight through her and came out the other side. She gasped. She looked with horror at the impossible wound. Her father had killed her. But where was the pain? Where was the blood?

  Kahld roared at the empty space she had occupied. He swung the cutlass in random arcs around the room. He couldn’t see her. She must have wielded herself hidden. She had to escape while she still could. She staggered to her feet and almost fell. She grasped the bulkhead for support and faltered her way out of the captain’s quarters.

  A shuddering weakness coursed through her. Winter blew over her. She could barely breathe. She didn’t know where she went. Jasmine found the darkest, deepest corner on the Prize and buried herself there. She’d found her limit. She had nothing left. She closed her eyes and let oblivion take her.

  PART TWO

  Chapter 17

  Jasmine became aware of her surroundings in stages. First, she became conscious of the creaking sounds of the ship, a distant bell, the wash of the sea against the hull. She heard them like a song from a childhood memory. They were faint lullabies that crooned her awake rather than asleep.

  Second, she became aware of the musty smells that wrapped around her like a blanket. These were the smells of dust, oils, and pine. The faint smell of the sea reached her as well. That smell brought her the memory of the waves, of the depths, of the ocean’s restless spirit.

  Third, she focused on the ache deep within her, an unremembered agony that cut through to the soul and could never be explained. With that agony was a terrible weakness that prevented her from even the desire to move. Blackness filled her but awareness pushed back the dark. She didn’t open her eyes. She wasn’t ready.

  Fourth, she became aware of rigidity around her, of sharp angles and hard edges. A chill prickled her skin and a deeper cold burned inside her heart.

  Last, she became aware of a warmth, a spark, a feathery touch. It began in her hand, hesitant at first. Soft. It tugged on her memory and pulled her consciousness. The touch grew warm. There was power there. There was strength. It was this touch that made her want to open her eyes.

  Bright light stabbed through her and she cringed. The touch didn’t leave her. The light dimmed and at last, blinking against the brightness, she returned to the living, she returned to the Prize.

  “Jasmine?”

  She stared at timber, noted its unpolished surface. She blinked and tried to look up and found she was partially covered by canvas. A shadow of a man knelt beside her. She gasped and tried to bury herself deeper into the hole she’d made. The touch that woke her tightened.

  “Jasmine, it’s me, Finn. You’re safe.”

  She stopped struggling and peered into the gloom. Finn’s boyish yet battered features stared back at her. His eyebrows knotted together in fear at the same time as his shoulders slouched in relief. He held her exposed hand in both his as if he were afraid to let her go. His skin felt hot.

  “Can you sit up?”

  She nodded, though she wasn’t sure.

  Finn helped her untangle herself from amid the torn sails and broken spars. A wave of dizziness rocked her and she held onto Finn for support. It passed as quickly as it came and she was able to sit on her own.

  Finn studied her. His gaze traveled over her body. She looked down at herself and saw her torn shirt. The captain had ruined it with his cutlass. She tried to pull the torn pieces together without much success. Underneath, her skin had sustained no visible injury. Not even a nick. Only her ribs were bruised.

  What had happened? She tried to remember her encounter with the captain. She hugged her knees and shuddered. The cutlass had sliced through her. She wondered how she could still be alive. She had wielded and she had hidden. Had she also healed herself? She didn’t remember any blood. Maybe she’d been mistaken. Maybe the cutlass hadn’t connected as she’d thought. But her shirt was torn from the back to the front. Even the bandages she used to conceal her breasts were ripped through.

  “What happened to you, Jasmine?”

  She didn’t want to answer him. She couldn’t explain everything. She didn’t understand it herself. “The captain is not a good man.”

  Finn nodded. “Of that, we can be certain.”

  She held her silence.

  “You’ve been missing for nine days.”

  She stared at the floor and frowned. Nine days? She’d faced the captain nine days ago? She had no recollection of where that time had gone.

  “How did you find me?” she whispered. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It sounded detached, broken.

  “I sensed something horribly wrong not long after you left me with the promise to bring back food. That night the captain claimed you stole a diamond from his quarters and the crew have been searching for you ever since.”

  “I didn’t steal his diamond.”

  “I know.”

  She looked up at him, startled. He believed her. He didn’t even need convincing.

  Finn rubbed the ring on his finger. He couldn’t see it, but he seemed to take reassurance that he could feel it. “I searched for you myself. When I came down here three days ago, there was no sign of you. I don’t know why I returned. Something drew me here, to this spot. That’s when I saw your hand lying beneath that scrap heap. It was so pale.”

  She looked away from him.

  “Jasmine, what did the captain do to you?”

  “I—” Her mouth felt dry. She pulled th
e ragged threads of her shirt closer to her as if that could protect her from the past.

  When she didn’t continue, Finn held up his lantern and said, “Let me see your eyes.”

  She flinched away from the light. He stilled her with a touch. Her world had been tossed in a storm, thrown up and scattered to the winds. Nothing was as it had been. She’d been set adrift, yet his touch anchored her. She let him search her eyes and watched his expression fill with worry.

  He let her go and sat back on his heels. “I don’t know what happened, but you almost killed yourself.”

  She gave him a questioning look. It had been the captain who had tried to kill her.

  Finn sighed. “You did something to reach your wielding limit. You depleted yourself. I don’t understand how I didn’t sense it, but it’s written plainly in your eyes. You must be more careful, Jasmine.”

  She wondered what she had done. She had to have wielded to escape the bite of the captain’s blade. The very thing that saved her almost killed her. She wanted to laugh.

  Finn studied her for a long time. “What happened, Jasmine?”

  She wondered how much she could tell Finn. Unlike Finn, the captain hadn’t seemed to care she was untrained and untalismaned. What mattered most to him was that she could wield and she was the offspring of another wielder. It seemed to be a combination that frightened him. She didn’t understand what it meant. Kahld sprouted words at her like “impossibility,” “forbidden,” “Abomination.” She shuddered at the last name.

  “Jasmine?”

  “He tried to kill me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  She took a shuddering breath and the bruises on her ribs pinched. She told him about her foolish decision to follow Brusan. She explained how she’d wielded to remain hidden. He gave her a stern look. Like there was anything she could do about it now. She told him her discovery — that the captain had planned to capture the Seahawk from the start. And she told him how she’d been discovered.

  “So, that’s why he wants me dead,” she lied.

  Understanding dawned on Finn. “That also explains how you reached your limit. You wielded to protect yourself?”

  She hesitated for only a second and nodded.

  “He knows now you’re a wielder.”

  She could see thoughts racing through his mind. He was studying her torn shirt.

  “He also knows I’m untrained and without a talisman.” She was more than reluctant to give him this extra information, but she needed something to explain why he wanted to kill her rather than try to take her power from her.

  Finn frowned. “How could he know? Can he sense a wielder’s power?”

  She flinched. “I told him.”

  Shock registered in his eyes. “Why would you do that?”

  “I think that’s his power. I can’t lie to the man. I tried.”

  Finn slowly shook his head in thought. “We have to leave.”

  “There’s no one else down here.”

  “No, I mean we have to leave this ship. The captain is too powerful. He wants you dead and soon he’ll want me dead as well. We can’t fight him.”

  “I’m not leaving the Prize. There has to be another option.”

  “It’s just a ship. One day you’ll have to leave anyway. You can’t keep up the ruse of being male. Besides, I’m sure there are other ships more willing to take on female crewmates.”

  “Name one.”

  He couldn’t. Even if he had been able to name a dozen, she wouldn’t have been interested.

  “The entire crew is looking for you,” he continued. “It’s too dangerous to stay aboard.”

  “The Prize is all I have. I can’t leave.” She couldn’t answer him or herself why the ship was so important to her. She’d lived aboard her whole life. She knew it so well that she could walk its length blindfolded. It would whisper to her the dark secrets of the sea. It supported her when she needed strength. It crooned to her when she needed comfort. It embraced her when she needed to hide. She couldn’t explain any of this to Finn. He didn’t love the ship or the sea as she did.

  Silence fell between them.

  “Did the captain try to do anything else to you?”

  Thinking of the captain made her shudder. She didn’t want to think about the things he said to her. She didn’t want to think about his revulsion toward her. He claimed to be her true father and yet he wanted to kill her. She couldn’t fathom his reasons. Without thinking, she asked: “Is there any complications if a wielder chooses to have a child?”

  Finn looked startled. She supposed it was because she’d changed the subject so dramatically. He seemed wary. “Wielders can have children just like anybody else.”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. She stared instead at the flickering lantern.

  “Unless the children turn out to be wielders themselves,” he added.

  She stiffened. “Why is that?” she asked the lantern.

  “They are the worst kind of wielder. They never turn out right. The Guardians kill them as soon as they’re found because they grow too dangerous.”

  “What makes them so dangerous?”

  “They possess every power their parent possesses, and more, without having to be guided into it. It has always proven too much power for one person to hold. They can’t contain their power. If left unchecked they have always destroyed everything around them, including themselves.”

  No wonder the captain wanted to kill her. No wonder he was afraid of her.

  She could feel Finn studying her again. He touched her shoulder. “Why do you ask?”

  She forced herself to smile at him. “It’s just in case I ever want kids of my own.”

  Finn looked unconvinced. His gaze dropped briefly to her torn shirt. “You know you can trust me? You can tell me anything. If you ever need anything…”

  “I’m fine.” She didn’t mean to push Finn away, but she needed space. His concern for her was beginning to smother. She didn’t deserve his worry or his care. She was no more than a curse to the world. She could destroy him.

  She hardened her heart. One problem at a time, she thought. “We have to do something about the captain.”

  “There is nothing we can do. Our only choice is to leave him to the Guardians.”

  “Then why haven’t the Guardians done anything about him?”

  Finn frowned. “They know he is powerful but they don’t know he can learn. He has covered his tracks well. He is intelligent and I believe he has done his homework.”

  “Then we have to get them here.”

  “It’s too dangerous. They will sense your untrained power. They are already hunting for you. They will find you. Do you want me to hide you again?”

  She scowled. “I’ve found a way of hiding without you drugging me. You’ve said yourself you can’t sense when I wield.”

  “I can sense it now,” he says, “You don’t know when you wield most of the time. How can you think you can control yourself?”

  “I can and I have.”

  “Only someone with a talisman can. Tell me again you don’t have a talisman.” He challenged her to lie to him.

  “I don’t.”

  Finn’s face tightened in anger. “When will you trust me?”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  It was clear he didn’t believe her. “Regardless,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  It was Jasmine’s turn to get angry. “Why do you even care what happens to me? Who am I to you? You’ve told me on more than one occasion I’m such a great threat to you, to the ship, to everyone around me. Maybe you should just let the Guardians have me.”

  “Jasmine, I care because I know what they would do to you.”

  “Why would you care if I died?”

  “The Guardians do more than kill their targets. They strip them of their power first.”

  “That can be done?”

  Finn turn
ed away. He stared into the darkness and rubbed his arms as if he felt a chill. “They all scream,” he said in a low voice. “Pure horror stretches their faces. It’s not a look you can forget. None of them survive the process.”

  Jasmine hesitated. He had been trained by the Guardians. “Do you have that power?”

  He turned back to her. “No. I couldn’t do that to another living being. And I couldn’t wish it on another living being. Not even someone like the captain. No matter what he might have done to you.” She could tell it pained him to admit that. He expected her anger again but instead his honesty surprised her. She didn’t know what to do with it. “So I won’t help you, Jasmine. Our only chance is to get away from the captain.”

  “We are a month out from our next port of call.” She frowned as she made the adjustment of her lost nine days. “Less than a month.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “We are going to Tathra to offload the Seahawk’s cargo.” Jasmine remembered the maps she’d seen the captain pore over in his quarters. “Do you know anything about Sapphire Cove?”

  Finn’s eyes widened in surprise. “Where did you hear that name?”

  “The captain has it circled on a map. As far as I could tell, it’s not a major port. We’ve not come this far south before so I was wondering if you knew anything about it. What might be there? The captain didn’t want me to see it.”

  Finn blinked in a daze a few times before he could answer. “That’s where I was headed when I bought passage on the Seahawk.”

  “You were just a passenger?” The thought that Finn was a mere passenger both surprised and disappointed her.

  “I offered my services as payment so, technically, I was a member of the crew.”

  “So, what’s at Sapphire Cove?”

  “My trainer, Marcelo. He asked me to visit him. He didn’t explain why.”

  “Wasn’t your trainer a Guardian?”

  “Still is.”

  “Why would the captain have that place marked on his map?”