by Anna Carven
The one called Sepimus follows his comrade’s orders and retrieves the disgusting oil-rag.
Oh no…
This is what I get for scaring the wits out of them.
It was worth it, though.
“I just put a curse on the two of you,” I hiss in Midrian as my captor draws closer. “You’ll die before your time.”
The Midrian’s eyes grow wide.
The boat rocks back and forth.
In the background, a man is dying. His agonizing cries split the roar of the ocean. Blood spills across the wooden deck.
They gag me with the foul oil-cloth, stealing away my words. It tastes like fat and ashes. I fight to keep from throwing up in my mouth.
Cold anger burns inside me. I glare up at them as they step away from me, as if I’m somehow contagious or poisonous.
I might be bound and gagged, but one thing is certain.
They’re afraid.
I’m the one who’s helpless, and yet they’re afraid.
Good.
Behind me, the tortured cries of the man with the severed leg fade away… then stop.
My Midrian captors back away.
“T-Tomlen?” The one called Sepimus looks over his shoulder, a pained expression crossing his face. “He’s…”
“He’s gone,” the older Midrian says grimly. “An unfortunate turn. Perils of the deep shouldn’t be taken lightly. Don’t worry. He’ll get full Imperial honors and a morning ceremony in the Holy Temple of Elar’s Wise Blessings. Let’s get going,” he mutters. “Commander will have our hides if we don’t make Golkar by nightfall.”
“Why’s he in such a hurry, anyway?”
“He’s an ambitious bastard, isn’t he? He’s trying to get earn Krogen’s favor so the emperor will reward him. Land and Title. That’s what he wants. Returning the murdering witch is the best way to please our new emperor right now.”
My heart lurches.
Trise?
That bastard is here?
He won’t touch me, of course, but he once forced me to do the most humiliating, degrading things.
This time?
He won’t.
I’m not afraid of him anymore. I’m not afraid of Midrians and their sick power games.
I’m not even afraid of death.
Kaim said he would find me in the next life.
If anyone can, it’s him.
“Oars down!” The grizzled Midrian that bound me yells his orders. The boat rocks from side to side as men scramble to take their positions.
Arses on benches. Hands on oars. Arms tensing. Men heaving and grunting.
We start to move.
Muted and immobilized, I tilt my head and stare up at the cloudless blue sky. The harsh sun sears my eyes, turning everything white.
I long for Kaim’s coldness, his darkness, his warm, gentle touch.
Come back to me, my love.
Until then, I will fight like a demon to make sure the Midrians can never chain me to their will again.
They can torture me all they like, but I won’t do what they want.
My mind is free.
My heart is free.
I will not dance for them ever again.
And this time, my arrival in the palace is going to be very different.
Seven
Amali
They haul me up onto their giant ship with ropes and pulleys, dumping me unceremoniously on the wooden deck.
I’m parched.
My lips are dry.
My arms and legs and back are aching terribly from being held in this awful position.
I lie on my side as the Midrian sailors and soldiers sneer at me. I glare as several of them come in close and leer at me, saying crude things in guttural Midrian.
How cowardly.
They’re acting as if the size of their manhood is dependent on how filthy they can speak of me, and yet I’m bound and trussed as if I’m the most dangerous person to ever walk this earth.
I’m not, though.
That title belongs to Kaim.
They have no fucking idea.
Suddenly, the sailors go still, standing to attention with a stiff salute. The sound of slow, steady footsteps reverberates through the floorboards.
“Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” a familiar voice says. It’s definitely Trise, all right. His gravelly tone sends a wave of revulsion through me. “Why ever did you think you could run from us, little sparrow?” His shiny leather boots creak as he squats down on his haunches beside me. “Don’t you know that the Arachene stretches its web all across the continent? We even keep tabs on the Ven. Interesting traveling companion you had there, Amali. My Ven contact had some colorful things to say about the man... or demon, or whatever he is. I do hope you didn’t develop Captive Infatuation Syndrome with that Ven deserter, Amali. Krogen will be pissed if he founds out his virginal trophy has been violated before he can claim her. Of course, we have ways of checking, but you already know that, don’t you, little sparrow?”
Kaim will tear you apart when he sees what you’ve done to me, I rage silently as I crane my neck, trying to catch sight of him in my limited field of vision. If I don’t get you first. My arms and back ache something terrible, but I don’t let my discomfort show as I stare up at him.
His disgusting smell washes over me—stale sweat, tabac, leather, and a hint of sourness. It’s familiar and cloying, reminding me of a time when I was young and terrified, when I believed my fate was sealed.
Now I just want to kill him.
Coward. You’re so tough when I’m restrained and helpless, aren’t you?
Suddenly, Trise’s ugly face hovers across my field of vision. He’s barely changed since I last saw him. Perhaps the wrinkles have gotten deeper, the jowls bigger, the hair greyer, but he’s still the same fat, entitled old bastard he was when he first captured me.
To meet him again… like this. What cursed luck I have.
His small, beady grey eyes slowly travel over my body, making my skin crawl. “Our divine emperor will share you with Elar. You’ll make a fine sacrifice to our god.”
Oh, shut up with your pompous, melodramatic declarations, you foul old bastard.
He reaches out and brushes a strand of hair away from my Mark. I suppress a shudder. Trise reaches behind my head and unties the disgusting oilcloth that’s wedged between my teeth.
Suddenly my jaw and mouth are free, and I taste fresh air and bitter grease. It takes all my willpower to act calm, and not cough and splutter like a landed fish. Instead, I stare Trise directly in the eyes and search for my center of calm.
For a moment, I drift away from here.
I find calm by conjuring Kaim in my mind’s eye. I find it in the memory of his glacial coldness at my back as we ride slowly through the cool, silent forest in the afternoon.
It brings a smile to my parched, grease-stained lips.
I say nothing.
“Don’t you have anything to say to me, little girl? Aren’t you going to beg for your freedom?”
I say nothing.
“Aren’t you even going to tell me you’ll behave for us? Because if you behave, I might even treat you nicely sometimes.”
I raise a mocking eyebrow, but still I say nothing. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of hearing my hoarse, cracked voice. I desperately need water, but I’m not going to beg for it.
They can’t kill me, and they can’t fuck me.
There is nothing that they can do to me that will scare me.
Nothing.
“Stubborn bitch,” Trise growls, raising his hand as if to strike me.
I glare at him. Go on, coward. Hit me.
Behind him, the soldiers and sailors mutter discontentedly amongst themselves. Several of them make the sign of Elar with their hands. They don’t seem to like the way Trise is dealing with me.
What is going on?
Voices swirl around me.
“She’s bad luck.”
“
A bad omen.”
“I don’t like sailin’ the Luxlan. Never ‘av. Now we’ve got ‘er on board?”
“You knew what you signed up for, Gorry.”
“Er, Commander,” one of the men, a bearded, tattooed sailor says, “we can’t have the witch here.”
Trise looks over his shoulder. “Then we’ll lock her down in the hold. Put her in irons. She won’t be able to do a thing.”
“Nah, you don’t understand, Sir.”
“Don’t understand what? Are you seriously talking back to your superior, Seaman Gorry?” A dangerous note enters Trise’s voice.
The sailors whisper amongst themselves, looking decidedly uneasy. They’re a motley bunch, dressed in ill-fitting purple-and-white striped Midrian uniforms that they’ve modified to suit their purposes; sleeves torn off, trouser legs shortened, belts re-tooled to hold an odd array of tools and weapons. One man has something that looks like a polished leg bone hanging from his belt. Another has fashioned a belt-buckle from something that looks suspiciously like part of a human skull.
They steal furtive glances at me, as if I’m something sinister and forbidden.
These rough, hardened Midrian men…
Are they actually afraid of me?
My smile turns into a smirk. Trise glowers.
“She’s Marked,” Gorry whispers. “Lok’s chosen. We can’t have her on this ship. Death’s curse, she’ll sink us or bring a hundred-winter storm upon us. We’re too far from a temple, and it’s coming to midwinter. Days are too short. We don’t have enough of Elar’s protection here.”
Trise rises to his feet and stalks across to the sailor. He pulls a long blade from a sheath at his waist and points it at the sailor’s throat. “If you dispute my orders ever again, I’ll behead you in front of your men.” He glances coldly at me. “Tie her to the figurehead. She can’t cause mischief if she’s staring Elar right in the face.”
Figurehead? What does he mean by that?
The sailors stare at me as if I’m an angry water viper.
“I’m not touchin’ her,” one of them mutters.
Trise nods at his soldiers, and immediately, they separate from the sailors. Now I can see that the Midrian soldiers are easy to tell apart; they wear austere black jackets and black trousers and knee-high leather boots. They all carry the same wide-bladed swords and curved daggers. Their hair is neatly cropped, and they all have the same steely hardness in their eyes.
“What did I say about disputing my orders?” Trise says softly; menacingly.
The soldiers turn against the sailors, hands dropping to their weapons.
Two of the sailors reluctantly step forward. “We’ll do it,” one of them says. He’s a bare-footed man with a freckled face and a messy mop of sandy blonde hair. He’s barely more than a youth, perhaps only sixteen or seventeen winters of age.
“Tie her securely,” Trise says coldly. “We wouldn’t want her falling into the ocean now, would we?”
I stiffen as a chill courses through me.
What ever do they mean by that?
Eight
Kaim
With my arms tied behind my back and my nonexistent hands tingling like crazy, I trudge up the slope, my feet crunching on coarse grey gravel.
I can make fists with my invisible hands. I can twine my fingers together and slip my fingers behind, teasing at my restraints.
But my hands aren’t there.
How strange.
I force myself to concentrate on the weirdness of my severed hands, because it distracts from the agony of the cursed dragon venom flowing through my veins. My entire body feels like it’s on fire. My vision swims and my legs tremble. Several times, I nearly stumble, but I catch myself just in time, because I don’t want to give these mindless Ven the satisfaction of seeing me so weak.
We walk past shattered boulders and frozen streams and gnarled, leafless trees until we reach a glacier. We climb up onto the mud-stained ice and cross the damn thing; slowly, carefully, the Ven pulling me up several times by the rope as I almost fall into deep crevasses where the ice could swallow me whole.
Maybe that would be better than this.
I belong in the ice.
My Ven captors aren’t used to it. They can’t wait to be on the other side of this vast frozen river. They’re extra cautious on the shifting, uneven ice, and the cold makes them tense and irritable.
But I like it.
Several times, I consider swinging my arms to pull the rope taut; to unbalance my handler on the other end and send him flying into the frozen abyss, but I resist that urge, because I would surely fall in with him and find my death in the freezing, silent ice below.
I can’t die here.
Not when I’ve sent Amali into the unknown to complete an almost impossible task. Sending her to Kalabar with my fortune is almost a fool’s errand.
I know that, but I don’t care. I have to give her hope.
Twenty winters of dancing with death, of taunting the Ven with my powers.
Twenty winters of a pointless existence, until I found her.
And now I might be dying.
Of all the cursed fucking luck.
I just have to trust Amali can pull off a miracle, because my invincibility has run out.
Somehow, I have to figure out how to cure myself of a dragon’s venom, get free of my restraints, grow my hands back, and kill six highly trained Ven assassins.
The latter would be easy, if only I had my hands.
Staring down at the dirty ice, gritting my teeth as I put one foot in front of another, I search for my strength.
Experimentally, I try to slow time, but I’m too sick and bone-weary to pull it off right now.
So instead, I draw on the coldness of the glacier, wrapping it around me.
It’s strangely comforting.
But then the pain in my body turns to pure fire, and something; a faint tingling at the back of my neck causes me to look up to the searing blue sky.
I squint against the blazing sunlight and catch a flash of gold.
Vyloren.
She’s returned.
It seems torn dragon wings do not take so long to heal.
Neither do punctured eyes, for that matter.
She dips her head and tucks her wings close to her body. Then she angles her body and drops. The massive dragon becomes a shimmering blur, plummeting toward us like an arrow.
She’s coming for me.
I just know it.
I should run, or at least duck out of the way, but what is the point? I’m restrained, and she’s…
A fucking dragon.
I can see her face now.
A single golden eye bores into me. Her fearsome teeth are bared in a savage half-grin.
Her claws are outstretched.
The sight of a dragon approaching at full speed is actually a magnificent, mesmerizing thing.
My heart forgets to beat.
Perhaps this is what the other side of death looks like.
She’s dropping so fast that I suddenly fear she’ll smash into the frozen glacier, but at the very last moment she snaps her wings wide and catches a blast of cold wind, swiftly changing her angle.
My Ven captors have stopped dead in their tracks. Like me, they’re staring up at the sky in shock.
There’s an aura of fear about them, and that’s extraordinary, because they’re Ven.
“Looks like she’s finally back at flying strength,” Tyden mutters under his breath. “Took her fucking long enou—”
Vyloren swoops in toward me. With great precision, she picks me up in her left claw, shearing the ice beneath my feet, cleaving my rope restraint in two as she closes her sharp, dark talons around me like the bars of a cage.
It’s amusing how the hardened Ven scramble backwards as her massive claw hits the ice.
She lifts me up, flapping her massive wings, sending powerful gusts of wind down toward the startled Ven. They try to get up, but the wind pushes them b
ack.
Amazing, how effortlessly powerful a dragon can be.
Vyloren gains height rapidly, lifting me up into the endless blue sky. I’m trapped amongst hard claws and scales. My first instinct is to reach out and grab something, but I can’t.
I can’t do a thing.
If the death-god ever wanted to design a torture that would infuriate me to the ends of my existence, it would be this.
Complete and utter fucking helplessness.
“Feeling better now, dragon?” I snipe, not knowing whether she can really hear me or not.
You took my eye, halfling. I could kill you between my talons right now, you know that?
“Then why don’t you?” I say softly, knowing full well that she won’t kill me. “A magnificent, fearsome creature like you? You’re carrying out the orders of these petty assassins as if you’re an indentured servant? I thought a dragon like you would be far removed from the affairs of ordinary men like us.” A sudden realization strikes me. “Ah. The Ven have something on you, don’t they?”
Be quiet, Kaimeniel, or I will crush that pale little body of yours and still find a way to keep you alive, she thunders in my mind, and her anger reverberates right through me.
This time, it’s a different kind of anger; deep and primal and loaded with tension, like an ancient volcano that’s been storing its fire for thousands of winters… but now it’s about to erupt.
I could irritate her a little more, but some deeply buried survival instinct tells me to shut the fuck up so I don’t get my spine and legs broken.
Instead, I look down through her curved claws at the landscape below.
We’ve left the glacier and the Ven behind. We’re gaining altitude, soaring over the base of a stark grey mountain range that’s covered in snow, heading further and further to the north-east.
Back to Ioni country.
Back to the snow, the peaks, the lands that never really escape winter when the rest of the world thaws.
Back to the Black Mountain.
I wonder what leverage they have on you that’s so powerful, hmm, Vyloren?
I wonder if I could steal it right from under their noses.
Stranger things have happened.