Adrian

by Heather Grothaus

  “Towers,” Maisie supplied as she leaned closer to him, bringing a rush of her scent with her. She pointed to four in quick succession. “These have stairs.”

  He looked sideways at her. “How do you gain the top of the other two?”

  “You doona.”

  Adrian glanced at the drawing again. The two towers were at opposite ends of the print. Decorative, then? Structural? It would seem likely if the towers were at right angle corners of a square construction, but this castle seemed to be hexagonal—why build two useless towers?

  He dismissed the idea for the time being. It was likely this queen’s lady was only mistaken as to the castle’s components. “Have you been in service to the queen long?”

  “Nae,” Maisie said, obviously losing interest in the drawing and walking across the cabin to sit in an odd chair, low to the ground with long arms. The back and seat were tilted at an angle, so that its occupant seemed to recline. She stared up at the close, planked ceiling. “Only after Glayer Felsteppe left Wyldonna.”

  Adrian nodded as his suspicions were confirmed. “It seems rather a dangerous mission to put upon someone just entered into service.”

  “Well, I suppose she’s known me all my life,” Maisie said contemplatively. “There was nae one—absolutely nae one—else to trust. I’m doing what I must to save my home—our home,” she emphasized.

  “The fate of all of magical Wyldonna rests on the efforts of a brave but humble lady-in-waiting,” Adrian said, unable to help his smirk. “It does sound like something of a tale, you must agree.”

  Maisie Lindsey let her head roll against the wood back of the chair to regard him. Her forearm lay across the rest, her palm up, and even from across the cabin Adrian could make out the bright blue veins just beneath her ivory skin.

  “Aye. Or a legend.” She regarded him for a moment. “I know you doona believe any of it.”

  Adrian looked back to the drawings. When he answered her, his voice was intentionally gruff. “You’re right—I don’t.”

  She sighed from her chair, and her voice sounded weary. “You will.”

  Chapter 4

  Maisie did not slip easily into slumber that night, even though she was fatigued beyond measure when she crawled into her berth behind the thick woven curtain in one corner of the cabin. Adrian Hailsworth seemed to find a bit of difficulty falling asleep himself, if the tossing and turning she heard from the opposite corner of the cabin was any indication. She tensed at every little sound he made at first, but then, when the cabin was quite still, signaling that he at last slept, Maisie found that she actually missed the evidence that there was another human being on the crawler with her. She had been alone for weeks before fetching Adrian Hailsworth from Melk. But the simple knowledge of his presence must have given her some measure of comfort, for when she finally succumbed to exhaustion, she slept deeply.

  So deeply, in fact, that she had not heard the Englishman rise before her, and she only came awake—quite at once—when she heard him struggling with the hatch.

  “Oh, nay. Nay, nay, nay,” she mumbled as she fought to disentangle herself from her covers, pedaling her feet against their strangling hold and then throwing back the curtain before she had come to stand properly.

  Her vision was still clouded with sleep, the dimness of the cabin lit by only the cauldron hampering her ability to see beyond it. She staggered forward, one hand rubbing at her eyes, the other held before her.

  “What is it?” she called groggily. “What’s wrong?”

  There was a pause in the cursing and scraping. “This blasted hatch is stuck.” She heard two thuds as his feet assumedly came from the ladder back to the floor, and then she saw his outline move toward her. His brown monk’s robes were gone, leaving him clothed in a white undershirt and brown chausses and his boots. The stubble on his jaw had increased from yesterday, and Maisie found his appearance quite large and startlingly masculine. “Likely the humidity,” he added.

  “The what?” Maisie turned away from him to approach her provisions trunk beyond the table. She squatted down and lifted the lid, in search of a jug of cider.

  “The moisture in the air,” he said, his footsteps coming up behind her. She closed the trunk quickly and then used a hand on the edge of the table to help her to stand. “From being on the water. Ofttimes wood—”

  She waved a hand to cut him off. “Yes, yes,” she said gruffly, and poured a measure of the crisp drink into a cup.

  He seemed to be waiting for her to say something further, and when she only attended to her drink, he continued. “I’ll need a hammer, or a lever of some sort.”

  Maisie looked up at him, her irritation barely in check. Couldn’t he see she’d just come from bed? “A lever? Whatever for?”

  He stared at her, blinked once. “To pry loose the latch.”

  “Why would you want to pry loose the latch?” she insisted, squinting at him and then dragging a chair from the table to sit down.

  “Why would I—?” he broke off and adjusted his stance to place his hands on his hips. Maisie tried not to look at him. “So that I might open the door, is why.”

  “There’s naught up there,” she half-groaned, rubbing her eyes once more. “And we’re going at such a speed that ’tis unsafe to be above deck.”

  “I’ve sailed on many a swift ship, Lady Maisie,” Adrian insisted. “And this one cannot even claim sails. I assure you, I am more than capable of keeping my legs beneath me while we navigate a river.”

  “You’ve nae been on a ship with me before,” she muttered into her hands.

  “What?”

  “I said, it will be a bit before we can open the door.” She lowered her hands and looked at him at last. “It will loosen eventually.”

  “I need it to loosen now,” he said and turned to walk about the cabin, his head craning and swiveling, peering onto the shelves and in the corners. “Have you a thick blade or a metal wedge?”

  “Nay.”

  “A sturdy spoon would do.”

  “Why are you in such a hurry to get above?” she insisted as he strode toward her curtained area. “Get away from there!”

  Adrian grabbed a fistful of the curtain and yanked it open fully, peering inside the private enclosure where she’d slept.

  He turned on his heel and faced her, and Maisie at last saw the wild look in his eyes.

  “I can’t be contained in small areas,” he said, and she noted the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

  “You were fine all the night while you were sleeping,” she pointed out, bewildered.

  “That’s because I thought I could easily depart if I chose to,” he said as his eyes fell onto her provisions trunk.

  She realized his intent in the same moment that he had made his decision, and Maisie stood from her chair with a scrape and turned to block his access to the trunk.

  “There’s naught in there,” she said, barely stopping herself from flinging her arms wide. “I’ll nae have you rifling through my things, messing up the order of them.”

  “There must be a utensil of some sort,” he said as he kept advancing. Maisie saw then that his panic was authentic and he would not be denied, and so she did hold forth one palm.

  “I’ll look,” she said, and was grateful when he at last came to a halt only inches from her fingertips. “Just . . . just wait a moment.” She drew a deep breath. Great Gods, what an encounter to contend with first thing in the morn. “All right?”

  “Are you going to look or not?” he demanded.

  “Aye!” she shouted. “Would you sit down before you cause me to leap from my skin? Have a drink!”

  “I’ll wait here, thank you,” he said between his teeth.

  Maisie sighed while sending him a glare, and then turned to once more squat down before the trunk. She lifted the lid only enough to slip her right arm inside and stir her hand around.

  Biscuits; oats; wine. Another meat pie? He was unlikely to be treated to another of those anytime
soon, the weasel. More wine. That felt as grass—what was that doing in there? Fur?

  “Ouch!” She withdrew her hand and stuck her finger in her mouth. “Little bastard bit me,” she whispered.

  “What was that?” Adrian asked from behind her.

  She withdrew her finger and glanced down at the bloody crescent at its tip. “Nothing,” she tossed over her shoulder and reached back inside the trunk. She reminded herself to be careful of her thoughts. Now she had two weasels to attend to. “Pricked myself with a knife, is all.” I’ll wring your bloody neck should you try that again, you squelchy puss.

  “A knife will do nicely,” he said pointedly.

  “Fine,” she muttered, thinking to herself that, in other circumstances, she might be tempted to use a knife on Adrian Hailsworth. A rather large one. In the next instant her fingers curled around a smooth wooden handle. “A knife it is.” She pulled out the requested item and was as surprised as Adrian Hailsworth seemed to be at the foot-long blade she held forth.

  “Here you are,” she said as calmly as she could manage as her cheeks flamed.

  The Englishman’s eyebrows rose as he took possession of the weapon. “I thought you said you didn’t have anything of the sort.” He turned away at once.

  “I didna know for certain,” she reasoned. “What use would I have for a knife of such a length?”

  “Indeed,” he muttered, climbing the short ladder. “I thought as much myself.”

  Maisie heard a scrabbling from inside the trunk, and so turned and delivered a swift kick to the side of the wood. She hoped Adrian Hailsworth could not hear the replying squeak. She glanced toward the hatch to make certain he was not looking at her before she patted the top of the trunk twice.

  The scrabbling noises ceased, and Maisie wondered briefly if weasels could swim before she turned to give her full attention to the Englishman currently hacking at the latch of her door. “I wouldna do that if I were you . . . er, I’m nae exactly certain what to call you.”

  “My name is Adrian.” He glanced back at her. “If I damage the ship, I shall repair it. I’m quite good with mechanics.”

  “Obviously, since you are clearly adept at operating a sliding door.”

  “Strange sense of humor you have for a lady-in-waiting.”

  “Do what you will. But doona say I didna warn you.” She had little choice but to help him, unless she wanted the hatch reduced to splinters. It would never yield to him, any matter.

  Maisie took her place at the table once more, and calmly picked up her cup. She held it toward Adrian Hailsworth’s back in silent salute. “Fosgail,” she whispered and then took a drink.

  Adrian wasn’t sure he’d be able to get the ridiculously long blade between the pin and the hasp to provide a suitable fulcrum without breaking off the knife tip and further incurring Maisie Lindsey’s wrath, but no sooner had he managed to wedge a sliver of the metal against the wood than it slid open as if oiled. The knife slipped free, surprising him into giving a huff of breath.

  “There we are,” he said, hearing the smug satisfaction in his own voice as his panic began to lift like a fog. In another moment he would be free.

  He backed down one rung of the ladder, the knife still held in his left hand, and released the latch with his right. Then he gripped the hasp and slid the hatch open.

  He was nearly knocked from the ladder by the gale of icy rain and seawater that blasted through the opening, the wind screaming into the cabin like a banshee, sucking the warmth from the air and drenching him at once. Adrian threw up his right forearm to shield his eyes while he coughed and gasped, mindful of the miniature sword he still held in his other hand. He squinted through the punishing onslaught at the ice-crusted deck of the crawler ship as it seemed to rise up before him on the crest of a massive wave. He clutched at the ladder as he was thrown backward, and heard Maisie Lindsey cursing in quite an unladylike manner behind him as the sounds of furnishings sliding about the cabin reached his ears.

  But Adrian braved the storm in disbelief, regaining his forfeited step and squinting through the tempest, attempting to make sense of what he was seeing: the ice and sleet of a full-on winter storm, sheeting the twenty-foot gray waves of the open sea. Try as he might, he could discern nothing beyond the ship’s oars, waving in the air like insect legs, as they came upon another mountainous crest. No land at all.

  They were on an ocean, when they should have still been floating leisurely down the Danube River.

  “Will you shut the bloody door before we’re drowned?” Maisie Lindsey shouted behind him, shaking Adrian from his shock and prompting him to slide the hatch door back to the left. A challenge, as the slender groove that housed it was already filled with freezing slush.

  He shoved the pin home and backed down the ladder, noticing at once how the ship seemed to right itself on the waves, as if the storm beyond the hatch had suddenly ceased with the closing of the hatch. But his very bones shivered inside his soaked skin and his legs trembled atop his boots, which splashed to the floor in what appeared to be at least three inches of water, chunks of slush bobbing like ghostly anemones around his ankles.

  Maisie Lindsey still sat at the small square table, but now her feet were drawn up onto the seat, away from the water swirling around her chair legs, her knees up by her chin and her skirts draping like a tent. She was shaking her head at him ruefully, her cup still clasped in her hand as she rested her elbows across the apex of her knees.

  “Happy now, are you?” she asked. “Look at the mess I shall have to clean up, and I’ve nae even had my oatcake yet.”

  “What,” he began in a voice that was slightly more civil than a growl, “was in that mead you gave me?”

  Her brow crinkled as if he had spoken a foreign language.

  “How long was I asleep?” he demanded as he splashed through the water toward the table.

  “How should I know?” she replied in an irritated tone. “You woke before me.”

  He reached the table and slammed both palms down on the top, the knife blade clattering ominously. “You poisoned me.”

  “I’m thinking now that would have been a grand idea, but nay, I didna poison you,” she said with a roll of her eyes, seeming completely unaffected by his anger.

  “There is no other explanation,” Adrian continued. “We departed Melk only last night—perhaps as few as seven hours ago. And yet when I look out yonder hatch, my eyes find no land.”

  Maisie blinked at him and then gave a shrug with one shoulder. “So?”

  “So?” he repeated. “So?! We should be in the middle of a river, not the sea!”

  “I told you the crawler was fleet.” She brought the cup to her mouth again and sipped calmly.

  “No ship is that fast,” he insisted, banging his hands on the tabletop again for emphasis.

  “Stop doing that. It pains my head.”

  He leaned toward her. “And why aren’t we being tossed about the cabin like stones in a crate? The storm beyond is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed at sea. We should be broken up at any moment by the waves and ice!”

  “I told you,” she said, her words muffled as she rubbed a hand across her face, either to help push the last vestiges of sleep from her countenance or in irritation, Adrian couldn’t tell at the moment. “Ice, water, land—it makes nae difference. The crawler goes.”

  “And I’m telling you,” he said, “that where we are right now is an impossibility!” He slammed his hands on the table a third time.

  He heard the screech and slosh of wood through water too late to brace himself as the chair caught him behind the knees, forcing his legs to bend and his arse to fall into the seat as his stomach was pushed into the table. The knife clattered away from his flailing hands.

  “An impossibility, is it?” she asked calmly, one burnished eyebrow raised. “Why is that? Because you demand that it’s impossible?”

  Adrian’s stomach felt as though it was little more than the opening to a gaping p
it. How had the ship moved so that the chair slid beneath him with such force but he hadn’t felt the sudden listing himself? And why had Maisie Lindsey failed to even wobble atop her perch?

  “It’s simply a matter of physics,” he said, noticing that his voice was much calmer now, despite the anxiety he felt in his middle. “Melk is six hundred miles to the North Sea, depending on the route you take and the weather. Even in a nimble vessel such as this, that trip could take no less that a fortnight.”

  “And yet here we are,” Maisie mused, eyeing him.

  “Facts are facts,” Adrian insisted. “You must have poisoned me so that I slept through the first portion of the journey. Although why you would do such a thing, I cannot fathom.”

  “I didna poison you,” she said calmly. “I have nae knowledge of the distance we are travelling, and that suits my purpose. I must return with you to Wyldonna in two days’ time.”

  “Two days?” Adrian repeated. “But it will take at least—”

  “Nay!” Maisie shouted, holding her palm toward him. “Nay, doona say anything. I doona wish to know how long you think it should take us. We shall arrive in two days, unless you insist upon opening the hatch again and sinking us. I can only do so much.”

  Adrian felt the blood leave his face. “You mean I’m trapped in here for at least two days?”

  Maisie shrugged. “I suppose you could swim back, if you choose.”

  “Swim the North Sea in an ice storm,” he clarified.

  The corners of her mouth turned down slightly as she considered. “I wouldna be so confident that the North Sea is our exact location.” She looked at him keenly for a moment. “I will tell you, though, that once we’ve arrived at Wyldonna, you willna be free to go until you’ve fulfilled your reason for being there.”

  Adrian felt his own eyebrows raise. “Really? And who is charged with holding me captive? You? I can promise you I’ve been liberated from more formidable captors than a female member of the lesser nobility.”

  Maisie Lindsey shook her head and her red curls bounced, although her eyes flashed with anger. “The island herself willna let you go.”