by E. S. Bell
No! This time I will not fail her. I won’t.
“This way!” Grunt, from somewhere ahead. Niven still couldn’t believe the man could speak but there was no time to ponder the why of it. He did as the old sea dog—who was as spry and fleet as Whistle—had commanded.
Niven could hear ocean crashing on shore, like some distant mirage, and ran harder. Something seemed to jump up and bite him on the back of the thigh. Needle-sharp pain flared, and he nearly fell. But whatever had bit him—and he wasn’t about to turn around and look—couldn’t hold on, and his leg was released. The pain faded to a mild annoyance and he breathed a grateful prayer to the Shining face. Ahead, the jungle ended, and beyond that, there was the sea.
Dawn had come, brightly here in the open air, and Niven saw a Bazira ship, like a bruise on the horizon, sailing away. No…
The beach was littered with the dead. Niven counted ten bodies: three Bazira and seven pirates—Farendii by their olive coloring and dark hair—leaking blood into the gritty sand. Cat sat off by herself, her elbows resting on her knees, her dark blue eyes on the retreating Bazira ship. One hand still wore a glove but the other was bare, and in the light of day, Niven saw her hand wasn’t burned or iced, but stained orange. The same shade of orange as her hair.
But it was the sight of Ilior, crouched near the shore, and made the adherent’s heart plummet. He dropped his sword and ran to the Vai’Ensai.
“They have her,” Ilior rasped. “They have her…. We have to…must…”
Ilior’s body was a patchwork of white, but surprisingly that didn’t bother Niven. He was strong enough to heal every wound; he knew that now. But the pall of illness that hung over and around Ilior bothered Niven very much. Ilior’s eyes were rimmed yellow and his gray skin looked dry, despite the humidity.
He forced a comforting smile on his face, the same he used during his years of healing in the Forgotten Isles. A smile meant to say, “It’s not that bad,” when in truth his stomach churned at the gruesomeness of his patient’s wound.
He’s sick, and I can’t heal whatever he’s got.
He laid his hands on a particularly wide patch of white on Ilior’s shoulder. It was as cold as the ice that had created it. Niven said the sacred word. He held the healing, felt it swell within his heart like hope or happiness, and then channeled it into the Vai’Ensai. Every one of the icy patches faded from Ilior’s skin. The illness remained, just as Niven knew it would.
Ilior nodded in thanks, and stood up. Niven noticed he leaned on his great sword to do it. The crew of the Storm gathered round. “We have to go after them.”
Grunt nodded vigorously and looked at Niven. He raised his bushy brown expectantly.
“I…I don’t know,” Niven replied. “I don’t know what to do.”
“We have to follow them,” Ilior said. “There is nothing else to do.”
“But how?” Niven asked. “We don’t have a ship…”
Grunt grunted loudly and pointed south.
“The Storm, yes,” Niven said, wondering why Grunt was keeping up the charade that he was mute. Perhaps out of habit, but Niven thought the old sea dog kept glancing at Ilior fearfully. “But we don’t have a captain. It looks as if they took Julian too.”
“His name isn’t Julian,” said a voice. A female voice. Cat sat and watched the Bazira ship. “His name is Sebastian Vaas.”
The air seemed to tighten and Niven felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“What did you say?” Ilior whispered.
Cat kept her eyes on the horizon. “He is Bloody Bastian. The Black Star of the Eastern Edge. My prey, and escaped. Again.” She shook her head with its shock of orange hair and tossed a throwing knife into the sand in disgust.
“No,” Niven said. “Paladin Koren would not journey anywhere with…that man.”
“She would,” Cat said without looking up, “if she didn’t know it was him.”
Niven stared at nothing, shocked at the revelation from Cat, shocked that Cat was the one who uttered it. “Who are you?”
Cat didn’t reply. She took off her other glove and tossed in the sand beside the knife, then ran both orange-stained hands through her cropped, orange-stained hair.
Ilior stood as still as stone, but for his wheezing breath. “What is going on here?” he asked finally, his voice dangerously low. Cat was further down the beach but the crew was near. He rounded on them, towering over the all. “What game is this?” he seethed. “What are you playing at? Tell me now!”
“Ilior,” Niven said, hearing the tremor in his voice, “they can’t speak…” He looked at Grunt. “Can they?”
Ilior was too enraged to hear Niven’s question. He took hold of Spit by the collar and the man was too frightened to do more than stare at the dragonman’s snarling visage so close to his own. “You knew. You always knew…”
Spit shook his head frantically, and Cur unsheathed his cutlass. Ilior knocked it away with his forearm as if it were a buzzing insect.
“Why was he on Uago?” the dragonman demanded of all of them. “Why did he agree to sail her to Saliz? You know, don’t you? Don’t you?”
Whistle wept silently, his face buried behind Cur’s shoulder. Grunt stepped forward and shoved Ilior away from Spit. Ilior was ill enough that he actually fell to one knee. Or perhaps it was the enormity of the situation that drained his strength. Niven’s own legs felt weak.
Sebastian Vaas. It can’t be….
“They didn’t know.”
Ilior whirled around and stared at the old man. “You…Lies upon lies,” he seethed. “The girl and now you. Who else? Who else among you has betrayed her?”
“I told you, they didn’t know.” Grunt jerked his bearded chin at the crew. “Look at them.” The men who had sailed with him for years wore identical expressions of shock. “Sorry, lads,” Grunt said. “I truly am.”
“You’re sorry,” Ilior snarled. “Since you can speak, tell me this: he was hired to kill her, wasn’t he? By the Bazira?”
Hearing the words aloud made Niven’s stomach queasy. “No,” he said. “It can’t be true.”
Grunt shook his head. “We waste time. That ship is sailing away and we know not where it goes. We can’t lose sight of it.”
Ilior strode to Grunt and gripped him by the shirt ruff.
“I should kill you now. He was hired to kill her, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?”
“Aye,” Cat told Ilior. “Sebastian Vaas was charged with killing Selena and Accora. Hired by the Bazira on Isle Kabak.”
“How do you know?” Niven asked.
“Because I’ve been hunting Vaas for three years now.” She shook her head. “And now he’s slipping through my fingers.”
“He’s not the same man they sing songs about,” Grunt said. “He hasn’t…worked in four years.”
“Until Selena,” Ilior snarled. He glared at Grunt a moment more and then released him.
“He’s still worth thousands in gold,” Cat said. She got up, brushing sand off the seat of her boy’s trousers. “We’ll take the Storm. I can captain her. If we hurry, we might be able to keep sight of the Bazira frigate. Might.”
Ilior nodded. “Let’s go.”
“I want to save them both,” Grunt told Cat, “but I can’t let you take Sebastian. He’s worth more to me than your bounty.”
“You going to try to stop us?” Ilior growled. He hefted his sword. “We will get back to the ship, and you will crew it. Under Cat.”
Niven moved close to Grunt. “We’ll lose them both if we don’t hurry,” he said quietly. “Julian…” he cleared his throat, “I mean…Sebastian can take care of himself, yes? We can sort the rest out later.”
Grunt scratched his beard. “If the wind changes, we’ll lose them for certain.”
“Yes. Good,” Niven said, though in reality not one thing about this situation was good. The crew eyed Cat with hostility, Grunt with mistrust and betrayal, and Ilior looked ready to run them all through at
the slightest provocation. “Well,” he said, forcing another of smile, “let’s sail.”
Cat stomped over the decks as she barked orders and inspected the Black Storm.
“Pity we haven’t time for repairs on Huerta,” she told Niven. “The topsails we’ll manage without, but it’ll be dodgy with only one staysail.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Niven replied.
Cat rolled her eyes. “It means we’re going to be slow and clumsy, and the Bazira vessel has a fantastic head start.”
Ilior stopped his work letting out the foresail. “But we can still catch them, yes?” he asked. The crew scurried behind him, readying the ship for sail. Ori helped with as much facility as if she had her sight.
Cat chewed her lip. “It’s not so easy as that. We have half of Saliz’s coast to sail around just to get on their same wind. If they’re on the same wind and not vanished. Otherwise…”
“There is no ‘otherwise’,” Ilior said. “We follow them and we catch up.”
“Aye, I’m as eager as you,” Cat said, “but I’m telling you what we face. Best to know where they were headed and stay far astern of them, out of their sights.” She glanced around. “Any ideas?”
“To Bacchus,” Niven said. “Gareth said he worked for Bacchus.”
“But which island?” Cat asked. “The old witch was supposed to tell Selena—”
Ori slipped up between them. She had appeared to them in the jungle as they passed through on their way to the Black Storm like a ghost. Without her to guide them, they would’ve lost valuable time trying to make it to the southern shore where the Storm was anchored. But once aboard, she remained aloof. Niven had almost forgotten she was there.
She turned her sightless gaze to the horizon, as if she could see the horizon. “I know where Bacchus is.”
Escape and Capture
She leaned in to him and gently laid her lips to his cheek, kissing him softly. When she started to pull away, he held her hands tightly. Their eyes met and for a second, she was inexplicably terrified.
“No, don’t be scared,” he whispered and then kissed her hard. His mouth was warm on hers; she could feel the heat. For the first time in a decade, she could feel it. She melted against him.
A flash of steel in the lower periphery of her vision, and then a sharp, glassy pain as his blade slipped under her ribs. He held her as she slid to the floor, cradling her all the way down. His breath was hot against her cheek, and she could feel that too.
“Selena…”
His hand holding the blade twisted, came free, and then plunged in again and again…
Selena woke from her doze with a start. The ship had lulled her into a shallow sleep but her bonds sent slivers of pain down her arms and shoulders. She was on her knees, her hands tied behind her to some post or beam. The dream made her gasp through her nose as the gag was still tied tightly around her mouth. It tasted foul and dry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had water.
She raised her head slowly, wincing at the stiffness in her neck. The hold was dim with only slants of light finding their way in between the planks of the deckhead. He was across from her, watching her. He wasn’t gagged and when he moved to speak, she shook her head at him.
The time for him to speak to her was long past.
Selena squeezed her eyes shut to the pain that gripped her heart in a merciless vise. She looked instead to Accora. The old woman had spent most of their voyage—nearly two days, Selena guessed—staring vacantly at nothing. Lost. But now she was working her jaw side to side, over and over. The gag had loosened and that had given the old woman new fire. Selena’s own bonds were tight and unrelenting. She dozed again.
She dreamt of another kiss. It was exquisite in every way and then Julian’s hands closed around her throat and began to squeeze….
She woke with a start, her chest hitching. Julian’s face was a mask of anguish as he watched her.
His name is not Julian. She looked away.
The sunlight that found its way into the hold was grayish and dull now, and she imagined a sky of clouds. The air smelled thick, as of rain, but Selena couldn’t be sure. The hold was full of foodstuffs that scented the air: sacks of dried beans, barley, cured pork. After the first day, her stomach had complained for smelling what she could not eat, but now her thirst commanded attention. Only twice had Jude Gracus come down to allow them to relieve themselves, but never to offer food and only enough water to drink to keep them alive. She taunted Selena. The Bazira woman caressed Julian’s face that was ashen gray and ran her fingers over the burnt skin of his neck as if he weren’t injured. All the while calling him ‘Sebastian’ with a triumphant pleasure, as if she had created him herself.
My name is Sebastian Vaas. I was hired by the Bazira to kill you.
Selena hadn’t believed it. Julian’s pledge to serve her and die for her had been too real, too full of desperate sincerity. Their lovemaking had been too perfect; his eyes had regarded her with a depth of feeling that was impossible to counterfeit. Or so she’d thought.
They hadn’t gagged Julian. When Jude was gone, he was free to tell her that it was all a lie. But he did not. Selena had stared at him, beseeching with her eyes, waiting for him to recant. His answer was in his silence, and did not look away or bow his head in shame. He met her stupefied gaze unflinching, as if her horror were a punishment to be borne. And when he’d had enough, he whispered only, “I never could. Never.”
Selena was glad for her gag then. His name is Sebastian. Your Julian is gone, she thought. Then, I must not weep or I will never stop.
Accora was making muffled grunting sounds. Selena turned her head in time to see the old woman had finally worked the gag down to her chin. She inhaled several times and then smiled in tired triumph. She worked her hands back and forth behind her, muttering the Bazira sacred word to freeze the ropes that bound her.
“You must not despair,” she told Selena. “I thought we were done but no…These Bazira, they are stupid with arrogance. They underestimate us. We will—Don’t look at him!” she hissed when Selena’s gaze drifted to Sebastian. “Waste not one more thought on that betrayer.”
Not betrayer, Selena thought. Trickster. Trickster and Supplicant, both, just as An-Lan said. She was right about all of it. And who shall be the Sacrifice? She offered a silent prayer to the god that Ilior remain safe on Isle Saliz. But was her god listening anymore? Shaizan, the Ho Sun god told her the truth. The Shining face was silent.
“He is what I knew he was,” Accora was saying, “a danger.”
“And what are you?” Sebastian asked. He sounded weak. “You set Selena on Bacchus as much as the Alliance did. And for what? What do you get when she fights him?”
Accora ignored him but whispered her sacred word again, and worried her wrists behind her back. “Healing,” she told Selena. “You stormed away from me like a child throwing a tantrum, and so never learned the final lesson. It’s your healing. It is what stands between you and Bacchus’s deadly visions.”
The woman’s urgent, hopeful tone sounded ridiculous in Selena’s ears. She felt helpless, her prayers silenced, her sword stolen, and her hope and love stripped away until she was left raw and broken. The Shining face had forsaken her. It was as plain as the hole in her chest.
Or is this the punishment for breaking the edict? I slept with a man who is not Aluren? Is the Shining face so wrathful…?
“No!” Accora seethed. “Do not give up! I can read your eyes that your will is dying. It’s not over yet. We are not done.” And as if to emphasize her words, the rope that had bound her wrist cracked and shattered, frozen by her ice. She smiled triumphantly, holding up her bloodied wrists, scratched raw. “You see?”
She crawled across the hold; her gray robes now torn and grimy. “We will yet prevail.” Accora loosened Selena’s gag. Selena worked it down to her chin and sucked in deep drafts of air.
“How?” she croaked. “How will healing block Bacchus’s
visions?”
Accora tugged on Selena’s ropes. “I’m too weak,” she muttered. “They don’t feed an old woman? Krystak.” Selena winced as ice lanced over her wrists. “Draw it in,” Accora said, “hold it, and when the terrors come at you, use the magic to undo them.”
“But how?” Selena asked. “I can channel the magic to a wound. How can I channel it to something that only exists in my mind?”
Accora took Selena’s chin in her hands, hands that felt dry like old paper. “You are stronger than you believe. Stronger, surely, than the Alliance or Skye or your precious Ilior know. That is why they fear you. That is why the first two sent you to die, and the third seeks to keep you from knowing your true self.”
A thumping came from overheard and both women jumped. “They’re loose,” she whispered, and Selena could feel a little bit of give in the ropes on her wrists. Accora replaced Selena’s gag, also looser now. She patted her cheek. “We’re not done yet.”
Sebastian snorted. “We.”
“Yes,” Accora hissed. “The we of she and I. You? You’re dead, Sebastian Vaas. I can smell it on you already.” She quickly returned to her place, adjusted her gag, and clasped her hands behind her back.
Jude Gracus slipped into the hold and surveyed her captives. “We’ve arrived.” She turned her dark-eyed gaze on Selena, and said with a mocking smile, “Welcome back.”
The sun was setting as Jude took them in a skiff from the Bazira ship to the tiny little island where Bacchus lived. Four men rowed, four others sat with hands on the hilts of their curved blades, eyeing the prisoners who sat huddled in the middle. Selena watched the island draw near. She had never been this close. During the war, she’d been leagues away, safe on a ship while her spell destroyed the Zak’reth and the villagers alike.
Isle Calinda.
Then we came at it from the southeast, Selena thought trying to keep her thoughts occupied. Her heart was racing. Judging from the setting sun, we’re now sailing from the northwest. We are coming to dock on the other side of the island from where I…From where I…
