by Vivian Arend
Until a pair of slender hands linked with his.
He jerked to a stop and looked up. Sexta was holding onto him, her legs braced against the railing to keep from falling overboard. Her gritted teeth spoke to the effort.
He dug the tip of his sandal between the boards and used it as leverage. “Don’t move.”
“I won’t, but hurry.”
He felt around with his free hand for something to grab on to, but found nothing. Sweat coated Sexta’s hands, and his palm started to slide against hers. His pulse pounded in his head. If he couldn’t scramble on board soon, he’d join the men screaming for help below.
Then a different pair of muscular hands grabbed him and pulled him up. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the faces of Sexta and Djer. “Thank you,” he gasped between shallow breaths.
She gave him a tight nod before rising to her feet, worry etching lines into her face.
Chaos ruled the deck, and his thoughts turned to controlling it long enough to get them out alive. “Toss some ropes overboard to help retrieve the others,” he shouted at a group of soldiers.
They sprang into motion, and he got to his feet. His knees wobbled from fatigue, but he ran as fast as he dared to the wheelhouse. “Lift the anchor. We’re getting out of here now.”
He wrapped his hands around the wheel and poured his magic into the veins of ore throughout the ship. The engines flared to life, rocking the ship from side to side.
Again the sound of cannon fire came from the direction of The Temptress. An iron ball ripped through the mainsail before plowing into the deck, creating a gaping hole. The ship swayed and listed to the starboard side.
Marcus cursed under his breath and started maneuvering the ship away from the docks. Another voyage, another serious repair that would be needed when he returned. Titus was never going to let him command his ship again at this rate. “Go down below and assess the damage,” he ordered a member of the crew. “The rest of you, sound the order to fire back at The Temptress.”
“No!” Sexta cried. She moved in front of him, blocking his view. “You can’t destroy her.”
“Your crew should’ve thought of that before they attacked us.” A jerk of his head was all that was needed to summon two soldiers to carry her out of the wheelhouse. It took an iron will to ignore her screams and protests as she left. He knew how much that ship meant to her, and it killed him to destroy her dreams, but he had to put the safety of the empire before her.
Sexta clawed and kicked at the two burly soldiers who carried her out, but they held on as tightly as iron manacles. Something must have spooked her crew. Or worse, someone could’ve hijacked it. But instead of boarding The Temptress to find answers, Marcus had chosen the easy route and ordered its destruction. And with it, he’d taken away the most precious thing she owned and shattered all her dreams with a single command.
Her eyes burned from the combination of smoke and heartbreak. She barely felt the blow when the men dumped her on the deck before running to help their comrades carry out the order to return fire. And she would’ve curled up into a little ball if Djer hadn’t helped her up.
“You should see this,” he said, the low tone of his voice telling her far more than those four little words.
She followed him to the port side where The Temptress lay below. Dark figures scurried around the deck, their forms distorted in haze. A volley of laser cannons from the emperor’s ship blasted the hull of her ship. The wood fractured, and the screams of her crew pierced her heart as their bodies flew into the air.
By the gods, make it stop. She tried to turn away, but Djer forced her head around to where she was forced to stare at The Temptress.
The engines of The Seventh Wind created enough of a breeze to blow the smoke and fog away and give her a clear view of her men. Only what she saw weren’t the men who’d sailed with her these past ten months. Their limbs were long and exaggerated. Their skin was a dull gray, and their eyes were flat and black.
Sexta’s breath caught. Barbarians!
She opened her mouth to give a shout of warning, but the next volley drowned it out. The Temptress fractured in half like a split melon, and with it, so did her heart. Fire licked at the damaged hull and sent clouds of smoke billowing around them. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. It was gone. Her hopes, her dreams, her future—they were all intertwined with that ship.
Marcus steered the emperor’s ship higher into the sky, leaving the burning wreck of The Temptress below. Sexta clung to the railing, unable to turn away.
“You saw them, didn’t you?” Djer asked.
She nodded. No doubt, the members of her crew had met horrible deaths at the hand of the Barbarians, but at least it explained why they’d fired the cannons. Worse, it meant that she and Marcus hadn’t stopped the Barbarians from crossing the Barrier.
A gust of wind whipped through her hair and churned through the fog and smoke just enough to give another brief window to the wreckage.
And what she saw turned her blood cold.
A Barbarian leaned over the body of a fallen Elymanian soldier, its hand pressed against his chest. The body disintegrated into dust that swirled around the Barbarian, and when it cleared, an Elymanian with flat black eyes stared back at her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Marcus charted a course for Emona and thanked the glowing purple supernova in the sky above him that they’d managed to get out in one piece. There had been some narrow escapes in his life, but this one ranked as the closest. Definitely deserving of a glass of strong wine.
He handed the wheel over to his first mate. “I’ll be in my cabin giving my report to the emperor.” And trying to figure out what to do with Sexta. Just when he thought he could trust her, she pulled something like this.
And of course she had to be behind it. Why else would her crew attack his ship?
But he’d also seen the shock on her face when it happened. Maybe there was some other explanation for it. Maybe her ship had been hijacked. Maybe she wasn’t completely responsible for the attack, but she wasn’t completely innocent, either. He curled his hands into fists. Damn that woman. She had him so turned around, he didn’t know which end was up.
He opened the door of the wheelhouse and ran smack into her.
Sexta grabbed his arms to steady herself. Her face was as pale as it had been when they’d stumbled across the Barbarians, her blue eyes wide with fear. “Marcus, I need to speak to you immediately. In private.”
“And I need to speak with the emperor immediately. In private.” He pried her hands off him and continued down the stairs to his cabin.
“By the gods, Marcus, why do you have to be such an arrogant, pig-headed, cold-hearted ass?”
He spun around and held onto the walls of the narrow stairwell to keep from touching her. Right now, he wasn’t sure if he’d strike her or kiss her, but neither action would help him now. “I doubt you have anything to say that would take precedence over what’s happened so far.”
“It does.” She lifted her chin in her usual stubborn way, telling him she wouldn’t back down until she had her say.
His shoulders fell. There was no way he was going to win this time. “Fine, you can tell me in my chambers while I’m contacting the emperor.”
Another set of footsteps followed them, and he looked over his shoulder to see Djer behind Sexta. The stony countenance of the former slave warned him that if he dared lay a hand on her, Djer would make him wish he hadn’t.
He shook his head and went straight for the communication orb when he entered his chambers. Magic poured into the crystal, clouding the insides. He held it in front of his face and focused on it instead of her. “You have until the emperor appears.”
She closed the gap between them until her nose was mere inches from the crystal. “There were Barbarians on my ship.”
A single, mocking note of laughter broke free from his lips. “You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth. I saw
them.”
“We collapsed and flooded the tunnel. There’s no way the Barbarians could’ve gotten past that.” But the thought of other tunnels lingered in the back of his mind. He wasn’t ready to acknowledge their existence, especially if he wanted any sleep tonight.
“What’s this about Barbarians?” Rufius asked, slamming the door shut behind him.
Sexta glared at Marcus over the top of the crystal, daring him to share what they’d seen.
His gaze darted from her to the other two men in the room and finally to the image forming in the crystal. If he had to shock the empire, he’d rather only do it once. He took a deep breath as Titus appeared. “We’ve got a serious problem on our hands.”
“From the look on your face, I believe you,” his best friend replied. “What happened?”
He glanced at Sexta, who gave him a tiny nod of encouragement. “Tell him,” she said.
He gulped back his hesitation and said, “The Barbarians have found a way to cross the barrier.”
“What?” Titus and Rufius said simultaneously.
A moment of doubt seized him. Had he really seen the chamber full of Barbarians? Or was it all part of some vivid hallucination?
He looked over the crystal at Sexta. A bruise was forming on her cheek. Her red hair hung in a wet, tangled mess. Her clothes were damp and ripped, and scratches marred her normally flawless, creamy skin.
No, it hadn’t been a dream.
He added a steely edge to his voice that matched his resolve. “You heard me correctly. The Barbarians have found a way to get past the Barrier by using the ancient Alpirion tunnels.”
Titus listened quietly as Marcus recounted the events of the day, from finding Sexta in the warehouse to the discovery of the tunnel and the chamber on the other end. His jaw tightened when Marcus got to the part about being followed in the tunnels and using Sexta’s bombs to collapse them.
“I think we’ve cut them off for now, but you need to find a way to penetrate the Barrier deeper into the earth to account for those tunnels. Who knows how many more like this exist.”
Titus lowered his gaze. A muscle rippled along his cheek as though he were clenching his teeth and searching for the right words to say. “And would that explain what happened in Shalfak?”
“It does,” Sexta answered before Marcus had a chance to speak, “especially when I tell you what I saw as we were leaving.”
“You mean when your crew was firing cannons at our ship?” Rufius pulled her back with enough force to cause her to stumble.
If Marcus hadn’t been focusing on keeping the communication orb working, he would’ve stepped forward to catch her. Instead, it was her faithful bodyguard who kept her from falling.
A line formed between Titus’s brows. “How much damage did you do to my ship this time?”
“It’s not as bad as when those Alpirions attacked us.”
His friend groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I’m going to stop letting you take it out if you’re going to bring it back full of holes every time you use it.”
“Hey, I don’t bring it home full of holes every time. There have been a few instances where I’ve brought it back without a scratch.”
“But not enough to make me forget about the cost to repair it when you do.” Titus focused on him again. “Tell me more about the attack.”
“It was just as Rufius said. Sexta’s crew began firing cannon at us.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized he’d lost any ground he’d made winning her heart. She shook her head and retreated to the far corner, muttering something about him being an arrogant idiot.
“Why?”
He looked to her for an explanation, but she refused to even meet his gaze.
“I suppose they were trying to free their captain,” he offered, watching her carefully for any sort of tell to confirm it. When she didn’t move, he added, “It doesn’t matter now, though. We destroyed the ship.”
That caused a tightening of her shoulders, but nothing more.
“And their captain?” Titus asked.
“Still in my custody.”
“Good. I have a few questions of my own for her when she arrives.”
Marcus’s heart warred with his mind. As much as he still wanted to protect Sexta, he wouldn’t sacrifice his loyalty to the empire to do so. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t leave my sight.”
“In the meantime, Azurha and I will try to come up with a solution for the Barrier. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Titus’s image faded from the communication orb, ending their conversation.
Rufius came toward him, a mixture of fear and disbelief written across his face. “You’re not serious about the Barbarians, are you?”
Marcus nodded and set the orb down. “I saw them with my own eyes. A whole army of them, ready to strike.”
“And you think that’s the reason why Shalfak was attacked?”
“It’s the only explanation I can come up with at the moment. Judging by the number of Barbarians we saw, it would be all too easy for them to raid the city and take the citizens back through the tunnels with them.”
He offered a quick prayer to the gods that those poor souls perished quickly at the hands of their captors. The Barbarians didn’t have a reputation for compassion, and he could only imagine what they did to their prisoners.
“And if that’s the case, don’t you find it a little bit odd that your lady friend here happened to know exactly where the tunnel was? For all we know, she’s in league with them.”
Sexta’s head snapped up. The icy glare she gave Rufius would’ve made a wiser man tremble, but the former soldier wasn’t well-endowed when it came to common sense.
Marcus ran his fingers through his still-damp hair, wincing when he came to the tender knot on the side where she’d whacked him the other night. “She was just as shocked as I was when we stumbled upon them.”
“You’re letting your dick cloud your judgment.”
Djer cracked his knuckles, forcing Marcus to defuse the situation before blood was spilled. “Rufius, enough. It doesn’t matter what I say or do. I’m to follow orders and bring her back—alive—to the emperor so he can decide if she’s guilty or not. Perhaps you’d be wise to follow orders, too.”
Rufius’s upper lip curled into a snarl, but he took a step back. “Fine. I’ll take her back down to the brig.”
“That won’t be necessary. I told the emperor she wouldn’t leave my sight, and I meant it. And as captain of this ship, I refuse to stay down in the brig when I have a warm, dry, and comfortable bed available in my cabin.”
“And I suppose the whole not leaving your sight thing extends to her not leaving your bed.”
Marcus turned to her, wondering why she’d chosen to remain silent during all this. The woman he knew would’ve jumped in already to defend herself. Instead, she stayed where she was, hiding in the shadows, and stared at the floor.
“She can stay where she wants in this room. That being said, she’s not leaving it.” He went to the keypad by the door and pressed his palm against it, changing the permissions so only he could unlock it.
“And her bodyguard?”
That was a bigger problem. If there was even a hint of truth in Rufius’s accusations, then Djer wouldn’t hesitate to run him through as soon as Sexta gave the order. Time to test her loyalties. “Sexta, do you feel safe enough with me to not require Djer’s services?”
She focused on him like she was equally testing him. “I do, but only if you promise he will be treated with care by your men. No cages. No chains. No punishments.”
He turned to Rufius, who, after a moment of doubt, nodded slowly. “If he behaves, then he’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Her gaze traveled between the two men before settling on Djer. “I’ll be safe.”
“If you say so, my lady.” The hard lines of the Alpirion’s face vowed swift vengeance if any harm came to her. He followed Rufius out of the room.
An awkward
silence followed that unsettled him as much as an approaching storm. He’d always been the one with a quick barb to lighten a dark mood, but now he had nothing to chase away the shadows in his heart. Sexta continued to stare at him as though she wanted him to say he didn’t believe the accusations, but the doubts in his mind wouldn’t allow him to do so. What if she was partially responsible for this? What if she’d given her men an order to fire on his ship? He didn’t see her willingly acting on the behalf of the Barbarians, but she’d already shown she wasn’t above using black powder bombs to make an escape.
He released his frustration in a whispered curse and crossed the room to where a small washstand stood. It wasn’t a luxurious bath with steaming water, but it was at least enough to remove the mud and grime coating his skin. He yanked his dirty, torn tunic over his head and dipped a sponge in the water. The cuts on his skin burned as he ran it over his arms and chest, adding an extra layer of agony to his strained muscles, and he let out a hiss.
Then something cool brushed against his bruised shoulder, and he froze.
“You said you had a healing rod?” Sexta asked behind him.
“In my desk.” He watched her carefully as she retrieved it. She’d managed to sneak up on him once, but he refused to fall victim to that again. Next time, it could be a knife against his back instead of her fingers.
She found the slender ore rod with a knob on the end and came back to him. “Where does it hurt the most?”
He pointed to his head. “Here.”
“Do you trust me?”
The question carried the weight of more than just healing him. She was asking him if he trusted her. Rufius’s accusations echoed in his mind, and a wave of shame washed over him. Sexta was many things, but she wasn’t a traitor. Just the fact she was offering to heal him suggested she meant him no harm. If she’d wanted to escape, she could’ve left him partially incapacitated.
The doubts in his heart eased. Even though there was evidence linking her to what happened in Shalfak, there was plenty more to prove she was innocent of it. Maybe she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe her crew had decided to act without orders. But he knew she didn’t mean him any harm. “I do.”