by E. S. Bell
“She was still…weary,” he said with a wan smile. “It’s been a…strange day. I think I might…Yes. Good night.”
Sebastian’s gaze followed the young man to the upper level where the doors to the bedchambers lined the hallway. Niven slipped into his room. Selena’s was beside his, a thin line of light seeping from under her door. She was still awake, likely pondering the repercussions of the witch’s lessons. Sebastian had his own thoughts rattling his brain, thoughts that had only whispered before but were now clamoring like a lighthouse bell warning an incoming ship of sharp rocks ahead.
What are you waiting for?
His answer was to take a long swig of the rum someone had set before him. The keep’s walls were too close, and beyond them he could feel the jungle pressing in on all sides, choked with life and writhing in the hot dark. It was hungry and would swallow them whole; devour them with sharp teeth and stinging bites of poison. He longed to be aboard the Storm and the open sea. But his ship was wounded. Broken spars and missing sails marring her perfection.
Both marks under one roof. Finish the job and you’ll have more than enough coin to repair the Storm and make her what she was before. Find another place, another atoll. Buy your own godsdamn island.
“Or spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for Zolin’s ice in my back,” he muttered.
He forced himself to take a bite of fruit. It was as tasteless as dust in his mouth. There was nothing left to do but to get as stinking drunk as his crew.
He pushed his plate and the rum bottle away. Instead, he drew a flask of gold whiskey from his coat pocket. Captain Tunney had given it to him on Isle Nanokar. Isle of Lords’ best, and not cheap, either. The flask was nearly full, as he never drank while under sail. The first two gulps burned, but the third was warm in his gut and, more importantly, it silenced the thoughts that tormented him.
The moths flitting around the torches made the shadows dance.
The night’s hours slipped past. He nipped steadily at the flask until his vision was blurred as though he were underwater. A fat moth blundered into his cheek. He snapped it up between two fingers and blearily peered at its struggle.
You could start over again, whispered a voice in his mind. A faint voice, hardly a whisper. With Selena. Tell her everything. If there is one person on all of Lunos who might forgive you…
A ridiculous notion. The dead—his dead, his victims—would not be so easily mollified. He’d buried them down deep but whenever he thought they were at rest, they came clawing out of their graves, blood-drenched and begging, their mouths open in silent screams.
If I tell her who I am, she will hate me. If I tell her why I’m here, she will kill me.
The moth fluttered frantically as he held it to the flame of one of the table candles. It burnt pungently and when it was a blackened, wingless little husk, he dropped it onto his food plate. Dust from its wings coated his fingers. He held them up for examination and saw Cat watching him. He wiped his fingers deliberately on his black long coat, and she looked away, disgusted.
Sebastian drank more. The hall grew quieter and torches sputtered. Natives slunk out. The more sober members of his crew staggered to their chambers. The rest slept where the rum left them.
The Haru came up behind Sebastian, asking quietly if he wouldn’t like to retire to his room. The black pits of Ori’s eye sockets seemed endless. He snapped at Ori to leave him be and watched her go. Ori. The Haru who served the witch. And the witch wanted him dead or gone. To keep Selena for herself, he was sure of it.
Selena…
As beautiful as his atoll, and just as impossible to keep. A strange ache gripped his heart and squeezed.
The flask was almost empty. His whisky-soaked thoughts swirled together in a maelstrom; one thought rising above the tumult to make itself heard.
The time has come.
The candles on the table drowned in their own wax, and Sebastian was left alone in the dark, thinking of what he must do.
The time had come.
“Svoz,” he whispered, “to me.”
Undefeated
Accora walked among the rows of fauna in her greenhouse. Dawn’s light seeped through the multi-colored glass panes to drench the greenery in jeweled hues. She trailed her fingers over the broad-leafed plants and the feathery ferns, but kept her hands to herself near the blood roses. They had a tendency to snap. But she talked to them. She talked to herself. A habit born of long years in service to Bacchus. One did not converse with Bacchus. One heeded. One cowered. One begged and pleaded for mercy and was answered with pain. He did not know her worth. None among the Bazira did. High Vicar Zolin threw her to his mongrel and then walked away. Accora stopped and returned to the stand of blood roses.
“If Selena is half as strong as I think she is, Bacchus will die, surprised that such a delicate little flower has such a strong bite.” She teased the flower; it craned on its stalk for her flesh. “And Zolin will know it was a mistake to favor his rabid cur instead of its master.”
But Zolin was a tiny speck on the horizon of her thoughts. Bacchus loomed, obscuring all. She had thought of little else but his death over the last twenty years.
“I will gladly suffer Selena’s sword if I can watch that soulless monster bleed first.”
She let out a cry and snatched her hand back from the snapping blood rose. It tilted its bloom up, like a closed tulip, to let her blood slide down its stalk.
“Careful,” she murmured, dabbing her fingertip to her tongue. “She has lessons yet to learn.”
Accora continued down her greenhouse, arriving at the tray of insects impaled on pins. As Selena’s did, her gaze went first to the stowaway mantis.
“I had thought that Skye would’ve been the one to end him. She was powerful. Aluren. The High Reverent even.” She sneered. “The Aluren are blinded by their desperation.”
She thought to what she had read in Selena’s mind the night of the kafira ritual. That Skye had ordered their deaths—hers and Bacchus’s. Bacchus, she understood. But her?
“After all I have taught her.”
The betrayal stung but was not unexpected. She let her fingers trail over the glass, tracing the mantis’s body and smiled despite herself. “Such is her nature.”
And if Skye was as Accora believed her to be, then Accora was but a pawn in a much larger game. “Selena too. All of us.” Her smiled faded. “But Selena will kill Bacchus and Skye’s game board will be absent one pawn.”
Selena will kill him. The thought gave her a pleasant shiver as she recalled how her pupil had mastered the healing. The shattered ampulla. It had cut the girl, but the wounds would heal and she would be stronger for it. Free of lies, Selena would know real power and she would need power in abundance to face Bacchus. But she had distractions. Ilior was one. Her captain was another.
Julian Tergus. A false name. Accora would stake her life on it. He’d resisted the water and in so doing, remained as a blank piece of parchment.
“And so dangerous to me. A captain with a mute crew has secrets, secrets that he gladly suffers beatings and broken bones to preserve.”
She thought of the mute crewman who was not mute. Such an interesting story she’d read that night when he drank from the darkpool waters. A story gleaned in bits and pieces but bloody enough for her to know that ‘Julian Tergus’ was up to no good. No good at all.
And the girl who called herself Cat. Accora moved to a shelf of vials and bottles. Her eye picked out the pumpkin oil easily. Its bright orange color was a beacon among the drabber concoctions. She turned the vial over in her hands.
“She is not his crew,” Accora mused. “She is something else altogether and dangerous. But not to me.”
The air shifted behind her. She smelled acrid, oily smoke, and a stench beneath that: the scent of hot blood. Accora dropped the vial of pumpkin oil; it shattered over the floor, splattering a sunburst over the planking. Quickly, Accora picked up a blown glass bottle from the table before her. It wa
s sea blue with gold veins wound in and a stopper at the top, all exquisitely rendered. She’d kept it close, ever since Ori had found the crew on her beach and had had to escape a great, hungry beast that served the captain.
“Tergus is dangerous,” she said loudly, “to Selena and to me. I am right to suspect him.” She brought the bottle close, cradling it in both hands. “Aren’t I…Svoz, was it?”
Accora started to turn but her instincts screamed. She threw herself to the ground, rolling and cradling the glass jar, as the sword came down. It cleaved the small worktable beside her, and she was showered with soil and broken pottery. Her heart fluttered in her narrow chest and she scrambled under the closest table as fast as she was able. The ground was hard on her knees but she hardly felt the pain. The sword came down again with a deafening crack. Splintered wood and more dirt wafted down but the table held. The sirrak bent to peer under. He twiddled his fingers at her.
“Halloo!”
Accora fumbled at the stopper on the glass jar she still cradled as the table was torn away as if lifted by a fierce wind. Svoz held it with one hand and hurled it at the greenhouse wall. Accora flinched at the cacophony of shattering glass, and then scrabbled backward as the sirrak loomed over her. Blood-red and hulking, he gripped a long curved blade that was as long as his arm and he licked a forked tongue over his lips.
“Fast or slow? Which shall it be, witch? Slow would be my inclination. It’s been so long, I don’t wish to rush this unless I have to.”
“You think me feeble?” Accora said. “You think me a tired old woman, easily disposed?”
“If you have fight in you, old one, I welcome it. My orders were only to kill you.” He smiled wickedly. “My new master has not yet learned to be specific.”
“Your master. Of course.” She slowly got to her feet, her joints aching, her robes torn and dirty. “Well, I have fight in me, sirrak; more than you could guess. Bazira are trained from childhood in swordcraft. But alas, I have left my blade in my sleeping chambers.”
Svoz retrieved a slender short sword from the pack of weapons strapped between his wings. “Let it be known in your afterworld that I was honorable to the aged.” He laid it on the ground between them. “Go ahead. Take it. I swear upon my honor I will not slice you to ribbons until you are armed.”
“A sirrak’s honor,” Accora sneered. Still clutching the glass jar, she closed and then opened her other hand. “Krystak!”
Water, culled from her own body, rushed to her hand instantly, and her magic morphed them into daggers of ice that lanced out of her open palm. She did not wait for them to find their mark but scrambled to her feet and ran down the narrow path, Svoz’s screams of pain chasing after her.
She was almost at the door when a plume smoke burst in front of her. Her instincts—honed years ago in training with the Bazira—flared again, and she ducked as the curved sword arced out of the smoke, whistling just above her head. It struck a wooden support beam and was held fast. The smoke dissipated and Accora’s breath caught in her throat to see Svoz, his face contorted with rage and pain. On his midsection a white-gray splotch of frozen skin stood out from the red like snow in a puddle of blood. Accora turned and ran back the other way.
Another plume of smoke barred her way and another sword strike came at her own midsection. She curled away but wasn’t so fast this time and felt the agony of the sirrak’s blade bite her in the meat of her shoulder—what little she had left.
Blindly, she screamed, “Krystak!”
Svoz answered with his own roar of pain that seemed like to burst her eardrums. As the smoke cleared, she saw another patch of white, this time on his neck. He swung his sword back, shattering the glass tray of pinned insects hanging on the wall beside him. Accora fell at his feet to duck the return swing, and called ice again. From her prone position on the floor, the shards struck Svoz in his groin and he staggered backwards, unable even to scream, before toppling over a broken bench to land on his rump.
The magic was draining her. A terrible thirst wracked her and her skin felt tight and hot. She worked frantically at the stopper on the glass jar but the damned thing was stuck fast and her fingers trembled so she could hardly control them. Just as she was certain she hadn’t the strength to pull it free, the stopper loosened ever so slightly.
Svoz was climbing to his feet, scraping his sword along the ground as he picked it up. She expected a scream of rage or curses, or threats. She didn’t expect to hear him laugh. A bone-chilling chuckle that seemed to originate from the ground.
“Oh, very good, old one,” he chortled. “A low blow…I can appreciate that.”
“I have more…if you want them,” she panted.
He cocked his head at the glass jar she cradled. “What is that? A souvenir of the days when you were young and had more years ahead of you than behind? I’ve heard the aged are fond of knick-knacks.”
“Knick-knacks, yes.” Accora said. “This one…very valuable. It is from the desert isles of Juskara. Have you heard of them?”
“There is nothing that is unknown to me, witch.”
“Then you know the Juskaran isles are serviced by djinn. Djinn are like your kind: subservient and weak. Like you, they are beholden to their human masters. Like you, they are slaves.”
“A slave, am I?” Svoz scoffed lightly enough, but rage boiled beneath the surface. “Slaves are not permitted to indulge in their thirst for blood.”
“Aye,” Accora said. “Bound by blood instead of chains, but bound just the same.”
The sirrak’s face contorted into a horrifying snarl. “I’ll show you blood…”
Svoz lunged, his blade swinging, but Accora lifted the stopper out and held the crystal jar before her. Immediately, the sirrak dissolved into his customary plume of vile-smelling smoke and Accora feared he was escaping her. But the smoke rushed for the mouth of the bottle and poured itself inside. Svoz’s final scream of rage sounded as if it came from a great distance. With a satisfied tilt of her lips, Accora returned the stopper with trembling hands.
“You talk too much,” she told the bottle. “I’m certain I’m not the first to tell you that.”
The dusky smoke inside the bottle churned and rolled. The brilliant blue of the crystal was made dull by Svoz’s’ vapor and the jug no longer caught the eye with its beauty. It felt as if it weighed a thousand stones, and she thought to take it to the shore that night and send it to the Deeps.
“But I may yet need him. A bartering tool to keep the captain’s own sword from my back.”
“Accora?” Selena called from the front of the greenhouse. “I heard a crash…” Booted footsteps rushed toward her.
“Here, child. I’m here.” Accora set the jug behind two other vases deep on the shelf so that it was lost to shadow. “The gods be damned, I’m still here.”
The Hardest Lesson
Tables were overturned or smashed, and the beautiful multi-colored glass of one wall was shattered where another table had been hurled through it. Selena rushed inside and a dozen Yuk’ri tribesman followed after. She called for Accora and heard the answer at the rear.
“Tergus did this to me,” Accora said. She clutched her shoulder and Selena saw blood seep from between her fingers. The Bazira waved irritably at the tribesmen and they reluctantly retreated, leaving the women alone.
Selena lowered her sword. “Julian did this? No. He wouldn’t have…”
“He would and he did. He sent his pet sirrak to kill me.
Selena glanced around. “Where…? Did you…best him?”
“In a matter of speaking,” Accora said. “I have him in my keeping and there he shall stay until we make new arrangements for the duration of our voyage.” She reached for the flask at her belt. Selena had learned that Bazira carry their own ampullas, but of fresh water, to replenish them after creating ice. Accora drank deep; her battle with Svoz must have been fierce.
“But…how did you defeat Svoz? And what kind of new arrangements?” Selena ask
ed. The mounted frame had been shattered and the insects lay amid shards of glass. They looked as if they would get up and scuttle about at any moment. She shivered.
Accora was studying her through narrowed eyes. “Aye, if you ever want to feel the intolerable heat of this island or any other, you’d best heed my conditions. I won’t be besieged as second time.”
Selena sheathed her sword. “Tell me.”
“What I have done with the sirrak is of no concern. He will remain in my possession so as to ensure my safety, and as a matter of collateral. I will forgive Tergus for this morning’s incident, but only because he is the means to get us off Saliz. And we will leave Saliz after you’ve completed the second portion of your lessons. Three days should be sufficient, beginning this morning. Lastly, when we sail, it will be to Isle Huerta, where you will discard Captain Tergus and his crew and hire a new ship for the voyage to Bacchus. This proviso is not negotiable.”
Selena stared at Accora. Discard Captain Tergus. “There is nothing on Huerta,” she said finally. “It is a jungle, such as this.”
“Wrong. An enterprising young lord and his companion have settled there, bested the land, built an estate, and begun a fine mercantile business trading coffee and tobacco and chocolate to the entirety of the Eastern Edge. Unlike the unfortunate Lord Penderlake, the lord of Huerta has only conquered what he requires and maintains a healthy respect for the rest.”
“How do you know?”
“Huerta is but fifteen leagues to the southeast. Five years is long enough to learn of one’s neighbors, especially if they are merchants. An old woman can’t live on berries and crabmeat alone.” Accora smirked. “You have been too long preoccupied with sailing about the Western Watch, healing every sniffle and scratch in the hopes of closing your wound. The time has come for you to rejoin the world with me as your guide, and you will do it on another ship.”
“I don’t believe it,” Selena said, finding her voice. “Julian wouldn’t send Svoz to kill you.”
