Rella’s face blanched.
“And I’ll wager he was chockablock with all manner of finery, not ta mention a chest o’ treasure that’d choke a sea drake!” Rella nodded at Paska’s description. “Dat was da booty he stripped from Plume Isle!”
“I should have trusted my instincts,” Rella said in a self-admonishing tone. “He paid in gold, and even gave us a handsome bonus.”
Chula gritted his teeth, remembering Paska’s stories of what Parek had done. He stepped forward and gripped Rella’s arm to get her attention. “An’ dis Capt’n Torek wanted a refit ta make de ship look different, right?” He continued when Rella nodded. “So what’s dis Lady Belle look like now, and where’s he takin’ her?”
“Tsing,” Rella said, her own features hardening. “At least that’s what he said. I’ll show you the work list and sketch her new lines for you. She won’t be hard to find.”
“Oh, it won’t be hard to find de ship, Mistress Rella,” Chula agreed, though he shook his head. “But dat pirate…I be bettin’ me last copper dat he be long gone.”
≈
Iron clattered on iron, stirring Cynthia from a fitful sleep.
Marta must be rearranging the pots in the kitchen again, she thought sleepily.
The sound came again, closer this time, accompanied by voices with strange accents. She opened her eyes to behold the bars of a prison cell, and the anguish of the past days washed over her so hard that her chest ached. She squeezed her eyes shut and bit back a sob, then forced them back open and sat up in her narrow bunk.
The sun shone through the single window of her airy cell, certainly better than the warship’s brig and not at all what she had expected of the imperial prison. The linens were even clean. But that didn’t change the fact that Feldrin was to die, and she would be imprisoned throughout Kloe’s childhood. Her gut clenched.
She stood and stretched, trying to ignore the aches and pains. Her head was still sore where she’d been hit, and her muscles were tight after her sedentary incarceration on Resolute. Her breasts, heavy with milk that she would never feed to her son, ached constantly. But these pains she could ignore; they were physical. The emotional pains—separation from her family, guilt over Feldrin’s death sentence—wracked her heart and soul every waking moment. And she now had ten years to ponder her failures and their consequences.
“By the time I get out of here, I’ll be stark raving mad,” she muttered.
She straightened her simple linen shift, then moved her chamber pot to the door of the cell. It was only her second day in prison, but already she was learning the routine: breakfast, lunch, and dinner at assigned times, and one hour of exercise per day. Exercise meant walking in circles around the courtyard, but at least it gave her the opportunity to see the sky.
She stood and waited, feigning patience as the jailor and his team of trustees—identifiable by the red sashes over their blue shifts—worked their way down the long row of cells. When Cynthia’s turn came, she stepped aside while they opened her door, removed the chamber pot, and handed over a tray of food; stew, bread and water, the same as yesterday’s lunch and dinner. Behind them walked the chief jailor, his hands tucked in his wide belt. Cynthia took her tray and placed it on her bed, then turned back to catch the jailor’s eye.
“Sir! Sir, about my request?” she asked, daring not to hope. One glance at his face and she knew the answer.
“The commandant’s denied it.”
He started to move on, but she implored him. “Please. Please could you ask again? I’ve got to see my husband before…before they kill him. I’ve got to.”
He turned back to her without a hint of rancor, and perhaps a note of pity. “Give it a week, then ask again. It won’t help to pester the commandant, and you’ve got nearly a month before the date.”
Less than a month, she thought in despair, though, “Yes, sir,” was what she said. She wondered if he was giving her honest advice or just putting her off. “Thank you, sir.”
He nodded and turned to follow the trustees down the line of cells.
Cynthia sat on her bed and ate mechanically, not really tasting the food. She was surprised when the bowl was empty and the bread gone. She drank her water and put the tray by the cell door, then returned to the bed and lay back down. She tried not to dwell on matters, but it was useless. The tears started slowly, but they were inexorable. Eventually she rolled onto her side away from the door, so that when the trustees returned to retrieve her tray, they would not see her sobbing herself to sleep.
≈
Camilla wedged herself into the corner of her bunk, feeling the rush of water through the thick wood. She remembered hating it, cursing the salty wetness, forcing it to her will; but that was gone. She clenched her eyes closed and pounded her head against the wood, praying that the pain would draw her thoughts away from the power…the blood. She could smell it, taste it, feel its warm, welcoming gush down her throat. She whimpered as a surge of nausea rushed up. Blood. The thought of it revolted her. But the power it had given her...
Power.
Yes, that was really it: the power. All her life Camilla had lived at the mercy of others with power: Bloodwind, Cynthia Flaxal, Parek. But for a short time, she had wielded the power, unafraid of anyone or anything. Terrified eyes. Gurgling screams. Camilla tried to focus her thoughts away from the horrific things that she—Hydra—had done. And the cannibals had deserved it for what they had done, what they had become.
If only they had left me there…
“Camilla?”
She blinked and clutched the sheet protectively around her. Slowly the red haze cleared from her vision and she remembered. Emil stood before her, a hesitant but hopeful smile on his face. She hadn’t heard him over the memories of the power she’d lost. The power he had taken from her…
“You didn’t touch your food,” he said softly as sat on the edge of the bed. “You’ve got to eat, Camilla, and regain your strength.”
She looked at the laden tray and swallowed back another bout of nausea. Everything she put in her mouth tasted like blood. When she didn’t reply, he sighed and placed a twine-wrapped bundled on the bunk between them.
“I brought you something. It’s from Captain Donnely. He had bought it for a…certain lady,” Emil quirked a smile, “but he thought you might like it.” He stared at her for a moment, expectant. “Would you like to open it, or do you want me to?”
Camilla looked down at the bundle and tried to make herself care what was inside. She failed. But there was so much love in Emil’s voice, shining in his face, that the resentment she felt for his part in her loss faded. She made herself respond. “Yes,” she whispered. “Please. Open it.”
“All right.” Emil untied the bow of string and folded back the layers of brown waxed paper delicately, as if it was fine wrapping. He drew back the last layer, and it was as if the sun had exploded into the room. Camilla gasped. He lifted the folded gown and stood, allowing the vast expanse of honey-yellow silk to cascade down. The fabric flowed as if liquid, the hems and plunging neckline cunningly embroidered in myriad shades of gold.
“Do you like it?” he asked, his smile beaming nearly as brightly as the fabric. “It might need a stitch or two, but it’s a close fit, I think.”
“It’s…beautiful,” she admitted, looking up at him in wonder. “The captain sent this? Why?”
“Everyone is concerned for you,” Emil insisted. “You’ve been through hell, and—” His voice caught. “We thought we’d lost you.” He spread the beautiful gown on the bunk. “Would you like to try it on?”
“I… Maybe…” she whispered, extending her hand to touch the gown. It felt smooth and cool to her fingertips. Yellow was not her best color, but she liked the feeling it gave her, and it provoked no memories. Emil had had her red dress cleaned and repaired,
but Camilla couldn’t even look at the thing, much less wear it. The color brought the memory of warm blood coursing down the bodice. She squeezed her eyes against the recollection and pushed away the sheets, then drew the golden folds up to her breast, clutching the smooth cloth like a protective shield. It felt as if she held the sun of a new day in her arms.
“Yes,” she whispered, blinking away tears of gratitude and loss as she gazed up at Emil’s adoring face. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
≈
Watching over a baby, Mouse had discovered, was hard work. Especially when the people who were supposed to be watching over the baby were more interested in keeping him from watching over the baby than watching over the baby themselves. Aside from Mouse—and the baby, of course—there were a guard, a maid and a wet nurse in the room, and only the wet nurse was paying any attention at all to little Kloe. Mouse was hiding behind a potted plant. He was trying to do as Cynthia had asked, but the guard kept trying to poke him with a sword, which was distracting him from his duty, aside from being bothersome and downright rude.
The guard had no real hope of actually hitting Mouse with the sword, which Mouse had hoped to make abundantly clear by landing on the flat of the blade right after one of the impotent thrusts, and thumbing his nose at the guard, but that had not worked quite like he’d planned. The guard was more determined than ever, and now he held a crossbow, which, if Mouse did not pay attention, might just be a serious problem. Not as serious a problem, however, as that lady in black clothes and the magic sword had been right after Cynthia fainted. That had been a very close call indeed, and one of his wings had a nick in it as proof.
The emperor had not been happy when Mouse tried to stay with Kloe. With two of the guards hauling Cynthia’s limp body away and two more escorting Feldrin out—not to mention the discomfort of just being in the same room with that black sword, so stuffed full of magic that it made Mouse’s skin crawl—it had been a tense moment. When they took Kloe, the guards had just shooed Mouse away, but he had promised Cynthia, so he had flitted up to one guard’s shoulder, thinking he would be out of the way and simply ride along to wherever they were taking the baby. The flitting part, he remembered later, was what got him in trouble. He’d felt the magic of the sword even before he heard the whistle of it cutting through the air. He’d dodged the cut, only barely, and received a nick in his wing as a warning. The woman, or the sword, or both, were faster than anything he’d ever seen, and he’d almost gotten high enough to be out of reach when another slash nearly cut him in half. He had tried to look harmless, hovering as high as he could and staying as far away from everyone as possible, but there had been a lot of commotion and a lot of shouting. Finally the emperor and his son had been ushered out of the room by the bodyguard and several others, and they had taken Kloe through another door.
Mouse had made a decision, and followed the baby.
Now, two days later, he was beginning to think they were calming down a bit. It was obvious that Mouse was not trying to do any harm, unless you counted that candle he’d knocked over when the stupid guard poked a sword at him, and they’d put the fire out quick enough. He hoped the maid’s eyebrows would grow back soon; she looked silly without them.
But the crossbow could be a problem.
He peeked out from behind the pot to see if the wet nurse was done feeding little Kloe, and found out just how big a problem it could be. The bolt hit the lip of the pot only an inch from Mouse’s face, sending shards of broken pottery, dirt, mulch, bits of bark, plant matter, and a plug of old chewing tobacco that someone had spat into the pot some weeks ago, flying in all directions. Mouse dodged most of it, but the chewing tobacco left a nasty stain on his shirt, which finally set his usually unflappable temper flapping like a flag in a gale.
He glared at the guard as the stupid man reached for another bolt, and darted into action.
By the time the guard had the bolt free of the quiver and the crossbow braced against his formidable stomach to pull back the string, Mouse had liberated the man’s dagger from his belt. The crossbow clattered to the floor with its string cut, and the man pitched forward in shock. Mouse cut the leather belt holding the man’s trousers up, returned the dagger to its sheath, then tied the man’s bootlaces together for good measure before darting behind another potted plant.
The crash and subsequent cursing that followed were most satisfying.
The stupid guard railed and raged, and Kloe hiccupped and burst into a scream that nearly shattered the sprite’s sensitive eardrums. The wet nurse let out a stream of curses that seemed quite inappropriate to utter in the presence of an infant, and the maid seemed to agree. The two women railed at the guard until he managed to regain his feet, untie his boots (Mouse had used a particularly tricky knot, a blood knot with a double lock, of which he was very proud) and pull his trousers up. He railed back at them a bit, which did nothing to quiet the baby, picked up the fallen crossbow and left the room.
An instant of silence fell upon the room—the two women had quit railing and Kloe had paused to draw a breath—so Mouse took time to assess the situation.
Kloe was unhurt, but angry at the noise and interruption of his dinner. The two women seemed unperturbed at Mouse’s presence and more concerned with quieting the baby, which was a refreshing change. Mouse knew Kloe pretty well, or at least as well as anyone could know a baby after a few weeks, which, he thought, was probably a lot better than either of these women knew him after only a day, so he flitted to Kloe’s side and cuddled close, running his hand through the babe’s downy hair and whispering sprite nonsense in his ear.
Kloe’s crying ceased.
The maid and the wet nurse both gasped.
“Well, would you look at that!” the maid said, staring down at Mouse and the babe as he soothed the tears away and coaxed a little smile.
“Blimey! Do you think he’s talkin’ to the babe?” the wet nurse asked, tucking up her bodice and continuing to stare at the two.
“Don’t know, but he calmed the tyke down, right enough.” The maid put a hand on the wet nurse’s arm. “Don’t see any harm in it, and he don’t look dangerous.”
Mouse would have agreed, but he was busy. Kloe had hiccupped again, which usually meant he needed to burp. If he didn’t, the results were catastrophic and quite messy. He tried to prop the baby up and pat his back, but even a newborn is heavy for a sprite.
“Here! What’s the little thing doin’ now?” asked the maid.
“Dunno,” replied the wet nurse. “Looks like he’s tryin’ to lift him up. You don’t suppose he’s tryin’ to steal him away, do you?”
“Steal him away? Are you daft? He can’t even lift him up!”
“Well, I didn’t think he could, but he looks like he’s tryin’, don’t he?”
“Well, he might be tryin’, but he can’t. Anyone can see that!”
Mouse had to admit that they were right about that; he couldn’t lift Kloe up, and if someone didn’t burp him soon, he would barf all over everything. Also, the two women were now paying more attention to each other than to the baby. Well, it seemed to Mouse that people employed by an emperor should pay a little closer attention to their work than that, so he stopped trying to lift Kloe up and flitted up to tweak each of them on the nose, hard, before returning to Kloe’s side.
“Blimey!” the wet nurse exclaimed, fingering her tweaked nose, her eyes wide as hens’ eggs.
“Bloody little monster! Maybe he is dangerous.”
Mouse glared up at them both, resolving that he would show them exactly how dangerous he could be if they didn’t start paying closer attention to Kloe. He stomped his little foot on the blanket and pointed down at the now furiously hiccupping baby, fluttering his wings madly.
“Hey, look here. He’s pointin’ at the babe!”
“He is! Looks like the tyke’s
got a bad case of the hiccups, too!”
“Oh, well, I better solve that, hadn’t I? He’ll spit up if I don’t.”
Mouse flitted up and away as the wet nurse reached for Kloe, relieved that the woman had finally figured out his message and decided to tend to her job. The woman lifted the babe expertly, tapped his back and jostled him just right. The result was immediate and resounding, with very little actual barfing, which satisfied Mouse almost as much as it did Kloe.
“Well now, that’s better, isn’t it little one.” The wet nurse wiped the little bit of barf from Kloe’s chin and tucked him easily into her arm, rocking him gently and pacing the floor, all the while murmuring all the nonsense that babies love to hear.
Mouse fluttered down and lit gently on the woman’s shoulder to pat her neck in thanks. The woman gave a little start, then just smiled and continued her pacing.
“No,” the maid said, gathering up the dirty swaddling clothes and diapers and heading for the door. “I don’t think that little sprite’s dangerous at all, and I’m going to tell the chaimberlain that very thing. He can argue it with the emperor himself if he wants, but as far as I’m concerned, we don’t need a ham-handed guard in this room anymore.”
“Gotta agree with that,” the wet nurse said, continuing her pacing.
Mouse heaved a little sprite sigh and settled down on the woman’s shoulder, thinking that they might not be too stupid after all.
Chapter 23
Fire Fight
Rockport.
The name whispered into Edan’s mind at the first sight of the huge haystack-shaped stone standing off the rocky shore. It was familiar, and not. The river that wound inland just south of the towering landmark was on the map in his mind, but no city. He remembered the city, remembered visiting this place, but…he had never traveled beyond Southaven. Ah, he realized, one of her memories. Sometimes the distinction was clear, other times not. His. Hers. Theirs…
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