Heir of Danger

by Alix Rickloff

  Elisabeth banged her head as she fought to hold herself upright. Grabbing hold of one of the ropes lashing the barrels to keep from sliding in the murky sludge rolling back and forth over the floor of the hold, she sidled a step closer toward Rogan. With his attention all on Brendan, she might find a chance to grab the gun or at least turn its aim from the center of Brendan’s chest.

  Brendan’s words cut the air like a blade. “The Other will fail, and when they do, Duinedon vengeance will be swift and merciless. They’ll not allow such a threat to continue to exist.”

  “A risk I’ll take if it means the chance for a life lived free of harassment,” Rogan argued.

  Elisabeth inched her way forward, palms burning every time the ship heeled over and her hands slid painfully along the rope. Three feet. Two. Keep him busy, Brendan. Keep him talking.

  “And Daz?” Brendan growled. “The old man. Did you kill him? Can we add his life to the list of those you’ve torn apart?”

  Rogan’s face tightened. Brendan was losing him. It wouldn’t take much for him to pull the trigger. “The old man’s alive. At least, he should be. I left him unconscious but breathing. More mercy than he’d have received at their hands.”

  Elisabeth was there. She need only lunge to her right and she could knock Rogan off balance.

  She never got the chance.

  Brendan’s face seemed to shine, his eyes shimmering burnished gold and bronze and amber. Hard. Pitiless. He lifted a hand, flicking his fingers forward.

  Rogan doubled over, retching. His body jerking as seizures tremored through him.

  Brendan’s gaze swept toward her, the horrible power in his eyes stripping her raw. “Come. Quickly.”

  Letting go of the rope, she crabbed her way around Rogan, making it halfway to the ladder before the harper grabbed her ankle. Her feet slipped out from under her at a heaving rush of storm waves, and she felt herself falling. Her head slammed against the barrels, her side hit the edge of a crate, her knees banged hard on the floor.

  In the wild swing of the lantern, she glimpsed bodies, heard shouts, a gunshot. Someone grabbed her around the waist, another slapped her hard enough across the cheek to throw spots into her eyes. She heard the thunk of fist meeting flesh over and over, and by the time she wiped the tears away, Brendan was on the floor, and a knife had been pressed cold against her throat.

  Rogan struggled to rise over Brendan’s slumped and bloodied body, voice hoarse, hands shaking. “You say hell will be the refuge, Douglas. But you’re already there.”

  Brendan looked up through one glittering eye, the other one swelling shut. “No, Rogan. You’ve no idea. My hell hasn’t even begun. Nor has yours.”

  “Get him out of here,” shouted one of the men.

  The winds had dropped from a hurricane scream and the nauseating pitch and roll of the waves had eased. Thunder still rumbled and bounced over the water, but no longer did the bark of cannon fire sear the air. The storm must have separated pursuer from pursued. The hope of rescue vanished.

  Two sailors grabbed Brendan beneath the arms, dragging him up and out of the hold.

  The man watched before turning back to Rogan and Elisabeth. “That happens again and I don’t care what you say, Rogan. I’ll let Quick’s boys do whatever they wish with her. Do you hear?”

  The harper nodded sullenly, following him out. The heavy scrape of the grille pulled across the hatchway like the closing of a coffin.

  Alone, Elisabeth curled once more into her corner, unable to stop the slow leak of tears.

  Her whole life, she’d avoided asking the questions.

  Yet the answers had come.

  And there was no going back for any of them.

  Croker had come twice with his knife. Each time leaving Brendan shaken and bloody. A hairline slash down his neck. A razored scoring of his upper arm. Death by a thousand cuts.

  The last visit had been a few hours ago, or so it seemed. He’d closed his eyes in a vain attempt at sleep, but his mind spun through plot after plan. He’d have a small window of opportunity once they came ashore. He needed to be ready when the time came.

  The ship remained taut, the water slapping and curling against the hull. Winds steady and southwesterly. No return of the mage storm. They must have outdistanced their attacker to the point the captain felt safe in resuming only subtle nudges to the weather. Enough to keep them on course. Not enough to exhaust him should he need to call the power down again.

  Brendan’s heart lurched at the sound of a key turning in the lock. Croker back for more?

  He fought at the cords binding his hands behind his back, his ankles to the chair until his wrists burned and his bones felt as if they’d been pulled loose, but there was not even the slightest give in the knots. They’d not risk his escape from the cabin again.

  The door swung open on the shuttered flame of a lantern. The light splashing up onto Rogan’s drawn and tired features, his eyes bleary and uncertain.

  Brendan’s gaze narrowed, his jaw clenched against the curse forming on his lips. Whatever his crimes, Rogan was right. He was all that stood between Lissa and the crew’s lust. Brendan needed the harper alive. Better yet, if Brendan could convince Rogan of his mistake, perhaps he’d be a powerful ally at the moment of decision.

  Rogan hung the lantern from a peg above the table. He sat across from Brendan, his eyes widening at Croker’s handiwork, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously as he ran a finger over the scarred tabletop, clearing his throat. “Elisabeth is well. I wanted to let you know I’ve seen to it they stay away from her.”

  Brendan had tried closing his mind to what might be happening to Lissa, but at Rogan’s assurances, he felt the throbbing pain in his temples and the tightness in his chest ease.

  “You said you’d scryed what the future held,” Rogan continued, his voice thready in the tense silence between them. “What Arthur’s return would mean for the Other. What have you seen?”

  Brendan closed his eyes, the backs of his lids dancing red with flames. A spreading, suffocating pressure building up through him as the stone drew closer to its destination. “Arthur is cursed, Rogan. His reign fated to fail. I’ve seen the battle’s end. Arthur is defeated. The Other lie scattered and destroyed. There is no return of a golden age. Only fire and death and ruin.”

  Rogan’s lips pressed to a thin white line. “I don’t believe it. Arthur was a great and glorious king. His power almost rivaled that of the Fey themselves. He couldn’t possibly fail against a horde of weak and powerless Duinedon. They won’t have a choice. They’ll be forced to live with us in peace.”

  “A peace bought with so many innocent dead is no peace. It’s tyranny. With Máelodor at its head. And Arthur his slave-born puppet.”

  “You lie.”

  “If you’re so certain, why did you come? I don’t think you’re as confident of your convictions as you pretend.” He paused, trying to gauge the man’s mood. “Does Lyddy know where you are?” Brendan ventured.

  “Leave her out of this. She’s not involved.”

  “Neither was Elisabeth,” Brendan answered quietly.

  Rogan blanched. “Enough talking.” He rose, fumbling uneasily with his pipe. “We’ll be arriving off Cornwall in a few hours.”

  Brendan nearly choked on the request he was about to make, but he’d had too long to dwell on the possibilities to leave this one unaccounted for. “Then time runs out. I would ask a favor from one I thought of as a friend and one whom I think still could be.”

  Rogan turned back, the lantern swinging wildly in his hand. “I won’t free you.”

  “I don’t ask for myself, but for Lissa. See to it she’s kept safe after. You understand what I’m trying to say: after. And if you’re able to, escort her to Belfoyle. She’ll be sheltered there if the worst should happen and war begins.”

  Rogan’s face seemed to sag, and he looked as if he might speak, but he merely nodded before departing, the key once more scratching in the lock, the darkne
ss crowding back in on Brendan like closing walls.

  He swallowed back his fear. He’d been here before. Surely nothing could be worse than St. John’s repulsive advances, his degradation, his power-mad sexuality that had left Brendan retching and sickened with his own body.

  He closed his eyes, willing a calm he did not feel. The words burned up through him. Buried themselves in his brain. A whisper on the wind. An echo in the water.

  It is my curse and my fate. What can mere mortals do against that? What can you do?

  He lowered his head. His curse and his fate.

  What could he do?

  Alone had meant safe. Alone had meant deadly. But alone had also meant alone. He’d weakened and this had been the outcome. He’d sought to outrun his curse and his fate. Had only succeeded in pulling his ruin down on Elisabeth as well.

  twenty-four

  A rough shake of her shoulder dragged Elisabeth awake. Rubbing her sticky eyes, she peered up into Rogan’s anxious, sweating face. Milky gray light spilled from the open hatch, the air damp and drizzly. The ship rocked softly, no sound to break into the quiet birdsong and murmured lap of water against the hull.

  “We’re going ashore,” he said.

  “Where’s Brendan?” she asked. Anger holding her fear in check—barely.

  “Topside.”

  He pulled her to her feet, skirts sodden, stockings clinging uncomfortably to her legs. She tried pinning her hair up in a quick knot, but the damp had caused her curls to frizz into an untameable mess and a crick in her neck made turning her head painful.

  Rogan gave a grunt of impatience, and Elisabeth surrendered, shoving the heavy wild mass back over her shoulders.

  “How is he?”

  “A bit the worse for wear, but still ornery as an ox. If he’s not careful, Croker’ll forget and stick him just to keep him quiet.”

  “Maybe that’s what Brendan’s hoping for.”

  Rogan’s expression darkened. “Enough talk. It’s time to go.”

  She scrambled up the ladder. Passed through the companionway beneath the gaze of sullen, hard-eyed sailors. Climbed to the upper deck, where mist floated like smoke over a narrow estuary, trees rising thick and black to either side of them in the somber gray of predawn.

  A dory had been lowered over the side, two men at the oars, two others seated in the bow. One in the stern. They moved like ghosts in the gauzy veil of morning fog.

  “Down the ladder. I’ll not leave you with them.” Rogan glanced over his shoulder at the men still on board.

  It didn’t take a mind reader to understand the danger to her if she remained. The crew stripped her with their eyes, whispered comments passing from sailor to sailor like an infection.

  “Thank you,” she said, holding to her shredded dignity.

  Rogan looked startled. Rubbed the back of his neck as he motioned her before him.

  She stepped upon the first rung of the rope ladder, gripping it tightly as she swung out over the black water. Her slippers sliding against the wet footholds, her skirts getting in her way as she descended.

  At the waterline, hands grabbed her about the waist, hauling her aboard the dory, where she was tossed into the stern beside the same pugnacious, jowly faced man she’d confronted yesterday, his pistol jammed hard in her ribs.

  Brendan sat between two others, hands bound behind him, hair silvered with damp. Ugly purple and black bruises marred his sun-bronzed face, thin bloody slashes crisscrossing his face, and one eye was swollen shut. A dark red stain damped his shirt to his left shoulder.

  She couldn’t help it. She started to tremble. Locking her knees together, she clamped her elbows against her sides to stifle the growing tremors. She hated being afraid. Being powerless. If only there was something she could do. Some way she could fight back.

  Rogan stepped into the boat, taking a seat across from her, never once looking Brendan’s way, as if he didn’t exist. Dropping his coat around Elisabeth’s shoulders, he murmured, “Won’t do you getting a chill on top of everything else.”

  The man with the gun gave a snort of crude laughter. “Such a gentleman. A chill’s the least of the bird’s worries.”

  Rogan speared the man with a stony gaze over the top of Elisabeth’s head, a jackknife appearing in his hand as if conjured. “You keep your comments to yourself, Sams,” he snarled, “or I’ll see you regret them.”

  Sams bristled, his face reddening. “You think so, Paddy? I’ll fucking blow your head off.”

  “English bug!”

  “Shut your yobs, the both of you,” Croker growled from his place beside Brendan. “If the excise tumbles to us, you can finish your arguing in Bodmin jail awaiting the assizes.”

  The dory shoved off, the oarlocks muffled in cloth, the water sliding in swirls and eddies with each stroke as light spread somber and gray across the sky. Rain took the place of mist, speckling the water as the boat ground against the rocky shoreline.

  Croker took command of Brendan while Sams grabbed Elisabeth, his fingers digging into her shoulder as he propelled her out onto the slimy rocks and up into the trees. Rogan trailing behind.

  The group pushed through the scrub and deeper into the spinney. Ahead, a narrow lonely track. A closed coach. And an enormous, barrel-chested man, his wispy white hair barely covering the gray skin of his head, his eyes pale as marbles.

  Elisabeth peered over her shoulder, but the river had vanished back into the swirling fog. Nothing to show a ship lay hidden only yards away. No sound but the crunch of trodden leaves, the mournful call of a nightingale from a nearby tree, and the pounding of her frightened heart.

  The cottage sat back off the road in a shallow valley, green, rocky hills rising up behind it. Brendan took in hasty impressions as he was hustled from the carriage to the door. The isolation. The number of guards lounging about in various poses of idleness. The way the trees closed in to the west. The narrow track into the hills that lay out of sight of the guards in the yard. And finally, the magic saturating the air. Buzzing up through his center. Not just the dark energy he expected congealing like sludge in his head, but a force outside the cottage walls that singed his mind with war and fire and images of death.

  He glanced at Rogan, the focal point of the energy, standing a few yards away with Elisabeth. He must still carry the Sh’vad Tual.

  Brendan felt it whispering to him. It was as if he was expected. As if someone or something beyond Máelodor awaited his arrival.

  Oss shoved Brendan forward, a guard moving to open the door and usher them through into the cottage’s surprisingly clean and comfortable interior. A tiny entry hall leading to a room at the back. A narrow set of stairs. Two front rooms to either side. One closed door. One open, from which someone called in dubious welcome.

  “Back already, Oss? Do you bring us company?”

  Like a knife along slate, the scrape of that familiar voice burned along Brendan’s bones, turning his blood to ice. Squaring his shoulders, he bowed his way beneath the doorway, allowing no glimpse of anything less than perfect confidence to cross his face. Máelodor wanted a groveling, terrified prisoner. Instead he’d find a mage as skillful and determined as himself.

  Brendan entered the gloomy room, a sulking fire burning to a few dull coals in the hearth, shutters drawn over the narrow window. The stuffy warmth caused sweat to bead upon Brendan’s forehead and cling stickily to his back.

  His host rose stiffly from an armchair. Leaning heavily upon a staff, he stepped out of the shadows.

  Son of a bitch! Bile chewed its way up Brendan’s throat as he tried not to show by even the flickering of an eyelid his complete repulsion. Was this the price for manipulating the forbidden magics? Would this have been his fate had he continued to work the dark arts?

  It had been less than a year since he’d last seen Máelodor, and in that time a horrible change had overtaken the master-mage. As a Heller, he had always possessed the ability to call upon the power of his fetch animal—even to take
on certain characteristics of that animal—but as the Unseelie magic consumed him, the line between animal and man was blurring in unspeakable ways.

  He’d lost all his hair, his scalp and forehead rough and crusty, except for the patches that had been replaced by glistening gray-green scales. His nose had flattened so that the nostrils were mere slits on either side of a narrow bump of cartilage, his mouth no more than a lipless grinning slash. His eyes protruded beneath scaly ridges that must have once been eyebrows, the slitted irises bearing a fevered intensity.

  Yet, the trade-off was obvious. Máelodor’s power throbbed the air, his personal wards impenetrable. If he’d been strong before, now he was damn near invincible. The strength needed to bring him down would need to be equally formidable.

  “No greeting for an old ally, Douglas? A man you once called comrade? Friend?” His eyes blazed. “Uncle?”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” Brendan replied smoothly. “Father may have honored you with his friendship, but you were always just poor old Simpkins to the rest of us. A dreary functionary with a flair for the dramatic. I see nothing’s changed.”

  The backhand rattled his teeth in his head. Disgusting and disgustingly strong. A bad combination.

  “Respect your elders and your betters, boy. A shame your father didn’t beat that lesson into you along with all the others. He might still be alive.” His hand shot out, grabbing Brendan’s chin, squeezing hard as he turned Brendan’s face this way and that. “You’ve more and more the look of Kilronan. The favorite son, weren’t you? How he loved you, the deluded fool.”

  Brendan wrenched away, coming up hard against the servant Oss’s chest.

  A slow, ugly smile parted Máelodor’s mouth in a black gape. “Touched a nerve, have I? Do you grieve for the old man still? Do you wonder how he died? I can tell you if you ask nicely. I can tell you how they all died. All but you . . . and me. Sole survivors of Amhas-draoi vengeance.” His voice dropped to a cold, snaky hiss. “The only two left who dared to dream for all Other and were punished for their vision.”

  “It was madness, and you know it. Any war begun by the Other will end in our destruction.”