“The island is our house,” he told them. “We do not knock her down. We would only have to wait for her to rebuild itself. Be gentle with her limbs.”
While Kelly appreciated the sentiment, it made their movements a slow effort. He thought perhaps that this was done on purpose on the tiger’s part, but found he had no recourse. And as they passed under the canopy of the jungle, the heat of the beach began to ebb, cooled by the shade and freshened by all the ripe green things around them. He began to understand why Reza referred to the island with a woman’s pronoun. Life was everywhere, buzzing and hopping and slithering and growing.
They stopped to rest where a small brook trickled fresh water between the roiling roots of the tallest trees that Kelly had ever seen. The water was also the freshest, the crispest that he could remember having ever tasted. They gathered there, drinking from their cupped hands and splashing water on their faces. Cressida dashed it across her arms, cleaning herself, and her throat, and Kelly couldn’t quite help himself watching as rivulets dripped down the edge of her blouse and into the exquisite crevice between her breasts. He wanted to lick it from her skin, but pushed those thoughts away and drank until the dryness of the salty air aboard the ship had finally fled his mouth.
A brightly colored butterfly went pinwheeling through a slat of sunlight by his head, and Kelly lifted a hand, quietly delighted when the butterfly settled for a moment upon his fingertip.
Its wings opened and closed ponderously, speeding motes of what Kelly couldn’t help but think of as butterfly dust into the air. He thought then that perhaps this was the paradise that men in his part of the world had lost and seemed to be forever mourning. What an incredible secret to know that it yet existed here.
A rustle in the underbrush startled the butterfly and it leapt from Kelly’s finger to go winding off. He turned his head, dropping his hand to the guard of his rapier, and straightened to his feet as Reza stepped towards the noise, a hand up to stall them even as his men formed at Kelly’s back, ready for a fight. Even Cressida stepped back to Kelly’s side, eyes wide as she waited.
A heavy tangle of fronds eased aside and a man came forward to meet Reza, the two eyeing each other with what Kelly described to himself as trepidation; another bad sign. They were of a kind, though; he could see that immediately. The same slender build, rich brown skin and dark hair, broadly set features and delicately sharp eyes. The other man was dressed in simple undyed fabric, a make that Kelly couldn’t name, perhaps of the island’s own design. Trousers that stopped just below the knee, and no shirt, but around his neck a wreath of leaves and other assorted items. Glass beads and stones, and Kelly thought he saw a tooth or two in there, but from what sort of creature he couldn’t say. If this man and Reza were not kin, they were certainly both of the island, and when Kelly lifted his head a little to sniff at the breeze, his nose caught the same scent from them both. The same flavor of scent, at least. Great cat.
Chapter 6
Reza looked back at Chaiya, the two locked in a contest of wills, and knew that he could not break eye contact with the man first. It was a kind of ruinous destiny that Chaiya was the first of them he would meet. Son of his father’s rival, they had hated each other fiercely for most of their youth. And of course, while Reza had been away, Chaiya had risen in status within the tribe. The wreath he wore was a symbol of his prowess as a hunter, as a warrior. It was the wreath that Reza himself had always imagined he would wear by now.
But instead he’d been made a slave. And now here they were, Chaiya in his wreath and Reza in the vestiges of his pride, each willing the other to look away first.
“You have been gone a long time,” Chaiya said quietly. “And you return with demons.”
“They’re not demons,” Reza replied. “Just men.”
Chaiya bared his teeth in an unkind smile. “One of them is not a man at all, Reza.”
Reza didn’t rise to the bait, though he felt the beast in his heart awaken. “They seek the jewel. Let them try and fail. They will not harm anyone. They’ve brought me home.”
“You will stand for them?” Chaiya arched an eyebrow.
Reza nodded. “I want to see my family, Chaiya.”
At that, Chaiya looked away. Reza’s heart began to beat loudly in his ears. He took a step towards Chaiya and said again, “I want to see my family.”
“Dead,” Chaiya said, and when he looked again at Reza, there was sympathy in his eyes. “When they took you. I’m sorry. Your father was killed in the fighting, and your mother died in her grief shortly thereafter.”
“And Kamala?” His little sister.
The hint of a smile twitched at the corners of Chaiya’s lips. “She lives. She is my wife.”
Reza gritted his teeth, anger flooding through him. Kamala had better have chosen Chaiya or Reza was now determined to rip his head from his shoulders. But he clenched his fists and set the rage aside, nodding. “I want to see her.”
“If these people bring danger to the tribe, you will die with them,” Chaiya told him. “My father is now the chieftain. He has decreed all foreigners shall be put to death. You will be all that stands between his law and these people.”
Reza’s gut twisted. Sajja, Chaiya’s father, bore him no love. “I understand.”
He felt Cressida and the pirates stirring at his back, wondering what they were saying. When Chaiya turned to lead them through the jungle and towards the tribe, Reza turned to look at them.
“We are welcome,” he said simply.
“What was that about?” Cressida asked, stepping away from the others to come to his side.
“He warns me that I will be killed if any of you cause trouble.”
She frowned. “We won’t cause trouble, Reza.”
No, he thought, but trouble loves you, it seems, as much as I do. He didn’t say as much, just nodded and turned to follow Chaiya. The others fell in behind them, Cressida walking close enough that her arm brushed his a few times.
As they walked, he explained to them as briefly and succinctly as he could how to interact with the tribe. That none of them should speak, obviously, because they did not know the language. That none of them should look too long at the tribal women. That Cressida should never find herself alone with any of the tribal men. Always eat and drink what is offered. Do not touch things or people unless invited and, even then, use caution. Reza promised to negotiate their passage beyond the village and deeper into the jungle as quickly as he could. He wanted them to linger no more than was absolutely necessary.
Even Cressida, he realized, was both a danger to his people and in danger when among them. That was not a thing he had thought of before, and it hurt his heart to think too deeply on it now. Home was so close he could taste it. He wanted to hug his sister and smell the wood fires and remember what it meant to be loved and cherished and to have a place in the world. He couldn’t let himself imagine that place now with Cressida occupying it as well. He didn’t know what it would look like, if it could look like anything, but he wasn’t willing to imagine her leaving him either. He could not imagine lying in his hut here without her. He could not pretend to himself that spending nights without her wrapped about him, without the possibility of sinking into her in the mornings, before the work of the day, and again in the evenings, after the songs of the sunset, did not stir in him a profound longing for simpler times. Nothing, it seemed, was ever so simple anymore as want or not want, as happy or unhappy. Perhaps there wasn’t even peace to be found on this island any longer.
The village was deeper in the jungle than it had been before, but it looked much unchanged despite the setting. As they passed beneath an eave of green branches boosted up with a wooden trellis, the village sprawled before them, worked into a natural clearing in the landscape. Thatched-roof huts and smoking fires in stone circles, a vibrant garden shared by all and a small waterfall spilling fresh water into a pool to the North, where women were washing laundry and cleaning weap
ons, or preparing food for supper. The scents of spice and smoke and crisping meat floated on the breeze, and Reza found his mouth watering expectantly.
Chaiya led them through the activity of the village, ignoring as people stopped to stare, both at Reza and his pale companions. The chieftain’s son led them to the largest of the huts, one built with multiple rooms and constructed in a place of honor in the middle of the village. The chieftain’s hut. They filed dutifully into the hut’s largest room, where mats were set down for sitting and a low table took up much of the room’s space. This table, Reza knew, was where the elders sat and made decisions, shared stories and experiences, and educated the young.
Sitting on a mat at the head of the table, an earthenware pot of hot water nearby him for tea, was Sajja, chieftain of the tribe. He was much older than Reza remembered him being, silver-haired and craggy-faced, shoulders hunched beneath a cloak of boar skin. His dark eyes swept assessingly over Reza, and then the rest of them.
“They’ve come for the jewel,” Chaiya told his father. “And Reza has returned to us.”
“Take the pale ones and feed them,” Sajja said, shoulders shifting beneath his great cloak. “And Reza, come sit with me. We will talk.”
Reza didn’t know what to make of this, but he turned to Cressida and Kelly. “They will give you food. The chieftain wants to speak to me.”
“Are you going to be all right?” Cressida asked worriedly.
He nodded and gave her a bit of a smile. “These are my people. I’ll be fine. Remember what I told you, all of you. I’ll see you soon.”
He felt like he should kiss her goodbye, but he didn’t dare. Not with Sajja and Chaiya present, and not with Kelly looking on. He had to take more control of the situation first, more power before he could be so bold. He touched her shoulder, though, gave it a warm, brief squeeze, and nodded to Chaiya.
“Go with him.”
She looked at him for another moment and he felt her eyes trying to pry into his mind, perhaps to read his heart in some way. Then she nodded and they all went, leaving Reza alone with Sajja in the hut.
“You return to us at an opportune moment, son of Ruang Sak,” Sajja murmured, tilting his head invitingly. “Sit.”
Chapter 7
Cressida didn’t like any of this one bit. Most of all, she disliked that she couldn’t understand what they were saying, and felt at a profound disadvantage. Even in a life lived mostly among men, she had never felt so very different as she did walking through this village. These people were made in so many different, vibrant colors. Browns and golds and coppertones, their hair sometimes dark like Reza’s and sometimes orange or a tawny mix. None of the men wore shirts, and she noticed none of the women really did either. More than once, as they followed Chaiya from the big hut to another smaller one, she had to elbow one of the pirates before he got caught ogling too long.
Though she herself was hard pressed not to ogle. The men were all sapling lean and hard with muscle, the women all rounded and curving flesh, the picture of fertility. And there were more people here than she had imagined. The village was very large and wholly sustained by the island itself. A secret Eden in the middle of the sea, full of gorgeous people and thriving with life. It wasn’t any wonder Reza had been so fiercely protective of it. Or that he’d so longed to return to it.
They gave them each a meal in a large, thick leaf, of rice and fruit and fish. Cressida ate it hurriedly, starving once she’d tasted food that was not salted or brined or six months old. They ate with their hands and licked the lingering flavors from their fingertips when they were done. Then they waited, Chaiya having left them, and Kelly leaned over to whisper in her ear.
“Even here, there are politics.”
She nodded, eyes low. “I see that too.”
“Do you think he will betray us?”
She looked up sharply into his face. “No.”
“He has been gone from this place a long time, Cress.”
“He won’t betray us. We made a deal.”
“You made a deal, I think.” He arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t you?”
“What do you want from me?” she asked him, exasperated. “One minute you want me, the next you want me to go to him. I made a deal with him, yes, and I gave myself to him so that he would help you.”
“But you wanted to give yourself to him,” Kelly fired back. “Admit it. Helping me had nothing to do with it in the end.”
“You are such a blind fool,” Cressida snapped. She got up from her seat and moved to the other side of the room, sitting back down away from him. The other pirates watched this, and Cressida could feel the weight of their attention upon her. She flushed, angry and embarrassed and uncertain. She thought she’d made the choice her heart wanted. She thought she’d made the choice her heart could live with. But she had not thought about whether or not it would be the choice that Reza’s heart could live with, and that left her feeling sick inside.
She resolved to get the jewel, to get her ship, and to get back to her senses and forget all of this nonsense. She had never before needed a man, any man, to fulfill her desires and affirm her happiness. She refused to believe that she needed one now. Either one. Not Kelly’s warmth and strength, not Reza’s fierce passion. Wanting them was not needing them, and she refused to find herself being passed back and forth between these men, the volleying prize they negotiated for while, really, they just wanted their own people. Reza wanted his island and Kelly wanted his den. She did not truly fit with either of them.
After some time, a shadow moved at the entrance to the hut, and Reza ducked inside. Kelly started to get to his feet, but Reza shook his head and sank down to a seat instead, nearer to Cressida but facing the Oso Armonia’s captain.
“They will not kill you,” he said, looking between them. “But they will not help you either.”
Kelly snorted. “Great.”
Reza frowned. “I had to work just for that,” he said curtly. “And I got the chieftain to agree to give you some supplies, and a map. But no guide. There are a few more details I can offer, but you will have to accomplish this on your own.”
“As ever,” Kelly muttered.
“You’re not coming with us,” Cressida realized, looking at Reza.
He shook his head and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Politics,” Kelly murmured.
“Reza, why not?” she pressed, ignoring the pirate.
Reza shifted his shoulders, uncomfortably, she thought, and she knew that whatever he said, and whatever he’d done just to get them safe passage through the village, it was going to hurt her. And she could do nothing to stop it. Her resolve of leaving him behind fled completely.
“Most of my family died,” he said quietly. “The last time people like you came to the island. They do not blame me, but I am my father’s only son, and I have been gone. My sister has married Chaiya, who you met, the chieftain’s son. And I have agreed to wed his daughter, to unite our bloodlines in strength.”
Cressida couldn’t breathe for a moment. To have choice so swiftly taken away was dizzying. She stared at Reza, unable to look away. He’d made her choose — he’d let her choose him, and now he was discarding her. It was supposed to be the other way around.
She got to her feet, mind a fog of anger and heartache, and though she felt Reza’s hand on her arm, she wrenched away. And though she perceived that Kelly was getting to his feet, she just waved him off, more or less staggering through the seated pirates to escape the hut. It was too confined. It felt too small. She couldn’t breathe and she needed to be free of it.
Outside the hut, the sun was just beginning to set beyond the jungle canopy, a blaze of scarlet and orange and gold against the mountain’s peak. Villagers stopped to stare at her, a few muttering to each other, but she just turned and walked away from them, away from the village fires, towards the darkening shadows of the jungle
itself. A few people called out to her but she didn’t understand what they were saying, and moreover she didn’t care.
She stumbled into the jungle, shoving past branches and leaves, tripping over fat tree roots and rocks, and kept the village and the setting sun at her back. She didn’t stop until she could no longer smell the cooking fires or hear the rush of the waterfall. She didn’t stop until the torches being lit on the camp’s perimeter were out of sight, and all that surrounded her were lengthening shadows and rustling vegetation. Then she sat, right where she was, and put her back to the sturdy trunk of a tree she had no name for, and burst into tears.
Cressida did not cry often, and now it poured out of her, as if a dam inside her heart had crumbled, releasing a tidal wave of anguish, gasping sobs and helpless watery moans. She put her face in her hands and buckled to the uncertainty, the loneliness, and the heartbreak. She cursed the day she’d seen the merchant clipper sailing on the horizon. She cursed herself for bringing Reza aboard the Black Fortune instead of leaving him to rot with the rest of the clipper’s mysterious crew. She cursed James Kelly for letting her dally with him and never telling her he loved her. She cursed her heart for being stupid and open. At last, she had lost her balance and fallen. And she didn’t have the strength to get back up.
She didn’t know how long she cried. Eventually, she hugged her legs to her chest and pressed her cheek to her knee, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to rebuild the dam inside her. When at last she opened her eyes, however, Reza was crouched across from her, a look of absolute shame on his face. She wanted to look away but couldn’t.
Alphas of Black Fortune (Complete Boxed Set) Page 8
