I bit back a shuddering sob. We’d fought. We’d fought and hadn’t found peace and now he was gone. And would he even come back? Could he be reborn in my heart when we were at odds?
I nearly jumped when Gundt cleared his throat. He pulled awkwardly at his collar.
“He’ll be back,” he said as if he could read my mind. “At dusk, he’ll be back.”
I caught his gaze with mine, eyes wide, trying to indicate that I needed something to hold onto. He understood, somehow.
“I’ve fought with Huxabrand before. She can be ... high spirited. Headstrong. Fiery.” He coughed a laugh. “Which goes without saying, of course. Sometimes I think that I never married because she’s too much of a handful to add a family in there as well. Not that Flame Riders marry – we usually don’t. It’s too hard with a phoenix who always must be moving.” He shook his head like he knew he was rambling and was trying to stop. His next words were so full of assurance that they made my tears stop. “She always comes back. Even when she’s furious with me. Even when she has a good reason to stay away. She comes back. She’s in my heart. The only thing that could ever banish her is evil. Don’t grow evil and he will stay with you.”
I blinked back tears and put my hand on his arm for a brief moment. A silent thank you.
Perhaps I should trust him after all.
The first drops of rain started with that thought and Judicus sprang awake, scrambling to his feet and searching the ship’s deck frantically.
“The feather,” he gasped. “What happened to the feather?”
Chapter Nine
I opened my hand and showed him the dark feather in my palm.
“You solved the riddle,” Judicus gasped.
“There was a riddle?” Gundt asked, looking from one face to the other.
“A feather, a flame, and a talon,” Judicus said. “You had to choose one.”
He was being so open with Gundt now. Where was that openness hours ago? It was Judicus’ mistrust that had fueled my own and now he was just letting it go.
“Any Flame Rider would know the answer to that,” Gundt said simply. “The feather. The phoenix is not his power, the talon. Nor his magic, the flame. He is valuable because he is.”
I smiled at him shyly. That was the same conclusion I had come to.
“Did you access the message then?” Judicus asked.
I nodded.
“That was what we were just discussing,” Gundt said carefully. “She does not want to tell her phoenix what she heard because she does not trust me.”
“What?” Judicus looked between us, his expression softening at the heat flaring in my cheeks.
“I can hear him,” Gundt said. “So, if she tells him, she will have told me.”
Judicus whistled a long, low whistle. “I see the problem.” He gave me a long look. “And she can’t tell us any other way. I’m guessing your signs won’t be up to the task?”
I nodded, sadly.
“And you cannot write.”
I nodded again.
The rain intensified. Sheets of it began to pour down, hitting the deck and drenching us in moments. There was a shout, and someone began to ring a bell.
One of the sailors hurried up to the bow.
“You can’t stay here in a storm. Get below with you!”
Which was how we found ourselves below decks, huddled in one cabin. Gundt and Judicus were wearing Gundt’s spare clothing – brought from where his bag had been stashed – and I was still wet as a drowned rat. I tried a little sadly to wring my skirts out while the men watched, awkward. Gundt had nothing that would fit me.
We all felt that same feeling of an impasse. Gundt wouldn’t leave since he was my Guarding Flame. But Judicus and I didn’t know if we could trust him. Judicus wouldn’t say it outright, but he kept looking at me as if to be sure I still agreed with him.
It felt strange to be so suspicious when I’d trusted Judicus so easily – but this was different. We’d been betrayed and chased so much since then and I couldn’t just forget that.
Instead, we sat in dour silence as the waves beat at the sides of the ship. It tossed and rolled on the sea like a child’s toy. Judicus was ill almost immediately and took to the only cot, moaning and clutching his belly or head. There was not much that could be done for him except to share a worried look with Gundt.
Once, Gundt tried to leave the cabin and was immediately shouted back in by the ship’s captain.
“Are you a fool? Get back inside. No passenger is to leave quarters! My sailors have enough to contend with!”
So, he came back in and sat himself on the bench screwed to the wall to keep it from toppling and I sat on the other side of it, and we kept a half of an eye on each other and half an eye on poor Judicus who looked like he might die of aversion to the sea.
I felt the burden of my fight with Kazmerev weighing me down and it was all I could do to hold in the tears that threatened to sweep over me. I wished I hadn’t let him die like that. I wish he hadn’t felt betrayed. I was just trying to be safe. To do the right thing.
I stole occasional glances at Gundt out of the corner of my eye. I did want to trust him. I did. But what if I chose wrong?
After an hour he let out a long sigh.
“I can’t think of a way to show you that you can trust me, Sersha,” he said. “But if we sit here like this all day, we will only grow more and more miserable.”
The lantern hanging in the center of the cabin flickered as the ship took a particularly bad roll on the waves and Judicus moaned in distress.
“The storm is getting worse. We should keep our minds on other things,” he said. Was he a little pale, too? Perhaps he liked these waves no more than Judicus did. “The rope worker said you cannot read or write.”
I nodded grimly.
“Perhaps, I could teach you that.” He suggested. “Perhaps you would like to learn. And perhaps as I am teaching you to read, you might teach me your signs and perhaps we’ll be able to communicate a little better. Trust, I find, grows best in the soil of truth.”
Which was how I found myself learning to read, beside a man I wasn’t sure I could trust, in the middle of a ferocious storm.
I should have been sleeping. But there were only two cots and it felt wrong to sleep while Judicus was in agony and Gundt was stuck in our cabin with us.
Instead, I poured over the words and letters he showed me in a small book he produced from his pocket, and for each one he taught me I made its sign and he practiced that.
I thought that perhaps the book was written in his own hand. After some time with it, I was confident it was a journal of his travels. Carefully, he stepped me through the sounds of the letters and how they blurred together. Since I couldn’t make the sounds of them, he made them over and over, and the rumble of his deep voice began to feel soothing.
Perhaps I should trust him.
Or, perhaps he was doing all this to get my guard down and I really shouldn’t trust him.
I needed to decide today. Before I saw Kazmerev tonight. Because if I was going to trust Gundt then I could wholeheartedly apologize to my phoenix and tell him everything. But if I wasn’t going to trust Gundt then I must brace myself for more of Kazmerev’s disappointment and my own broken heart.
Those thoughts plagued me as I listened and learned and started to decipher the letters before me. As my eyes traced the graceful flow of an “f” I was thinking of how I’d taken so many risks, what was just one more? As they flowed through the snaking “s” I thought of how even trusting the wrong person and letting them disappoint you might be more kind than distrusting someone who deserved your trust.
And by the time my head was hurting with all the letters I had almost talked myself around to trusting Gundt. I paused, looking at him as he read to me, willing him to look up so I could indicate that I was sorry – that I was willing to try things with him.
He looked up and I could see he had something he wanted to say, too.
/> “Trust is a risk. But not trusting makes you rot away, curling in on yourself. Please, just trust that I am here to help you.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but a cry from above arrested us both.
The bell began to ring furiously, and the ship canted sharply to the side.
“Stay here,” Gundt said, lurching to his feet. “I’ll see if they need help.”
Chapter Ten
He hadn’t even reached the door when it was wrenched open, and someone threw something inside. I heard the sound of breaking glass even over the storm and the shouts outside and then a figure burst into the room, sword flashing.
Something wafted into my lungs, choking me. I wretched, gasping for clean air, clawing away from the noxious smell.
On the far side of the cabin, where the glass jar had broken, a puff of colored smoke rose right under Judicus. He fell from his hammock, landing on hands and knees, coughing and gasping.
Our air was tainted. We needed to do something.
I fumbled for my belt knife, but I was already too late. Weight slammed into me, pinning me against the wall. A thick hand rose and clamped around my neck.
Panicked, I fought against his grip as his leather glove bit into my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see anything but his contorted face filling my vision.
Kazmerev!
Kazmerev!
There was a hollow smacking sound and then the hand left my throat and the man slumped to the ground. Gundt stood over him, sword raised.
“He’s wearing a green bracer,” Judicus said, gasping.
Gundt nodded, adding, “And that’s Kopovain powder that we’re smelling. It will render you immobile if you breathe it for too long. Hurry, we need to get out.”
Judicus stumbled toward the door, nodding, and Gundt steadied me with an arm and then helped me out of the cabin.
Outside seemed no better, people were yelling and screaming through the corridor. Something cold washed over my feet. Water, I realized. Our ship was taking on water.
As if my thoughts had triggered it, the ship lurched further to the side, knocking me into the wood beam. I stumbled, falling to my knees in the brackish waters. I bit down on my lip and tasted blood. Around us, people were screaming.
“They’ve barred the hatch!” Someone cried. “The sailors are taking the ship boats!”
There was a hammering sound – or was that my heart? I looked down one passage and then back down the other and all I saw were desperate, wet people. Merchants perhaps. Or lower nobility. A few craftsmen. No children, thank the heavens.
And no sailors.
It was only afternoon. By the time Kazmerev rose again, it would be too late for me.
Strong arms hauled me to my feet, and I turned to see Gundt braced against the passage wall, holding his sword in one fist and me in the other.
“Back in the cabin,” he barked, his eyes flicking from one person trapped here with us to the next.
“But the gas,” Judicus started to say.
“Back.” Gundt’s words were harsh, and face tight, and when I followed his gaze, I could see why. People close to one hatch were battering it with any piece of wood or weapon they could find, but the ones nearest us were watching us as if they were about to attack. Shivers ran up and down my spine at the looks on their faces. “Now.”
I nodded.
It was like climbing a steep hill to get back into the cabin, but we clawed our way in, coughing on the colored smoke. Gundt pulled the door closed behind us and barred it.
“I should have known he’d follow me here. I should have been ready,” he muttered.
“What are you doing?” Judicus gasped.
I caught Gundt’s gaze. He’d been my enemy all along, hadn’t he? And I’d almost trusted him.
Judicus came to the same conclusion. He reached out and snatched Gundt’s left sleeve back. Beneath it was a bracer just like the one worn by the man on the deck. The one I’d glimpsed before when I didn’t realize they meant something.
My heart thudded in my ears.
“You’re wearing one, too,” Judicus said, breathlessly. He gagged, dry heaving, but kept his feet, his eyes burning and fixed on Gundt.
I drew my sword.
“No. Wait,” Gundt said, raising his hands.
“You’d better talk fast,” Judicus said in a low voice. “The smoke is still rising.”
“I can explain everything but not in here.” Gundt spoke between his teeth. His eyes had taken on a new fire. “The Kopovain powder will disable you. And then the sea will swallow us up. We need you to break a hole in the hull, rope worker. Now.”
“And then?” Judicus said tersely.
“And then we swim for it.”
Judicus’s head was already shaking. “I’ll be so exhausted, I won’t be able to swim.”
“There’s no other way out,” Gundt growled.
“I’d be putting our lives in your hands. And you’re our enemy. The bracer marks you as such.”
I didn’t understand that. I tried to catch Judicus’ eye.
He paused, remembering me. He never treated me like I was ornamental.
I was coughing on the powder, my fingertips starting to tingle as he quickly spoke.
“It’s the sign of the Greensleeves, Sersha. They don’t just search for the ai’sletta during the Hunt. They search all the time. He’s one of them. But how did he know we were after the ai’sletta? He could only have known if he was told by Lady Lightland. He claimed he was friends with Hallimore and yet he consorts with his killer.”
“Wait. What?” Gundt asked, his expression shocked. He cut off, coughing. “We have to go now. We can sort this out later.”
“I can’t do it,” Judicus said with a shaking voice. “I can’t put our lives in your hands. I can’t trust you. Don’t trust him, Sersha.”
Yes, my heart was screaming. I won’t. We can’t.
The ship shifted again and then suddenly there was another scream, and the ground was knocked out from under me, the cabin suddenly filling with water as it rolled so that what used to be up was down and what used to be down was up.
I kicked and thrashed, but I couldn’t find my way to the surface.
And then the lantern went out and the cabin was plunged in darkness.
Chapter Eleven
“Sersha? Sersha!” Gundt’s frantic voice rang out as my head broke the surface of the water and I sucked in a huge breath.
Someone grabbed my collar and plunged me beneath the water again.
I sputtered, fighting against their grip. Panic washed over me, dark and inky.
And then something lit everything up and I almost sucked in a lungful of water when the side of the ship burst outward in an explosion of debris and splinters of wood of every size shot outward. My vision seemed to ripple and then a cloud of debris filled the water around us.
My heart raced but my limbs felt frozen, like they didn’t know how to move anymore.
A rough tug dragged me forward and then shook me. I followed the motion to see Gundt, pointing upward toward a lighter patch in the dark water, his expression urgent in the fading light of the – magic? – whatever it was that broke up the side of the ship. Gundt pointed a second time and gave me a shove and before hauling a limp, dangling Judicus toward the surface.
I fought the pull of the depths to follow them – my skirts and heavy belt fighting against me. I didn’t dare shrug them off. I’d need the flint and map and knife in that belt – especially now that it was all I had.
But they hampered me, fighting my movements.
I just needed to reach the surface. I just needed to breathe.
My hands were numb. I couldn’t feel them. My feet, too. It must have been that last breath of the toxic powder clouding my ability to move. I could only swim and hope my limbs were doing what I told them to do – hope they were propelling me through the water.
Hope.
The thought of it ripped through me. I fel
t like it was leaking away. And I didn’t dare lose it. Not even for a second.
My lungs screamed, desperate for air.
And then I reached the surface, relief washing over me with the feeling of air on my face. I gasped in a deep breath.
The surface was not the salvation I had hoped for.
Calls and moans broke through the pounding sound of surf on rocks. Thunder boomed through the air and lightning lit the sky in a bright flash that stood out against the deep darkness of the storm. I thrashed in the water looking for Gundt or Judicus. All I saw was the round hull of the ship rising from the waves like the belly of a dead cow in a marsh.
There was a dull sound coming from it as if someone was hitting the inside of a bowl with a wooden spoon. I didn’t want to think about what – or who – was making that sound, trapped in the sinking ship.
I shuddered.
My hands weren’t responding the way they should, the fingers clumsy, my motions jerky and spasming. The gas. It had affected me worse than I’d thought.
I needed some safe place to swim for.
Not the rocks ahead. As I watched them, I saw the dark figure of someone swimming. He was lifted by a great wave and smashed against the jagged rocks. He did not surface again.
Not there.
The rocks must have been what sunk our ship. Perhaps, in the heavy rain of the storm, we had lost our way.
There was so much wreckage in the water – too much, I would have thought, for just one ship. Too many people bobbing in the water. As I watched, someone dragged a barrel out from another man, plunging his head beneath the water with a rough hand. Bubbles surfaced, but the dunked man did not and his attacker swam free, barrel beneath him.
I swallowed, treading water against the drag of my clothing. My breath was coming too fast. My feet didn’t feel right.
I fell beneath the surface, losing the strength to keep my head up. I needed to fight or I would drown.
Fight, Sersha. Fight!
I pulled twice as hard with my hands, surfacing again, but barely. My legs weren’t responding to me. I didn’t know if they were kicking at all.
Phoenix Heart: Episode 4: Rope Worker Page 4
