“Enough about plots. Tell me about the mountains,” Zorra murmured.
“Hope told me that the men of the mountains could no longer be considered men. They lived away from the cracks for so long, they were little more than monsters. Decades ago, our Uncle Usborne fancied himself an explorer and tried to reach the inner parts of Perdition but was forced back by fierce attacks. All manner of creatures assaulted his expedition day and night, claiming many lives.
“It was from his account through Hope that I learned what little I know. The men in the mountains have bred with all manner of creatures, creating a new race of men—or even races. Too many are now indistinguishable as human. Hope believes the only reason they have not poured out of the mountains to slaughter us all is the harsh natural climate keeps their numbers thin and the few separated by great distances and treacherous terrain.”
Zorra drifted off to sleep. He needed to keep reminding himself the girl that slept at his side, the woman whose bed he was now lying in, was his wife. It all just seemed too strange. He would have risen and let her sleep, but she had latched onto his shirt with a death grip. He feared any movement would wake her.
Ollie considered returning home. He longed to return. The suddenness and circumstances of his father’s death weighed heavy on him. If his sister Hope went for the deal he proposed, it would save many lives. Ollie felt prepared for any sacrifice to serve the greater good. He hoped his sister would feel the same way. First thing in the morning, he would draft the letter and speak with Meghan to get Joti off the pinnacle.
The thought of warning Hope about the creatures from the mountains crossed his mind, but he decided against it in the end. Uncle Usborne told Hope the stories, Hope told Ollie. He was sure she would remember them. She didn’t need him to remind her. Best to leave the lecturing until after she accepted his proposal.
If the monsters came out of the mountains, Ollie wasn’t sure even Zar’s defenses would be enough. Everything in the city faced the crack and was meant to defend assaults from the sea. Perdition, like Zar, would find itself in the same indefensible position with their backs to the crack. The thought didn’t help Ollie fall asleep any quicker.
Chapter 14, Kanika:
The Phoenix and Coyote lay several days at anchor. This gave both crews time to heal and Kanika to recover from her festered wound. The healthy trained hard, using the small cove to practice boarding skills and defense maneuvers. Captain Talen was always quick to explain all plans were good until the first bolts left the crossbows.
Kanika found herself unsure of Talen. He looked pretty enough, but she learned long ago that pretty did not equate to skill. She would prefer to see more scars covering his body, proof of his fights and living to tell about them. She didn’t think he was that good with a sword. More likely, he didn’t put himself in harm’s way.
She was happy to find the ship’s carpenter alive after her sickness. Christian took the tools and wood she’d given him and carved himself a peg, along with a fitting that would attach to the severed nub of his leg. With a crutch, he hobbled about the main deck, directing repairs or even taking part in combat training, even if slower than the others. She was surprised at how quickly he healed.
The training the crew of the Phoenix received from the Coyote added up quickly but was not nearly as valuable as the charts Talen allowed Tiara, the Phoenix’s quartermaster, to copy. From that small gift, Kanika located her place in the world, much farther west than she guessed but not as far south as she thought. If Tiara kept showing her aptitude for charts, Kanika might promote her to navigator and quartermaster. She worked hard and was meticulous in her record keeping.
It seemed the democratic way of picking her officers worked out well so far. She heard little grumblings from the crew. Training with the seasoned men of the Coyote only helped.
Kanika stood on the main deck, working through the ballista loading drills with her crew, when Captain Talen called from his bridge over the rail. “Captain, when you have a moment, I would love to come speak with you. Request permission to come aboard.”
Even if Kanika was unsure of his fighting ability, he always did treat her with the respect of an equal captain. “Sure thing, Captain. Permission granted.”
Talen grabbed the nearest free line and swung over the rail to meet her on her main deck. “Can we speak privately in your cabin?” Talen asked as soon as Kanika joined him.
“I don’t see why not. Should I be worried?”
“No, not at all. There is just some information you should know, away from prying ears.”
“You don’t trust my crew?”
“I trust no person when faced with a hot poker positioned over my bunghole. This is information people would kill to know.”
Her interest now doubly piqued. The threat of torture mixed in with a secret seemed a bit much for this ragtag group, but she would play along to see what was going on. “Let’s go learn your ass-breaking secret.”
She entered her room, and there sat Tiara working over the charts, as Kanika left her in the morning. “Can she keep working, or is it that secret?”
“Your woman can stay.”
“The woman has a name. Its Tiara,” she growled from the table, where she bent over copying the charts.
“I am sure the captain meant nothing by it. He just didn’t know your name. Captain Talen, this is Tiara, my navigator.” Kanika figured she might as well promote her now.
“Pleased to meet you, and yes, you must stay. This concerns you, as well.”
Tiara raised an eyebrow about her promotion but remained respectfully quiet.
“You have done an outstanding job of copying over the information I shared, but now you must learn this and not write it down.” Talen pointed to a cove on a small shard far to the west from even the smallest settlement.
“What’s that?”
“A safe place. Captain, as you know, looking for safe moorage or anchorage is dangerous. If you pull into the wrong cove, you might lose your ship or your freedom. This small cove holds a free town. A place for all who don’t make waves.”
“Do slavers trade there?”
“No, since most pirates are somehow former slaves, Freeport never allowed slavery, but their ships do pull in from time to time. They are not allowed to capture or trade slaves.”
“I don’t think they listen to many rules.”
“They listen to these. Even ships fighting one another in the cracks will not fire in the cove. They would lose everything. The entire city would throw the ship and its crew out. They would be banished.”
“They don’t pick sides?”
“Not that I know of. They remain neutral. It is a place to sell all cargo, except slaves. It is the farthest westward port I know of.”
“Why all the secrecy? Why not mark it on your chart?”
“It was decided by the privateers long ago that only the captains and navigators of ships should know the location. If the city-states learn of its position, they might move to stomp it out.”
“I would think there are enough free captains around to fight off any attack from any one city-state.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Privateers like fights they know they can win. When losing means certain death, it pays to be cautious.”
“Or cowardly.” Tiara blurted aloud what Kanika thought.
“I would hold that thought to yourself. Talk is cheap with little experience to back it up. Many may not take your slight in jest like I do. Some people don’t have thick skins.”
“Then they need to toughen up and stop being such pussies.” It was Kanika’s turn to blurt out her thoughts.
“Perhaps, but I told you this information in confidence. It is a safe place for you to anchor when you can think of no other place to hide. Don’t lead me to regret telling you both.”
“We don’t plan on going to your city and telling everyone they are cowards.” Kanika rested her hand on Talen’s forearm.
“Even if they are,” Tiara ad
ded.
Talen raised his eyebrow before shaking his head at the two women. “Captain, if you feel your crew is ready for it, I have a plan to take out a small slaver operation not too far from here.”
“Do you think we have enough training? I think my crew needs more ship-handling experience.”
“For my plan, we will not need that. I have the perfect scheme to rescue the slaves from a fishing village a day’s sail from here.
“I would like to hear more of this plan before we commit,” Kanika said while she concentrated on the cove Talen had just shown her and Tiara.
<=OO=>
Kanika found herself drenched from the surf that battered her while she clung to the rocks under the shard’s cliffs. If not for the warm spring air, she was sure her chattering teeth would have given their position away.
Major rose a full two hand widths above the horizon; the time to strike approached. When Kanika felt the time was right, they would swoop in and kill all the slaveholders and free the slaves, while Talen would rush in with catapults raining fire down on the defenders.
The plan seemed solid enough, even if Kanika and the crew of the Phoenix had the dangerous part. They needed an easy win to boost their confidence. She couldn’t think of an easier victory than attacking sleeping men.
The hardest part would be distinguishing the slavers’ quarters from the slaves, but the closer they got to the huts, the plainer she could see the bars covering the windows and doors.
She plainly saw the torches of the sentries flickering along the small flat the huts perched on. It gave a ghostly outline for her force to focus the killing. It looked like only two guards paced a route through the shelters, and another two stood watch on an outcropping thirty feet up the cliff. Four men were about to die for their crimes, and Kanika felt no remorse at all. She would leave it for the crazy bitch Sinead to decide their soul’s fate.
With Christian on the mend, she left him in charge of the skeleton crew stationed on the Phoenix. It would be his job to keep the ship safe and to come pick them up if they needed it.
Currently, her largest concern with this plan was the fact her weapons, specifically her crossbows, had been soaked in the pounding surf. If they failed to operate, it would become a hazardous mission indeed.
Kanika felt ready to give the order to move out when Lizzie made a light tap on her arm. Kanika glanced her way to find the witch’s right index finger waving a no-no motion in front of her face. She raised her shoulders in question, but before Lizzie answered, she slipped over the rocks and out of sight.
Kanika bit her lips to keep from cursing the tiny witch, in case it might stick, but she vowed silently to herself to have a stern talking to her once they safely reached the ship.
Her head crested the rocks and found Lizzie staring back into her eyes. “There was a fifth, in the shadows.” She dropped a severed ear on the rock before Kanika’s eyes. “He’s dead now.”
Not that Kanika needed proof after what she’d seen the witch do, more like what she’d never seen the witch do. The night was her time. She moved effortlessly through the dark, taking out people twice her size in silence. Lizzie called it disappearing. Kanika wasn’t sure magic wasn’t involved, so complete was her concealment.
Precise like a Brotherhood’s staff, the ten members of her team took out the four remaining guards. The slavers that slept fell just as fast, Kanika gleefully slitting throats as she went through the cabins. She felt killing a slaver akin to killing a dangerous animal. There was no difference in her eyes. The world would miss neither of them.
The last hut cleared, Lizzie strolled up to her side and pointed out over the water. There, anchored fifty feet off the coast, sat a ship smaller than the Phoenix or the Coyote but a good size for a prize, about the size of the Resolute. She just needed to reach the craft. The settlement secured, she felt no need to send the signal for Talen and the Coyote to firebomb the buildings. She felt it better to take it intact.
“Why don’t you swim out and take the ship?” Kanika glanced down at Lizzie as the surf lapped against her feet.
“I can’t swim,” Lizzie whispered back.
Kanika cocked her head. The thought of the enormity of it all sank in. She bet more than half of her crew couldn’t swim, yet they sailed the cracks. There would never be enough time to teach them everything they needed to know.
Sword sheathed, she waded out into the warm water and stroked silently to her target. Two of her crew brought up the rear. If they took this ship intact, it would make for easier transporting of the human cargo to safety.
The ship sat at anchor, dark, no small boat alongside nor ladder dropped. The anchor rope provided ready access up the side.
She reverted to her childhood when she would swim nude off the ship while at anchor. It would drive her father and the crew crazy, her diving off the rigging. If it were shallow enough, she would swim along the bottom finding all manner of shellfish to catch. When she grew older, she started spearfishing. The crew of the Resolute always ate well when she was in the mood to swim.
Now it was just her and her sword. The two that followed her didn’t match her speed through the water. Like a sea monkey, she scampered up the anchor line and landed without a sound on the deck. The sweet smell of vine caught her attention first, then the glow of a pipe on the stern of the ship, the watch looking out over the crack where an attack should come from.
She almost felt sorry for the man as she drove her blade into his neck at the base of his skull. She was sure he died before his body fully finished slumping to the deck. The watch taken care of, she turned in time to see the two who followed her head below decks to the crew’s quarters. The ship’s company in hammocks would die quickly and quietly like the slaver crew of the Phoenix once did.
All manner of concern now on her mind, she needed to finish off any officers on board at the aft end of the ship then lead the others on an assault of the bosun’s locker under the forecastle. “One step at a time,” she whispered to herself. A quick check of the quarters, she found the quartermaster’s cabin occupied. For whatever reason, it seemed this ship was not fully crewed. It would make her job that much easier. The quartermaster died in her sleep. Her eyes opened in shock when the tip of Kanika’s sword pierced her throat and severed her spine behind, pinning her briefly to the bed.
Surprised, she found the captain's cabin empty. Either he slept ashore this night and died with the others, or there was another reason for so many missing from the ship’s roster. Kanika began to have that sinking feeling of foreboding again. Something wasn’t right on this ship. She might have just made a grave tactical error in rushing to take this prize. Back above deck, she met her two crew that took care of the crew’s quarters. She scanned the masts for any flags flying high and found no yellow flag.
“Raise the white, we need to give a signal we are good here before Captain Talen gets an itchy finger.” Though she wasn’t sure of the truth, the time to worry about it would come with the sun. That left only the bosun’s locker to inspect. They found the door locked from the outside. The smell of death met them when they opened the door. Inside they found the decomposing body of what might be a woman. Kanika assumed it had once been the bosun who died long ago. The flies were so thick in the cabin they found it hard to breathe.
“You two launch the long boat and get cleaned up. You’re both covered with blood.” Kanika waved off the two men and looked over the beach. This whole situation stank and not just of the dead bosun.
The captain and most of the officers fled this ship. She had a few fine words for such a beast as that. She would never abandon the Phoenix. The only way they took her off the Resolute was unconscious. If not for a twist of Harper’s wrist she would have died on that ship like her father and the majority of her crew.
Something terrible happened here, bad enough to force a ship’s captain to leave, and now Kanika stood on this death ship with two of her men.
She shouted down to the two in
the water, “You two stay down there tied to the side of the ship until Doc can check us out.” She was sure they would discover nothing in the dark. Hopefully, this would all look better in the light of day… Hopefully.
Against the dark sky, Kanika spotted the Coyote just past the entrance to the inlet. At least they weren’t firebombing the beach. Kanika began waving her arms at Talen or anyone on the ship that would pay attention. She’d survived too much to die under the Coyote’s fire.
The ship barely made way through the water. Moments ticked away that seemed like an eternity, she was not sure what they waited on to come help, but at least they didn’t launch an attack. Her eyes must’ve adjusted to the dim light because now she spied movement on the deck. Focused on the Coyote, she didn’t realize first light had come. With each passing moment, the Coyote’s view grew clearer.
“Talen said he wasn’t a person to risk his own neck. That must be why he sent my crew on the shore party.” Kanika shook her head, unsure if she grew angry at Talen or herself.
The beach clearly visible, Kanika could see her crew and the freed slaves sitting on the rocks above the water line. She was sure Talen saw the same thing.
That man’s constant hesitation grew thin on Kanika. She contemplated shouting across the water for him to get off his ass, when the slack white sails were hoisted, catching the wind and bringing the ship into anchorage position.
Even still, the ship anchored on the far side of the small haven. The Coyote’s single longboat was lowered over the side and Kanika spotted Talen and the doctor heading her way. Her heart skipped a beat, fearing the worst when the launch pulled up short of her ship.
“Is everything all right on that ship?” Talen shouted across the water.
“The ship is ours. I need Doc to come check some bodies before we finish claiming it,” Kanika shouted back.
Talen was almost too quick with the next question, “Why?” She caught him eyeing the vessel, even from this distance.
Fractured Loyalties Page 11
