Shadow Trapped (The Collector Chronicles Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “How many of these catalogs exist?”

  The woman went off to a shelf and grabbed two more volumes that were the same size as the first. “She is on her third volume.”

  “And she allows you to know where these are? I thought you were only allowed to handle her journals when she was in the room with you. Linsay would be unlikely to reveal such secrets.”

  The woman flushed slightly. “She has documented while I was present on more than one occasion,” she said.

  “Stacia!” Rebecca said.

  Stacia glanced over. “She did it so that I can help if she needed my assistance.”

  “Your assistance? How would she need your assistance with documenting her journal entries?” Alessa asked.

  Carth grinned at the discussion between them. “Are you afraid that Linsay will be angry with you?”

  “She won’t be angry. I know you probably don’t think much of her, but she wants us to work with her, and she does everything that she can to help us understand our abilities better.”

  “Abilities? What you have aren’t abilities, they are enhancements. There are dangers to using the enhancements,” Carth said, glancing over at Jenna.

  “We have seen no side effects from using them.”

  “The person who taught Linsay about enhancements was not convinced that there weren’t side effects. In fact, he believed that there were.”

  “There are side effects,” Jenna said quietly.

  Rebecca glanced from Carth to Jenna, and she looked at Jenna with an expression of sadness. “I don’t claim to know what you’ve experienced, but she told us about what was used on you. That was not an enhancement. That was meant for a different purpose altogether. The side effects from that is different. You can’t attribute the same side effect to your sedative as what we used to augment ourselves.”

  “It’s not only that,” Jenna said. Her voice barely rose above a whisper. Carth hadn’t spoken to Jenna about her experiences with the enhancements, not enough to know how they had affected her. Carth was able to burn them off, but the others could not. They had to wait until the effects of the concoction wore off on their own. “There are other effects to the enhancements. I know this because Boiyn was afraid of those other effects, and he tried to protect me from them, but…”

  Alayna patted Jenna on the shoulder, consoling her.

  “What kind of effects did you experience?” Carth asked. She hadn’t heard anything about the effects, other than a warning from Boiyn that they might exist. Neither of the other two women had mentioned anything, other than what Carth had observed from Jenna.

  “We haven’t wanted to worry you,” Alayna said.

  “You haven’t wanted to worry me? What have you kept from me?”

  “You’ve needed our help,” Jenna said. “We used Boiyn’s enhancements willingly, knowing that they would help us with you.”

  Carth looked from one woman to the next, but both made a point of looking away from her, as if they feared answering her.

  “You didn’t need enhancements to help me. That wasn’t the point of me having you accompany me this way.”

  “There were times when we did,” Alayna said softly.

  That wasn’t the expected response—or the person that she would have expected to have given her that response. Jenna was a different story, and Carth wouldn’t have been surprised to have Jenna tell her that she had needed the enhancements so that she could fight alongside Carth, but for Alayna to do it?

  “We will have to talk about this later,” Carth said.

  “What is there to talk about?” Alayna asked. “We made a choice. We are dealing with the consequences.”

  “I can help you,” Carth said.

  “Maybe, but maybe not,” Alayna said.

  Carth met her gaze and Alayna’s bright green eyes practically dared her to question. Carth finally pulled her gaze away from her friends, and she looked at the women who had been working with Linsay. “What can you find in these journals about the Ai’thol?”

  Stacia set down one of the books and began flipping through the pages. “We will need to take time to study. I don’t know that I can answer without reviewing it. Is there anything that you might know about that would help place what you’re looking for?”

  “Other than the Ai’thol?”

  Stacia nodded. She clutched one of the books to her chest, and her eyes continued to look down to where Carth held the other two. “That might be too broad of a topic for such a search. We can certainly try, but I think you should be prepared that it won’t be as easy to find as that.”

  “Then we look for references to Ras or Odian or…” Carth tried to think about what else might have been used. There was something that was tied to the Ai’thol, but it was a name given to her by the captain. Could that be what she needed?

  The idea seemed ridiculous, but why should it be? It would be no more ridiculous than the fact that Carth had willingly given him Talia’s name.

  “Try looking for the name Olandar Fahr.”

  “Whose name is that?” Stacia asked.

  “I don’t know whether it’s his name or whether it’s a name that he made up, but I wonder if Linsay found the same name.”

  They all took seats, each of them looking at the catalogs and trying to find an answer to whether Linsay had recognized that name. There was nothing obvious in the catalogs, nothing that would indicate whether she had experience with a man by the name the captain had given her or not. From what Carth could see, Linsay had documented an incredible number of different experiences. She had been much better traveled than Carth had ever imagined. Not only were there trips to all of the places Carth had been, but she saw one that made her pause.

  “This one,” she said, pointing.

  Alayna looked over her shoulder and frowned. “That isn’t the name you’ve given us.”

  “It’s not the name, but there is something to it that I think will help.”

  Stacia looked at the volume Carth was holding out and made her way around the room, searching until she found the volume that Carth had indicated. She pulled it off the shelf and glanced at the others before bringing it over to Carth. “These are considered important. Please be careful when you’re going through it.”

  “I will,” Carth said.

  She started flipping through the pages of the volume that Stacia had brought her but found nothing that drew her attention. “How do you know this is the right one?”

  Stacia pointed to the front cover where a series of letters and numbers had been written. It matched the one that Carth found in the catalog. “She keeps track of them this way. I suspect she has some strategy to her organization, but most of us aren’t familiar with it. That remains a mystery even to us.”

  Carth glanced around the room before finding a chair near one of the shelves and taking a seat. She rested the book on her lap, flipping through the pages. Linsay’s writing was neat, compact, and Carth didn’t struggle to follow it. Thankfully, she didn’t use any other language than the common one. Had she written in Lashasn, Carth wouldn’t have unable to follow. But then again, why would Linsay have written in Lashasn? Ras had done so—at least, she presumed that it had been Ras who had created the volumes that detailed ways to defeat Carth—but Linsay wasn’t from Lashasn. She wouldn’t have known that language as well as she knew others.

  Near the end of the book, she found the reference she was searching for.

  Alayna remained near her, reading over her shoulder. “What is it?” Alayna asked.

  Carth looked up. “Ever since they showed me the books of Tsatsun strategy, I’ve wondered about Linsay’s connection to Ras.” There had to be one, but what was it? What was Linsay keeping from her?

  “And does this give you a better idea?” Alayna asked.

  “Look at this.”

  Alayna leaned in, and Carth pointed to the paragraph. “I don’t know what it means.”

  “It means that Ras taught Linsay.”

&
nbsp; 23

  Carth sat in the cabin on her ship, feeling the waves rocking while they anchored in the bay, staring at the book that rested on her lap. This was proof that Linsay had known Ras. He had trained her, much as he had trained Carth.

  But why?

  And if he had trained her, then why would she have needed the books on Carth’s playing style?

  That was the question Carth had yet to have answered.

  Had Ras known who she was? Had he known what she would do? Carth doubted that he had known how dangerous she would become, but maybe he had. Hadn’t Ras always valued strength? Why wouldn’t he value Linsay, and the person that she had become? He would have appreciated the strength that Linsay had managed to demonstrate.

  But if he had trained Linsay, and if she had a similar affinity for him as Carth did, why wouldn’t she have told Carth? Why keep that from her while she wanted help? Could she have thought that Carth wouldn’t help otherwise?

  When she’d last left Ras, they had been on reasonable terms, but there had been the question of whether Ras had manipulated her, forcing her to join him. Maybe he had moved on, searching for someone who might be more ruthless than what Carth had been willing to be, but Carth thought that she had been plenty ruthless when it came to it. She had been willing to attack, and willing to do what was necessary to ensure that the people she offered protection to had the necessary protections.

  Creaking along the stairs alerted her that someone else had re-joined her on the ship. Carth looked up, expecting Jenna or Alayna, as both women had remained on the shore, searching for more information, but that wasn’t who came below deck. Rather, it was Rebecca. She paused in the doorway, looking over at Carth, a question on her face.

  “What is it?” Carth asked.

  “We’ve found something,” Rebecca answered.

  “About Ras?”

  That was where Carth had instructed them to begin, showing them that there were other volumes that involved Odian and Linsay’s training with Ras, but Carth had taken only the first of the volumes, wanting to see what she could learn, knowing that there had to be something here that would explain what—and how—Linsay had begun training with Ras. She wanted to understand that even more than she wanted to know why the Ai’thol had come after her.

  “We followed the journals as you instructed,” Rebecca said. “We didn’t find much more other than her training.”

  Carth nodded. She wasn’t certain that there would have been much more for her to find. If Linsay had been training with Ras, she had wondered if perhaps there might be some key to understanding how Linsay had played Tsatsun, but maybe her training had been along the lines of what Carth had gone through, the kind of training that would have left her feeling like nothing more than a captive, forced to struggle so that she could escape.

  “There was something else. It was in a description of a conversation that the Cason had with this man.”

  “And?”

  “And there was one reference, brief, but considering what we’ve been looking for, I thought it best to bring to you.”

  She set the journal in front of Carth, who skimmed the page. The preceding paragraphs discussed a recent loss to Ras, and now she was discussing the technique that she had used but failed in. There was value to it, especially as Carth intended to understand Linsay so that she could be better prepared to defeat her, but there wasn’t anything else there of use.

  “I don’t see what you’re referring to.”

  “It’s here,” Rebecca said. She pointed to the page.

  Carth frowned as she studied it. It was an odd reference, one that Linsay had written about needing to travel too far to fully understand the game.

  Carth stared at it.

  Not too far, but to Fahr.

  Linsay had documented the discussion. Ras had been the one to instigate her finding the Ai’thol.

  But why?

  Carth continued to flip through, but there weren’t any more discussions, certainly not about Ras and his travels. “Is this it?” she asked.

  “This is what we’ve come up with,” Rebecca said.

  “I need to see all of them from her time in Odian.”

  “You saw it, then?”

  Carth nodded. “I think you’re right. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “If this is right, it might mean that things aren’t quite what they seem.”

  “I will get you other volumes.”

  “I still need to know how she managed to break into the Ai’thol. Anything that we can find about that will help us.”

  Rebecca left Carth, and Carth sat back down, staring at the page in the book. It seemed an impossible task. How was she to go after a place with so many ships, and as dangerous as they possibly were, without endangering herself and those who worked with her?

  There wasn’t a way. More than anything else, Carth was keenly aware of the fact that there didn’t seem to be any way for her to reach them, not without putting too many lives in danger.

  She began reading through Linsay’s journal and found a few sections where she described games that she had played with Ras. These were the most helpful. As Linsay would not reveal any strategy to Carth, this would be the only way that Carth would know how Linsay intended to play Tsatsun, and it would be the only way that Carth could discover how to counter her if she continued to press when—and if—Carth ever managed to get her to safety.

  Carth awoke to the sturdy sound of boots on the deck, and she looked up when Alayna entered. “I’m glad you were getting some rest. You can’t help anyone if you’re exhausted,” she said. She pulled the book away from Carth and pointed to the cot. She stood there, unmoving, until Carth stood and went to lie down on the cot.

  “I can’t get past the idea that there’s something more here I’m missing,” Carth said.

  “Maybe you’ll find the answer when you get some rest. Sometimes it’s the answer you’re not looking for that comes to you, and—”

  Carth sat up, and she looked at Alayna. “That’s it.”

  Alayna frowned. “How is that it?”

  Carth looked around her cabin. It was sparsely decorated, the way that she liked it. There was a Tsatsun board tucked away in the corner, and a trunk at the end of the cot, and a table that took up most of the space in the middle of the room. She didn’t need a lantern or much light, but she had one for the others who came here, choosing to make it so that they would not be uncomfortable.

  “You said sometimes the answer will come when you’re not looking. I think that’s the key.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Alayna said.

  “That’s what you told me.”

  “I was meaning more that you needed to get some rest, and that maybe while you were sleeping, you might find the answer to what you needed.”

  “I don’t think I have time to sleep.”

  “Why?”

  “They’ve been captured for days. There comes a time when we won’t be able to get to them anymore. I worry that we’ve already reached the point where they will be lost.”

  “Do you think that the Ai’thol will harm them?”

  “Not the Ai’thol. Ras.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve been struggling to understand what has been going on. When I met with the captain, he didn’t strike me as a violent individual. And he let us go. That’s not the behavior of someone who wants to destroy us. He was after Linsay.”

  “And Talia,” Alayna said.

  “And Talia, but only after I mentioned that they were related. Before then, he hadn’t known about her, and I don’t think he was interested in Talia. It was after spoke with me, and he…” Carth thought about that time, remembering the way that the captain had disappeared from the cabin, leaving her alone for a while. She had thought that he was going elsewhere for a different reason, but what if he was going with his instructor? Could it be that the answer had been there all along? If
it was, then even Linsay had it wrong. She had wanted Carth to go after the Ai’thol, thinking that they would find Ras, but Ras had never been missing—not in the way that Carth had believed.

  “What is it that you figured out?”

  “When Rebecca showed me these books,” she said, pointing to the stack of volumes that described her training at Tsatsun, “I thought that she had either gotten them from Ras, or she had stolen them from the Ai’thol. Either way, I have been working under the belief that Ras betrayed me by recording our games.”

  That had hurt more than Carth wanted to admit. But what if that hadn’t been the case at all? What if Ras hadn’t betrayed her, but Linsay had stolen the books from him? Carth didn’t know why she would have done it, not yet, but she could discover that in time. For now, she had to find a way to reach him.

  “You think your mentor is the one to blame for their abduction?”

  “I’m not sure. I wonder whether he is behind it more than I realized.”

  “If he is, how do you intend for us to find him?”

  She had been planning to try to sail to where she could find the Ai’thol, but that wasn’t going to get her the answers at all. If she was right, and Ras was involved—forcing her involvement—then it wouldn’t be going to the Ai’thol and trying to force them to release Linsay and Talia.

  It would be a much subtler game. It would be the kind of game that would ensure that Ras would play. And it would take her to Odian.

  24

  Water sprayed up onto the deck of the ship, the heavy waves crashing around her. Carth allowed Alayna to steer, knowing that she was the better sailor and that she would be best able to get them to Odian safely. A hot wind gusted, carrying the humidity of the sea, and Carth stood in the middle of the deck, looking out at the water moving past her, remembering the first time she had sailed for Odian.

  “You don’t think we should have more people with us?” Alayna asked again. Since breaking through a line of Ai’thol ships, drawing their attention, it had been a frequent point of discussion for them.