Pillars of Six

by St Clare, Kelly

  Plank assessed him, a curious smile hovering about his lips. “Nay, I don’t believe ye would.” Plank turned to her. “I’ll be startin’ up the hill, little nymph. Say yer goodbyes, but don’t tally overlong.”

  “Aye, Plank,” she said softly, watching him go.

  Ebba turned and jerked, finding Caspian before her. He brought his arm up around her, and she lifted her right arm, hugging him back in their special embrace. A lump rose in her throat. “I’ll miss ye,” she said hoarsely, feeling tears dripping off her chin. Blasted things. Somehow his compliment had made this parting worse.

  “We’ll see each other again,” he said. “Let’s not say goodbye. What we have shared doesn’t have a goodbye; it just has a. . . .”

  “. . . See ye again, matey?” Ebba offered.

  He smiled sadly. “Exactly. See you again, matey.”

  She grimaced at the stilted way he spoke the words. “Still a bit soft.”

  He grinned, picking up his small bag with a change of clothes and the knife. “Always a bit soft, Mistress Fairisles. Luckily, you’re pirate enough for both of us.” He bowed to her, holding her eyes for a long moment before saying, “Please take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” she said, flushing. “Ye too.”

  Caspian gave her one last dimpled smile and turned for the docks.

  Ebba pretended to watch him go, but truthfully, after he’d moved more than twenty feet away, the tears blurring her eyes made seeing him impossible. When she relented and dragged a grubby sleeve over her face, he’d disappeared.

  She made for the path after Plank, a little in denial that her friend could really be gone. People gave her a wide berth as she wove through their midst. Ebba wiped at her face again, sniffing hard.

  The ship just wouldn’t be the same without him.

  “Look, lads,” a nasal voice called in front of her. “If it ain’t fish-lips.”

  Ebba dashed away her tears again, jumping at the row of black-clad Malice pirates before her.

  A black bag was pulled over her head from behind, and her legs were kicked out from under her. Ebba didn’t waste any time.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Hel—”

  The butt of a pistol slammed down on her temple with crushing force.

  And Ebba knew no more.

  Six

  Ebba groaned and rolled to her back, unsticking her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “Missin’ teeth o’ a gummy shark,” she groaned. “Did Grubby make the grog last night?”

  “She be wakin’, captain.”

  She didn’t recognize the voice. The ground rolled beneath her. Waves slapped against the side of the vessel she was on. A ship, she assumed. It was nighttime, dark . . . but the heat beating down on her body said otherwise.

  “Take off the hood,” someone ordered.

  Ebba froze at the drawling voice. That was a voice she’d know in a dark pit. She was wrenched to her feet. The hood was ripped off.

  The midday sunlight assaulted her eyes where it filtered between crimson sails and midnight-black booms. Dread settled heavy in her bones. Only one ship was black with crimson sails.

  Mercer Pockmark stood before her. “Fish-lips o’ Felicity,” Malice’s captain greeted her.

  She’d been so upset about Caspian leaving, Ebba hadn’t paid proper attention. They’d taken her at the docks. Ebba inhaled sharply. Plank was waiting at the top of the track, and Caspian down by the shore. What if they’d been caught? She had a moment of panic about the purgium at her belt before remembering she’d left it on Felicity to go into the Kentro village.

  Turned out she did care about the magical cylinders ending up in Pockmark’s clutches.

  Trying to control her flipping stomach, which wanted to remind her how bad this would go for her, Ebba looked into Pockmark’s eyes. She gasped at his face. “Blimey, what happened to ye?” The tiny circular scars that had given him the name Pockmark were now ulcerous, as though someone had been digging into his skin and the wounds became infected. His black tunic and slops hung off his frame, a far cry from the lean strength he’d portrayed in Maltu just three months earlier. The feathers of his black tricorn hat were bent and missing half their barbs. His eyes had always been cruel, but now the same eyes were empty, devoid, dull; yellowed and bloodshot.

  He leaned in, his breath rank with stale grog and rot. “Power happened to me.”

  Ebba waved a hand in front of her face. “Have ye considered it wasn’t power but a whole heap o’ ugly?”

  Mercer nodded to his left, and Ebba followed the jerk of his head to Swindles. Swindles grinned and stepped up, socking her in the gut without preamble.

  “Shite,” Ebba gritted out, doubling over as much as the two pirates holding her arms would let her. That hurt. The pain reminded her about the notion of thinking before talking.

  “Where are yer fathers?” Pockmark said in a bored voice.

  Why did people always do that? Whenever they wanted something, they acted the opposite. Hope filled her at his words, however. “All six o’ them?” she ventured.

  He gave her a blank look.

  Ebba danced inside. Plank was okay. “They be far away from here by now.”

  Pockmark regarded her, then nodded to Swindles again. Ebba braced her stomach this time, but he punched her in the jaw. Gasping, she blinked back stars, sagging in her captors’ arms before locking her wobbling knees.

  That one would hurt later.

  “Ye always did hit like a landlubber, Swindles,” she said, spitting out blood. The thinking first gig was a lot harder than it seemed, but since Ebba also didn’t want to be dead, she gritted her teeth against the urge to hurl more insults at the Malice pirates’ heads.

  Swindles’ face twisted, and he rushed her, but Mercer stopped him with a lifted finger. The captain sauntered closer until he was directly in front of her. He gripped her chin, thumb digging into the injury Swindles had inflicted. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Ye’ll tell me where yer fathers be,” Pockmark said in a low voice. “Or ye’ll die.”

  The answer to that was easy. “There ain’t no way I’m tellin’ ye where they are.”

  His eyes widened, then he regained his composure. “Everyone talks.” He smiled. “Whether they’re wishin’ to or not. Time below deck may be convincin’ ye otherwise.”

  There was a snicker from her left, and she turned to see Riot there, Swindles’ buddy. Not that they’d seemed all that close when Ebba last saw them on Febribus. At a sharp intake of air from her right, she turned to look the opposite way.

  Ebba blinked at Jagger, who had a hold of her right arm. He was alive. And he looked terrible. Not as bad as the others, but where he’d always been strong, his uniform hung off him. Usually proudly upright, his shoulders were slouched. His silver eyes had regained their hard edge. He avoided her eyes, watching Pockmark.

  “Take her below, boys,” Pockmark said with a wave. Glancing back at her, one of the wounds on his face weeping, his lips twisted into a smile. “I will have the dynami and the purgium. One way or another, I’ll be havin’ them.”

  Over her dead body. They could do whatever they wanted. To give up the dynami and the purgium, she’d have to give up her fathers, and that would never happen.

  Riot jerked savagely on her arm, nearly ripping her shoulder out of its socket. Jagger clasped her upper arm on the other side in a grip that was light and tight in turns as though he couldn’t decide if he wanted to hurt or help her. Ebba scanned the massive ship as she was marched to the bilge door. Malice was a schooner and had a crew of one hundred. The decks were crammed with pirates going about their duties. More swung from the riggings and were dotted up the mast.

  How would she ever get away from all this? How would her fathers ever get her back?

  They couldn’t. Not against so many.

  The rags of the crew’s tunics hung off their emaciated frames. Sweat poured over their waxy skin as they worked. Yet where they got the energy to work when
they looked so weak, Ebba couldn’t tell. They were solely focused on their tasks, dark eyes fixed on their hands.

  There was no laughter, no whistling or singing.

  It was just as Locks had described Eternal back in his time under Mutinous Cannon. Something was wrong with this ship.

  A tendril of fear slithered up her spine. Jagger shot her a veiled look.

  “Ye’re alive?” Ebba hissed at him as Riot swung open the bilge door.

  Jagger’s silver eyes tightened, his gaunt cheeks hollowing further as he pressed his dry, cracked lips together, but he made no answer, just ushered her down the ladder to the quarters below.

  The crew didn’t glance at her as Ebba was shoved through the passages, down three more ladders. This ship was huge. There had to be at least four or five decks compared to Felicity’s two.

  “Where are ye takin’ me?” she blurted as the passage they were leading her down became darker, and the walls seemed to shrink the farther they walked.

  Riot smirked, glancing back. “Ye be goin’ into the place no one in their right mind wishes to be. Ain’t that right, Jagger?”

  Jagger’s hand tightened on her arm.

  “Ye were in there, too?” Ebba asked him over her shoulder, hearing her beads rattle. The sound did little to alleviate her fears. “What is it? A cell?”

  Riot just laughed.

  The ship groaned as they neared the end of the passage. The groan was less like the sound of a full stomach and much more like the high-pitched complaint a bone might emit just before it snapped. The echoing noise raised the hairs on the back of Ebba’s neck. The soothsayer’s groaning house on Febribus was the closest she’d ever heard to such a sound, and that hadn’t been anything like this. “Was that people groanin’?” she asked.

  Riot unlocked a heavy door and swung it open. A putrid, overwhelming smell hit her, and she dry-retched.

  “How long do ye think she’ll last, Jagger?” Riot gripped her arm and hauled her into the pitch-black room. “Some only last a single day.” He breathed on her, and she gagged again. His breath was nearly worse than the smell of waste in the room.

  “Some last a week,” he continued, eyes gleaming. “Our precious Jagger here lasted a whole month afore Pockmark let him out. Should’ve left him here to rot like the others, if ye ask me.”

  “Shut yer gob, Riot, and chain her up.” Jagger spoke for the first time.

  Ebba swallowed. “Chains?”

  “Nay,” Riot scoffed. “A four-poster bed fit for a king.” They guided her over to a wall and placed a manacle around her left ankle.

  A quick pull told her it only gave her seven or eight feet of freedom. Could be worse.

  A hand found hers in the dark and squeezed. Ebba squinted for a peek at Jagger’s face, but there was no light. Worse was the heart-thudding feeling that something else was down here. As though a six-headed monster waited in the depths to devour her.

  “Is the other one alive?” Riot asked.

  Jagger let go of her hand. “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  Riot shuffled back to the door. “Guess she’s dead. Have fun with the smell, fish-lips. It’ll be the least o’ yer worries when the rats get to ye.”

  “Can ye at least bring a lantern down?” Ebba croaked.

  Another laugh was her reply. “Afraid o’ the dark, are ye? Ye should count yerself lucky there’s a chamber pot down here.”

  That explained the smell. A loud boom sounded as the door shut, and the dank, inky room became darker still.

  “Shite, I’ve landed in a good one this time.” She released a shaky breath, and felt the area behind her, grimacing as her fingers encountered slime all over the walls of the hull and the wooden floor. Never happier to be wearing boots, Ebba used the heel to scrape at the slime until a mostly slime-free patch was clear to sit on.

  Ebba hugged her knees to her chest, shivering as the ominous pressing feeling grew and her chest tightened. “Ahoy?” she whispered.

  The sound hit the opposite side of the hull; it had to be at least twenty feet across. They’d led her four flights down, into the guts of the ship. Was this where they took all their living captives? The room stank and was dark, but Riot was too gleeful about leaving her here. Was it the rats? Or was there something in the slime coating the walls that would make her sick? Something wasn’t right about the room.

  Her gut was telling her to get out of there fast, like a monster stood right behind her, breathing down her neck.

  “Ebba-Viva Fairisles.” A frail voice spoke.

  Ebba shrieked and leaped to her feet. “Who’s there?” The sound had come from diagonally to her left, in the far corner. “How do ye know my name?”

  There was a rattle of chains as the person shifted. “Verity.”

  Verity. “Ye mean Verity the soothsayer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Verity, who gets black eyes when she’s mad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Verity, who is in love with Locks, but both o’ ye are too stubborn to admit it?”

  Irritation crept into the woman’s voice. “. . . Yes.”

  Ebba sat back down. “Well, why didn’t ye say earlier? I thought there be a beast in here that would eat me, but it was just ye.”

  “You have the manners of someone raised by six male pirates.”

  Pulling her chain from underneath her butt, she replied, “Aye, so I’ve heard. I’m just glad none o’ them got caught.”

  The soothsayer hissed. “Be careful what you say down here, Ebba-Viva Fairisles. The walls have ears and will tell Mercer Pockmark anything you confess while inside them.”

  Ebba shifted farther from the wall. “Ye’re serious? How can they hear us? There be people listenin’?”

  “A darkness rules this ship and those on it. The dark power seeks to uncover what you know. If you didn’t have information it wanted to possess, you would already be dead.”

  “Shiver m’timbers, Verity. Yer sayin’ there be dark magic in the bloody walls?” That was nearly as scary as a monster. Ebba shifted farther away from the hull.

  Verity shuffled again in the dark, sighing heavily.

  Ebba frowned at the sound. “Oi, Verity. How long have ye been down here? Are ye hurt?” The woman didn’t sound very good. Nothing like the powerful soothsayer they’d met on Febribus. “How did ye get caught by Malice?”

  It took a long while for the woman to answer. “This is the path I chose.”

  “Were ye drunk when ye decided?” Ebba asked after a beat.

  Verity hummed in amusement, her voice fading. “It was the only pathway to success.”

  Ebba craned her head to glance around the darkness, wrinkling her nose. She had a different idea of what success looked like. Her version involved a head full of beads and free rein of all the seas with her fathers by her side. At least, it had.

  “Can’t ye use yer powers to wish us out o’ here?” she asked.

  “My powers are nearly gone,” Verity said calmly. “Most of them. Since I’ve been here, I’ve poured all of my power into shielding my heart for as long as possible.”

  “What do ye mean, ‘as long as possible?’” Ebba said, aghast.

  “Trapped like this, I cannot withstand the power these walls hold. I won’t be able to keep myself from succumbing for much longer. Once they have the heart, the soul is theirs.”

  Verity seemed half-delirious, and Ebba was struggling to put together what she meant, but if a soothsayer was afraid of whatever was in these walls, Ebba knew she should be terrified.

  “We’ll get out,” she said to Verity, biting her lip when she recalled the walls could hear.

  Verity’s voice was a mere feather on a breeze when she answered. “Our fate is no longer in our hands, Ebba-Viva Fairisles.”

  Seven

  Ebba woke, disoriented and surprised she’d managed to fall asleep at all. Nightmares of a six-headed beast had her jerking back to consciousness.

  Her cheek was stuck to the slimy
deck. “Yuck.” Ebba peeled herself off and sat up, rubbing at the area with her sleeve.

  She felt unaccountably weary. The events of the last day were catching up with her. Ebba wavered on the spot, frowning. She could go back to sleep right now, actually.

  But first. . . .

  Ebba got to her knees and then her feet, and set to work scraping back the slime with her boots to make a larger space. Feeling to make sure it was large enough, Ebba nodded and sat back down, arranging her chain beside her. “Verity, ye there?”

  No answer came.

  How would she ever face Locks if Verity died? Of course, facing Locks depended on her fathers saving her, and that seemed highly unlikely, given the size of Malice’s crew. Her fathers had surprised her more than once, however, and she knew by now they had a fair number of tricks up their sleeves. But even with the dynami, and Grubby’s selkie skills, she couldn’t see a way for them to save her. Ebba sincerely hoped she was wrong.

  Escaping by herself didn’t seem possible either. Impossible, according to the slumbering soothsayer. Ebba’s heart sank as she thought of the enemy crew between their position and the main deck. And where were they in the Free Seas? She could stay afloat for a day, but anything more than that was questionable unless she managed to steal something to help her drift. And keeping herself and Verity afloat wasn’t viable.

  All of that depended on getting out of the manacle around her ankle, and opening the locked door.

  Ebba cursed and abandoned that line of thought, drawing one of her dreads around to play with the beads. She began at the top. It was a turquoise bead with a wavy carved line through the middle. Her first bead. Her fathers purchased it for her when she was twelve and had just started growing her dreads after they shaved her hair because of lice. They got the bead from Neos, and gifted it to her that night. First, she’d thought about making a bracelet, or a bangle, but the wooden bead was so beautiful she hadn’t wanted to risk losing it. So, she’d put it in her hair.

  Ebba ran her hands over the others, calling forth the memory of how she came to have each bead. She’d given one to Caspian, but the others were all still accounted for. As she ran through her memories, Ebba felt energy returning to her.