The Captive Kingdom

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

  I kicked back, landing my knee into his chest hard enough to force him off me, then I rolled again to get on top of him, placing that same knee over his right arm. He struggled against me with his left arm, landing a few more hits on my side than I would’ve liked. But it was all worthwhile when his right wrist finally maneuvered into position so that I could pull the manacles out from beneath the capstan and snap the opened manacle into place, fastening him to the deck.

  He roared with anger. But the effort to get Roden into position had also distracted me, and I would pay a price for it.

  Searing pain shot from the center of my thigh in all directions. I looked down and saw he had somehow gotten hold of a knife with his left hand and plunged it into my leg. Willing myself not to pass out, I focused a glare at him. “That was a big mistake.”

  “Jaron, I’m sorry. I never meant to —”

  “What are you waiting for?” Strick cried. “Get him!”

  Fink remained directly overhead, which was only half our escape. I grabbed a second rope fastened to a bolt on the deck, wound my hand around it, and held on tight.

  But when I went for my knife, it had fallen out of my reach. Strick was already racing toward it, but Wilta darted between us, grabbed the knife, and set it in my hands.

  “Hurry, go!” she cried.

  “Come with us,” I offered, but she only shook her head.

  “Just go,” she whispered.

  “If anyone wants proof of this being a cursed ship, here it is!” I shouted.

  Using the same pulley system that I’d rigged to get Fink into the air, I cut this rope and it yanked me up as high as the crow’s nest. With another slash of my knife, the long sails of the Shadow Tide collapsed to the deck, covering everyone in the sails’ fabric. The same rope that had held the sails in place also loosened the boom on which I stood, with Fink at the far end of it. I pushed off from the crow’s nest, forcing Fink and the boom to swing out directly over the sea.

  I lowered myself on the rope, then used my weight to swing closer to Fink. He saw me coming toward him and tried to squirm away, but as he was lighter than me, he didn’t get far before I grabbed the rope holding him midair and sliced through it.

  With a long cry for help, Fink fell into the water. After a few seconds, his head popped up and he began yelling my name.

  A few of the crewmen who had been nearer the ends of the sails emerged and seemed to be following someone’s orders to rotate the boom back toward the ship. A knife cut through the sails and Captain Strick rose up through their center.

  I gave her a sharp salute goodbye and let go of my rope.

  I fell deeper into the water than I had expected and returned to the surface with aching lungs and my leg shooting with pain from the salty water. Fink wasn’t far away, and once he saw me, he said, “Remember that time you made us jump off a cliff? At least we were dangling over something solid!”

  “Did you want to land on something solid just now?” I pointed behind him. “Swim!”

  “Where?”

  From what I could tell above us, the main deck was a hive of activity, with crewmen attempting to clear the sail that had fallen. Yet above all other voices, I heard Captain Strick ordering her men to get the lifeboat down to us. She would be even more furious when they told her the problem with her request: There was only one lifeboat on board this ship, and it was missing. I wondered how long it’d take them to figure out that Tobias was on it. Hopefully Amarinda was there too.

  With any luck, they weren’t far away. The Eranbole Sea was colder than I had expected, and my injured leg was becoming stiff.

  I began to swim toward the back of the ship, where the lifeboat should have been attached by rope. When I heard a loud splash behind us, I rotated in the water and saw Wilta come to the surface. “I changed my mind,” she said. “But please help me. I’m not a good swimmer.”

  I held out a hand and when I could reach her, she put her arm around my shoulders while I assisted her in moving toward the lifeboat. Once or twice, in her efforts to stay afloat, she kicked into my injured leg. I clenched my teeth and forced myself to keep going.

  Strick’s next order was shouted so loud, I heard every word. “Fire off a volley of cannonballs! They’ve got our lifeboat!”

  “We don’t see it!” someone shouted back.

  “Just fire!” she replied.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked Fink, who had paused in the water to stare at Wilta. “Swim!”

  The Shadow Tide continued sailing forward until most of the ship had passed us. Immediately behind it was the lifeboat, except Tobias was the only one in it and his eyes were red as though he’d been crying.

  He extended one of the boat’s oars as far as it could reach. We swam as close as we dared without putting ourselves too near the moving ship. Tobias brought in Fink first, and then Wilta.

  Once I reached the side of the boat, I asked, “Where is Amarinda?”

  “She couldn’t find the secret escape from the captain’s quarters. But she heard someone coming into the room and said she would sneak out and find you instead. She wanted me to have the boat ready to go. I had to drop it into the water once I saw Fink lifted into the air.” His face fell and any hope within him seemed to dissolve. “I was sure you’d have Amarinda with you.”

  “That was me who Amarinda heard,” Wilta said. “I was going in to replace the sword, but I never saw Amarinda.”

  I took an extra minute to catch my breath, then I rolled inside the boat. My emotions were still raging inside me when I turned to Tobias. “I know you’re only thinking about Amarinda right now. I’m thinking about her too, but I want you to hear this. Don’t you ever again make plans behind my back. Or keep a secret where Fink’s life is concerned!”

  Tobias responded with a sharp glare. “You’re correct, Jaron. All I’m thinking about right now, all I care about right now, is Amarinda! And I’m thinking about how, sooner or later, you’ll force us to abandon her. Whatever happens to her now is your fault!”

  Tobias was only speaking through his anger and fear, but his words hit me hard. Regardless of the reasons why she wasn’t here with us, eventually, I would have to give the order to leave her behind.

  Almost as soon as he finished, the ports opened, and in quick succession, cannonballs were fired at various angles. Because of our proximity to the hull, none of them came anywhere close to hitting us, but we did get considerably rougher waters that nearly toppled us once or twice.

  Finally, everything settled, and only then did Tobias notice my leg. He was still so angry that he merely glared at it, then at me.

  I was happy to return the glare, though I added, “Can you wrap my leg before I bleed to death?”

  He glanced down at his medical bag, then tossed it into my lap. My lip curled as I considered inviting him out of the boat, but Wilta quickly leaned forward to take the bag from me. “I’ll do it.” She dug through the contents until she found a roll of bandages.

  Tobias grunted. “No, I’ll do it.”

  He reached for a knife to begin cutting my trousers, but I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”

  “I’ve got to get at that wound.”

  “How am I supposed to fight with one trouser leg flapping about in the breeze?”

  “What makes you think you’ll be fighting?” Tobias paused. “Oh, because you’re you.” He began wrapping the wound directly over my trousers. “Who did this?”

  “The person I’m going to have to fight.”

  “I don’t think Roden intended to hurt you,” Wilta said. “I saw his face afterward.”

  “Does it matter what he intended?” Fink asked.

  She turned to him. “Who are you?”

  “No one,” I said, motioning to Fink to keep his mouth closed.

  Wilta pressed her lips together. “I will earn your trust, Jaron. You have certainly earned mine.”

  “It isn’t personal,” Fink said. “No one earns his trust.”

&
nbsp; “What about Amarinda?” Tobias asked. “We’re not leaving her behind.”

  “We’ll wait here for as long as we can,” I said. Which was hardly the comfort he wanted. But it was all I could give.

  “She won’t know we’re tethered to the ship,” Tobias said. “How can you be angry with me for keeping secrets when you never bothered to tell me the details of this lifeboat?”

  “I worked on the lifeboat, not Jaron.” Fink pointed to the bow of the lifeboat, where a rope was knotted between the lifeboat and an eye hook in the ship’s hull. It kept us in the ship’s wake, so this was hardly a comfortable ride, but there was no angle from the ship at which we might be spotted.

  Fink leaned back in the boat and sighed. “I have to say, that was one of the easier escapes we’ve ever had.”

  I looked at him. “We were nearly drowned, exploded, and drowned again, and Amarinda is still missing. How was that easy?”

  “I didn’t say it was easy. I said it was easier.”

  Tobias wasn’t finished either, becoming increasingly worried for Amarinda. “They’ll know she unlocked the closet! They’ll ask her how all of us escaped! The punishment you should be receiving right now, Jaron, or me — what if they do that to her?”

  “Strick won’t harm her,” Wilta said. “She will question her, yes, maybe withhold meals, but nothing more.”

  “What about Roden?” Fink asked. “Is he in danger?”

  His question hung in the air for several seconds before Wilta said, “He stabbed Jaron’s leg. Whether that signals a true shift in his loyalties or not, the captain will respect that he fought for her.”

  I turned to Tobias, who kept searching the waters around us, as if Amarinda might spontaneously appear there. “She’ll be all right until we can get her back.”

  “Why do you think that? Because Wilta says so? Because you believe everything will work out for you in the end?”

  “No, because she is smart and she is strong, and because she has been in difficult situations before and knows what to do.”

  That seemed to settle Tobias down, at least for the moment.

  After a heavy silence, Wilta asked, “How long did you have this escape planned out?”

  I shrugged. “This was a fairly new plan.”

  “Fairly new? How many escape plans were there?”

  “Eleven … and a half, although some would have been difficult, and some required unlikely events, such as the Eranbole Sea drying up overnight. But this was the escape that best fit the situation.”

  She gestured to my leg. “Getting stabbed? Was that one of your planned possibilities too?”

  “Well, yes. But I thought it’d be the captain to do it, and a lot sooner than it happened. At least most of my plan worked.”

  Tobias grunted, reminding me that the failed part of my plan was an enormous problem. But he finished working on my leg and said, “I can only wrap this wound here, but I’ll need to sew it when we get off the boat, or cauterize the wound.”

  While Tobias tied the final knot, Fink asked, “Should we cut the rope?”

  I shook my head. “Let everything settle and wait until it’s dark. Do you have my bag, and the items from that closet?”

  Tobias glanced over at Wilta. “Is she —”

  “I already know what you stole,” Wilta said. “I was the one who had to report to the captain that they were missing.”

  Tobias frowned, then nodded at Fink, who tugged on a blanket in the center of the lifeboat, revealing everything we had removed from the locked closet.

  “How did they get your brother’s crown?” Tobias asked.

  “And his sword.” I wished I hadn’t had to leave that behind. “I don’t know where they got them, but they have no right to them.”

  We all looked to Wilta, who only shrugged. “I knew the captain had the items, but she never told me how she got them.”

  “Unless what they said is true.” Fink tilted his head, deep in thought. “If Darius is alive, is he my adopted brother too?”

  “I buried him, Fink!” Or, I thought I had. Doubts swept over me with every memory of my brother, every detail I tried to recall as I struggled to think whether it truly had been him in that coffin. It had to be — no other explanation made sense. For Darius to be alive, there would have to be answers for how he had not only survived, but escaped Carthya when my parents had fallen victim to Conner’s plot.

  As the activities on the ship gradually settled, I relaxed too and began to take a closer look at the items we’d stolen from the captain. I began with the scope, running my finger over the engravings. “What do we know about this?” I asked.

  One glance at Wilta’s widened eyes told me that she knew exactly what this was. Before I could ask, she shook her head. “Please don’t ask me anything. If she finds out I’ve told you —”

  “She’ll assume you’ve told me, whether you have or not.” Wilta still would not speak, so I held the scope out over the water, raising all but two fingers. “Maybe it’s not that important.”

  With a cry of alarm, Wilta darted forward, nearly throwing the boat off balance until Fink and Tobias pulled her away. Then she said, “All right, I’ll tell you, if you promise to keep it safe.”

  I brought the scope back into the boat. Wilta’s eyes fixed on it, as if looking anywhere else would put the scope at risk.

  She said, “This scope is believed to be an ancient map to the greatest treasure in all the lands. At the height of the Prozarians’ power, they captured it in one of their conquests. Their finest minds attempted to decipher the markings, but no one succeeded. Gradually, it was forgotten. Then, a few years ago, the plague swept through the people, killing so many Prozarians that it threatened their very existence. One day, a strange man named Levitimas came to the Prozarians with the promise of a cure, but it would not be given freely. He claimed the scope belonged to him. If the Prozarians returned it, he would heal them.”

  “Was that true — did it belong to him?” Tobias asked.

  Wilta shrugged. “If it did, then he should have known better than to trust the Prozarians. The agreement was made, and once the people began to heal, the Monarch, full of cruelty and ambition, cast Levitimas into a prison from which he will never return. In a search of his possessions, they found the first lens for the scope.” She pointed. “Is it still in that bag?”

  I nodded.

  She looked up at me with the most serious possible expression. “Jaron, if you were in a bad position before, I warn you, taking this scope was the most dangerous choice you possibly could have made.”

  “So far.” She looked confused, so I added, “That’s the most dangerous choice I could have made so far. It’ll get worse before this is over.”

  Wilta shook her head, perhaps trying to understand me the way that everyone else tried to understand me, and eventually failed. Everyone but Imogen, I supposed.

  A lump formed in my throat when I thought of her again. I was desperate for any news of what had happened to her. She was alive — she had to be alive.

  Fink asked, “Did that lens lead them to Belland?”

  “Yes.” Wilta’s eyes filled with tears. “They came as friends, asking our help to find the second lens. When we refused to help, they became our conquerors, killing our people one by one until your brother finally confessed to having the second lens. He made some agreement with them, part of which involved them bringing you to Belland as quickly as possible.”

  “Why must it be so fast?”

  After some thought, she said, “The Monarch is coming to Belland soon to claim the treasure. The captain believes there are only two days this year when the sun will be at the proper angle to find the third and final lens. If the Monarch comes and the captain has not found that lens, the consequences to all of Belland will be terrible.” Wilta drew in a slow breath as her eyes settled on me. “If you truly understood what you are up against, you would be just as afraid as the rest of us.”

  That was the probl
em. I knew very little of what I was up against. And I was already terrified of what was yet to come.

  I didn’t say much to Wilta for several minutes after her attempts to warn me away from the Prozarians. Tobias and Fink began questioning her, but I sat back in the boat and just listened.

  I had long ago decided that if I understood the enemy, I had nothing to fear. So all I had to do was understand Strick, as she seemed to have an equal interest in understanding me.

  And I would have to understand Wilta if I wanted to know the truth about Darius.

  Everything she had told me about the scope confirmed in my mind that this person who claimed to be my brother was a fraud. My family had known nothing about any scope. Darius could not have the second lens to offer them.

  Nor would my brother have negotiated for me to be brought to Belland as a prisoner, and certainly not in exchange for the surrender of that lens. He would never have put me in so much danger, nor would he sacrifice something so valuable into enemy hands.

  I said, “Tell me more about the Prozarians.”

  Tobias had been studying the scope and looked up. “What more do you need to know? These are dangerous people who are willing to kill. If you thought you were a target before, what will they do to you now?”

  Wilta added, “They see the entire world as either those who will help them get the treasure, or those who are enemies. And they will destroy their enemies in the cruelest of ways. That’s why Roden was supposed to get you to kneel to the captain, because she knew that single action would be harder on you than any physical pain. She instructed him to whip you because she knew that would be harder on Roden than if he took the punishment himself.”

  “Maybe that’s why she’s asked so many questions about you,” Tobias said. “She can’t quite figure you out, so she isn’t sure how to get ahead of you.”

  “I can’t figure me out either,” I replied. “Honestly, I’ve given up trying.”

  Above us, the ship came to life again as orders were shouted for all hands to begin working on repairs to the deck.

  “I thought we were supposed to be watching for that lifeboat!” someone said.