Wielder's Prize

by Elle Cardy

  Jasmine took a step back. She was next. The captain wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. He took a step forward. She had to hide. She had to vanish. The panic that once saved her, now failed her. She couldn’t disappear. She couldn’t move. She stared at her father in growing horror. Her fear rendered her useless.

  The captain pointed his cutlass at her. “You,” he said in a deep guttural voice that raked through barely controlled fear and anger. “You cannot exist.”

  Power whiplashed from him. It slammed into Jasmine with the force of a tidal wave. She flew backward and landed in a pile of lines. She staggered to her feet. The power struck her again. She spun sideways and lost all sense of balance. She knocked over the fire bucket, and water splashed across the deck. Clutching the railing for support, she focused on the reassurance of the smooth wood in her hands. Its solidity lent her strength. When the next burst of energy came, she would hold on.

  The captain didn’t wield. He closed the gap between them in four easy strides. He stood over her and raised his cutlass. She didn’t know why she didn’t run. She wasn’t cornered. She could have bolted. Instead she closed her eyes and hugged the handrail as if it could save her.

  “Stop this madness!” someone bellowed.

  Jasmine opened her eyes to see Gregor run forward. He was the ship’s second mate who sported a bushy ginger beard and a long ponytail. He was a huge bear of a man who barely spoke except in a growl. He’d been with the ship for five years and proved a loyal officer. Not once had he questioned the captain — until now.

  Gregor caught the captain’s wrist. “He’s just a boy!” he said in a loud voice as if shouting might get through the fog of madness.

  The captain wrenched himself free and stared down the second mate. Although Gregor was a hand taller than Kahld, in terms of intimidation, the captain won. There was power in the captain’s stare and stature that had nothing to do with wielding. No one would stop the captain from his goals. No one.

  “How dare you get in my way,” Captain Kahld said in a low, calm voice.

  Gregor blinked. Uncertainty made him fidget. He held his ground between the captain and Jasmine.

  “I’ll give you one chance to step aside,” the captain said.

  The crew watched the exchange with growing unease. It was one thing to attack outsiders. The visitors could have posed a threat to the Prize that only the captain knew about. To attack one of their own, without reason, without trial, was something else. It was unthinkable.

  “I can’t do that, sir. If the boy has done something wrong then —” Gregor didn’t get to finish his sentence. Kahld drew a dagger from his belt and plunged the blade into the second mate’s gut. Gregor looked down at his wound and blinked. Kahld turned the blade and wrenched it out again. Gregor’s blood stained the captain’s hands, it splattered his fine coat, and splashed onto the deck.

  Gregor teetered. He tried to hold his wound closed, but his blood flowed dark between his fingers. His knees buckled. He fell heavily to the deck and landed in a bowed position. He seemed to prostrate himself in front of his killer as if his captain were his god. A hollow sound issued from his mouth. It wasn’t a word. It wasn’t a song. It might have been a eulogy. The sound ceased and Gregor collapsed, rolling to his back as he fell. His sightless eyes stared up at the rigging and the fog and the ghostly sun that hovered in the mist.

  The ship’s bells tolled as if to keen for Gregor’s lost life and the captain’s lost soul. Out on the water, in the fog and the stillness, the Wild Rose turned about.

  “Man the cannons!” Captain Kahld hollered.

  No one moved. Stunned silence embraced the deck and the ship. The crew stared at Gregor’s corpse.

  “You will obey your captain!”

  The Wild Rose sailed within cannon range. Her maroon sails fluttered in the breeze. Her ten cannons took aim but didn’t fire. They couldn’t know the captain had killed their people. Or perhaps they did. Jasmine didn’t know what powers they possessed.

  Captain Kahld raised his cutlass in the air like a flag. “Rally to me, men, and help me defend your ship.” He lowered his cutlass and glared at each man on deck. “Or would you have me charge you all with mutiny?”

  The Wild Rose fired a warning shot off the bow. The boom echoed through the fog. A plume of smoke rose from the smaller ship. The sea erupted in a huge, loud splash.

  The stubby figure of First Mate Durne stepped forward. “Man the cannons!”

  It wasn’t the captain’s command that spurred the men into action, but Durne’s. They knew the drill and scurried to their positions. For the moment the captain had forgotten Jasmine. She still clutched the railing and stared at Gregor’s empty eyes. Chaos whirled around her.

  Sea water rained down from a second cannon shot. She flinched against the cold and at last looked away from Gregor’s empty eyes. She’d lost sight of Finn. She couldn’t see him anywhere.

  Thick arms wrapped around Jasmine’s body from behind. She yelped in surprise which was cut off by a hand covering her mouth. It felt like she’d been caught by a tree — a tree that pried her hands from the railing and carried her backward. It then pushed her into larger arms. She struggled against her constraints. She might as well have wrestled a wall made of stone.

  “Take your boy and get off this ship,” Durne said.

  “Aye, sir,” Brusan’s strained voice replied. He was out of breath as if he’d just arrived to the scene.

  Jasmine struggled harder. Brusan was stronger. With both arms, he held her against him. He lifted her over the railing and dropped her.

  Time halted. She hovered in the air after Brusan had thrown her overboard. Below her, the sea hungered for her warmth. It called for her soul. It promised darkness. The sea’s restlessness would devour her. The cold would destroy her.

  She screamed as she fell. The wind whipped her cry from her throat and turned it into nothing more than a wheeze. She reached for the overcast sky and found nothing to catch onto. A feeling of desperate helplessness seized her.

  Jasmine plunged into the sea with a jolt. Ice flooded her and stole her breath. She swallowed a mouthful of salty water. She flailed in the waves, desperate to stay afloat. She didn’t know how long she struggled before strong hands lifted her by her collar and dragged her onto a small boat. They dumped her in the middle of the little boat and left her there in a shivering puddle of shock.

  “It’s for your own good, Midge,” Brusan said, unmoved by her coughing.

  The Prize surged away.

  “What have you done?” Her voice was no more than a whisper. It sounded hoarse. Her throat felt raw.

  Brusan pulled on the oars. His muscles strained. “It was easier to throw you in the ocean than to carry you down the lines. Besides, you can swim.”

  “Take me back.”

  “I saved yer skin, boy.”

  “Take me back!” she screamed at the huge man.

  Brusan’s tiny eyes looked at her. His expressions were impossible to read.

  A boom thundered over the waters. Both of them turned toward the sound. The Prize, much smaller now, had turned on the Wild Rose. Even from where they sat they could hear the splinter of a mast. It was a sound every sailor knew and dreaded. Maroon sails billowed and collapsed. Another boom and another mast collapsed. Captain Kahld’s accuracy with his cannons was legendary. The Wild Rose burned. Thick, black clouds bloomed up from the broken ship. Flames licked the craftsmanship with thirsty tongues. Soon she would sink. The captain hadn’t even bothered to plunder her before he made sure of her demise.

  Brusan grunted once and began working the oars. Jasmine clung to the side of the boat. She shivered in the cold. The pain she felt ran deeper than a mere chill. She yearned to return to the Prize. It was an ache that burned inside her. Finn was still there. Her home was there. She belonged there. And now Brusan was taking her away.

  “Take me back,” she whispered for the last time
.

  PART THREE

  Chapter 23

  Jasmine sat shivering in the middle of the boat. She hugged herself and listened to the dark ocean as it lapped against the sides. The waves spoke to her. They crooned and begged her to join them. Their green depths promised peace. The cold promised numbness.

  She didn’t want to think anymore. She didn’t want to feel. She wanted to disappear into the depths and vanish forever. It wasn’t possible, of course. She was trapped on a tiny boat with a man who had made her believe he was her father, a man who used to beat her.

  She could detect no sign of the Wielder’s Prize. The fog had closed in to a thick blanket that muffled sight and sound. None of that mattered. Her ship was long gone.

  Brusan’s knotted muscles pulled and strained on the oars. Sweat soaked his brow. They hadn’t spoken to each other since he’d forced her off the Prize.

  “Do you even know where you’re going?” she asked.

  He glanced her way as he pulled on the oars. That was his only response.

  “We’re lost, aren’t we?” she said. “We’re lost at sea with no food or water and no idea which direction to go.”

  “I’ve sailed the seas longer than you’ve been alive, boy. I know my easts from my wests.”

  “What does a cook know about sailing?” she muttered under her breath and turned away from him. It wasn’t a real question. It had been a long time since she’d stopped thinking of him as Cook. She wondered when it had changed. When he had raised his hand to Finn. When he had knowingly taken part in piracy. When she had learned he’d killed for his captain’s gain.

  Brusan would normally have struck her for her tone. Instead he kept rowing. It seemed nothing would stop him, not even exhaustion. He tore up the waves with fierce determination. While their little boat picked up speed, she doubted Brusan would be able to maintain it. She suspected land wasn’t anywhere close. It seemed certain they wouldn’t survive. They would die of thirst before they reached safety.

  Jasmine chuckled silently to herself. She had always thought of herself as a creature of the sea, yet even though they were surrounded by water, they would likely die of thirst. Already the cold had chapped her lips. She licked them and immediately paid for her mistake.

  “We’ll be chipper, Midge.” Brusan must have read her expression. “You’re safer here than on the Prize.”

  Jasmine stared out at the swirling mists of the fog. “You don’t know anything,” she said in a quiet voice. “I was fine on the Prize.”

  “Is that so?”

  She ignored his sarcasm.

  “Why did the captain want you dead?”

  His question hung in the air between them. She didn’t want to answer him, or even think about it. While unwanted thoughts invaded her mind, she hugged herself a little tighter against the cold. She remembered again the wild look in the captain’s eyes when he learned she could wield.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know,” she said at last. It wasn’t the truth. She knew the captain’s reasons. He needed to kill her because she was an impossibility, an abomination against nature and wielders and everything right in the world. What did a person do with the knowledge that their own father not only rejected them as a person, but rejected their entire existence? It was easier not to think about it.

  Brusan seemed to accept her lie. His rowing slowed and his face screwed up in thought. “Why did you steal the captain’s diamond? I thought I brought you up better than that.”

  It was such a parental thing to say that his words annoyed her. Even when she thought he had been her father, he’d never been the fatherly type.

  “I know you’re not my father.”

  He stopped rowing and looked at her. She could have sworn something inside him broke. His face sagged and his shoulders slumped. “He told you then.”

  Jasmine regretted her words and wished she knew how to take them back. She couldn’t pretend he was her father and she couldn’t lie to him about it either. They were words that were best left unsaid. He could continue to pretend and she could continue to ignore him. Now they were a truth stranded in the open with nowhere to go.

  She wanted to say something that would ease the pain in his eyes. Nothing came. She could have reached out and touched his knee as a sign of reassurance. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was still angry at him for taking her forcefully from her only home. She doubted she would ever see the Prize again. Or Finn.

  She frowned. Why would never seeing Finn again be a problem? Her life had turned to chaos from the day she’d first met him. She should’ve been grateful he was gone. Yet she missed him. How? On the Seahawk, he’d been nothing more than a nuisance. He’d involved himself in everything she did. She couldn’t escape him. It wasn’t until she was back on board the Prize that things had changed. As much as she wanted to deny it, she had begun to see him as a friend.

  She sighed. She should’ve said something to him. Maybe she could’ve let him know she appreciated his company. Would he have cared? It didn’t matter anymore. He was stuck on the Prize, a prisoner of a mad captain, and she was floating aimlessly in a vast ocean with no idea which direction land might lie.

  “Just so you know,” she said, “I didn’t steal the diamond. Your precious captain lied to you.”

  Brusan opened his mouth to say something. The ghostly cry of a gull screeched through the darkening fog, interrupting him. The sound sent both a shiver and a thrill through Jasmine. Gulls meant land.

  “What did I tell you?” Brusan said and rowed again.

  “One gull isn’t our salvation. It will soon be night, then how will you navigate?”

  He shrugged. “The moon, the stars, my instinct.”

  Jasmine stared out at the fog. It didn’t look like it was going to shift anytime soon. There would be no stars that night. The moon was rising late if they could see it at all. And she had no faith in a cook’s instincts.

  The pervading cold sluiced through her wet clothes and needled into her skin. Never in her life had she felt so cold. It would grow worse as the night drew closer and darker. She hunkered down. Nothing she did sheltered her from the chill.

  “Come sit next to me.” Brusan shifted over to give her room.

  “No.”

  “You’ll catch your death in this cold if you don’t. Help me row.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Don’t lie, Midge. Come. Sit.”

  Shivering, she forced herself to move. Making sure not to rock the boat, she sat next to his large form and took one oar. He shifted so he almost crushed her. His body heat radiated into her as he wrapped one arm around her. She felt her muscles relax into the warmth.

  “Now, put both hands on the oar and match my movements.”

  She did as he told her. The smooth wood of the oar felt good against her hands. Brusan kept his arm around her and rowed with this left arm alone. It took all her strength to match his strokes with equal power. Warmth from her exertion soon flushed her face. With her mind on keeping pace with his oar strokes, all thoughts of the cold fled. A small portion of her was grateful to Brusan for his insistence.

  Another gull cried in the distance. A ship’s bell clanged across the water. Jasmine’s heart leaped. She searched the shifting fog for any sign of the Prize. Nothing. Chimes drifted through the fog like strange musical beacons. They pulled on her thoughts and teased her mind.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked. The sound had a quality of unreality to it as if it had been snatched from a dream.

  “Aye,” Brusan said. “Keep rowing.”

  Jasmine pulled the oar through the water. The slosh and splash and creak of the oars in synchronized rhythm gave her a strange reassurance that anchored her to the world.

  “Ahoy there!”

  Brusan stopped rowing and indicated to Jasmine to remain silent. He twisted around to try and find the source of the voice. The thick fog and the gathering darkness cloaked everything in a
somber gloom.

  “Shouldn’t we hail them back?” Jasmine whispered.

  Brusan hissed.

  A ship’s bell rang out again and the soft chimes followed like a rainbow after a storm. It was then she realized there was a subtle wielded power woven into the threads of the chimes.

  “He’s crazy if he thinks we’ll find anyone out here,” a voice said in undisguised disgust.

  “He said they would be here and so they will be here,” replied a younger male voice.

  The fog made it seem the voices were closer than they actually were, or so Jasmine supposed. She wondered why Brusan chose to remain silent. They needed help. She still didn’t believe they were close enough to land and she didn’t like the thought of being stuck on that tiny boat all night with nothing but Brusan to keep her warm. She shuddered.

  Brusan looked down at her. He seemed to struggle with a decision. They didn’t know who was out there, they didn’t know if they could trust them. They both knew they had little choice.

  Brusan growled. “Ahoy!” he shouted.

  “Over there!” cried the younger voice.

  The fog parted in a swirl. A small fishing vessel sailed into view. She was not a fine example of a single-masted ship. Her paint work was chipped, her metal fastings were rusted, and even her sails showed signs of wear. Two men stood on board. One appeared as old as the ship. The salt air and sun had weathered his skin into brown leather. His clothes were faded and his woolen sweater sported frayed threads and patches sewn into the elbows. He wore his peppered beard and hair long and scraggy. Long thin limbs completed his wild hermit look.

  The other man aboard was his complete opposite. He was young, with smooth skin. His perfect golden hair and perfect clothes made Jasmine think of the Guardians. Immediately she didn’t like him.

  “Permission to board?” Brusan called up to them.