by Dawn Peers
Eden’s fists bruised against the door again. “You wouldn’t! You bastard.”
“Don’t worry, Eden. If Ross got to them in time, then I’m sure Quinn will be fine. Whether she survives the Sea of Sighs is another thing entirely.”
Eden stormed out of the gaols without another word, heading back to the Great Hall and the Spring Ball, which was no doubt still in full swing. He certainly had the urge to drink some wine, and finding out who his allies were had suddenly become a much more important task.
17
“Has she finished being sick yet?”
Maertn rubbed on Quinn’s back as she hung over the side of the ship. The crossing wasn’t rough. Ross had actually thought that, so far, it was smooth sailing. Quinn, however, had turned pale as soon as she set foot on the gangplanks, and had spent most of her time since they left port throwing up.
“I’d like to stop vomiting now.”
“Here, try and stand up.”
Maertn pulled her up, and Quinn turned, leaning against the rail and belching. She rushed her hand to her mouth. Maertn, used to this and worse from his patients, didn’t even react. Ross looked her up and down. She looked exhausted. Unsurprising, since she’d only managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep in between her waves of nausea so far.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“I will be, once we get to Sha’sek.” The deck rolled, and Quinn staggered. She turned back over the rail, and Ross thought she was going to be sick again, but all that came out were dry heaves. After a few minutes, she tried turning to them again.
“Give me something to do, Ross. I need to take my mind off this.”
“Come on. I’ve got an idea.”
Rather than watching Quinn trying to traverse the deck, which Ross had seen once, and never wanted to see again, he picked her up and carried her. She protested, but only weakly. Her pride only lasted to a point, and it was a much safer way for her to travel on board.
Ross carried her down into his cabin and placed her on his thin bunk.
“Wait here.”
With nothing else to do, Quinn did as she was bid, trying to concentrate on anything but the rolling motion of the boat. Ross wasn’t gone long, and she was surprised to see him come back with Sammah’s mercenary.
“Not down here.”
“What do you mean?”
Quinn shook her head, swallowing down some bile. “If you want me to read him, I can’t do it in here. The room is too small. The air…if I’m sick, I want to be near the side.”
Ross rolled his eyes. “You want me to carry you all the way back to where we were?”
“Take me to the bow.”
“You do know which bit of the ship that is? That’ll be moving the most.”
“Then I’ll know if this will actually do any good. Please, Ross?”
Not seeing any other solution if he wanted Quinn to try to read the man, Ross picked her up again. She protested louder this time, but Ross didn’t want to dawdle. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting the mercenary to follow; he did.
They dodged past sailors as they went, but the simple voyage meant they were calm, and even enjoying themselves. The Sighs, as it stood, were not living up to their fearsome reputation.
Reaching the bow, Ross sat Quinn down on a crate. He squinted at the horizon, shading his eyes from the sun. “Is that fog?”
Quinn didn’t bother looking. “In this weather? I doubt it.”
“Come on then. You—stand there.”
The man did as he was told. Quinn struggled to think the questions she had asked him so far, and the vague responses she’d gauged. Instead of trying to move on from an uncertain point, she decided to start again from the beginning.
“You nod for yes, you shake your head from side-to-side for no. Shake your hands at me if you can’t answer me. Is that clear?” Quinn aped Ross's instructions to Elias in his short trial. It seemed like an effective way to question a mute. He nodded.
“You work for the Baron Sammah?”
Nod.
“Do you enjoy it?”
Hands.
“Do you take pleasure in your work?”
Grin. Nod.
“Have you murdered before?”
Nod.
“Were you sent to murder me?”
Shake.
Quinn cocked her head. The sword that had come close to decapitating her had felt very certain. “I’ll ask you again: were you sent to murder me?”
Shake.
It didn’t feel like a lie, either, and Quinn let out a soft growl of frustration. In the horizon, there was a haze. Some of the sailors were calling out. Perhaps Ross had been right; there was a fog rolling in. Great; that was all Quinn needed. She pushed on, letting go of all restraint on her power to take in all the mercenary had to offer. She focused only on the man in front of her. She wanted to read every facet of him.
He was an abhorrent man; Quinn had decided that before today, but in seeing every facet of his soul, Quinn was sure of it beyond doubt. She couldn’t find a single glimmer of redemption. This man didn’t know remorse or guilt. She doubted he had felt real fear in a long time.
“Do you know what it’s like to be afraid?”
Nod.
“Is it a long time since someone’s scared you?”
Shake. “
“Is that someone Ross?”
Shake.
“Is it me?”
Nod.
“Were you sent to kill my friends?”
Shake.
This was frustrating. If he wasn’t sent to kill any of them, then why had the mercenaries tried to hack them all to death in the middle of the night?
“He must be lying. That can’t be the truth.”
“As far as I can tell, he’s being completely honest with me.”
Ross grunted in disbelief. “I’m not sure how.”
Quinn bit her nails, completely distracted now from the seasickness that had been enveloping her. She was in her element. The sailors around her were becoming agitated. The fog rolled in closer, thick and menacing.
“Were the men with you sent to kill any of us?”
Nod.
Ross stood upright at this response.
“So, you were sent as, what, some sort of backup?”
Waggle.
“If your friends failed to kill us, were you ordered to kill us instead?”
Shake.
Quinn was frustrated. “Then what were you there for!”
Waggle.
“I didn’t need an answer to that question.”
Quinn groaned. She felt a pressure in her temples, and beads of sweat ran down the back of her neck. It could have been sea spray; she didn’t feel hot. The questions, his responses, were overwhelming her. She needed to know more.
“Have you murdered children before?”
Nod.
“Because Sammah asked you to?”
Nod.
“Were they gifted?”
Nod.
“Were they all gifted?”
Shake.
“Only because Sammah asked you to?”
Shake.
This last response angered Quinn. She could feel it coming from the mercenary. His spite and hatred for life was wrapping itself around her heart. Tendrils of fog were creeping up on the deck now, and the occasional cries of the sailors broke through Quinn’s obsessive haze.
“The Sighs! Beware!”
“Quinn,” Ross cautioned, “we should go below decks.” Quinn ignored him. The mercenary was her focus, now. Ross tugged at her arm. “Quinn? It’s not safe up here.”
Quinn turned to look at him, and Ross fell back to the decking in shock. Her eyes were completely black. Red and purple veins bled out from her eye sockets, spreading across her forehead and cheeks. She looked like death incarnate.
“He’s a murderer, Ross. Sammah was making him murder my kind.”
“He didn’t have a choice.”
“He enjoyed it Ros
s. I can feel it. He told me. He didn’t lie.”
“He’s not killing anyone now, Quinn.”
“He’s not going to kill anyone ever again.”
Quinn turned to the mercenary. The man didn’t look so smug, so strong, and sure now. At seeing Quinn’s face he dropped to his knees. His mouth opened, his blunt tongue stabbing out, as if he wanted to yell in alarm.
“What’s wrong? Have you forgotten what it’s like to feel frightened? Don’t you want to know what it felt like to be the children you murdered? How I felt when one of your friends nearly took my head off with their blade?”
The link between them was still open; Quinn could feel the hatred bleeding between them. The fog of the Sighs wrapped around her, whispering in her ear. It whirled around her head, carrying a soft male voice. It oozed confident conviction. This is what you are Quinn. This is what you can be. You can stop men like this. You can do what you want.
“What are you going to do, Quinn?”
Quinn cocked her head. “What I want, Ross.”
“Quinn, this isn’t you. Please. It’s the Sighs. Come with me below deck.”
“Not yet. I need our…friend to do something.”
“Quinn! Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
You know exactly what you’re doing Quinn. You want this. He deserves it.
Quinn grinned at the mercenary. “You don’t deserve to live. Jump overboard.”
The mercenary got to his feet. Ross yelled in protest, but the ship rolled violently. He staggered backwards, falling into the ship’s rail. Wordlessly, unable to cry out, the mercenary backed himself into the point of the bow.
“Jump overboard,” Quinn commanded again. His mouth wide in panic, shock, fear—all emotions Quinn could feel spilling towards her—he did as she commanded.
As he slipped away, so did the fog. Quinn dropped to the decking, pain splitting her temples. Ross skidded to her, tears staining his cheeks.
“Oh, Quinn, what have you done?”
18
“It looks just like Everfell.”
Maertn stood with his hand on his hips surveying Farn, which stretched out in the distance. Quinn was on her hands and knees, kissing the ground. Maertn crouched, rubbing her back with the palm of his hand. Quinn continued to retch, bile spewing out of her mouth onto the pebbles. “This bit,” she said in between heaves, “looks different.”
“Our beaches are sandy,” Maertn said absentmindedly. “The city up there,” he nodded towards the horizon, “looks just like any other city. I thought this place would be different, Ross?”
Ross was throwing their bags from a small rowing boat, which they had used to get off the ship, onto the beach. It was a slim chance, but he hoped to avoid having to declare his arrival in Farn, along with his young cargo, before he’d had a chance to sneak himself to the council. Ross looked down at Quinn. “You’re off the ship now, lass, you can stop being sick.”
Quinn shot a look at Ross, but the movement made her nauseous and she couldn’t get a word out before she was sick again. It had stop at some point; there was nothing left in her stomach. All of her muscles ached. Her stomach had been torn by her nausea, and the rest of her had felt lethargic and heavy ever since the Sighs had overwhelmed her.
“Maertn, the walls might look different, but the inside—let’s just say you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Besides, this will look so similar because the stones used to build it came from Daggerdale.”
“Really? Why didn’t they just mine their own stone?”
“Look around you lad, it’s an island. Where do you think they’d get it from? Farn is mostly chalk. Nothing here that you can build with. They had to import it, in ships like the one we just came in. Imagine how much that weighed, and how many ships it took to build something that size?”
Maertn looked again, a little more awe now stretching across his features. By the end of their journey, he’d started to hate sailors, but now they did earn a little more respect in his eyes.
“Well then, let’s get in there, shall we? I need a proper bed, somewhere to lay down for the night where I won’t be rocking from side to side.”
“Woah there, not so fast. Firstly, we’ve got to wait for this little thing here to stop being sick.” Ross pointed down at Quinn, who puked again by way of response. “Then, I’ve got to figure out what I can actually can say when we get to the council. And we’ve got to get to the council halls without being stopped by any of the guilds, or just flat-out arrested for being foreigners. So what I can do, is make camp here for one night. You’ll still get your wish of sleeping on solid ground, it just won’t be as soft as you’d hoped.”
Maertn ground his teeth in frustration, but he didn’t complain. In truth, he was just glad to be off the ship.
* * *
Eventually, Quinn’s stomach settled long enough that she could sit down properly and she saw that Ross and Maertn had already gathered together the majority of their camp. A small fire was set, and a frugal pot of stew was already cooking. The smell of it did make her stomach turn again, but there was nothing left there for her to spill. She crawled over to her bedroll, feeling thoroughly miserable. She had hated every single second of that journey, from the moment she’d stepped on board the planks of the ship, to the point she’d rolled out of Ross’s forsaken little rowing boat and onto the beach. The face of the mercenary falling overboard had haunted her. The nausea had been a welcome distraction, rendering her incapable of concentrating on anything but her stomach.
Quinn had hoped that getting back on solid ground would be a glorious feeling, but as soon as she hit the beach, her head continued to spin and her feet had wobbled. The vertigo had overwhelmed her, and despite spending most of the journey with her head over the side of the ship, Quinn had continued to spill her guts. She was never going on another ship. That was a strong promise, given that there were now on an island, but Quinn was determined to stick to it.
Maertn had tried to stick all sorts of noxious herbs down her throat to settle her, but none of them had helped. She was pretty sure most of them had made it worse, and Maertn was deliberately making her sick so that she was sick less in the long run. That plan hadn’t worked, and now she had a headache and a constant stomach ache from all of the muscles she’d pulled. Maertn had apologised to her numerous times, saying that they’d worked for countless people before. Quinn pointed out that she wasn’t countless people, and this time his herbal tricks hadn’t worked. Maertn didn’t speak to her for a few hours after she’d said that, which made Quinn feel even more awful. She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings, but she’d felt so dreadful, that she’d lashed out at the only person talking to her. After the Sighs, Ross had ignored her for most of the journey. His excuse had been talks with the captain of the ship, catching up on the news of what was happening in the islands so he wasn’t caught unawares when they finally landed. Quinn had thought he was avoiding her, like most everyone had after what she’d done to the mercenary.
“How are you feeling?”
“That’s a stupid question, especially coming from a healer. How do you think I’m feeling?”
“Quite rotten. It’s not as if I haven’t tried to help you.”
Quinn relented. “I know, and I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound so horrid. I’ve just never felt so vile in my life.”
Ross chuckled, and Quinn glared. He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t kill me with those evil eyes.”
Quinn stilled, hurt at first. Ross, though, was just trying to be playful. Quinn tried not to overreact.
“I’m sorry Quinn, I’ve just never seen someone go so green so quickly in my whole life. You were doomed the second you walked onto that ship, and all of the deck hands felt sorry for you at first. I’d considered throwing you over at one point, but I decided against it. I thought it would do our friendship some irrevocable damage.”
“I’m glad you decided to keep me,” Quinn responded sarcastically.
&nbs
p; “Try this.” Maertn handed across to her another steaming mug of noxious liquid, and Quinn felt like throwing up before it even got near her. She grabbed the wooden mug in both hands, making the regrettable decision to sniff the contents. Another wave of nausea rolled over her, and she passed the mug back to Maertn. “What foul thing have you put in this?”
Maertn shook his head, trying not to laugh. “It doesn’t matter what’s in it, all you need to know is make you feel better.”
“By doing what, killing me?”
“No, by making you feel better.”
“But I have to drink the whole thing for this miracle to happen?”
Quinn brought her hands back in as Maertn nodded, obviously not willing to take the concoction back. Heaving a massive sigh, she pinched her nose and quaffed the disgusting liquid down. She retched twice, but did manage to get it all down her throat. She kept pinching her nose afterwards, so she didn’t accidentally taste any of it. The liquid settled in her belly, and oddly, she did feel better, almost straight away. She hated it when Maertn was right, especially when she’d been mean to him.
“Now that you two are done flirting, get some sleep. You’ll need rest to get through tomorrow; you’re going to get your first full experience of Sha’sek.”
Quinn was nervous, and she didn’t want to let that show. She was certain that she wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. She was wrong, and she drifted into a deep sleep quickly enough as Ross settled himself in for a long night of watch. They had been attacked in Everfell; there was no way, now they were in Farn, that he’d consider them safe.
* * *
Quinn and Maertn both woke with the dawn, the tense excitement from the night before spilling over into the morning. Ross had already cooked them the remainder of last night’s broth for breakfast, and Quinn scalded her tongue as she swallowed it down, eager to be into the city proper. He chuckled at them both, giving them the disappointing news that, before they did head into the city, Ross would be getting a few hours’ rest himself. He’d been up all night keeping watch, and whilst there hadn’t been any incidents, he wasn’t taking any chances.