Veritas

by St Clare, Kelly

  Ebba picked up her pace. She heard her fathers grumble, but the water was definitely higher. They had to hurry.

  “Go on then.” She scowled. “Tell me.”

  “Ye’re the cleaner,” Jagger answered.

  The . . . cleaner. She didn’t want to be the cleaner. “What? Ye’re sure? How do ye know it ain’t Caspian?”

  Both sniggered.

  “Jagger, are ye touchin’ Caspian with the amare?” she asked. “Ye’re both bein’ weird.”

  Ebba picked up her pace again. The shadows and black night made it hard, but she could make out the island’s full outline now. There were cliffs there. The crew could take refuge on top until the tide shifted again.

  “We’re just jokin’,” Jagger said. “There ain’t no cleaner. No need to sulk.”

  She shot over her shoulder. “I ain’t sulkin’, I be survivin’. Unlike the pair ‘o ye.”

  “One of us is the bearer. And then one of us is the assembler,” Caspian said.

  “The assembler?” she asked despite herself. Or were they still teasing her?

  “Aye,” Jagger grumbled.

  Her stomach plummeted. “That’s a right fierce name.” Better then ‘the cleaner’.

  Had the wind picked up? She hadn’t noticed the increasing pitch of her voice. Her throat was sore. Ebba had been shouting at the others without realizing.

  “What can ye see, lass?” The yell came from the back. Peg-leg or Stubby.

  “There be another island at the end o’ the jetty,” she answered. “Hard to tell how far.”

  They didn’t answer, and she said to the men directly behind her, “The assembler. I’ll take the other one, the bearer.”

  Jagger snorted. “I ain’t sure ye get to choose.”

  Ebba peered back. “Are ye ashamed ye ain’t called the bearer or assembler, then? Ye just get the measly immune.”

  “I knew ye’d be annoyin’ about it,” the pirate groaned.

  She grinned. “Ye ain’t immune to envy, I see.”

  Caspian laughed and warmth spread through her chest. That’s how things were meant to be. She and Caspian against Jagger. None of this lad’s club shite. The prince was her best friend. Though . . . people could have more than one friend. There had been Sally, after all.

  Ebba’s mouth dried. Sally!

  “Caspian.” She rushed, turning her head to speak back over her shoulder. “How do ye think the wind works to take messages to Sal? She said to just use the wind, didn’t she?”

  He blurted, “I have no idea. There’s ample wind here, though. If that’s the only thing required, the wind sprites might hear us.”

  “It be worth a try,” Jagger said.

  Ebba cupped her hands around her mouth. “Oi, Sal! Uh—” She broke off. “What’s her queen name again?”

  “Saliha,” the prince supplied.

  “Oi, Queen Saliha,” she roared. “We’re in the Dynami. Felicity be sunk.”

  “Tell her to send the Daedalion,” Jagger cut in.

  “So send the Daedalion. They owe us. The Satyr, evil buggers that they are, have us marchin’ across a rocky path to some island belongin’ to their boss who we think might be the—” She lowered her hands, aghast as she recalled.

  “We’re marchin’ toward the pillars,” she croaked. “We can’t go forward.”

  Ebba whirled, and the others cried out as they drew up short, arms circling for balance as they shouted in alarm.

  “The pillars be that way,” she said, panic closing over her.

  “And the tide be nigh. The time to lose yer head ain’t here,” Jagger countered.

  “Jagger, but the taint. . . .” Ebba trailed off, seeing the tightness around the pirate’s eyes for the first time.

  Beyond him, Caspian looked much the same. They’d realized this entire time and had. . . .

  “Ye distracted me on purpose,” she said flatly. “Ye bloody cons.”

  Jagger crossed his arms. “Told ye it were too forced. We’d have done better to be at each other’s throats.”

  Ebba glared at the pair of them, oddly touched by their ploy to keep her from worrying. She spun back around and hurried down the path again. “I thought ye were friends at last.”

  The pirate. The arrogant pirate answered, “Be honest, ye didn’t like that we might be friends. Ye want Caspian all to yerself.”

  “Ye think ye know everythin’, Jagger,” she sneered. He was right. Caspian was her friend.

  Ebba scanned the shadows with a terror as cold as the spray hitting her face. They’d assumed the six pillars would take up their seat in Exosia, in Caspian’s rightful place. Yet hadn’t Medusa called them forth when she believed the crew of Felicity was caught in her grasp only weeks before?

  When they hadn’t found the pirates at Medusa’s Lair, had they widened their net, knowing Felicity was somewhere in the Dynami Sea?

  Were her crew walking to their doom?

  “Jagger,” she said aloud as memories of the taint pitched and heaved like bile burning her gut.

  “Viva.”

  She took a breath. “I’m thinkin’ it be better to get in the water and swim than to go farther. None o’ us but ye stand a chance against them now they have their bodies.”

  Ebba stumbled and Jagger’s hands shot out to grip her sides. “Viva,” he said again.

  Something hot burst through her at his touch. Passion. Fire. Endless. Consuming.

  Ebba clutched her chest as the wild, untampered longing surged and burned through her with breathtaking ferocity.

  She whirled around, hardly knowing she moved, and her gaze dropped to the amare in Jagger’s hand.

  He’d just touched her while holding the tube.

  Stupefied, Ebba lifted her chin to look at the frozen pirate. Silver eyes bore down into hers. She couldn’t decide if she wished to break the crackling tension between them or never let it end. Ebba couldn’t think of a single thing to say anyway. Nothing could explain what she’d just felt when the amare touched her.

  She dropped her gaze to her hands, completely stunned, completely at a loss. When the amare was touched to another, it drew out their real emotion.

  Ebba had already discovered her attraction for Jagger. But that just now? That wasn’t attraction. Attraction looked like a weak, withered nothingness beside what just surged through her.

  It had stolen away the very urge to survive.

  “Do ye think I’d let harm befall ye?” Jagger said hoarsely.

  Right. As the person holding the tube, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. And she was staring at him like a flaming idiot. She latched onto his question, attempting to push at the dumbstruck wonder coating her mind.

  “N-nay?” she said with difficulty. Ebba could trust him with her life. But what had they been talking of?

  “I’ll keep all o’ ye safe usin’ my immunity if things come to that. But we don’t know what be ahead. To jump in the ocean is certain death without the kraken’s help. Grubby can’t keep us all afloat.”

  Ebba focused on steadying her breath and uncoiling her braced frame.

  “I hear ye,” she said, recovering from her sharp shock. “I’ll wait to drown myself.”

  She wouldn’t dream of jumping in there now. Not after what she’d just felt.

  Jagger chuckled. As she turned to keep walking, Ebba wondered at the deep sound.

  “The bearer will fight another day,” she announced shakily, claiming the title.

  . . . If they got through whatever happened next. Which seemed a large ‘if’ as water broke over the path.

  “Speedin’ up,” she muttered, increasing her walk until it rested just below a jog.

  If Matey or Sally or the Daedalions were coming, this was the time to miraculously appear. Ebba kept fast to the current speed, knowing Barrels and Peg-leg would find this pace far harder than she did.

  The shadows loomed ahead as the water began to edge on top, narrowing the path farther, and she forced away mounting fear.
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  They were close. So very close.

  Jagger was right. No matter what waited on that island, they had to get there before making the next decision.

  When the water lapped at her feet, Ebba broke into a light jog that sent water flying everywhere. She listened to the splashes behind as the others followed suit.

  Ebba ran, studying the slick black rocks ahead.

  “Will we have to climb the cliffs?” Jagger yelled.

  “I’d say so,” she replied, running faster. Peg-leg wouldn’t be able to keep up with this pace. Neither would Barrels. Which meant they’d soon need help.

  The path was only wide enough for one person, and she was at the front of the line. She had to get to the wider area at the exit so the others could get out of the way. She’d go back for her fathers with Grubby.

  Ebba pumped her arms, the mesh net with the purgium thumping against her thigh, her eyes torn between the ground at her feet and the cliffs ahead.

  “Nearly there.” Her legs burned.

  As she ran, droplets of water burst upward with each of her pounding steps. Only a sliver of the jetty remained.

  Her breath was harsh to her ears. Her heart galloped. She traversed the remaining section of the path. Three hundred feet. One-fifty. Seventy. Thirty. Fifteen.

  Her eyes widened as the cliffs became fully visible.

  The path just stopped! The jetty ended in a slippery, sheer cliff with no ledge or space to access the rest of the island and no visible handholds.

  No means of escaping the water.

  Ebba was moving too fast to pull up. She lifted both arms as she crashed into the wall.

  Except. . .she didn’t.

  She fell to the ground, rolling.

  She curled into a ball as an invisible sludge poured through her insides right down into her feet. The heavy thickness filled her limbs, her heart, her mind. It left her face slack, her body wavering, her senses out of calibration.

  As though sand bags filled her frame, she heaved onto her back.

  Why couldn’t she see the others? There was only a black wall. No way. She couldn’t have run through that.

  Her mouth dropped open as Jagger burst through it behind her. Through solid rock.

  His face slackened, and she watched panic fill the silver eyes that always showed control and competence.

  Caspian entered through the wall, tripping over Jagger. Plank, Grubby, Locks, and Stubby were close behind and did the same, forming a heap on top of the pirate.

  Barrels and Peg-leg.

  The thought waded to her as though weighted with an iron and chain, and even then, she had to think extra hard to recall why that mattered.

  “The others,” she slurred to Grubby. He could swim. He had to come.

  Ebba staggered back to the solid wall and placed her hands upon it, relieved when they sank through.

  She took another step, sighing in bliss as the heaviness was peeled from her like shedding ten layers of clothes on a scorching day. Her mind cleared; her heart soared; her very soul rejoiced.

  “Ebba!”

  She caught sight of Barrels and Peg-leg making their way down the path, about twelve feet out. The path was submerged, and the black water continued to swiftly rise, already to her fathers’ knees as they inched their way toward her.

  They were feeling for the path.

  Rope. Ebba needed rope; some way to tether them to her. Futilely, she searched, patting her frame. There was only the mesh net containing the purgium. And her dress.

  Her dress.

  Careful not to drop the tube, she yanked off Jagger’s tunic and then the full length of the gauzy top layer of the dress.

  The wait as her fathers shuffled within reach was torture, but Ebba stayed fixed on them. When near enough, she tossed out one end of the dress, the knot she’d tied earlier in one side adding weight to her throw. With the loose strands that had trailed down her back, the garment extended the better part of six feet.

  Peg-leg swooped to latch on to the material.

  Behind him, Barrels grabbed hold of the cook’s belt, and Ebba sagged in relief, holding tight to her end. She had a link to them.

  They inched inward to where she stood shivering in the royal blue shift. Black water swilled high around her bare thighs.

  “Where be the others?” Peg-leg rushed as they reached her.

  Ebba didn’t waste time explaining, just grabbed hold of their arms and yanked them backward through the wall.

  Though braced for the sickening heaviness on the other side of the stone wall, it still left her a slackened mess with ragged breath. Ebba got ahold of herself faster than the others, just in time to see Plank drop his hands.

  “Don’t come in,” he finished lamely.

  “What?” she asked, tongue heavy from the feeling of treacle filling her.

  He reached out a hand to the wall. When he reached the black rock, his hand stopped.

  “I just went out though,” she said in a stupor.

  Ebba placed her hand on the wall and her arm sank through to the other side without resistance. “Why can’t ye get out?”

  Dread filled her as she took in her surroundings for the first time.

  They stood in a crevice between two towering cliffs. In the immediate space around her, there was enough room to fit a rowboat, but the crevice narrowed as it disappeared farther between the sheer cliffs.

  The ground underfoot was dry black sand. The whipping wind and sound of hissing water had disappeared as though switched off. Though the rising sea existed on the other side of the wall, the inside of the cliff wasn’t slimy with moisture but . . . dry.

  . . . It was as if this hidden area existed in an entirely different place to the one three steps to her right.

  “What’s goin’ on, Plank? Do ye know?” Stubby’s voice was slurred too.

  Each of them sagged, faces expressionless. The mere effort of smiling was beyond her. What was this place?

  Cruel laughter echoed down at them from above, ricocheting between the cliff faces down over their heads.

  “To me, lads,” Stubby hissed.

  They slowly converged in a tighter group, each of them moving sluggishly.

  Ebba peered into the shadows of the black crevasse.

  “Who goes there?” Jagger asked, the words almost incoherent with the slur. “Show yerself.”

  The laughter changed directions, blasting through the passage and blowing her hanging dreads back. Her stomach twisted as she listened to the crunch of sand ahead.

  Not one person. More than two, but beyond that she couldn’t tell.

  Shadows masked the front person’s face as they stopped just out of range.

  “Arrived at last,” the voice called. “I told the beasts everythin’ I knew, and they still took weeks. Stupid mules.”

  The harsh voice rooted her to the spot. After witnessing impossible things for months, this was what finally destroyed the fabric of what could and could not be. Panic pushed up her throat as the person stepped forward from the shadows.

  Mercer Pockmark, the dead captain of Malice, straightened before them.

  Swindles appeared on his right.

  Riot on his left.

  “Ye have no idea how I’ve looked forward to seein’ ye all again.” A merciless smirk split Pockmark’s face, and he spat at their feet.

  Ebba stared at him. “But ye’re dead.”

  Yet was he? The castle stairway had collapsed, but she hadn’t seen his lifeless body.

  “Aye,” Pockmark said, eyes flaring to crazed proportions. “I am.”

  What was he saying? That wasn’t possible.

  “How?” Jagger asked hoarsely.

  Swindles and Riot sniggered, and Pockmark shot them the exact gloating look he’d had in life. This was real, not an illusion of some kind.

  Or the pirates were lying about being dead and were somehow still alive.

  “I’ve looked forward to seein’ fish lips,” the Malice captain said. “Bu
t I might be most excited to see ye, Jagger.”

  The pirate spat on the black sand again, glaring at Jagger with murder in his eyes.

  Plank croaked. “Where are we, then?”

  Ebba glanced at her father, watching as he peered back to the wall he hadn’t been able to exit.

  He jerked suddenly, and his eyes filled with fear.

  “Where are we?” Plank pressed, stepping forward.

  Pockmark removed his tricorn hat and bowed mockingly as Swindles and Riot snickered. “It be my pleasure to welcome the lot o’ ye to Davy Jones’ Locker.”

  Her ears rang high.

  “My grandfather be eager to meet ye all again,” the captain said smugly.

  Her knees threatened to buckle.

  This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

  “Grandfather?” she whispered, unable to help the tremble in her voice.

  His cruel grin widened as he replaced his hat.

  “Aye, my grandfather.” He ran his eyes over her fathers and laughed harshly. “Mutinous Cannon.”

  Thank you for reading

  I hope you loved Veritas! ETERNAL GAMBIT (book six) releases soon. Pick up your copy here.

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  Acknowledgments

  I may write the books, but the final product is a team effort—not just from my manuscript team, but beta readers, and my support network of family, friends, and readers.

  When I get to this part, it never gets easier to put my gratitude for the people around me into words. It means so much that I can pursue this dream and passion. Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

  My swashbuckling manuscript team:

  Editor One

  Melissa Scott

  Editor Two

  Robin Schroffel

  Proofreaders

  Patti Geesey and Dawn Yacovetta

  Map Illustrator

  Laura Diehl

  Cover Designer & Illustrator

  Amalia Chitulescu