Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Stolen Princess (Pirates of Felicity Book 2)

by Kelly St Clare

  “What did ye just call me?” she demanded.

  The sod didn’t even appear bothered. In fact, he appeared healthier than he had in days. The black circles under his eyes were smaller, and his skin seemed to have gained a golden hue, though he’d been tied in the hold out of the sun for nearly two days.

  “What’s that in yer hand?” he asked.

  Ebba shouldn’t say anything. Her crewmembers would be furious. Except they weren’t her crewmembers anymore, were they? They’d made that clear. Despite this, an uneasiness gripped her as she replied, “It be the dynami. That’s what Mercer Pockmark be after.”

  Jagger turned his head aside, voice furious. “Ye shouldn’t have showed me that, ye fool.”

  “Why not? Doesn’t mean a thing to me. Stupid thing has only brought harm.”

  Disbelief rippled through his eyes—charcoal in the dim light of the hold. “Aye, not even ye believe that.”

  Jagger could shut his flaming gob. But she asked, “Has Mercer told ye o’ this plunder? Why he’s after us?”

  The pirate shook his head and as though against his will, turned back to look at the tarnished silver cylinder in her hand. “What’s that just underneath the surface?” he grunted.

  Ebba held the dynami closer to his face. “Do ye remember how the mountain apple had that sheen to it? Like liquid pearls were swirlin’ in a current under the surface?”

  Jagger nodded.

  “I be thinkin’ it means there’s magic in stuff.” She tucked the dynami down into her tight jerkin, so it rested against her tunic. “Watch this.” Walking to a full barrel, she gripped the sides and lifted. The barrels rose as easy as if it were a bucket of water. “Cosmo says the word dynami means power.”

  “I’d say that seems accurate-like,” Jagger said hoarsely. When she turned, his eyes were rounded and set on the barrel she’d picked up. His eyes flickered to the dynami, and, in that rare, unguarded moment, she could tell a hundred thoughts were whipping through his mind.

  A loud moan echoed from the back of the hold.

  Ebba strode past Jagger to check on her pet wind sprite. Sally was sitting on her haunches with her face buried in the little bed.

  “Do ye have a head full o’ pain?” Ebba asked. “Brandy must be stronger than our grog.”

  Sally gave her a ‘ye don’t say’ look before dropping her head into her tiny hands.

  “Want some mangoes?”

  The wind sprite’s face paled and she hurled herself out of bed to an empty goblet.

  Ebba watched her pet vomit. “How is it ye get so much in and out o’ ye? I just can’t figure out where ye store it.”

  Sally finished heaving into the goblet and dragged herself back to Ebba. Tugging on Ebba’s pinkie, the sprite pointed at the top of Ebba’s jerkin.

  “Aye then, ye be needin’ some love, do ye?” Ebba swallowed thickly as her words struck an aching rawness inside. “All right. Ye can have a wee nap.” Ebba picked up Sally and deposited the sprite under her jerkin against her heart. It seemed rather close to her armpit, but Sally appeared to enjoy the spot. If she wasn’t underneath Ebba’s dreads, that was usually where the sprite crawled to.

  Ebba made her way back to Jagger to force him into more conversation, mostly because she knew her constant talking irritated him to no end, but a bit because she was lonely and sad, too. Her fathers had gone too far. They’d broken a promise to her. And after already trusting them again once, Ebba wasn’t sure what to do.

  Surprisingly, Jagger was the first to open his gob this time. Before any sound came out, he wrenched his eyes to stare in the direction of the main deck and went completely, predatorily still.

  “What—”

  He glared at her, shaking his head. “Shush, now. Did ye hear that?”

  Ebba crouched beside him and listened. She’d left Pillage on watch duty. He usually attacked anyone who tried to board Felicity when they were docked for trade. Ebba was confident she’d hear his complaints if anyone showed up.

  There was a scraping sound. Muffled. Soft.

  . . . Though that didn’t sound good. . . .

  The scraping was followed by a louder thud. She’d heard and felt that thud too many times to not recognize it. Someone had landed over the bulwark. Several someones. They were trying to be quiet, but with the seas this calm, every sound echoed in the hold.

  “Yer fathers?” Though tied to the barrel, Jagger seemed coiled to strike.

  Ebba shook her head and mumbled, “They’d be talkin’. We would’ve heard the rowboat come up alongside. Whoever it be, they’re at the bow. Must’ve monkey-climbed up the anchor rope. But I don’t know why Pillage ain’t makin’ a racket.”

  “The cat? He slunk past ten minutes ago. He’s in the back o’ the hold.”

  “Yer flamin’ kiddin’ me,” she groaned. That was the last time she trusted a cat to keep watch. “Ye don’t think it be—"

  “Malice,” Jagger finished, nostrils flaring and mouth set in determination. “Untie me.”

  The bilge door creaked open and Ebba’s breath came fast. They’d never been boarded before. How many were there? She had her usual two pistols and cutlass, but would those be enough. Ebba glanced around for more weapons. The passage would be the best place to fight. They’d have to filter through the small space.

  Jagger nudged her with his foot and brought his head close, flaxen hair swinging forward. “No time. Ye get in the back with ye. Hide and don’t make a sound. I’ll tell them ye’re all on Pleo.”

  She licked her lips and stared at the chaos of knots tying the pirate to the barrel. Tiny echoes came from the direction of the hallway; they were close. Ebba reached for the knots and Jagger shook his head, bobbing until he met her eyes. “Ye go on back there now. Don’t ye worry about me. I’ll cook up some lie. Ye know I be good at those.”

  Terror lodged in her throat.

  “Go on now,” Jagger breathed. “Don’t let him get more power.”

  Ebba took a pistol from her sash and pressed it into his hands. I’m sorry, she mouthed. Staying crouched, she ran on silent feet, ducking between the barrels to the back where Sally normally slept. The wind sprite had fallen asleep tucked in Ebba’s jerkin and had no cares in the world.

  Holding her breath, ears straining, and though she’d expected it, Ebba still froze when Malice found Jagger. There was a loud echoing clatter, and the muffled footsteps stopped.

  “You are alone?” a heavily accented voice asked.

  Ebba resisted the urge to peek over the barrels. The voice wasn’t one she recognized—the person wasn’t Swindles, Riot, or Pockmark.

  “Aye.” Jagger sounded off. Not anything like he should when faced with the crew he’d deserted. More curious than anything else.

  The person muttered to his companions and Ebba’s face screwed as she attempted to make out the words. Hold on a fish-fearing minute; they weren’t speaking pirate. Was the person clicking his tongue? The urge to peek over the barrels grew, and Ebba shoved it back again.

  There were grunts. There was a sawing sound of a dagger working through rope fibers. They were untying Jagger.

  “Where are ye takin’ me?” Jagger inquired in a mild voice.

  She should look. She needed to look.

  Sally let out a great snore and Ebba froze, clamping a hand down on the sprite in her jerkin. The intruders spoke in their guttural language again, but with an alarm and urgency in their tone that made it apparent they’d heard the snore.

  Shite.

  “Just the ship cat,” Jagger said smoothly.

  Should she meow? Her mind worked frantically to dredge up a plan. Planning really wasn’t her strong suit. She usually had a crew to help with that.

  Sally began to fidget under her hand and Ebba let up the pressure. The fidgeting didn’t stop but grew, taking on a panicked thrashing edge. What in Davy’s—

  The sprite bit her thumb through the jerkin, and Ebba bit down on a yelp. Sally pulled herself free, vomiting the sec
ond she’d cleared Ebba’s jerkin.

  And like everything the sprite seemed to do, the ringing of her heaving chunder was pirate-sized. . . .

  A strange sense of doom fell over Ebba as she half-listened to the footsteps pounding her way, and half-watched Sally wipe the bile from the corner of her mouth. Moving in a daze, Ebba batted Sally away with her palm, tracking her to make sure the sprite was out of sight behind a barrel. Then Ebba stood, and yanked her pistol free.

  Pulling back the hammer, she took aim.

  Twelve

  Ebba came to with a groan and a feeling that nothing in the world was where it ought to be.

  “What did ye eat for breakfast?”

  Her vision blurred and she made to rub her eyes, but found her hands were rather curiously stuck over her head. Silver eyes swam in front of her. Jagger. He was alive. And very, very close. But that didn’t really account for the swinging sensation and throbbing pain in her hands and feet.

  “Where’re we?” she slurred.

  “First, I need to know what ye ate for breakfast.”

  Ebba frowned. “Fish in garlic sauce, why?”

  “Explains a lot.”

  Why was he so close? Their bodies were pressed together, their faces smooshed cheek-to-cheek. Her heartbeat erupted in rapid staccato as she recalled the last moments on the ship. Ebba inhaled sharply, trying to free her hands and see down the length of her body.

  “Calm down,” the pirate said, rolling his eyes. “They hit ye over the head.” He paused briefly. “Ye dribbled all over my face while ye were out.” That explained the slight stickiness between their cheeks. “And now I smell like fish and garlic,” he added.

  “Where are we?” she hissed, completely disoriented. “Am I tied up? Who were those people?” It hadn’t been any of Malice’s crew, that’s for sure. They’d almost seemed like. . . .

  Jagger’s breath tickled her nose. His breath didn’t smell like fish and garlic, more like sea salt and fresh rope. Was that possible?

  “We’re strapped to a pole,” he answered. “We’re bein’ carried.”

  “Tribespeople,” Ebba said in a voice filled with doom. “They’re goin’ to eat our bones. They don’t even bother about the soft parts,” she advised him. “They like the good stuff in the middle o’ the thigh. They suck it out.”

  Jagger shook against her, and she looked at him suspiciously. Maybe he was shaking in fear—being from a tribe himself.

  A stick whacked her in the back and Ebba twisted away, shouting, “Ouch, ye flamin’ sod.” The stick hit her again, harder this time, accompanied by a series of clicking noises.

  “They’re tellin’ ye to shut yer gob.”

  “They could’ve just asked,” she huffed.

  “They’re only extendin’ those manners to people who don’t shoot them in the leg and try to run them through with a cutlass.”

  “Well ye could’ve taken one o’ them down with the pistol I gave ye,” she withered, trying to shift into a better spot.

  “Stop wigglin’, please.” He sounded pained. “And I tossed the pistol away as soon as ye left.”

  “What? Why?”

  “If I’d been taken hostage and tied up, do ye think I would’ve been given a pistol?”

  “I gave it to ye to use on yerself,” she said defensively.

  Jagger tried to turn and face her, but only succeeded in squishing their cheeks together more. He winced as she exhaled. “Ye gave me that pistol so I could shoot myself? And all ye mouthed was, ‘I’m sorry,’ afore runnin’ off?” That appeared to amuse him to no end.

  Some people were so ungrateful. “Next time, I won’t bother. I thought ye may rather be dead than to be back on Malice, is all.”

  He fell quiet, and Ebba used the moment to squint upward with her right eye. They were being carried through trees, a forest. The trees had thick trunks—a red-brown color—and sparse foliage. It was nothing like the dense and humid rainforest of Neos. This forest seemed dry and friendlier to human life. Instead of boas and frogs, she expected to see stags and eagles.

  “Yer breath truly reeks, fish lips.”

  She tried to kick him and earned another stinging whack of a stick across her back. “Why do ye all call me that?” Gathering her breath, she blew the entire chest full of air at Jagger’s nose.

  He gagged. “Because ye have big lips.”

  She wouldn’t pout, not outwardly. “Are they really that ugly?”

  The pirate’s brown lashes fanned down over his golden-bronze skin. He assessed her lips. “I didn’t say they were ugly. Just that they were big. Meant for . . . well, they’re just big-like.”

  That didn’t make her feel better.

  “Would ye rather have the lips of a stingray?” he asked.

  A snort tore loose before she could claw it back. “Stingrays don’t have lips.”

  “Exactly.”

  For some reason, the observation struck her fancy, and she burst into laughter that, instead of fading after a few seconds, grew in both volume and pitch.

  “Yer skull rum got shook up,” Jagger said, but chuckled after a moment.

  A stick whipped across her back and shut her up. Briefly. “Why do they hit me and not ye?”

  “Because ye’re an annoyin’ woman.”

  “I ain’t a woman.”

  He shifted and winced. “Aye, ye are. All woman.” His lashes fanned down as he looked at her body.

  Could he feel her cheeks heating? Ebba sincerely hoped not. She ignored his purring comment and eyed him in return. “Sink me, I feel sorry for the sods carryin’ us. Ye’re very oversized for the kind of man ye seem to be.”

  He snorted. “Bigger men should be bigger inside? Is that yer logic?” He wheezed in quiet laughter. “How do ye explain the wind sprite?”

  Ebba pretended not to hear, which was rather difficult when pressed against the person in question. “Now Cosmo, he should be yer size. And maybe ye should be his size. Or maybe smaller. Maybe the size o’ Grubby. When he’s slouched.”

  “Exosian scum,” Jagger seethed, all traces of amusement gone.

  Ebba smirked. “Why is it ye hate him so? Cosmo says he can’t remember seein’ ye in his life.”

  “I don’t hate him.”

  It was her turn to snort. “Aye. Ye do. Ye just try awful hard not to show it. Do ye know when ye look at everyone else except for one person, it’s pretty clear-like how ye feel?” Daft pirate.

  Jagger growled deep in his chest, and Ebba tensed, falling silent. In recent days, she’d felt slightly more comfortable with the Malice pirate, but she knew very little about him. Tied as they were, he couldn’t do anything. But being so close to the ugly rage suddenly emanating from him was scary enough to shut her up.

  “Don’t be comparin’ me to the likes o’ him. Mainland dirt. Ye have no idea. No idea at all. And if ye did, ye’d quickly see Cosmo should be the size of yer sprite, if anythin’.”

  Ebba’s eyes rounded. “Ye don’t just dislike mainlanders. Ye hate Cosmo. Why?”

  He ignored her and the minutes stretched out.

  Guess that was the end of that conversation. Her stomach rumbled. “Wish I ate some mangos afore I left.”

  “I wish ye’d eaten them, too,” he muttered, and then called out, “How long until we get there?”

  Ebba grinned as he got his answer in the form of a stick across his back.

  Ebba spoke. “My hands and feet are goin’ to fall right off—”

  “Dramatic.”

  “—followed by my eyeballs.”

  They sat in a dark hut. The last twenty minutes had been filled with an unpleasant needling sensation as rum filled up her hands and feet again after the ropes binding them were cut. “Where are we, do ye think?”

  “In the tribal lands o’ Pleo. This be the main tribe. Several smaller tribes are spread across the island, sister tribes o’ this one, but we’ve been brought to the chief.”

  “How do ye know that?”

  “I
listened while ye were gabbin’ away, that’s how.”

  The tribal language sounded like gibberish to Ebba, but it dawned on her Jagger would understand their language—being raised in the tribes of Neos. “Ye can get us out o’ this,” Ebba suddenly said.

  He quirked a brow. “There ain’t no ‘we.’”

  “But I gave ye a pistol back on the ship.”

  “To shoot myself. I ain’t sure that counts.”

  Well, sure, when he said it in that negative tone of voice. . . .

  Footsteps sounded outside, and Jagger stood, removing his black tunic. Ebba stared at his sculpted torso and the intricate tribal chest tattoo that covered him from one shoulder tip to the other and down to the middle of his breast bone. And swallowed. That was a hole heap of nice skin.

  But back to the matter at hand. Ebba hurried to remove her tunic. Jagger caught her hand as she fiddled with the bottom hem.

  “What are ye doin’?” he demanded, searching her face.

  She paused, eyeing him. “Takin’ off my tunic. Ye have more learnin’ than me right now. I’ll copy ye.”

  The pirate swore under his breath but backed away as the door swung open. “Leave yer bloody clothes on. I’m showin’ them my markings,” Jagger said in a low voice.

  Her eyes dropped to his chest again. Oh. Tunics off wasn’t just a standard tribe thing that everyone should do. “I’d’ve got that in a second,” she informed him. She was hit on the head recently. Her cheeks warmed as she let go of the hem and straightened her tunic.

  Ebba ignored Jagger’s snort and peered toward the front. Only the last dredges of sunlight streamed in, and a warrior stood just outside the open hut door.

  “Haere mai,” he said, spear in hand.

  The man’s skirt consisted of strand after strand of white and black beads strung in a curtain from a wide leather belt. She shifted her gaze to his long greenstone spear and tribal tattoos. The inked images and patterns weren’t as intricate as Jagger’s.

  Ebba wanted a tattoo.

  “He ain’t wearin’ much.” She observed.