“And him?” Aleida took hold of Jameson’s elbow. “Any chance you could lock him up somewhere safe for me?”
Cutter smirked. “Of course, miss. It would be our pleasure.” He whistled, and the man with the earrings seized Jameson by the arms and dragged him up the gangplank. The Tarja’s eyes were wild with fear, but no sound escaped his lips through the barrier Aleida had placed there.
“We’ll set sail as soon as yer settled,” Cutter said, turning to walk up the gangplank with his coat billowing out behind him.
Aleida hesitated for only a moment, then followed. Her eyes drifted to the bow of the ship, where the name Hound’s Hatred had been crudely scratched into the wood. A chill breeze blew through the salty air, and a spray of seawater misted over her skin. She shuddered, and not only from the cold water. Everything inside her screamed that getting aboard a ship with a bunch of pirates was a terrible idea. But she could take care of herself.
Besides, if this was what she had to do to save Tyrus, what did it matter whether she liked it or not?
34
Kesari
Kesari loved everything about life on the Vindicator. She loved the pitch and roll of the deck beneath her feet, and she loved clinging to the sail lines and leaning out over the sea to stare at the froth made by the ship’s passing. She loved the clean, salty smell of the air and the dolphins that sometimes leaped and frolicked around the vessel. At night, she loved looking out as far as she could see, where the sky seemed to melt into the water with no horizon to separate them. She loved watching the lamps come on like stars in the merchant ship they were escorting, setting it aglow as it trailed behind them.
Maybe it was a new sense of freedom or just knowing that Rajiv had once walked this same deck, but being on the Vindicator made Kesari feel brave. After their first night at sea, she asked Lucian to start training her to use her magic again, and he was more than happy to oblige. She spent most of her mornings meditating under his direction, working to align the energy of her mind, body, and spirit so she could better channel altma and then keep it in her control. To test her abilities, she stuck with simple, safe exercises that were easily contained. Still, the practice proved to be far more difficult than she remembered it ever being before.
“Don’t fight your emotions,” Lucian reminded her after one particularly frustrating morning. She’d been trying to mend a small tear in the fabric of her coat, but it wasn’t working “If you’re fighting them or trying to shut them out, your mind can’t be fully in harmony with the rest of your being.”
“If I don’t fight them, they get out of control,” she retorted. “That’s what happened before.” When she’d burned down the clocktower, it was because she hadn’t kept her excitement in check, and she couldn’t allow something like that to happen again.
“Shutting out your feelings only puts you at war with yourself,” Lucian replied. “You can’t channel altma like that—not in a way that’s safe or effective. Try again.”
She did, again and again, day after day, spending hours upon hours reflecting on her feelings and the turmoil that had been writhing inside her since Rajiv died. Most days, she cried, but Lucian was always there to talk her through it. And little by little, as she acknowledged the conflict within herself instead of trying to ignore it the way she’d always done before, it began to subside. Not completely—she suspected she’d hold some piece of it forever—but at least enough that she could feel its power over her starting to weaken. Enough that she could, sometimes, leave her past in the past.
When she needed a break, Kesari spent her time wandering the ship and pestering the crew about her brother. She’d quickly figured out which ones had served on the Vindicator at the same time he had. They told her stories that made her laugh and stories that made her cry, and every memory they shared gave her a little more strength to carry her grief. It wasn’t the tight, constricting thing it had once been, pressing on every part of her so that she suffocated under its weight. The loss was still heavy, something she’d carry the rest of her life, but she was strong enough to bear it.
“I forget, sometimes,” she confided in Lucian one night as they stared up at the stars. “Just for an instant, I forget that I burned down that clocktower. How terrible is that? I shouldn’t ever forget—not after what I did.”
“You can’t spend the rest of your life agonizing over your mistakes,” he replied. “Rajiv wouldn’t have wanted you holding onto them forever.”
He was probably right, as usual, though it was still difficult not to feel guilty on the nights she went to bed and realized she hadn’t thought much about those mistakes all day. But she was happy. For the first time in years, she was truly and unconditionally happy.
Amar and Mitul seemed equally happy, having rekindled their old friendship now that Amar had regained his memories. They frequently played music together for the sailors at night, much to everyone’s delight. Saya, however, was utterly miserable. She spent their first three days on the ship vomiting over the bulwark. Even after the seasickness passed, she constantly walked about with a strained expression that was very unlike her usual calm confidence.
Late one night, after Amar, Mitul, and most of the sailors had gone to bed, Kesari and Lucian wandered up from the crew’s quarters to find Saya standing at the starboard side of the ship, staring out across the ocean beyond. The merchant vessel, the Golden Raven, drifted silently behind the Vindicator, close enough that Kesari could see its sailors’ shadows in the lantern light. Farther in the distance, another ship was silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Another brig maybe, like the Raven, but it was hard to tell from this distance.
She leaned against the bulwark next to Saya. “It’s good to see you out here looking so healthy.”
The older girl gave a wry smile. “If I stand still like this and look out there in the dark, I can almost pretend I’m staring at the desert and forget I’m on this cursed ship.”
“Not much of a sailor, then.”
“Not like you. But I shouldn’t complain. It’s this ship that’s bringing me closer to finishing my haseph. A little seasickness is a small price to pay.”
Kesari had been so wrapped up in her own concerns lately that she hadn’t spared much thought for Saya or her haseph. They’d learned so much from Jameson, and the implications were bound to have an effect on the young warrior’s own goals. Even if they found Shavhalla and the answers Amar was seeking, would they discover what Saya needed? Would they learn how to replicate his curse to give immortality to the Sularans?
“Do you still think you’ll find what you’re looking for in Shavhalla?” she asked.
Saya shrugged. “I like to believe I will, but maybe I’m just too stubborn to admit I’ve wasted all this time on something that won’t work. And that’s if it’s even the right thing to do in the first place. Immortality is…” She trailed off and shook her head. “You saw. All of Amar’s deaths, all the people he lost.”
“He told you?”
“He told Mitul. Mitul told me enough. I think I finally understand why Amar doesn’t want his immortality. And why it might be a bad idea for me to offer my own people that option, assuming we do find a way to recreate the curse.”
Kesari wasn’t sure how to respond. Her own feelings about life, death, and immortality were complicated, to say the least. Because of their Bond, she and Lucian shared a life, which meant she had essentially given up half of her remaining lifespan from the day their Bond was formed. If she reached the age of fifty, she’d be lucky. She knew how precious life was, how valuable every year could be, and there was still so much she wanted to do with whatever time she had left. The prospect of living forever was undeniably enticing. And yet, she’d seen the pain in Amar’s memories. He’d lost so many people, and she knew the pain of loss, too. To experience that pain a hundred times or more would be unbearable.
“Immortality could save your people,” Lucian said, using the same argument Saya had made a hundred times before. “I
f war does break out between them and Kavora, it could be the only way to save them.”
“But is it worth the cost?”
“If it prevents them from being wiped out?” Lucian said. “Yes. Of course it’s worth it.”
“The same conclusion I came to,” Saya said. “But it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? This is a curse we’re talking about. If we find a way to recreate it, there’s no guarantee we can contain it. The Masahi and our leaders would make every effort to do so, but in time, it could get out. Others could use it or build on the framework to create their own curses. Things are bound to go wrong, tampering with such powerful magic.”
“So what are you going to do?” Kesari asked.
“I’ve been asking myself that for days, but I still have no idea. I suppose all I can do is hope we’ll find more answers in Shavhalla. At the very least, there should be something there that would be a worthy offering for my haseph, even if it’s not what I originally set out to retrieve.”
She made no effort to hide the disappointment in her tone. She’d poured so much time and energy into her haseph, and facing the possibility that it had all been for nothing couldn’t have been easy for her. Kesari laid a hand on her arm. “You’ll figure something out.”
Saya turned her eyes back to the sea, but murmured voices behind them drew Kesari’s attention. One sailor hurried toward the door that led to Captain Rutledge’s cabin. He’d come from the helm, where Master Gambol and another sailor stood passing a long spyglass between them, their voices rapid and hushed. She followed their gazes back to the brig she’d spotted in the distance earlier. It was closer now, and still closing in rapidly.
“That was fast,” she said, nodding to the ship.
The dark spots that formed Lucian’s eyes seemed to narrow as he studied the approaching vessel. “Too fast. There must be magic propelling it.”
She started to ask how that might work, but a noise like a sudden thunderclap drowned out her voice. Behind the Vindicator, the Golden Raven shuddered as a cannonball struck her stern.
Kesari’s heart gave a sudden lurch, and she turned to Lucian in a panic. Captain Rutledge burst through the door of her quarters, fully awake and alert despite having undoubtedly just jumped out of bed. “What the devil is going on?” she shouted up to her helmsman.
“The Raven’s under attack!”
“Yes, I know that. By whom? Why did no one sound the alarm?”
“Apologies, Captain. They were trailing so far behind, and then—” He shook his head. “I’ve only seen a ship move that fast with a Tarja’s help.”
Captain Rutledge took the spyglass offered by her yawning cabin boy and peered out at the attacking ship. “Pirates,” she said in the same calm tone one might use when announcing that dinner was ready. “Well, don’t stand there gawking, Nate. Get the crew up here. All hands on deck!”
The boy took off, crying out the captain’s orders at the top of his lungs, and a second cannon shot rang out as the Vindicator’s crew poured onto the deck. Kesari and Saya hugged the bulwark to avoid being run over in the commotion. Amar and Mitul soon joined them.
“What do we do?” Mitul shouted over the roar of angry sailors and the boom of another cannon blast.
“Stay out of the way,” Amar replied. “And don’t get killed.”
Captain Rutledge stormed past them then, pausing when she caught sight of them all standing at the bulwark. “What are you all doing? Go down and help load the cannons. That shouldn’t be too hard, even for a bunch of land lubbers. And you, fire creature!”
“Me?” Lucian asked, hovering forward a few paces.
“Do you see any other fire creatures on my ship? I want you to fly overhead and report back to me with what you see. If you can manage to set their sails ablaze, so much the better.”
She turned on her heel and resumed shouting orders to the rest of her crew. Lucian shot off into the sky without so much as a word to Kesari, and she suddenly felt absolutely and terrifyingly alone.
“Come on,” Amar said. “Let’s see if we can help with the cannons.” He headed for the stairs that led to the deck below, and Kesari followed behind the others.
It was even louder below deck than it had been above as shouts echoed around the crowed space and the crew hurried about, loading the cannons and firing them off as fast as they could manage. She lost count of how many blasts went off. They all seemed to ring together in her ears and echo inside her skull, punctuated by the crack of splintering wood and the screams of injured sailors. The Vindicator shook with the recoil of her cannons and the hits she took from enemy fire.
Someone shook Kesari by the shoulders. She blinked, realizing she’d been standing frozen against the wall. A man’s face swam into view—the ship’s surgeon. She didn’t remember his name.
“You’re the Tarja girl, aren’t you?” he said, and she nodded. He gripped her by the arm and dragged her toward the front of the ship. “I could use your help. Come on.”
He led her into the sick bay, a part of the ship she’d only ventured to once before. It was a small space and already filling with the wounded. Their pained expressions looked even more grotesque in the flickering lantern light.
“Help me tend to them,” he said, releasing her arm. “Use your magic to heal them if you can.”
Flashes of memory began to flicker at the edges of her mind. Smoke and fire, people screaming, a crush of bodies as they swept past her trying to get away from the burning clocktower.
She clenched her fists, felt the sharp press of her fingernails digging into her palm. It wasn’t real. It was in the past, not happening now. She was here, on a ship—Rajiv’s ship—and there were people who needed help. She had to do something.
Trying to brush away the last of her memories, she headed for the first person she laid eyes on—a young woman bleeding from a nasty head wound. “Let me take a look at that,” she said, and was proud of herself when her voice only shook a little.
The woman took her hands from her scalp, and Kesari pulled away strands of her hair to reveal a long, deep gash underneath. She could see the skull through the torn, red flesh and had to fight a sudden wave of nausea that roiled through her stomach.
“What’s your name?” she asked, both to distract herself and the woman.
“Evie.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Evie.”
“You too, miss.” She offered a tremulous smile. “How bad is it?”
“Not too bad. Nothing a bit of magic can’t fix.”
She instantly wished she could take the words back. She was hardly ready for this, and Lucian wasn’t even here to guide her through it. What if she made a mistake? What if she hurt this poor woman more than she was already hurt?
The ship gave a sudden violent shudder, and a few of the lanterns flickered out. Evie grabbed hold of her hand, then dropped it with a shy, embarrassed look. “Sorry. Just a bit scared, I guess.”
“It’s all right,” Kesari said. She grabbed a clean rag from a nearby table and pressed it against the wound.
“This is my first time out at sea,” Evie said.
“Mine too.”
“This part’s worse than I imagined. I thought fighting pirates would be exciting, but it’s rather terrifying, isn’t it.”
Kesari nodded. “That it is.”
A pair of sailors came in carrying one of their comrades, who was so bloody she would have thought he was dead had he not been screaming. Evie watched them go by with wide eyes. “There’s others needing help more than me, miss. You should go to them first.”
Kesari’s heart pounded. The woman was right, but if she couldn’t even handle a little cut, what good could she do for those with more severe injuries? She shook her head and pulled the cloth away from the wound. “This will only take a minute.”
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and listened to the turmoil of emotions inside her. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.
She said it more as an ack
nowledgement to herself, but Evie responded anyway. “I think we all are.”
Somehow, that made Kesari feel a bit better. She channeled altma into her fingers and pressed them against Evie’s scalp. Working slowly and carefully, she began to send her magic into the woman’s skin, using it to feel for any deeper damage and close up the wound. Fear lingered in the back of her mind through the entire process, but she didn’t fight it or try to suppress it. She didn’t need to. It was there, but she didn’t have to let it control her.
“That feels a lot better,” Evie said when she had finished. She gingerly touched the skin around the wound, which was now little more than a raised scar, and smiled. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Go on and see to the others, then. I’ll be all right now.”
Kesari took a deep breath and turned around to face the wounded men and women crowded into the room. There was so much pain and suffering here, just like there had been the night the clocktower burned, but she was no longer helpless. She was terrified, yes, but she could also be brave and competent.
With that, she immersed herself in the work of cleaning and bandaging wounds, setting broken limbs, and using her magic to help the injured however she could. Before too long, her fear subsided to little more than a gentle undercurrent beneath her concentration.
35
Amar
Amar’s legs strained to keep him upright as another cannon blast rocked the ship. He put a hand against the wall to brace himself, his pulse pounding in his ears loud enough to compete with the shouting voices all around him. He hadn’t been in a fight like this for years, and never one aboard a ship. It was different, in some ways—the cramped space, the inability to see his foe on the enemy ship, the scent of gunpowder so heavy it burned his nostrils. But in all the ways that mattered, it was the same. Mingled cries of pain and fear, the rapid rhythm of his heartbeat, the familiar desperation to do whatever it took to save his own life—and his friends’.
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