Dark Shores

by Danielle L. Jensen

  “Yedda!” Teriana’s cheeks warmed. “He’s a blackhearted devil. What he looks like doesn’t matter. And what do you mean supposedly?”

  Yedda shrugged. “I think there’s more to that tale than has been told. And if we’re going to take these Cel bastards across the world, I might as well have something nice to look at. Or a few somethings.” She whistled at a pair of legionnaires who’d wandered too close. They both jumped like they’d been stung by bees.

  Teriana groaned and shook her head. The rest of the crew hid grins behind their hands. “So you know the plan?”

  “Oh, aye. There was only ever one reason they’d do this. Though perhaps you might fill us in on the details.”

  While Polin cleaned and bandaged the raw spots where her fingernails had been, Teriana explained what had happened since she’d been taken. Her crew stood in a circle around her, expressions tightening as they listened. When she’d finished, Yedda rubbed her chin. “So you spy on them and we use Magnius to smuggle out their plans to the greater powers of the West?”

  “Isn’t much of a plan,” Teriana admitted. “But I didn’t have any other options that didn’t involve all of us ending up dead.”

  More than a handful of the crew glanced uneasily at the dangling corpses.

  “They don’t know I’m heir to the Triumvirate,” Teriana said. “They think I’m just the daughter of a merchant captain. They don’t realize that my word carries weight with kings.”

  “Or that where we’re going has gods who might have something to say about the Cel scourge invading their shores,” her aunt added.

  Teriana only nodded, because those same gods might have something in store for her for the choice she’d made.

  “Teriana! The tide.” It was Marcus’s voice. She scowled over her shoulder. Servius stood next to him, and he waved cheerfully.

  “Make ready,” she told the crew, then motioned for Yedda to follow her to where Marcus stood by the helm.

  “You heard from Magnius or Bait?” Teriana asked quietly as they walked.

  “They’ll turn up once we’re at sea. You worried?”

  Teriana knew she didn’t mean about their well-being. “Very.”

  Climbing to the quarterdeck, they stopped in front of the two legionnaires. “This is Legatus Marcus and Praefectus Servius of the Thirty-Seventh,” she said. “This is Yedda, my second mate.”

  “First mate now, Captain,” Yedda said, nudging her in the ribs.

  Teriana’s chest hollowed. “Just until we get my mum back.”

  Yedda only shrugged.

  “Anyway. Taking into account the speed your tubs with sails will manage, it’ll be a day until we reach the doldrums of the Sea of the Dead, then another two to reach the mouth of the greater ocean path. Once there, I’ll have specific instructions that the crews of your ships will need to follow in order to safely make it through. It’s…” She hesitated. “It’s far more dangerous than a land path, you understand?”

  Marcus nodded.

  “All right. Good.” She surveyed the deck. “You have everything we need, then?”

  “Not quite.” Marcus nodded at a group of his soldiers who were lingering next to a longboat. “Cut them down.”

  The men dropped the longboat, rowing it swiftly across the harbor to the dock with the gallows, where they climbed up and began cutting down the bodies of her people, carefully depositing them in the boat before rowing back to the Quincense. With her aunt at her elbow, Teriana watched it all in silence, but when they reached the ship she asked, “What are you doing?”

  “You bury your dead at sea, yes? The ground is unacceptable?”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “I heard you tell Servius as much,” he said. “And if I heard, so did Cassius. He’s petty when given the opportunity.”

  Yedda glanced at Teriana, both grey eyebrows rising nearly to her hairline; then her aunt said, “That’s good of you, Legatus.”

  Snorting, Teriana shook her head as she watched the legionnaires lift the bodies on deck and stow them below out of the sun. “Good would’ve been keeping them from the noose in the first place.”

  No reaction showed on Marcus’s face. “When we’re in open water, I’ll bring my men belowdecks to give you the time to do what you do. Now shall we?”

  Teriana placed a hand on the smooth wood of the helm. It should’ve felt familiar and comforting, but it didn’t. “Let’s get out of this gods-forsaken city.”

  Yedda immediately shouted orders at the crew, and moments later the Quincense drifted away from the docks.

  They had to pass the scaffold that had held the corpses of Teriana’s countrymen, but it wasn’t the cut ropes her eyes went to. It was to the living person standing next to them. He was dressed in the white toga and crimson sash of a senator, but she would have recognized him even if he weren’t. Cassius lifted one hand, not in farewell but to an unused noose, its loop waiting for a neck to fill it.

  “He’s warning you,” Marcus said under his breath, but an instant later Cassius moved his arm, finger pointing not at Teriana but at the legatus. Teriana looked up at Marcus right as he looked down at her, and their gazes met. In that instant she realized that not only did he hate Cassius like she did but also that just as she did, the legatus of the Thirty-Seventh had something to lose.

  19

  TERIANA

  After not a half day of sailing, the Quincense started to take on the odor of sick landlubber.

  “Did you have to put all the seasick ones on my ship?” Teriana asked, wrinkling her nose at the stench rising from the hatch.

  “It isn’t all of them,” Marcus replied from where he leaned against the railing, steady as though he stood on dry land. “Only forty-three are sick, and of those, only thirty-six are bad.”

  “Only thirty-six,” Teriana muttered. “Well, what are you doing for them?”

  “They have fresh water. They’ll survive.”

  “I might not survive,” Teriana replied, shaking her head. “Bring the pukers on deck.”

  He frowned. “You said you wanted the deck clear so your crew could work.”

  “That was before I realized your men were going to fill the hold with puke,” she replied. “Send all those ones”—she gestured at the men loitering on deck—“below, and bring up the sick ones.”

  “I need able bodies on deck.”

  “Why? We’re at sea and the only ships I can see are full of Cel legionnaires. And I’m quite sure your second-in-command would sense if you were in any danger and fly over here on those wings he calls ears to protect you.”

  “I don’t need anyone to protect me,” he snapped. “And frankly, I’m starting to tire of your foul mood.” He started down the steps, shouting orders as he went.

  Teriana was in a foul mood, but she had a good reason for it. Once they had gotten out of the harbor, she’d gone on a tour about her ship to see how well the damage had been repaired. But it wasn’t the repair work that had set her eyes thundercloud grey—it was what else the Cel had done to her ship.

  The Quincense was their home, where they kept everything they owned. And everything she owned was gone to make space for soldiers, including the small fortune in gold they’d kept aboard.

  “Where’s my money?” she’d shouted at Marcus upon discovering the chests were gone.

  He’d had the decency to look embarrassed. “It’s in trust back in Celendrial. It will be returned to you once you’ve fulfilled your end of our bargain.”

  “Gods-damned thieves,” she’d muttered at him, though in truth, the gold was the least of her concerns. With the exception of her clothing, all her books, art, and bits of memory had vanished, and no one was able to give her a straight answer about where it had gone. And not only her possessions—all the crew had suffered the same. The ship seemed barely theirs anymore—her home had been invaded and taken over by the enemy. She hadn’t even gotten to keep her tiny room. All her clothes were piled on the small bed in her mot
her’s cabin. Which would have been fine, if she’d been in there alone. It would have been fine if she’d been squished in there with every last member of her crew. But no, she had to share the room with Legatus Marcus, so that he could keep an eye on her.

  She’d argued against it, of course, but she would have had more luck moving a mountain than changing his mind. She’d offered to bunk with her crew or even in the midst of the legionnaires squished into the hold. She’d even gone so far as to offer to sleep right next to Servius and have him watch over her, which Marcus had taken entirely the wrong way, threatening to tie her to a mast if she so much as thought of sleeping with one of his men. As if she’d ever even consider such a thing.

  The legionnaires on deck disappeared below, replaced a few minutes later with a pale-faced lot, who looked relieved, if a little confused, to be out in the fresh air.

  “Take the helm, and make sure you keep the Cel ships in sight,” she said to one of her sailors, Jax, then started toward the seasick soldiers. As she watched, one of them ran to the side and heaved his guts into the ocean.

  “Well, aren’t you a sorry-looking lot,” she said to them.

  Marcus’s face darkened, but she held up a calming hand. “First things first: keep your eyes on the horizon.” She pointed to where the sea met the sky. “It doesn’t move. Watching it will settle your gut. Secondly, stay on your feet. Doing so will force you to keep your balance, and you’ll get used to the motion of the ship. Thirdly”—Yedda had read her mind and arrived at her elbow carrying a bowl of hazelnuts and a few strips of old cloth—“you all need to do this.” Taking the elbow of one of the young men, who was Sibernese judging from his red hair, she removed his armguard and tied a strip of fabric around his pale wrist so that the nut pressed against the two tendons.

  “What’s this for?” he asked suspiciously, the impact of his glare reduced by the splatter of freckles on his nose.

  “For growing a tree out of your arm.” She rolled her eyes. “What do you think? It will make you feel better.”

  “I think I don’t like your pagan witchery,” he said, plucking at the fabric, clearly of a mind to pull it off.

  “You’ll do what she says,” Marcus ordered.

  “Yes, sir!” they all shouted, saluting sharply despite how they wobbled each time the ship crested a wave. Teriana tied a nut to each of their wrists, and by the time she was finished most of them were starting to look less green around the gills. Leaving them to wander the deck, she made her way back to the helm. She hadn’t noticed that Marcus had followed until he caught her arm.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For helping them. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I did it for the sake of my nose, not for them,” she said, even though it was a lie. She didn’t want to admit that she’d felt bad for them—that she, the daughter of a Triumvir and the closest thing her people had to a princess, knew what the ceaseless nausea felt like.

  “Right.” He fussed with a buckle on his armor, looking as though he wanted to say more, but instead turned and walked away.

  “Legatus,” she called after him, keeping her eyes on the horizon. “Unless you got rid of it, too, there should be gingerroot in the galley. Get Polin to make you some tea out of it—he’ll know how. Give it to those who are still sick.”

  He didn’t thank her a second time.

  * * *

  She stayed at the helm for the rest of the day, leaving only to eat a quick meal, which she shared with Yedda, half-listening as the woman pointed out the legionnaires she found most attractive. It wasn’t that Teriana wasn’t watching them, but rather that she was more interested in how they functioned as a whole. Everyone knew the Cel were efficient in all things: organized, methodical, and persistent. It showed in how they built: every building, bridge, and road designed to last. In the way they governed themselves: with laws, rules, and regulations that left nothing unaccounted for. In how they had conquered the eastern half of Reath, slowly, but resolutely. And the legions were the ultimate testament to what it really meant to be Cel.

  Despite being crammed into her ship with barely room to move, they functioned with absolute order. With the exception of the sick ones who remained topside, the rest of them rotated about with the precision of clockwork. When they were on deck, they marched around in groups of ten, doing various stretches intended to keep themselves limber. They ate in shifts, forming neat lines and eating with mechanical efficiency. No one argued or stepped out of line, every one of them seeming to know exactly where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to be doing at every moment.

  She knew there were 170 men aboard, excluding her crew, and that 8 of them were servants who served the legion in some capacity. From the variations in their armor, she could tell that Marcus and Servius were the only two senior officers, but there were another two who seemed to be the ones giving the most orders. About half of them appeared to be Cel, with their ubiquitous golden skin, the rest hailing from the provinces, their skin ranging from the nearly translucent white of those born in Sibern to the deep brown of Atlia, along with dozens who looked to be the product of interracial relationships, which were common given that the Empire colonized the provinces with retired legions. Yet despite so many of them having been born to places that spoke a language other than Cel, none of them bore even a trace of an accent, their training having made them uniform even in that.

  Their efficiency made her nervous.

  Her plan depended on the West being able to defeat them—on her belief that if she could provide its rulers and armies with details about Marcus’s plans and strategies, it would be enough for them to prevail. That a warrior backed by the power of the Six would be able to defeat any one of these godless Cel vermin. Except she was beginning to realize that it wouldn’t be just one legionnaire. They didn’t function as individuals, and they wouldn’t fight as individuals. The legion was an enormous cohesive entity, and her uncertainty was growing over how well thousands of individuals would fare against them. Her doubt felt like a sickness inside of her, working its way through every vein and growing in strength as it progressed.

  Would it be better to refuse to open the path and suffer the consequences? Was her mother right? Was it better to martyr herself and her captured people for the sake of the countless thousands of lives she was putting at risk by bringing the Cel across?

  “You heard from Magnius?” Yedda asked as they walked back to the helm.

  “No.” If Magnius didn’t come back to the ship before they reached the mouth of the ocean path, Teriana wouldn’t have to make a decision—it would be made for her. If her guardian refused to help, she would know for certain the state of her soul in Madoria’s eyes. A cowardly part of her wanted to turn this into Magnius’s decision. If he agreed to open the path, then it wouldn’t be her who’d put the West at risk. And if he refused, then it wouldn’t be her fault when the Cel slaughtered her crew. Sighing, she took hold of the wheel.

  “There is still time,” Yedda said, patting her shoulder before heading off in the direction of legionnaires doing their stretches.

  * * *

  When the sun set, Magnius had still not shown himself.

  Leaving specific instructions with her night crew to keep the storm lanterns lit and the Cel ships well in sight, Teriana retreated to her mother’s cabin. Marcus was inside with Servius and a scarred man with dusky skin named Gibzen, who she’d learned was a centurion, which was an officer of sorts. They had one of her maps out on the table, but their discussion of supplies and such didn’t interest her, so she climbed into bed, clothes and all. Someone had kindly hung a sheet that concealed the bed from the rest of the room, but it did nothing to block their shadows.

  Moments later, she heard Servius and Gibzen leave and she listened to Marcus talking to the man who attended him.

  They were speaking in Sibal, which surprised her a little. She didn’t think a Cel legatus would condescend to speak in the language of his servant—especially w
hen the man spoke Cel fluently. Leather creaked and metal clicked as Marcus’s armor was removed and put aside; then the door shut and the lock fell into place.

  They were alone.

  Teriana held her breath, wondering if he would say anything to her. But the only sound was the faint tread of bare feet against the floor. The lamp dimmed to a barely perceptible glow, and blankets rustled as he lay down. Nothing was said, but Teriana remained frozen on her side until she heard the measured breaths of sleep. Only then was she able to roll on her back and relax.

  Teriana woke to a cool breeze brushing across her face, goose bumps rising on her arms. She frowned, trying to remember if the window had been open when she’d come in. Maybe Marcus had opened it during the night? She had risen, intent on closing the window whether he liked it or not, when a large hand clamped down over her mouth.

  20

  TERIANA

  Teriana shrieked and slammed her elbow against her assailant’s ribs. He grunted and let her go, stumbling into the sheet hanging from the ceiling. She heard the rapid thud thud of Marcus coming across the room and then a collision as he tackled the man to the floor.

  “Teriana, it’s me!”

  The voice was familiar.

  “It’s Bait!”

  It took her a second to react; then she flung herself on top of the two men. “Marcus, stop!” she shouted, trying to figure out who was who in the tangle of sheets. “He’s one of my crew.”

  The hard shoulders beneath her hands froze. “Teriana, get the light.” His voice was angry and she jerked her hands away, running to fetch the faintly glowing lamp. Turning up the flame, she swung it round so that the light illuminated the two.

  Bait had gotten the worst end of the struggle. Marcus had one of her friend’s arms twisted behind his back and his face pressed into the floorboards. Blood dripped from his nose, making tiny splattering sounds against the wood.