He stood and crossed the small room, wide shoulders blotting out the faint light that leaked in around the door. Planting hands on either side of me, he leaned close as if to kiss me. As I shifted forward, awaiting his lips, he jerked away. He dropped to his knees at the edge of my bed.
“The moon isn’t up yet. I didn’t want to disturb you. But I couldn’t stay away. I had to hear you breathe to prove to myself that you were okay.”
“I am. I’m fine.” I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him up beside me, but his body was rigid and immovable.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He sank down onto his heels. “Don’t you remember? I almost killed you.”
Fighting the urge to sigh, I dragged my hands through my hair. After a moment, I turned and lifted the hem of my shirt, exposing the new scar.
“It’s healed, see?”
“Much deeper, and things would have been different,” he said.
“But that didn’t happen.”
“No, but it could have.” Raav finally took a seat beside me. “There’s something I want to ask you, and I want you to take it seriously.”
“Okay…”
“What if we just sailed away from here? Forget defeating Mieshk. We could stop at the Kiriilt Islands and warn everyone. And then we could keep going. Somewhere safe and far, far away from Ioene.”
After what I’d learned about Mieshk’s powers, his questions tugged at my heart. It would be easier to just leave. We couldn’t win against Mieshk, so why throw our lives at her mercy?
I stared into the darkness as my thoughts circled. Finally, I laid a hand on Raav’s knee. He tensed but didn’t move away.
“I can’t give up now. We might manage to warn a few Kiriilti. But many more will die if we don’t find a way to stop this.”
There were more reasons, but Raav’s mood was too black for me to want to mention them aloud. I didn’t yet understand what Mieshk had been doing at Ashkalan, but I sensed that if she completed it, we’d have more than the cataclysm to worry about.
He nodded, a rustle in the dark. “I thought that would be your answer.”
The darkness in the cabin seemed to press closer, stifling hope.
“I don’t like seeing you like this,” I said. “It’s like you’re defeated already. But I still believe we’ll find a way to beat her.”
His shoulder moved as he shrugged, rubbing against my arm. “It’s not just Mieshk. Even if we win against her, I’m afraid, Lilik. Every time I close my eyes, I see my sword entering your back. What if that never goes away?”
I squeezed his leg. I wasn’t sure what else I could say to convince him. “Everything heals, even your memories.”
He stood and stepped toward the door. “I hope you’re right.”
Fatigue tugged at me, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I needed to do something besides lie in the dark and worry. Sliding the covers off my body, I swung my legs over the edge of my bunk and dragged on a padded wool jacket. I slipped out the door to my cabin and shut it quietly behind me before tiptoeing down the hall, careful not to wake those who were still asleep.
As I descended the ladder into the lower level of the hold, the air got noticeably damper. A single lantern cast a flickering glow over heaps of cargo and patches of damp that oozed in through gaps in the hull. A few storage rooms lined one side of the hold. To convert it into the makeshift brig, one of the small cabins had been barred from the outside.
A single smuggler lounged on a canvas-draped mound of cargo. Around his nest, there were lines on the floor where the wood looked fresher than the surrounding planks. The panels which had been bolted to the floor in those spots, forming hidden compartments where the smugglers could store illicit goods, were now stacked and stowed against the far wall.
“I need to talk to the captives,” I said when the thief glanced at me.
He yawned and nodded. “Suit yourself,” he said, pulling a long knife from his belt. “Yell if they give you trouble.”
“They’re all inside?” I asked.
The thief was busy using the tip of his knife to trim his cuticles. He nodded without looking up. I lifted the bar away from its brackets and squeezed the latch. The door swung open on oiled hinges, exposing the pathetic huddle of captives slouched against the far wall.
Emaciated after weeks on the island and no longer innervated by Avilet’s compulsion, they turned dull eyes to me. I lowered myself to a cross-legged seat in the doorway.
“Have you eaten enough?” I asked. There were five of them, but I suspected I could win against the whole group in a fight.
Nearest me, one of the two women ran her tongue over cracked lips. “More than we’ve had in a while. Not enough to fill our bellies.”
I nodded. “I’ll make sure you get more soon.”
As I ran my eyes over them, the largest of the captives, a big-boned man who’d probably looked like a mountain before his extended deprivation, sat up straighter.
“I’ll just say it. I made a mistake, Nightcaller. There’s no excuse. I believed Mieshk when she blamed you for the eruption. I didn’t object when she mutinied. I even hunted you.”
“Same,” another man added. The others nodded agreement.
“It’s in the past,” I said. They’d clearly suffered enough. I wasn’t going to berate them.
“It’s going to get worse,” the woman who’d spoken first said.
“What is?” I asked.
“Mieshk. You can’t stop her. Might as well sail away and save yourselves. Us too, if you’ll have us.”
I winced at the similarity between her words and Raav’s recent plea. “Not an option. But if you truly regret following Mieshk, you can help me defeat her. Tell me what happened in your encampment. What does she want with Ashkalan?”
At the mention of the city, it felt as if a shadow passed over the group. Eyes turned to the floor as shoulders hunched.
“She didn’t tell us any details,” one of the men said. “She forced us to march across the island. Made us paint her symbols on the walls. But every rune… tides… it felt like evil itself lived inside them.”
I nodded. I’d felt it, too. “Could any of you resist her commands?”
The closer woman swallowed. “She couldn’t do it at first. I’m ashamed to admit it, but at first, I did what she asked because I was scared. She had all the thugs on her side. And what were you besides a little rat hiding out in the dark?”
I shrugged. “But I’m the little rat who got home.”
“True enough,” she said. “Some of us did try to escape after the way Mieshk treated that little girl. The small nightcaller.”
Are you there Heiklet? You don’t have to listen to this.
I am. But I don’t mind, she responded. It won’t change anything.
“And what happened?” I asked.
The woman’s cheek twitched. “She chased us down. Made an example of two of us. It took them three moonrises to die.”
“After that, no one tried to run,” the big man added.
My fingertips dug into my knees. No matter how much I thought I loathed the Ulstats, I was always learning something to make me hate them more.
“Food got scarce,” the woman said. “We started fighting amongst ourselves. Mieshk encouraged it at first. Said it was for the best if we killed off the weaker ones. Meanwhile, she just got stronger. Spent most of her time in the calling trance. We were still trying to make plans to overthrow her, meeting out of earshot and so forth. But then she learned how to command us. Taught that other girl. Avilet. Between that day and the moment when the boulder fell on Avilet, almost nothing I did was of my own free will.”
Planting my hands beside me, I straightened my legs. “Tell me about her commands. I need to understand how to fight her power.”
“It’s useless. You can’t get a single person near her. All she has to do is look at you, and you’re hers. You’ll do whatever she says. You’ll fall on your own sword, cut out your ow
n tongue.”
I nodded. “Compulsion. We saw it with Avilet. And as you might have noticed, she’s dead.”
She shook her head. “Her abilities were nothing in comparison. She had to be near and focus on it. That little thief—Daonok I believe his name was—was able to stop himself from killing you.”
I was glad Raav wasn’t there for the reminder that Daonok had resisted where he couldn’t. “And Mieshk is different?” I asked.
“Like the sea is different from a puddle.”
“Avilet’s ability didn’t work on me. I doubt Mieshk’s will either. I’ll just kill her myself.”
She shrugged. “If you could get to her, maybe.”
“There have to be limits to her power. What happens if you move out of earshot? If you get far enough from her, are you free?”
“It holds as long as she’s within a thousand paces,” another of the captives said, a young man not much older than me. He’d been an apprentice navigator aboard the Evaeni if I remembered correctly. “And there was something else. When your ships first arrived, her concentration broke. For a few minutes, I could decide my actions again. I almost ran, but there wasn’t time.”
“She saw us?” I’d thought we’d been invisible, our ships lost in the waves beyond the shoals. But at least that information helped explain how the ambushers had found us.
“It was her pet,” the woman said. “The one called Mavek—she sensed you. Apparently, the nightstrands are the souls of the dead.”
I nodded. “We know.”
“Mieshk can’t speak to the nightstrands, but she can order them. Command them like she did us. She keeps a few souls as slaves. The others, she feeds to the fire.”
“So this pet… Mavek saw us. If Mieshk can’t speak to the strands, how did she know?”
The woman grimaced and wrapped her arms tight around her knees as if to protect herself. “She forces her pets inside us. They speak through our mouths. Control our bodies.”
Oh, tides. I shivered in disgust, remembering how helpless I’d felt when Tyrak had taken control of my body. I trusted him and cared for him. How much worse would it have felt if Mieshk had forced a strange strand into me?
“How much does she know about our plans? Are her other pets watching us?”
The navigator shook his head. “Mavek saw more than the others. Understood more about the living, I suppose. I was forced to…” He grimaced. “Forced to serve as a vessel for one of her other pets. Mieshk questioned him. He and the other pets could sense you’d returned to Ioene, but that’s all. Anyway, before she sent us to ambush you, she pulled the pet from my mind and sacrificed him to the fire. Said she had a task to finish. Needed her strength more than a collection of worthless souls.”
I chewed my lip. If we were lucky, then, Mieshk had lost her only spy when Mavek had chosen the aurora. If not, Mieshk and her army would have been here by now.
“I’ll have more food sent as soon as a cook is awake. Thank you for the information.”
I climbed to my feet, nodded, and latched the door before dropping the bar in place. Mieshk had a weakness, I’d learned that much. If we could get her followers far enough away from her, we could free them from her commands. But how?
Chapter Eleven
AFTER MOONRISE, I spent a few hours leading two of Captain Altak’s sailors and three smugglers from the Midnight through thickets of brush and open stretches of scree where hardy witchtubers pushed up stalks during the long-day. I explained which plants had edible leaves, where to find foilwood nuts, and how to boil Eikkas tresses to remove the irritating oils from the leaves. The vine-like tresses thickened soups and added flavor to cooked jellyfish. Foragers needed to be extremely careful, though; the roots had a poison that could cause temporary paralysis on contact.
We moved as silently as possible, wary of any patrols sent from Mieshk’s camp. If she discovered where we’d anchored, she’d need only to creep close enough to enslave us one at a time. It was a risk, delving inland, but I believed strongly that we needed to be able to survive here even if our ships were destroyed and my knowledge lost.
When we returned to the anchorage, exiting the trail onto the narrow arc of gravel beach, the moon was high overhead. As soon as our footfalls crunched in the crushed pumice, shadowy figures stood from stands of brush not ten paces away. I hadn’t glimpsed the slightest motion or heard even a rustle of cloth. Good. Before leaving, I’d consulted with Caffari. Mieshk might be able to take control of someone’s actions with just a word. But a crossbow bolt through her throat could silence her threat forever. We’d decided to station a few of Caffari’s stealthiest rogues near the edge of the beach, crossbows ready.
“Identify yourselves,” one of the thieves said.
I pushed back my hood. “Lilik Boket.”
Before heading into the dark, we’d smudged dirt over our cheekbones and the bridges of our noses to soften any highlights that might give us away if we were forced to hide from a patrol. But the thief recognized me immediately. He touched his fingers to his brow in greeting.
As I spoke to the thief, one of Captain Altak’s sailors stepped to the water line. “Lilik,” he said, faint alarm in his voice. I followed his gaze out over the water. Zyri’s Promise and Shards of Midnight were anchored side-by-side, their rails tied in a raft formation so that the crew could move back and forth with ease.
It took me a moment to notice the dark shapes beyond our vessels. Around a hundred paces past Zyri’s Promise, three ships bobbed lightly at anchor.
Trader Ulstat.
“Rot!” I said, pulling Tyrak from his sheath. “What’s going on here?” I whirled on the closest lookout.
She raised her hands, black shadows clad in lambskin gloves. “Take it up with the boss,” she said. “They turned up a couple hours ago waving white sheets. Dropped anchor, and then a single man—Trader Ulstat I’d guess—rowed over. Been aboard our ships since.”
Anger roared into my body, screamed in my ears. Why hadn’t my friends just shot him as he approached? And why had the captains remained at anchor while the other vessels arrived? The Ulstat ships were currently blocking our escape from the bay, hemming us in.
“I have to get to the ships. Quickly.”
With a shrug, the thief picked up a hooded lantern to signal the Midnight but soon stopped and pointed. “Seems they’ve noticed you.”
Indeed, she was right. The Midnight’s dinghy was already being lowered with a single oarsman inside. Arms folded across my chest with Tyrak still clamped in my fist, I paced as the little rowboat bobbed toward our position. When the boat scraped gravel, I dashed forward and jumped in. My foraging students followed quickly.
Despite the oarsman’s efforts—my glare kept him pulling hard—the little boat made agonizingly slow progress toward the Midnight. Once alongside her, I yelled for a ladder. Seconds after it had splashed down in the water beside the dinghy, I scrambled over the Midnight’s rail.
“What in the rotted tide—”
My words died. Ten paces in front of me, Trader Ulstat sneered.
“Hello again,” he said. “Well met, I’m sure.”
As I’d refused to go inside a closed cabin with the Ulstat prime, I stood with the other leaders in a small circle on the forward deck of the Midnight. Instead of looking Trader Ulstat in the eyes, I kept my gaze fixed on the aurora. I imagined it filling me with peace. Otherwise, I was sure to unsheathe my weapon and plunge it into his throat.
“So who is going to explain why this man is aboard our ship?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps I should answer.”
My gaze shot to Caffari. The bandit leader just shrugged. “I believe we should let him speak. He came under a white flag. Alone. There’s no reason we can’t kill him after he finishes talking.”
“I’ve learned it’s a bad idea to listen to Ulstats,” I said.
“What if we promise it can be you that slits his throat?” Caffari asked.
I
gritted my teeth. “Only if Vidyul refuses the right. He has dibs… for Nyralit.”
Captain Altak nodded, but gestured with a sweep of his hand. “The honor is yours.”
Trader Ulstat cleared his throat. “Good to see we agree. Now then, you asked why I’m here. Back on Araok Island, I was repeatedly advised that I’d never defeat my daughter, Mieshk, without you, Lilik. And from what I’ve learned in the last couple hours about her… changes, I believe that’s true. But I’m also convinced you’ll never defeat her without me.”
I snorted. “Right. And exactly what do you have on offer that I can’t gain from people I can trust?”
He showed his palms in a conciliatory gesture. “In order for you to get close enough to damage my daughter, she must be isolated from anyone she could command. I can draw her out to a vulnerable position. She won’t suspect me.”
As the trader spoke, I glanced at Jet. During the fight for Istanik, I’d relied on his advice on strategy and our strengths. At the moment, Jet’s expression indicated he agreed with what the man said. I curled my toes inside my shoes.
“Or maybe, you intend to lure us close and deliver us into her clutches,” I said. “We have no reason to trust you. I never have, and I don’t see why we should start now.”
Trader Ulstat met my eyes with a serious expression. “I understand. And truly, I wouldn’t expect you to trust me. A month ago, I would have delivered you to her if it suited my purposes. I’d even considered joining forces with her despite what I’d learned regarding the progression of her madness. But I’ve changed my mind.”
“You’ve changed your mind. I see. Sorry, but you still haven’t given me a reason to believe you.”
“I heard you rowed into Ashkalan,” he said.
I raised a single eyebrow and shrugged. “What of it?”
“As did I. There are ancient Ulstat family secrets. It’s time I tell them. I know what happened to Ashkalan.”
Chapter Twelve
Darkborn (Shattering of the Nocturnai Book 4) Page 9