Prince's Fire

by Amy Raby

  “You mean in conversation?” He raised his brows. Zoe had never been much for talk.

  “If you like,” said Zoe. “I have other ideas.”

  The floor tilted as the ship heeled over, and he leaned to compensate. “Go back to your own cot. I’m not interested tonight.”

  “That’s not what your body’s telling me.” Zoe eased up next to him and slid an arm around his waist. Firm breasts pressed against him.

  For a moment, he tolerated it. He liked being touched, and she did have a lovely body. And yet so much had changed. A year ago, his cock would have stiffened in eager anticipation when she’d slid up against him like this. But not today. Nor ever again, he suspected. He was truly over women like Zoe.

  He pushed her away—gently, because the floor was moving beneath their feet. “No. We’re finished.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes. “That princess can’t suck you off the way I can.”

  Now she’d done it. Her words had summoned the mental image of Celeste taking him into her mouth. He nearly groaned at the eroticism of that image. Their lovemaking had been limited in scope and opportunity, and they hadn’t tried that particular sex act yet. But it was fantasy material. Now he had a cockstand.

  Zoe reached for his belt. “Let’s go to your cot, where the storm won’t knock us off our feet.”

  He pushed her hand away. She might have felt his physical response, but she had no idea what had actually inspired it. “Go to your own quarters and leave me alone.”

  Outside, the sailors shouted, and the wind groaned in the sails. The cabin lurched. He fell heavily to one side and caught himself, but Zoe wasn’t so lucky. She lost her balance and windmilled her arms. He reached for her, but snatched only empty air as the ship’s bucking tossed her halfway across the cabin.

  “Are you all right?” Struggling as the floor tilted and heaved beneath him, Rayn made his way haltingly toward her and picked her up off the floor. “Here, hold on to something.” He spotted some handrails mounted on the wall, perhaps intended for this very situation. He steered her toward them.

  The floor lurched again, and he grabbed her more firmly, placing one hand on her arm and another on the back of her neck. He maneuvered her to the railing and she grabbed hold of it.

  His thumb found something on her neck: a lump. No, two lumps, one next to the other. He’d felt them before, years ago, and thought nothing of them at the time. But now they piqued his curiosity. Where had he felt something similar?

  In the belowground prison at the Enclave building. The Riorcan assassin had lumps in his neck just like these, for his implanted riftstone and deathstone.

  “Stop,” she said. “You’re hurting me.”

  He jerked his hand away. As the wind howled outside and rain drummed on the cabin roof, the hair rose on his own neck. Who was this woman, really? “What are those lumps on your neck?”

  “Where?” She placed her hand on the spot. “You mean my neck bones?”

  Rayn knew what neck bones felt like, and those weren’t them. Was Zoe an assassin, like those men who’d assaulted him in Denmor? The thought boggled his mind. Yet it would explain a great deal. He’d always wondered why she’d dogged him so persistently in the face of continued rejection. “I don’t think that’s what they are.”

  The muscles in her arm jumped beneath his fingers. She was frightened.

  She yanked her arm from his grip and staggered toward the door. Despite the bucking of the floor, she managed to open it and leave. Windblown sheets of rain, nearly horizontal, assailed his cabin.

  He went to the still-open door. Should he go after her? She might be an assassin—but then, she might not be. As suspicious as her behavior was, a couple of lumps on her neck weren’t evidence of anything.

  And really, how could she be Riorcan? She spoke Inyan without even the trace of an accent. He’d been to her home and seen her family.

  He shook his head. The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. He could only conclude that he knew next to nothing about this woman he’d sired a child on. Pushing against the wind and grunting with the effort, he shoved the cabin door closed. From now on he was going to keep his distance.

  • • •

  The sky shone opalescent pink when Celeste reached the pier. Mist crept along the still waters, and the fog shone with the diffuse light of a rising sun. Out in the harbor, the masts and spars of the Soldier’s Sweep were barely visible, a trio of bony skeletons rising from the haze.

  Atella was following closer than usual, which was her habit when nervous. “This isn’t a good idea. What if the assassins are about?”

  “There aren’t any,” said Celeste. “Justien rounded them all up night before last.” Except for two stragglers he was still searching for, and Zoe, and the other two in Inya, of course.

  “You could see the sunrise from the Enclave building,” said Atella hopefully. “If you went up on the roof.”

  “It’s prettier here.” Celeste glanced around the foggy harbor. “It will be even prettier on the water. What’s the point of coming all the way to Denmor if I can’t see the beauty of the frigid north?” A couple of sailors stood watch over the rowboat that ferried passengers to and from the Sweep. “You there,” she called to one of them. “Ready that boat and take me out into the harbor.”

  He bowed his head in obeisance. “To the Sweep, Your Imperial Highness?”

  “Just into the harbor. I want to see the sun rise from the water.”

  “Absolutely, miss.” He called to his fellows and they prepared the boat, removing some cargo, bailing out the bilge water, and uncoiling the rope from the pier. Soon four strong men sat in the boat, manning the oars, and two more waited on the pier to help Celeste and Atella in.

  Celeste took the sailor’s hand and stepped on board. A grumbling Atella followed.

  The sailors plied the oars, and the boat slipped into the harbor. Celeste shivered in the chill morning air. Tendrils of fog washed over her, leaving her skin damp. She wouldn’t mind a little Inyan fire magic right now. Or the company of a certain Inyan prince.

  “Not much of a view here,” said the sailor, looking up into the mist-shrouded sky.

  “Take me to the Sweep, then,” commanded Celeste. “Perhaps the view is better there.”

  The boat changed direction. Celeste wrapped her arms around herself as the hull of the Soldier’s Sweep emerged from the fog, at first in patches, and then all at once, an enormous wooden wall that loomed out of the haze. The sailor called to his fellows on the ship, and a rope ladder was dropped down to them. The sailors spun the boat and dragged their oars until the boat just kissed the side of the hull below the ladder.

  “Will you need help with the ladder, Your Imperial Highness?” asked the sailor.

  “Not at all. I’ll go first, and Atella after me.”

  She seized the highest rung she could reach and hauled herself upward until she could step onto the bottom rung. The ladder lurched sideways, but clung to the hull. Taking a deep breath, she began to climb, one rung after another, not looking down. An icy plunge into the ocean would be most unwelcome, especially with no fire mage to warm her. The ladder seemed endless, but she kept moving. When she reached the top, two sailors took her arms and gently lifted her on board.

  “Thank you,” she said. As Atella joined her on deck, she projected a suggestion into the first sailor’s head, and then the second: I will do whatever the Imperial Princess tells me to do. Then she said, “Haul up the anchor. We’re setting sail.”

  The sailors snapped their thumbs to their chests in salute. “Right away, Your Imperial Highness,” said one of them.

  “What?” cried Atella.

  “We’re going to Inya to help Prince Rayn,” said Celeste.

  “No. Please tell me you’re not stealing the emperor’s ship,” said Atella.

 
Celeste shook her head. “Don’t worry. He won’t be angry with you. Just with me.” And three gods, was he going to be furious when he learned what she was doing. She’d never defied him before, had never wanted to. He was good to her, and she loved him. But she was not going to leave Prince Rayn to fend off three assassins alone, especially when he didn’t know that his former lover was one of them.

  “You can’t do it,” said Atella. “You can’t use your magic on this many people at once.”

  She rather suspected she could. Suggestions lasted a reasonable length of time; she just had to refresh them periodically. She moved among the ship’s sailors, projecting her suggestion to each one in turn, ensuring their compliance with her plans.

  “Imperial Princess!” called an unfamiliar voice.

  Celeste turned. It was one of the ship’s lieutenants. This fellow might be trouble. He was probably a mage, and thus immune to her magic. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

  “What’s going on here? This ship isn’t scheduled to depart.”

  She tried her suggestion on the lieutenant, just in case: I will do whatever the Imperial Princess says. “We’re sailing for Inya,” she said. “Rouse your men.”

  “We are not sailing for Inya. I’ve had no such order.”

  Pox it. “I’m giving the order. As the Imperial Princess.”

  “You are not authorized to make it,” the man hissed.

  “Imperial Highness!” The captain was hurrying toward her.

  The captain was a sea mage; there was no way her suggestions would work on him. Rather than waste her time arguing, she moved toward the capstan, projecting her suggestion on every sailor she saw. The bosun, she found, was vulnerable to her magic. “All hands up anchor!” he shouted to his men. “Rig the capstan.”

  “Avast!” cried the captain. “Avast rigging capstan!”

  The men ignored him.

  The captain stormed over to her. “You’re controlling them with magic. But this is the emperor’s ship, not yours. We haven’t enough water. We haven’t enough food—”

  “Not true,” said Celeste. “Lucien always keeps his personal ship stocked in case he needs to leave someplace in a hurry.” She’d gone belowdecks and checked the supplies, just in case. She wasn’t going to let them get halfway to Inya and run out of water.

  “We’re not scheduled to sail at this time,” he said.

  “We’re sailing whether you like it or not, Captain,” said Celeste.

  • • •

  Later, one group of sailors was catting the anchor while another had run up into the tops to make sail. Celeste was nervous. The fog was burning off. She could easily see the pier and shore now, which meant the guards at the dock could see the ship. They might report her mischief to Lucien. Much as she wanted to stand at the rail, keeping a watchful eye on the dock, it wasn’t possible. She was controlling nearly a hundred people with mind magic, and her suggestions needed frequent refreshing.

  The captain and his lieutenants had grown troublesome. She’d ordered some of her magicked soldiers to lock them in the captain’s quarters. This was going to be a difficult journey. She’d have to keep the captain imprisoned the entire time; otherwise he might turn the ship around while she slept. Sleep might be impossible for her except in short stretches, because what was going to happen when her suggestions wore off and she wasn’t there to refresh them?

  Tense with worry, she shook her head. If only Lucien had been sensible, she wouldn’t have had to steal his ship. They could be sailing to Inya under his authority, with the captain and his lieutenants up on deck applying their considerable skills.

  Instead, they would be conspiring against her, thinking up ways to retake the ship. And poor Atella, pacing nervously on deck, was caught between two loyalties. On the one hand, she wanted to report Celeste’s malfeasance to the emperor. On the other hand, as Celeste’s bodyguard, she couldn’t leave her charge unprotected.

  “Rig the fish,” called the bosun.

  Celeste had no idea what a fish was, except that it clearly was something other than a sea creature with scales. They’d put a second line on the anchor, with which they had hooked the bottom of the anchor and were drawing it up so that it lay horizontal against the ship. Soon the Sweep would be off to Inya, and then it wouldn’t matter if someone reported her to Lucien. She would be out of reach.

  “Princess!” called a sailor from up on the yards. “There’s a boat down yonder.” He pointed to the place where Celeste had climbed up the rope ladder. She hurried in that direction. Fortunately, she’d had the good sense to pull the ladder up behind her.

  As she approached the rail, she heard a dog bark. Patricus? Her stomach tightened.

  Below, in a rowboat, was Vitala, accompanied by six Legaciatti and the black-and-white sea retriever, whose tail wagged frantically when he saw her.

  Celeste retreated from the rail, hoping the empress had not seen her.

  “Celeste, let me up!” called Vitala.

  Pox it all. Celeste returned to the rail and called down, “I’m sorry, but I’m going to Inya. I have to warn Rayn.”

  “Let me up,” cried Vitala. “I won’t try to stop you. I swear.”

  Celeste gritted her teeth. She couldn’t let Vitala up on the Soldier’s Sweep. She didn’t trust that the empress wouldn’t interfere with her plans. Plus she wasn’t kidnapping her pregnant sister-in-law and taking her to Inya. Her men nearly had the anchor up.

  “I want to go with you!” cried Vitala.

  Celeste blinked down at the boat. “Why?”

  “Because you need help,” said Vitala. “I run the Order of the Sage—did you think I didn’t have eyes on you? That I wouldn’t find out what you’d done almost as soon as you did it?”

  Celeste said nothing.

  “I could have told Lucien, but I didn’t.” Vitala spread her arms. “See? It’s just me and Patricus. You shouldn’t do this alone. Let me help.”

  “Why do you want to help me?”

  “Because you’re doing the right thing. Because Rayn needs to be warned about the assassins.”

  Celeste glanced back at the captain’s quarters, full of mages who would be trying everything in their power to seize the ship from her and sail it back to Denmor. She threw down the rope ladder.

  21

  Celeste stood by the rail at the front of the ship. A sea breeze caressed her face and teased her hair. They were away at last, out of the harbor and into the open ocean. The empress, once aboard, had freed the captain and his officers and ordered them to proceed to Inya with all haste. Celeste didn’t need to use her mind magic on the sailors anymore.

  Now that she’d solved the problem of traveling to Inya, she turned to fresh worries. Would Rayn survive his voyage on the Water Spirit, with Zoe on board? And would her ship arrive in time to help him? Celeste’s greatest nightmare was that she would arrive in Inya just in time for a royal funeral.

  Assuming Rayn survived, how would he react to her unexpected arrival in Inya?

  Rayn was uncomfortable with her family and her ancestry, yet he’d insisted that since their squabble in Waras, his feelings on the matter had changed. It wasn’t the love they’d shared in the Riorcan wilds that had done it—after all, that had happened before Waras. As far as she was concerned, those had been physical acts without much meaning. And while part of her felt she ought to be angry that he had slept with her while secretly harboring a hatred of her family, when she tried to whip up some self-righteous fury about that, it didn’t materialize. Her memories of Rayn on the beach and at the forest pond were sweet, and even if she never saw the man again, she would treasure them.

  Even now, just thinking about the way Rayn had made love to every inch of her body in the pond made her squirm with unfulfilled desire. Tonight, in the privacy of her cabin, she would relive those memories in detail. She’d retrace the r
oute his hands had made, calling to mind the heat and strength of his body.

  But something entirely different had happened after the second assassination attempt in Denmor. When she’d worked on the cipher and he’d held her and massaged her shoulders—that hadn’t been purely physical. She’d felt appreciated, supported. Loved?

  So why had he left the country without a word of explanation? Lucien had forced him to go; she knew that. But surely if Rayn cared for her the way he claimed, he would have made some effort to contact her. Perhaps she had misread his intentions after all.

  Would she be unwelcome when she turned up?

  She wished this were a math problem, something she could figure out in logical, stepwise fashion. But there was no logic to this situation, no solution that she could see. Numbers and ciphers made sense. People were gods-cursed confusing.

  She heard a patter of paws on the deck that could only be Patricus. The dog sidled up to her and leaned into her leg. She obliged his blatant bid for affection by rubbing his ears. Was there anything more comforting than a dog? Patricus was never shy about his love for her, or for anyone. With the sea retriever, she always knew where she stood.

  Just as she had started to relax a little, she heard footsteps behind her.

  “I talked to the captain,” said Vitala. “He’s steamed at you, but I think I’ve got him settled down.”

  “Thank you.” She grimaced. “I’m not looking forward to what Lucien’s going to say when he catches up to us.”

  “He’s a reasonable man,” said Vitala. “He’ll get over it.”

  “Will he be mad at you too?” Celeste glanced sidelong at the empress. She hated to think that she might be driving a wedge between her brother and his wife.

  “Mad as a stuck boar,” said Vitala. “But only because he worries. He feels it’s his job to protect the women in his charge. That’s the real reason he doesn’t want you to go. Or me.” She placed a hand over her rounding belly.