The Edge of the Blade

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “She left Dafne with—”

  “Queen Dafne Nakoa KauPo,” Zynda corrected with a grin, “very happily married to her husband. They negotiated a treaty, another alliance by marriage, with Dafne declared an adopted sister to Her Majesty.”

  It took me a moment to wrap my head around that. “Then she bedded him with . . .” I slid a glance at Kral, who looked far too smug, as if he’d been proved right. “No force? Are you sure?”

  “Ursula is sure, and you know she wouldn’t stand for any coercion. She’s satisfied that Dafne loves and is loved in return.”

  I whistled. “Good for our little orphan girl.”

  Zynda returned the smile. “There’s more to tell you. But for now, Her Majesty is anxious to speak with you.” She slid another speculative glance at Kral. “And to hear all your news in return. Can we pull the ships up beside each other?”

  I threw the question to Kral, who lifted his shoulder in that fatalistic shrug. “Why not?”

  Much as I looked forward to reporting in and delivering myself of my mission, apprehension crawled up my spine. What couldn’t I remember?

  Little mouse.

  We pulled the two sailing ships up beside each other, the Tala ship light and feral compared to the heavier Hákyrling, reflecting much of the differences between the two races. The Dasnarians used clever devices to hook the hulls together and another to make a sort of bridge that we could cross.

  “Excellent for boarding a captured vessel,” Kral told me with an avaricious smile. “Not that I’ve ever done so.”

  “You? Never, I’m sure.”

  He caught me to him for an intense kiss, and when I surfaced from it, I faced the High Queen and Harlan across the short distance of our ships, both of them watching us without any surprise at all—and possibly satisfaction.

  We crossed and I gave Ursula the Hawks’ salute out of habit, then remembered myself and bowed. She shocked me by pulling me into a hard embrace.

  “Thank Danu you’re all right,” she whispered fiercely.

  Beside us, Harlan and Kral exchanged a back-thumping hug, full of manly shouting. I rolled my eyes, then laughed to find my queen doing the same. So good to be among friends again. Almost enough to defray that intensifying sense of foreboding.

  She held me at arm’s length. “Look at you. You look like one of those minstrel tales of pirates sailing the high seas. And you seem to have captured a ship as well. I have someone for you to meet.”

  She beckoned to a Nahaunan man who hung back, wide dark eyes cast down shyly. His long hair tied back with a colorful ribbon whipped in the ocean breeze and he clutched a silk packet I immediately recognized as the one Ursula had given Dafne, to hold her small daggers.

  “This is Akamai,” Ursula said. “Dafne hoped he might help you in Dasnaria.”

  “But the timing did not work out,” he offered in a solem voice, flicking his gaze up to mine and away again, lush lashes fluttering like butterfly wings.

  “You can read Dasnarian?” I guessed.

  “Yes. Among a few other languages.”

  That would have been useful. Still, if we were to maintain contact with Inga, maybe it still would. He studied the silk packet, holding it tentatively toward me. “Queen Dafne Nakoa KauPo said that you might teach me to use these.” Dafne sending me a new pupil. It made me smile. And it would be no trouble to train him along with Karyn. “I think maybe that—”

  A shout of alarm from Ove, back in his crow’s nest, almost immediately echoed by one from the Tala lookout, who burst into bird form and took off flying in the direction we’d come.

  “What’s going on?” Ursula demanded.

  “The lookout flies to determine what closes on us.” Zynda shaded her eyes. “Another ship?”

  I followed the direction of her gaze, toward Dasnaria. Or a pursuer from there? But there was nothing but empty sea and sky. Just like looking at the barrier. This was all wrong.

  And then it was upon us, as if out of nowhere. A Dasnarian sailing ship. Far too close and already sliding up to the other side of the Tala ship, Tala and Hawks alike racing to engage, popping into animal forms and drawing blades.

  Terror seized me as the memories came back in vivid clarity.

  Forget about me while I follow you back to your hole.

  Once again I’d led the rampaging bear right to the people I loved.

  Ursula had already drawn her sword, and I realized I had my daggers in my hands. Our many defenders surged, diving into the sea or flying off. “Don’t let them!” I shouted to Zynda. “It’s too dangerous. Tell them not to go. To come back!”

  I didn’t think she’d understand my order, but she cracked into bird form and zoomed to give warning. Akamai fled below.

  “Who is it?” Ursula asked, crisply in command, Harlan stepping up behind her.

  “A High Priestess of Deyrr. She followed me here.” She’d messed with my head, made me forget, and now I’d endangered my captain and queen. Head in the fight. Keep to the facts. “She’s very powerful and wants the Star of Annfwn.”

  “Well, she can’t have it,” Ursula snapped, sending signals to the alert Hawks and Tala guard, who’d come swarming to protect her.

  “We have to get the ships apart,” Kral urged. “We can’t maneuver with—”

  “Too late,” I whispered as the scent of death washed through the air, sinking into my muscles and freezing them with nauseating chill. Helpless to stop them, everyone seemed similarly incapacitated, watching as the Dasnarian vessel set the grappling hooks and a black-cloaked woman crossed the bridge between ships.

  She strolled up to us with a gentle smile on her lovely face, brushing away the straight blond hair that whipped into eyes like dark holes in her head. “Ambassador Jesperanda,” she cooed. “How lovely to see you again. And this must be Salena’s daughter. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

  Ursula had taken a fighting stance but, like me, like all of us, remained frozen in it. Her throat strained against the strange paralysis, creaking out, “I’ve killed one of your ilk before. I’ll do it again.”

  The priestess laughed. “Illyria? That pup. A handmaiden. A mere bynde to test a rumor. We had to know if all your High Priest Kir had told us was true.” She shook her head, walking around Ursula, her gaze flicking to Harlan, who was straining to move behind her, and away again. I used her inattention to reach for the meditative state that allowed Danu’s power to flow. I couldn’t quite pump my rib cage to activate Danu’s Cycle, but I worked what breath I could. Presumably she gave us that much space, so as not to suffocate. She couldn’t simply kill us all until she had what she wanted. The Star. If she slipped at all, she’d be dead. Just give me a hair’s breadth of opportunity.

  In bits and nibbles, the energy flowed, thawing me ever so slightly from inside. Something else connecting to it. That bright green healing energy, still pooled in my tissues, that magic she’d sniffed but hadn’t identified.

  “Such a pitiful excuse for a priest,” the High Priestess was saying as she studied Ursula, circling her. “No power at all. But Hestar had grown fond of him, the pair so alike in their perversions.” She laid a finger alongside her nose. “Though I doubt Kir will realize the power Hestar promised him, when the empire takes over all your realm.”

  “Over my dead body,” Ursula snarled.

  The High Priestess laughed again, rich, sensual, and horrifying. “Well, yes. And sooner, rather than later. Deyrr will have what is rightfully ours. The Nahanauns can no longer keep the treasure from us. The old scribes awake, and this time they cannot hide from us.”

  “You won’t reach them,” Ursula said, a bead of sweat running from her temple as she strained to move. “You can’t penetrate the barrier.”

  Sweat poured off me, too. My muscles still would not respond, but—it could have been my imagination—it felt as if my chest moved more easily.

  The High Priestess shrugged that off with impatience. “All of you so ignorant. This
is why the Star belongs in better hands. So kind of you to bring it to me. Where is it? Close. I can smell it. Not in the sword anymore, obviously. Aha!” She stepped up close to Ursula, just ducking the sharp edge of her upraised sword.

  I fought to move and couldn’t quite. Harlan’s face contorted with stiff and slow rage, a growl of menace rolling from him, twin to Kral’s, but neither of them moved. Gnawing away at the sorceress’s hold like the mouse she’d named me, I could almost shift my grip on the knives I held.

  The High Priestess’s hand melted like wax and reformed into a claw. With that, she laid it almost gently over Ursula’s belly. With a sick hiss, the queen’s flesh parted, abdomen falling open so blood poured in a waterfall, the contents of her stomach acrid to the air. Dizzy with the gruesome memory of how that felt, I howled, joining my cry of agony to Ursula’s, Harlan’s a deeper echo. While I thrashed, a mouse flailing against the grip of the trap, the High Priestess reached into the cavity of Ursula’s ribs with her other hand and plucked out the topaz, round and glowing with incandescent light through the smear of bright blood.

  Ursula croaked as her eyes rolled up in her head, white with death, but could no more fall than any of us could move.

  With a triumphant smile, the High Priestess held the bloodied jewel up to the sun. “At last,” she purred. “Kiraka, we will meet again.”

  A blur of white swooped through my peripheral vision, the great seabird. Zynda! As large in that form as the High Priestess, Zynda slammed into her, knocking her off-balance. As graceful as any swordswoman, her wickedly pointed beak stabbed out one dead-dark eye. The High Priestess, staggering, screamed in rage. Zynda seized the Star in her beak, wide wings beating furiously toward the open sky.

  Hand clapped over her eye, which streamed blood black as tar, the High Priestess flung a bolt of some violet magic after Zynda. It struck, glowed, and dissipated, Zynda flying still higher, unaffected.

  In that short space of time, the magic hold finally slipped. Without thought, I threw the two daggers in rapid succession, one into her remaining eye, the other to the base of her throat.

  The second knife cut off her scream and the rest of her magic—unleashing a torrent of sound and motion from the rest of us. Like a sail with ropes severed, Ursula dropped, Harlan diving to catch her.

  Kral swung into decisive action, moving in front of me, his broadsword singing as it sliced through the empty air where the High Priestess had been. At his back, I scanned the open sea for where she’d gone. But she, and her ship, had disappeared as if they’d never been, the boarding bridge and hooks still rocking with their abrupt dislocation.

  A howling Harlan cradled Ursula in his arms, a widening pool of blood around them.

  28

  With a snap of great wings, Zynda landed beside me, taking human form and pressing the bloody Star into my hands in one startling movement. “Guard it with your life.” In the next blur of movement, she was at Ursula’s side, trying to wrest her from the crazed creature that was Harlan. “Kral! Jepp. Help me with him!”

  Kral obeyed her first. I clutched the Star, sticky slippery with Ursula’s lifeblood, stupidly searching for the High Priestess to descend upon us again. At least I had the sense to tuck the jewel into a pocket, to have both dagger hands free. I wasn’t swallowing the cursed thing, nor would I be gutted again.

  The Tala healer who’d been with Andi had Ursula on her back now, heedlessly kneeling in the pool of blood. Kral sat nearby, his arms around Harlan, holding him against his chest, muttering something in hushed Dasnarian. Harlan had quieted, his gaze fixed on Ursula and the green glow emanating from the healer’s hands, electric blue surrounding them both from something Zynda did.

  Even as he calmed Harlan and helped him hold vigil, Kral stared at me with haunted eyes. Don’t make me watch you die.

  For the first time I understood how it would be harder on the person who had to watch.

  Marskal found me keeping my useless watch. Too slow, too late. I blinked at my lieutenant, too numb to be surprised at his presence. “Jepp, to me,” he snapped, grabbing my attention and habitual obedience through the shock.

  “Sir.” I gave him the Hawks’ salute, though I didn’t sheathe my knives.

  “We have to uncouple the ships and sail through the barrier,” he said, spacing his words. I’d talked thus, to skull-rattled warriors. “We’ll be safe there and the Tala healer needs the magic. Take charge of the Dasnarian vessel, Scout.”

  I sought Kral’s steadfast gaze, his somber nod cutting through some of the dumb haze. He had to stay with Harlan. I got that. And at least I had something to do. Jens, a step ahead of me, already had sailors in the rigging and men ready to pull up the bridge. He set course, the Hákyrling surging ahead, the Tala ship wheeling to follow.

  With nothing better to do, I climbed to the crow’s nest, searching the glittering horizon in all directions, straining every sense I possessed, searching for the High Priestess to reappear. I held the Star in one hand, in case its magic helped, and a set of throwing knives in the other—in case I had the pleasure of blinding her again. Ove set his crows to searching and watched from the long glass also.

  From time to time, I checked on Kral. Harlan had moved, sitting with Ursula’s head in his lap as the healer stayed nearby. Kral kept close to his brother, but always he held his face turned to me as the ships raced for the barrier side by side, until I lost the sight of him when night fell.

  I started when Zynda appeared beside me, my focus had been so far away.

  “Easy,” she said, her face calm despite my blade at her pulse point.

  “Apologies,” I muttered, dropping the knives from her throat. “Ursula?”

  “Alive, but barely. We need you to bring the Star, so we can cross the barrier. Hurry.”

  “Just take it.” I thrust the jewel at her and she held up her palms, fingers spread wide.

  “It’s not for me. Come on.”

  “Like it’s for me?” I called after her, but she didn’t reply or pause in her descent.

  I followed her down the rigging, a memory of doing the same while the fish-birds attacked assailing me. She stopped at the rail and flashed me a slight smile. “At least that piece was easier. Grab on.”

  I frowned at the surging sea between the ships. “Grab on to what? We need to pull up, hook the boarding ladders.”

  She shook her head, climbing over the rail and clinging to the side of the plunging vessel. “We can’t afford the time. Hold on to my waist. I’ll try to make it a clean dive.”

  Danu save me. Kral was teaching me to swim at the very next opportunity. With a heartfelt sigh, I pocketed the Star again and sheathed my knives. Climbing onto the rail behind Zynda, I wrapped arms and legs around her slender body, her long hair cold and damp between us. Impulsively I kissed her cheek. “If you drown me, I’ll come back to haunt you.”

  She laughed, the sound turning into an uncanny song as her skin shifted into sleek scales under my hands. I squeezed my eyes tight as we plummeted into the water. Her muscular mermaid body undulating beneath me felt every bit as strange as it had looked, but she kept my head above water long enough to get me to the Tala ship and to Kral’s strong grip, handing me up the ladder.

  He stood with me in the prow of the Tala ship as we sailed into Glorianna’s dawn, one arm around me and sword in the other, stabilizing me against the pitch of the waves. The Hákyrling held judiciously back, but we raced at full sail for the barrier. No tentative approach this time. Zynda assured me it would be fine, but I felt like an idiot holding the glowing topaz in my hands, bracing to crash into a wall I couldn’t see.

  “I asked about Jenna,” Kral said in my ear, cheek close to mine.

  Surprised, I looked up and back to search his face.

  “It was a long vigil.” He lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “It seemed better to distract with old arguments than let him stew with worry. You were right about one thing, though—he loves her.”

  “Jenn
a?” I asked. One day I’d have enough sleep and my brain would work again.

  “No.” Kral squeezed me with affection and kissed my hair. “Your queen. Ursula. If I never again see a man so wrecked by the prospect of a woman’s death, I’ll die a happy man. Don’t you ever do that to me.”

  “I’m trying my best. What did he say about Jenna?”

  “He couldn’t say directly because of his vows, but he hinted that the knowledge might be found on Nahanau—and that Dafne might be of assistance.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  “So we’re still headed for Nahanau, Nakoa, and Dafne—if we make it through the . . .” I gasped. “I see it.”

  There—a curtain of shimmering magic, between me and the rosy sunrise, taking on all the glorious colors and shining with promise.

  Kral studied the horizon over my shoulder. “You and your sharp eyes.”

  “Best in the Hawks,” I boasted, flashing him a grin over my shoulder. “We made it. She didn’t get us.”

  He took the opportunity to kiss me, long, hot, and deep. Oh, yes. And like that, we slipped through the barrier, only a sparkle of magic on my skin to reveal that we’d crossed.

  I had to take one more mermaid ride back across the barrier to bring the Hákyrling through. Kral went with us, cleaving the waves with strong strokes as he swam beside us with enviable ease. We both scanned the horizon with tense awareness, until the last inch of the stern glided through the barrier, only then able to breathe a final sigh of relief.

  “Perhaps she’s truly dead,” Kral said, as unwilling as I to speak of the High Priestess of Deyrr aloud.

  “Danu make it so,” I agreed with a fervent prayer. Hopefully Danu would understand about me not following through on all those desperate promises to give up men, or sex entirely. Really, She should know me better. I wasn’t giving up Kral, not even for Her.