Pillars of Six

by St Clare, Kelly

  “Father, this man has spent many years as a prisoner to pirates. He is one of our people,” Caspian said softly.

  The way this was going, Ebba didn’t expect the rest of them would get off the hook, but if one of her fathers could be spared from whatever fate lay before them, she’d never stop thanking the prince.

  “The baron and his eldest son died during the war,” the king said, ignoring his son to address Barrels. “You did not know, which means you were captured a long time ago. Tell me—” The king’s face hardened. “What ship did you sail upon?”

  The courtyard hushed.

  “Eternal,” Barrels admitted. “I was taken hostage by Mutinou—”

  “Do not utter that name here!” the king roared.

  Sally squeaked again. Captain Tinkleman cut Ebba a look, frowning as Sally shifted position under Ebba’s jerkin.

  “What are you hiding?” the captain asked, striding forward. His eyes were bright, and his steps eager.

  Sharks’ teeth, he was looking for a way to save face. “Nothin’,” Ebba blurted, high-pitched. Sally stilled.

  The lie hung thick in the air.

  “Search her,” the king ordered.

  Ebba surged to her feet, hissing, “Fly for it, Sal.”

  Her fathers erupted into shouts to the ringing and rattling of chains as soldiers surrounded Ebba. Sally didn’t budge from underneath her tunic. Flaming disobedient pet!

  “Get yer hands off me, ye Exosian pigs,” she snarled at them.

  “Wait,” Caspian said loudly. “Really, there is no need to treat a lady in this manner.”

  “Caspian,” the king called.

  The prince ignored his father, and the soldiers holding Ebba stepped aside for him, though they did not relinquish their grip on her arms.

  Caspian stood before her, and Ebba stared up at him for a long moment. They exchanged wordless horror over their current predicament.

  “Mistress,” he said. “If you are hiding something, now is the time to hand it over.”

  Ebba was aware of Montcroix watching them intently. She just couldn’t decide if Caspian meant what he said or not. He didn’t know she had the purgium stuffed down her top, surely. Did he just think Sally was there? Did he think it best to admit to Sally’s presence? Well, he should know better than that; Ebba would never drop her winged friend into danger.

  “What did I tell you? There is no reasoning with a pirate,” the king said. “They understand only violence.”

  Caspian’s amber eyes bore into hers, and Ebba swallowed. What did he want her to do? “I’ll need my hand back.”

  “Release her.” The prince jerked his head at the soldiers.

  “Just one arm,” the king called.

  The soldier on her right released her, and Ebba reached for the purgium. No way was she handing over the wind sprite. The navy men already had the dynami. As frustrating as losing the tubes was, Ebba could find them again.

  Sally batted her away from the purgium and clung to her finger. Ebba tried to shake her off to no avail. Noticing that Sally’s white glow was pouring out of her jerkin, Ebba sighed and drew the sprite out.

  Gasps sounded from the soldiers, and those by the king craned to catch a glimpse as Sally’s brilliant light burst out around them.

  Ebba scowled at the sprite, who’d just condemned herself for the purgium. “Fly,” she hissed again.

  But the wind sprite merely floated over into Caspian’s upturned hand, ignoring Ebba and her kneeling fathers.

  “What is it?” the king said, something other than stone-cold anger entering his voice for the first time.

  Caspian turned but the soldier still gripping Ebba’s left hand spoke. “She’s still hiding something, sir.”

  “Nay, I ain’t!”

  “I can see the top of it,” the soldier pressed, squinting down the front of her tunic.

  Ebba wound up her arm to sock him for staring where he shouldn’t. Clearly the hiding place wasn’t infallible.

  “Search her,” the king boomed.

  No one was searching her tunic. Ebba quickly reached inside and drew out the purgium. The loudmouth soldier snatched it from her grip. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell to the stones unconscious, the purgium rolling from his grip.

  Ebba stared at him in shock.

  “Is he dead?” Caspian asked.

  Captain Tinkleman crouched at the man’s side and shook his head. “Still breathing, Your Highness.”

  He’d clearly had some permanent illness inside of him.

  The prince was white-faced as he stared at the purgium, and Ebba recollected that the last time he’d touched the magic cylinder, he lost an arm. Sally disappeared up Caspian’s ruffled sleeve as he bent down to pick up the purgium.

  “Son—” The king strode forward.

  Caspian took a deep breath and gripped the purgium.

  Everyone held their breath, the captain surging to his feet, arms outstretched to catch the prince.

  But Caspian wasn’t affected. Not physically, anyway. As the king came to stand beside his son, Sally reappeared at the open V of the prince’s tunic, yet the monarch did not spare the sprite a glance. His attention appeared fixed on the purgium.

  No one uttered a word as Montcroix stared at the object. To Ebba, the king looked as though he’d witnessed something unbelievable. What she couldn’t understand was that he seemed more interested by the sight of the purgium than the sight of a glowing sprite exploding out of her top. Had he seen magic before, or did he know what the purgium could do?

  “Where did you find this?” the king said quietly.

  Ebba shrugged. “On the ground.” She winced. Not her best pirate truth.

  The captain spoke. “They had another one just like it, Your Majesty.” He nodded to two of his men, who stood over a large chest dragged in from Felicity. The sailors opened it and rifled through, one of them taking the plunge to pick up the dynami.

  She heard Stubby’s muffled curse.

  The king reached into his pocket and drew out a heavily embroidered handkerchief before taking the dynami from the sailor.

  “You are guilty by association,” the king said slowly, taking several seconds to break his unblinking stare to look at Barrels. “You will suffer the same fate as the others.” The ruler shifted to look at Jagger. “And you, boy? What is your name?”

  Missing teeth of a gummy shark, Jagger was breathing heavy. Was the climb up here too much for him? Ebba darted a look at him and found the flaxen-haired pirate’s attention was on the king. And not in a good way. If Ebba was the object of that seething attention, she’d be running as fast as possible in the other direction.

  “Jagger,” he answered tightly.

  Ebba couldn’t glean anything from the king’s expression. Did he recognize Jagger? If so, why ask his name? Did this have something to do with why Jagger hated Caspian?

  Caspian was looking between them. He glanced at her, and she read the same questions in his eyes.

  “Where are you from, boy?” The king asked the question wearily, as if angry at himself for giving way to curiosity.

  Jagger smiled a wide smile that Davy Jones himself probably gave to new guests in hell. “I was raised on Neos, Your Majesty.”

  Only because she was watching so carefully did Ebba see the king’s tiny jolt.

  “I see,” he breathed.

  Caspian stepped forward. “Father. . . .”

  Montcroix turned back to the castle. He was silent for a space where Ebba could only listen to the thudding of her heart.

  Icicles dripped from every word when he did speak.

  “Take them to the cages, Captain. Caspian, come with me,” he said.

  “That’s stupid,” Ebba said angrily. “If Barrels be guilty for a’sociation, so is yer son. He spoke to Barrels, after all.”

  Stubby didn’t quite manage to bite back his groan.

  The king turned back. Briefly. “Pour boiling oil on them at dawn.”

>   “Yes, Your Majesty.” The captain bowed. “It will be done.”

  Fifteen

  Ebba pressed her face between two of the bars of her cage and blew a white dread off of her cheek. “These things don’t have much space.”

  They’d been escorted back down to the town and shoved into human-sized birdcages. Now, Ebba was suspended above a sludgy brown canal filled with writhing crocodiles. The canal looked man-made, lined with stone walls, and about two hundred feet wide—probably purpose-built for the cages and to add more of a fear factor for those contained within. Why anyone would want a stinking pit of water in the middle of their town was a mystery to her, though the jeering Exosians below didn’t seem to mind.

  “Ye be the smallest and the youngest. Ye don’t get to complain,” Peg-leg grumbled in the cage next to her. They were strung out in a line and hanging from the stone parapet above, Ebba in the middle. Most of her fathers were watching the leering and booing crowd on the far side of the murky water, but Barrels had his back turned to them, lost in his own thoughts. The throng of Exosian townspeople had dwindled in the last hour as the sun set, and hopefully once they were all gone, Barrels would come out of his funk.

  Honestly, after hearing the terrors of how pirates were tortured on Exosia, she didn’t find the cages so bad. Ebba supposed after a week of no water, she’d change her tune, but they might not even make it that long, with the boiling oil tomorrow. That seemed kind of . . . final.

  Her plan to free everyone had failed well and truly. Now they didn’t even have Sally. She should have sent the sprite to Caspian straightaway, instead of waiting to arrive at the prison. Sod it, hindsight was a fat load of use.

  She swallowed, suddenly realizing her life expectancy might have been greatly reduced by recent events. “Do ye think Sally will be okay?” she asked.

  “Aye, Ebba-Viva,” Grubby said, smiling at her. He seemed the least worried of her fathers, and Ebba wondered if he fully grasped the situation.

  “Cosmo will take right good care o’ her,” he added, leaning back against the rusted bars of his cage.

  “I be more concerned about the look in Montcroix’s eye when he saw the purgium and the dynami,” Stubby said.

  “Ye think he knew what they were?” Locks asked.

  “He knew enough to rush forward to try to intervene when Caspian gripped the purgium,” Plank replied. “I guess that could be coinc’dence; the healing tube had just dropped that navy man.” He pushed at his raven black curls.

  “Ye don’t sound convinced o’ that,” Ebba noted. “How would Montcroix be knowin’ what they are?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Stubby said. “But I didn’t like the gleam in his eye one bit.”

  “Aye, he was a mean one, all right,” she agreed. “How is Caspian so nice-like with that for a father?”

  Peg-leg stretched his peg out of the cage with a loud groan. “Not everyone be as lucky as ye. From the look o’ it, Montcroix has been caught up in revenge for a long time. That changes a person. But Caspian turned out just fine on his own, and when Montcroix passes, this world will be a better place for not havin’ a Montcroix junior in charge.”

  Ebba pursed her lips. “I be forgettin’ Caspian will be king.”

  Stubby threw her a glance. “That’s what princes become when their fathers cark it.”

  “I know that,” she withered. “I just mean, it’s hard to tell my skull that he ain’t a prince slave.”

  “Aye,” Grubby said with a deep frown. He blinked several times.

  “Don’t think too hard, Grubs. Ye know it gives ye a noggin’ ache,” Locks reminded him gently.

  Ebba watched the last of the sun’s circle disappear below the horizon. “Can’t be complainin’ about the view, though.”

  Plank snorted. “Nay, we can’t at that.”

  “Oi, Jagger,” she hollered down the row of their swinging cages. “Why’d the king know ye?” No time like the present to ask a few questions. He might even feel amenable to answering because they’d all be dead in a matter of hours.

  “He doesn’t,” Jagger replied after a beat.

  Stubby snorted. “Aye, he recognized ye, all right. Thought ye were goin’ to run him through and get us all killed.”

  Jagger muttered darkly. “It weren’t me he recognized.”

  “How about ye just spit out why ye hate the royal-lubbers?” she ventured, holding her breath lest he should reply.

  He didn’t.

  “Well, I for one would like to know how we mean to get out o’ this,” Locks said, hammering his cage with a fist. A cage was the epitome of Davy Jones’ locker for her impatient father. “The sailors took Verity somewhere, and she was still injured. She needs me.”

  The soothsayer had gotten by pretty well without Locks so far, in Ebba’s opinion.

  “I gotta get the dynami back,” Grubby said. “My seal kin’ll be angry with me.”

  “And the purgium.” Plank sighed, rubbing his temples. “I’m afraid I ain’t got any bright ideas.”

  “Could we swing somehow?” Peg-leg said. “Maybe a chain will break?”

  “Sure, let’s drown in our cages,” Stubby scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Or be eaten by crocs. Have ye ever heard a crocodile’s jaws snapping shut? The power will kill ye in a second. And if it doesn’t, their death roll will. We ain’t got a hope o’ outswimmin’ them either. Not by a long shot.”

  Something clinked by Ebba’s head, and she rubbed at her ear.

  “Peg-leg has his wooden leg,” she said.

  “Maybe he can be gnawin’ at his peg to use it for a key,” Locks said drily.

  With that attitude, the plan was bound to fail. Ebba scowled at him. “Ye come up with a better idea then.” She rubbed at her ear again.

  “Have we got anythin’ to pick a lock? Ebba could climb up and escape,” Plank said.

  “I ain’t leavin’ any o’ ye.”

  What was that sodding plinking sound? Ebba twisted and squinted at her cage in the dying light. Trust her to be put in the broken bloody cage. She— “A key,” she said thickly.

  “Aye, Ebba-Viva, that’s right helpful,” Stubby muttered.

  “No,” she said louder. “A real key.”

  A key dangled just outside of her cage, knocking against the bars every so often. She stretched her arm through and carefully took the metal key, tugging at the yarn it dangled from. She traced the yarn up, up, and up some more to the stone parapet above. A shadowed figure was leaning over, but without a torchlight present, she couldn’t make out the person above.

  She grinned. There was only one person on Exosia who’d help them—who didn’t glow. Actually, Ebba frowned. Why wasn’t Sally here with the key?

  “Is that Caspian?” Plank asked.

  “Aye,” she replied. “I’m thinkin’ so.”

  Jagger snorted derisively, the first noise he’d made since they were shoved into cages and lowered over the side of the castle wall. “Skulkin’ about in the dark instead o’ standin’ up to his father? Sounds about right.”

  She understood he had something personal against the royals, but Caspian was different. “Didn’t seem to me like there was anythin’ else he could’ve done at the time. This be smarter.”

  “Have ye truly got a key?” Stubby stared at her between the bars.

  Ebba held up the key, which gleamed in the dark. “What say ye? Time to get out?”

  The others encouraged her in hushed voices.

  Ebba winced as she turned the key in the lock, sure the entirety of the king’s army would descend upon them at any second, even though the torchlight of the two sentries overhead had moved away several minutes prior.

  “Imagine if I dropped the key?” she whispered, chuckling.

  Jagger’s answer was immediate. “Don’t drop the key.”

  Ebba frowned. Did he even have a sense of humor? “What d’ye think I am? An idiot?” She rushed to add, “Don’t answer that.”

  She held the key tight a
nd shoved her door open. The hinges screeched in protest, and her sharp inhale was echoed by those of her fathers.

  No one budged an inch for a full minute, all of them listening for the sentries. Ebba let out a shaky exhale when there were no shouts of discovery. She leaned out of her cage and passed the key to Stubby. After a further seven clicks of locks, they were all free.

  Of a sort.

  They were still hanging over a canal filled with crocodiles. “Now what?” she asked. “Are we climbin’ the chains to the top?”

  “How young do ye think I am?” Peg-leg asked.

  She thought that they were definitely over thirty. And that people over thirty couldn’t do much. “Only me, Grubby, Jagger, and Plank’ll be able to climb to the top,” she said. “So how will the rest o’ ye get up?”

  Plank replied, “I don’t think they’ll be goin’ up, little nymph.”

  Ebba poked her head outside of the cage and glanced down to where the brown, crocodile-infested water shimmered. “Don’t much like our chances down there with the snappers, mateys.” Not after what Stubby had said.

  “I could talk to them,” Grubby offered.

  “Ye’re kiddin’ me,” Jagger muttered.

  The pirate knew by now that Grubby was a selkie, but he was clearly having trouble with the concept of her father talking to water creatures. Ebba guessed he hadn’t known that—just that Grubby could hold his breath for far too long, and swim far too well. She wondered what the pirate would say about the conversations Grubby had with the octopi in Zol.

  They all ignored Jagger. Locks asked, “Ye sure, Grubs?”

  “Aye, crocodiles ain’t my favorite. They be a bit mean-hearted for my likin’,” Grubby explained. “But they always keep a promise.”

  The creaking of their cages was the only sound as Ebba assumed the others did their best to absorb that little tidbit.

  “Right.” Stubby drew the word out. “Well, if ye think they’d listen, Grubs.”

  Ebba shook her head. “Ye can’t send Grubby down there with the crocs.” She gestured to his cage only to find it empty. She gasped and peered down. “Grubby!”

  A huge splash disrupted the still night air.