“Where is he?”
He could only mean one person. Marielle stood back so that she could see Etienne lying on the threadbare blanket at the bottom of the gondola.
Allegra was in the boat as quickly as the guard had been before her.
“How long?”
“Three days.”
She clucked her tongue. “Internal bleeding. Fever. You’ve almost killed him, you stupid girl.”
Marielle bit her tongue against a retort. This tone meant Allegra would help, and that’s what they needed right now.
“Bear him to the rooms attached to mine. I will tend him myself,” she ordered her guards.
Marielle kept a blank look on her face as she watched the servants and guards lift Etienne carefully onto a litter as Allegra hovered over him like a hen with one chick.
“And Tamerlan?” Marielle asked. “Would you tend him, too? For Etienne’s sake?”
She held her breath.
Allegra’s gaze was blazing when she turned it on Marielle. “That one is trouble. And I can ill afford trouble at this time.”
“Please.”
A muscle twitched in her jaw. “You can take him to Spellspinner’s Cures. I’ll send Fanwen with you and she will tell my people to tend him there.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. This settles the debt I owe you for returning the Lord Mythos to me. After this, we are free and clear.”
She left the gondola, striding after the litter as her maid – Fanwen – boarded the little craft.
“Allegra!” Marielle called.
Everyone froze and Allegra spun. Her sharp features deadly in the low light of the pier.
“You dare call me by name? Don’t be fooled by my simple clothing. This city is mine now.”
“My apologies,” Marielle said, swallowing. She still needed to say this. Etienne might not recover in time to warn her – might not recover at all. “You must evacuate your city.”
“Must?” There was an edge of warning to her voice.
“The dragon beneath it will rise.”
“When?”
How long did she dare wait before destroying Deathless Pirate’s avatar now? It would have to be her. Etienne could not in his current state. How long would it take to get Tamerlan stabilized? The words froze in her mouth.
“Three days.”
Her mouth nearly fell open at Jhinn’s words. But he had saved her from struggling with an answer.
“That’s not enough time. Certainly not for Etienne, but not for my city, either,” Allegra said.
He shrugged as if he and Marielle would have nothing to do with this turn of events. He was right to play it this way. If anyone knew they were going to cause it, they’d kill them faster than an arrow could fly.
“Then you’d best hurry,” Jhinn said shortly.
“Three days?” Marielle mouthed, wide-eyed as they pushed out from the pier. Jhinn merely shrugged grimly.
He was right. There was no time to lose.
She’d already seen how the Legends could fight back.
12: Never Say No
Marielle
She woke with a start. It was still night.
Whatever Allegra’s women had put on Tamerlan’s face was almost magical. He had fallen to sleep – a deep sleep, not a fever sleep – as soon as the salve was applied. The relief it brought Marielle was just as tangible.
“He won’t see from the eye again,” the assistant had warned her. “But the salve is one of Allegra’s. They don’t call her ‘Spellspinner’ for nothing. His face will heal. And quickly.”
She’d bathed him with a cloth and raided Allegra’s storeroom for fresh clothing for them. Allegra wouldn’t be able to move it all in three days, so it hardly felt like stealing, and her shop workers did not stop Marielle. Allegra’s clothing were dark and cut with sharp lines, but Marielle found a leather vest to go over them and a warm cloak.
Jhinn was off to spread his good news and she needed sleep, but she took the time she could to strip out of her filthy, burned rags and strip Tamerlan out of his. She locked the door of his room and slid under the blankets with him to keep him warm, trying her best not to touch his burned face or the other old wounds she’d tended and bound. It was all she could do.
And she tried not to shiver too badly as she fell asleep, when her mind kept conjuring up the look in his eyes as he tried to kill her. She wrapped her arms around him, as if she could fend off the Legends by guarding him with her body, as if by drawing him closer physically, she could bring back her sweet Tamerlan and expel the demons that held him under their thumbs.
And now that she was awake she looked at his sleeping face in the moonlight as it lit the tiny room in silver light. He looked so innocent, so vulnerable.
His skin was already healing. The assistant had not been wrong about the power of Allegra’s magic. Was it drawn from the dragon Xin? His burns were no longer seeping. The skin seemed to be knitting itself back together before her eyes.
She swallowed back a lump in her throat as his good eye flickered open. The one that had been burned was always open now. Even though the salve had sealed shut the open wounds on it, the eye was a bubbled mass of damage. He would need a patch for it. She would be sure to get him one.
“You live,” he gasped, relief thick in his voice.
She waited, tense. Was it Tamerlan or was it a Legend in his body?
He coughed. His words were faint. “I fought her off, but I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t tell if she had already taken your life. Dragon’s blood, Marielle. Why are you still here?”
She let out the breath she was holding, relaxing into him. It was him! It was him.
“Tamerlan!” she cupped the undamaged side of his face with a hand. “Oh, thank the Le – I’m so glad it’s you.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Marielle. You need to run,” he said, his lip trembling as he spoke. “Flee. Before they get you. They want you dead.”
She shivered, but she held her ground. “No.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
“It wasn’t you. It was them.”
“I almost killed you with my own hands. I couldn’t stop them. I’m not asking you to forgive me.” He curled over himself, shaking with anguished coughs. “I don’t expect that. The only thing I can do is beg you to leave me while you can.”
“And what will you do?”
“Go as far from people as I can go. Keep myself from being able to harm anyone.”
It made sense. It really did. And yet she knew she would never want that. Not even with the constant risk that he might turn in her hand like a faulty blade and destroy her.
“No, Tamerlan,” she leaned in close so that her dark hair fell over him, her body almost grazing his. She kissed the undamaged side of his jaw, her lips meeting the short beard still growing there. She should have trimmed it. Her kisses trailed up to his cheekbone to slide over the silky skin of cheek and temple, eyelid and forehead. “I married you because I want every moment that you are you to be with me.”
“I can’t let you, Marielle.” He sounded like he was breaking.
“You think you can determine my course?” she let a dangerous edge into her voice.
“No, but I must determine my own. And my course must not include your needless death.”
“Even if I was not laying my heart before you like a Springhatch egg and begging you to take it, we still need you,” she whispered into his ear, letting her lips trace the shell of it with a kiss. There might not be many more of these kisses. There might not be any. She should savor them while she could. “You are our connection to the Legends. Without you, we will not know when – ” she bit off the word. She couldn’t tell him her goal. Didn’t dare. “We won’t know what we must know. Please trust me on that.”
“And Jhinn?” he asked, his voice still wavering.
“Is out spreading the good news to any Waverunner who will listen.”
“And Etienne?”
/>
“Will heal. I delivered him to Allegra who seemed more than pleased to take possession of him.”
“And you?”
“Am no worse for wear but am entirely sick with love.” She felt her face flushing at the admission. But if she didn’t admit it now, when would she? If she didn’t take every single moment to convince him of her love, she would lose her chance.
She pulled his blanket down lightly and kissed his collarbone.
“Marielle,” he groaned. A warning, but not a ‘no.’
She let her lips drift to his shoulder, his bicep, press into the hollow of his elbow and the center of his palm.
“You should not.”
“I should not kiss my husband?” she teased.
“You should not care so little for your own life that you risk it by being near to me.”
He was right. And he was wrong. Because she was beginning to realize that he was her life. Every moment with him was life. Every moment without would be a kind of death. She would no more embrace that death than she would embrace the other kind. Not even if he asked her to.
“Do you remember when you told me that you were done saying no to me?”
“Yes,” he gasped and she buried her face into the hollow of his neck, kissing it gently.
“Then do what you promised, please.”
He moaned at her words, but he did not say no. Not for the rest of the night.
13: To Know and Not Know
Tamerlan
Tamerlan adjusted the eyepatch Marielle had given him that morning. It rubbed on his healing skin uncomfortably, but shockingly, that healing skin only stung now rather than causing waves of agony every time the wind so much as stroked it.
He tried not to blush at the word ‘stroke’ in his mind. Marielle had done things last night that had taken a lot of the sting of his wounds from his mind. Affectionate things that he had thought he would never experience now that he was a madman.
The last three days with her, healing as she collected supplies and raided Allegra’s storehouses, had been like a kind of heaven. A heaven with one eye and a face he didn’t dare look in a mirror to see, but as much heaven as a madman could handle.
Madman? I hardly think so. You are privileged to be chosen by us. You know that girl is only using you. You know she preys on your inexperience to manipulate you to her will.
And all the while, the Legends had poisoned the happiest moments of his life – the most intense joy and attachment he felt at the nearness and affection of Marielle – with their constant suspicions and whisperings. They did not like her. They did not trust her. And they hoped to poison Tamerlan against the one good person he knew.
To his relief, his body had stayed his own. Whatever control he had wrested from Lila Cherrylocks was still there – for now. Still present enough to keep them at bay.
For now. You cannot be strong forever.
Which was what he was afraid of. He’d tried again that morning to reason with Marielle as they dressed and fled Spellspinner’s Cures but she had not heeded him in the slightest. He should have tried harder.
Guilt shuddered through him at the thought, because he knew he had not fought very hard to make her leave. Not when staying with her was so entrancing. She bewitched him, it was true. Not like a predator playing with prey, but like the rays of light cast from the facets of a diamond, like the colors of the sunrise staining the sky, like the flight of birds over the dark mountains of the north. She bewitched him with beauty so sharp that it shattered his heart and left him gasping.
Your romanticism is hopelessly naïve. It will be your undoing. Can you not see with your eyes what is right before you? This woman will kill you. She is already preparing you for slaughter. Why do you think she keeps you so close? When the time comes for her to steal your life, she wants you to be at hand.
Liars. They were all liars all the time.
But were they? It was impossible to believe that anyone could love him. Could adore him.
Was the only explanation the obvious – that it wasn’t real?
He blinked and swallowed down bile.
He hated it when he wasn’t sure if his thoughts were his own. One tiny drift into daydream. One slip of the mind and there were thoughts waiting to colonize him, to enslave him, to ruin him forever.
He adjusted the eyepatch again and frowned at the irony. They had nearly reached Dragon’s Spit Point. He was rowing while Jhinn pedaled and Marielle prepared the things she had brought with her. He hadn’t asked why they were going there, and he was trying very hard to think of anything else he could. He’d gone through many of his childhood memories all over again just to keep their location from his mind. One slip and the Legends would know everything he did.
Marielle and Jhinn hadn’t discussed what they were going to do at all. They’d simply nodded to each other as they wove through the surging crowds of troubled people and seemed to know without words what was coming next.
Maybe they had discussed it while he was healing. Maybe they had discussed it in the hours that Marielle had slipped away preparing. Maybe they were just so in tune with the same plan that they were following it without having to speak a word.
He swallowed. Think about other things, Tamerlan. What would his father be doing in Yan? Had he survived the revolution there? Was he in power now? Would Tamerlan see him before the Legends finished stealing his mind? If he did, what would he say?
He thought of everything and nothing as they crested the waves of the sea, keeping his mind busy so it would not drift to the task at hand.
But it was hard not to think about where they were when Jhinn settled the gondola on a small spit of land – the Bare Island – made entirely of sand.
There was a scream of recognition in his mind.
“Do I need to bind your hands?” Marielle asked gently, catching his eye.
He stiffened at the sudden clamor in his mind, his hands drawing to his temples.
“Please,” he gasped, fighting an onslaught from Deathless Pirate.
My island! My treasure! Mine!
“Please, do it quickly.”
He’d thought it would only be his hands, but Marielle and Jhinn laid him in the sand, tying both feet and hands with a length of rope behind him stretching between the two. It would be impossible to escape this. Which was perfect.
“Are you sure we should do it this way?” Marielle asked Jhinn, worry on her face. It was the first time they had consulted aloud all morning. “If we die in the attempt, he will lie here unable to help himself.”
“Then we don’t die,” Jhinn snapped. “Wait patiently here, Tamerlan. We will be back before the tide swallows the island.”
“Swallows the – ” Marielle sounded panicked.
“Don’t worry, Marielle,” Tamerlan said, making his voice tender as the Legends in his mind began to howl.
They will rob me! They will take what’s mine!
“You’re making the right choice,” he assured her.
She gave him a tremulous smile and then she and Jhinn got back into the boat and began to paddle out to a point just off the edge of the island.
No! Not that! Deathless Pirate’s voice took on a new tone and then suddenly it was overwhelmed by Ram’s voice snarling in the background.
This was their plan? They mean to slaughter Deathless Pirate’s avatar? They will destroy us one by one and the world will burn! You must stop them! You must!
They seized hold of him and shook him and he prayed the knots would hold, that the rope was strong enough as his muscles tensed and bucked, and his eyepatch dislodged, sliding down his face, as they dragged the uninjured side of his face across the sand.
He lifted his face from the sand to peek at Marielle and Jhinn.
In the distance, he could see Jhinn lighting an underwater lamp and fixing it to a chain suspended from his belt. He carried a rope in one hand and a hammer in the other.
Marielle cast an anxious look in Tamerlan’s direction.
I will not be laid waste! Deathless Pirate’s roar in his mind silenced all thought.
This was why the entire city was departing today. This was why Marielle had refused to discuss the strangeness of people loading everything they owned on mules or in carts, in gondolas or barges, and fleeing for the past three days until this morning half the city had been gone. This was why the guards had tense looks in their eyes. Why the banner had disappeared from over the palace. Why there had not been a ship in harbor when they left. And not a single family boat in any canal. This was why he had asked no questions of her and refused to pay any mind to where Etienne might be.
Because though he wouldn’t admit it even to himself until this moment, he had known exactly what her plan would be. She was going to kill every Legend one by one.
And what will she do when she gets to the last of us in your mind, hmmm? Ram’s voice was bitter. When she has reduced our people to refugees and our land to desolation?
Then she would kill that avatar, too.
Think again, pretty boy, Lila whispered. We certainly have. We can’t all occupy you at one, but once there are no other Legends to vie for your attention, one can easily occupy you. Remember how King Abelmeyer held the girl from over the sea? Remember how the Lady Sacrifice laid waste to her consort? That will be you. If she succeeds, whichever of us lives last will make you our avatar. Roll the dice, watch them spin, which of us will your soul win?
He shuddered, but now the other Legends were whispering the same grisly rhyme in his mind.
Roll the dice,
Let them spin,
Which of us will,
Your soul win?
They went on with that horrible chant while Deathless Pirate wailed in the background.
Could they even destroy his avatar with a hammer? Marielle had needed to use the Eye last time.
Because the clock was different. The other avatars are not so immune. Remember Maid Chaos? Remember Queen Mer? They are vulnerable. We are vulnerable.
Tamerlan tried to focus his one eye on Marielle anchoring the boat to something. On Jhinn slipping down the rope into the water. On Marielle waiting, waiting, waiting, her eyes drifting to Tamerlan and then to the rope and then back to Tamerlan and then eventually stripping off her clothing and diving in, too.
Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series Page 86