His fear melted instantly, replaced by deep pangs of grief. This was Panna’s hair. No doubt. Touching it brought him back to her, brought him back to her bench, his fingers running through her soft, dark hair. It smelled of her. And Senslar’s beret. Seeing it brought the swordmaster back, the smiling eyes, the calm demeanor, the gentle, firm command.
“I promised to find those you love, those who have helped you. And so I did as I promised. But I added one element, for my own satisfaction.” She took a folded piece of parchment from her jacket pocket, and opened it up. She showed him the image on it, then tossed it toward him. The wind caught it, and he put his foot on it before it could blow away, leaned down, picked it up.
The fire now crackling above the duo burned hotter, illuminated the image of Packer Throme. Wanted for Murder.
She smiled as the full extent of her power rolled over him. “I did not kill them, you see? You did.”
Packer looked at her. How could she have managed such a thing? But it all fell into place quickly, coldly, like a firing pin clicking within a well-oiled pistol. The scheme was masterful in its evil. Talon had arrived ashore and moved secretly. Whatever she did, whomever she killed, no one would know who did it. They would only know that some swordsman was on the loose at exactly the time Packer Throme, who had carefully proven to everyone his expert swordsmanship, had disappeared. Packer could imagine Dog swearing to everyone that Packer was the guilty one. He could imagine Pastor Seline’s broken heart. He could imagine it all.
“I also promised to kill you. And so, now I will.” She stood and drew her sword.
Packer just looked at her, tears in his eyes. “But why, Talon?”
She recognized the question. It came from the heart of his weakness. “Because I am strong, and you are weak. Because I am strong, and they were weak. Because there is no God who will fight for them, as there is no God who will fight for you.”
He was crippled inside. He had no will to fight her. “I don’t understand. You killed them only because they are weak?”
She stared back at him. “No. Because they pretend that their weakness is strength. Because they believe a God will save them in their weakness, and they teach others this stupidity.”
“Panna was weak. But Senslar Zendoda was not.”
She swallowed. “So it would seem.” And yet Panna lived, and Senslar did not. Senslar had fought her, and Panna had fled. Senslar had fought her. And so far, Packer had not. The pattern was unmistakable.
And then Packer did the one thing that Talon didn’t expect, the only thing that could send a shiver down her spine. He dropped his sword.
“You have killed me already, Talon.” He was quite prepared to die. He did not want to defeat her, if that meant he would be required to live on to see the results of his own pride, his own sin: the names of Panna and of Senslar added to the long, brutal roll of the dead in the Captain’s log, or on cold marble on some hillside…added to all the deaths, Vast and Achawuk, caused by his presumption, by his climbing into that barrel. Even if he could defeat Talon, then what? He would be tried for the murders of the two people he cared about most. No, he had no desire to fight, or to win. He was finished.
Talon stepped close, raised her sword, put the tip to Packer’s chest. He did not notice the tremor in it as she did so. He could not see her heart race. He could not know the image that rose in her mind, the memory of an embrace that reached into places she did not want to be reached. “Fight me!”
“No. I will die if God so wills it. If He wants me dead, not even you can keep me alive. If He wants me alive, you and a thousand Drammune warriors couldn’t kill me.”
She laughed. “I have killed, and I have given life. I have saved you, and now I will kill you. No God will do this. Just me.”
He shook his head. “I put myself in His hands, Talon. Not yours.”
And now the moment had come. A single thrust, and it was over. Proof would be hers. And yet, what would he do with a sword through his chest? What would he say? What look would be in his eyes? She saw in him now the same determination she had seen in Senslar Zendoda, the same fearlessness, the same focus, the same sadness, the same power. And yes, that’s what it was. It was not the power to crush and kill; it was something altogether different. She remembered Senslar’s iron embrace, that inescapable, overwhelming gentleness, that voice, soft as a lullaby in her ear.
Then Packer spread his arms wide, and opened his hands. Talon flinched. The image of the dying Christ, willingly giving Himself to death, was all she could see. Her eyes were drawn to his right hand, the damage there. He was helpless. But the power of God…She looked back at his face, unable to come to grips with what stood before her.
Packer saw fear. He saw terror in Talon’s eyes. He didn’t understand it. And then God granted him a vision, much as He had granted one to Senslar Zendoda. Packer saw within her the helplessness, the pain, the anguish that lived at the root of her soul. He didn’t understand it, but he saw it. He knew.
For the first time, she appeared before him as something other than evil incarnate, something more than a soulless killer. She was a woman who was once a child, who had been hurt, who had hardened herself, who had lashed out in anger, who had schooled herself in vengeance, and who was not yet beyond redemption.
Packer smiled gently. “Your Father in heaven loves you.” Packer meant to speak of her heavenly Father, of God, and couldn’t know what meaning his actual words conveyed. But Talon reacted as though he had hit her in the stomach. Her breath left her, and she hunched forward, eyes wild. She shook her head, and backed up to the burning stairs. The heat of the flames, now licking down like the sun, was strong.
“No!” she said. She kept her sword out in front of her, to ward him off. This worried Packer, not for him, but for her. He stepped forward, back into range, back to where the tip of her sword touched his chest. His arms were still spread wide. He would welcome death. But even more now, he would welcome her, if she would embrace life.
“Whatever you’ve done, He loves you.”
“No!” she cried again. It was as though Senslar, her father, had come to this boy and had told him all that had happened. But he couldn’t have! Packer Throme couldn’t know!
But her real fear was not that this was Senslar speaking to her, nor that Packer knew, and spoke the same. Her true fear was that this was the very voice of God. The God of weakness, the God of Nearing Vast, appearing before her, speaking through Packer. Her fear was that she was directly in contact with, directly in conflict with, the God of the universe.
If that were so, then she would address Him.
“Love is a lie!”
“No. Love is the power of God.” He found himself aching for her, wanting desperately for her to understand. He dropped his arms to his side. “You’ve been blind. You’ve believed a lie.”
“I have killed a thousand men, and You have not stopped me.”
Packer now understood that she was questioning God, speaking to God, not him. But he also heard a question she didn’t ask aloud. “He died to wash away the wrongs of the whole world. Even yours, Talon.”
She shook her head, and stepped backward up the first two steps. The heat was unbearable, the crackling flames just behind her.
“Stop now. Put down your sword.”
“I hate you. I despise your weakness.” But there was a wince of pain in her voice.
“When I am weak, then I am strong.”
“Lies! Yours is a religion for fools!”
“The wisdom of men is foolishness to God. Talon, the world is upside down. The powerful who seem to live at the top are really at the bottom. God’s power is with the poor and the humble. And the meek.”
“That is nonsense!” Talon climbed another two steps. The heat of the flames at her back was now painful, almost impossibly so. But the light in front of her was more painful yet.
“You abandoned me!” She grimaced, her face was contorted, her pain and anger now unveiled to the fou
ndations of her being. “You never cared for me! I was hurt and alone, and you never came!”
“I’m here now.”
Her eyes grew wild. That was Senslar’s voice; those were his eyes that looked at her.
She backed up onto a step that was now in flames, still several steps from the top of the stairway, from the quarterdeck itself. Packer put out a hand toward her, wanting to pull her back, but she pulled away, and then in the blink of an eye, lost her footing and tripped backward. Packer climbed the three steps in a leap, and reached for her as she tumbled into the flames.
She dropped her sword, and reached out to him, a look on her face that was a simple plea for help. Her hair ignited; a blazing halo. Packer lunged forward, but the floor below her, already ablaze, gave way with a loud crack. And she was gone into darkness, darkness that suddenly erupted into flame and smoke that billowed upward like a cloud.
Packer looked up, following the flame and the circle of sparks as it spiraled into the night sky. “Talon!” For the first time, he felt the full intensity of the heat. It roared and billowed at him, forcing him back down the stairs. He looked around him. The entire ship was now fully ablaze.
Across dark water, visible in the light of the flames, he could see the crew gathered on the deck of the Trophy Chase, watching wide-eyed.
Something grabbed Packer’s elbow. He looked down, saw a hand, looked up, saw Delaney’s face. “Let’s go!” Delaney yelled.
Packer let himself be led to the rail. The flames seemed to be all around them.
“Jump!” Delaney plunged feetfirst over the side. Packer followed. His sword he left behind him, resting on the burning deck.
Packer surfaced from the cold wet darkness, back to a world of fire and water, smoke and mist. Delaney was there, grinning as broadly as Packer had ever seen him.
Packer spit saltwater. “You’re safe! Did you find the key?”
“Didn’t need a key!” Delaney answered happily, pointing in the direction of the Chase. “Look!”
Not one but two heads bobbed in the water ahead of them. One of them was Mutter Cabe; the other Packer didn’t recognize. The man’s head was plastered in a wet, white bandage.
“He’s the carpenter’s mate!” Delaney exclaimed, sputtering with delight. “He got the tools. Pried us out!”
And then the head turned to face him, and Packer recognized the boy. “Marcus? Marcus Pile!”
A broad grin came back in answer.
CHAPTER 22
Home
The red dawn promised more rain, but the air was as crisp and cool as a fall afternoon. Seagulls careened in circles, squabbling over scraps as though this were but one more morning in an endless sequence. Panna’s chin was up, her face stoic. She stood among the crowds that had gathered to get a glimpse of the famous ship as she entered the bay in the pink and orange morning light. Surrounding Panna was a small force of armed men. The Sheriff of Mann was by her side, waiting patiently, his arms crossed across his chest and a flintlock pistol prominent in his belt. Panna’s wrists were manacled together behind her back.
The main points of her story could not be corroborated by anyone in the city. Bench had found one or two witnesses who could remember seeing Panna enter the Sheriff’s office, and with some prompting both men had said that, yes, she might have had a servant with her. Bench Urmand himself had seen the servant but could not recall her in any detail, and certainly had not found her remotely suspicious at the time. The Sheriff couldn’t be sure the woman was even connected to Panna. It seemed a complete absurdity that she was Talon, a ship’s officer on the Trophy Chase. Why should she be abroad in the City of Mann while Packer Throme, the son of a simple fisherman, was out at sea on that ship instead? Talon, it only made sense, was the one with the alibi.
A horse had gone missing from the Sheriff’s office, belonging to one of the slain deputies, but no one had actually missed it until it had been found and returned. The biggest news was the disappearance of the ship during the rainstorm, one of the Trophy Chase’s escorts, but no one knew who had taken it or how it had set sail, or if it had simply lost its moorings. The single sailor who had been left on guard was gone, and no one had seen him for three days now.
Bench had dutifully investigated Panna’s wild but certainly vivid story about stopping at a notorious inn out in the marshlands. Of the few people who could be induced to speak to him, none had ever heard of a woman named Talon. No one had seen any foreign-born women in weeks. The innkeeper was no help; she was blind and bedridden.
All in all, it was a much simpler story if Packer, who had a history of violent incidents, had turned criminal, fought and killed several people, and then turned on his old Swordmaster to prove his mettle. And Panna had simply lied to protect him. And as the Sheriff and every other law-enforcement officer knew, the simpler stories were more likely to be true. What Panna really knew, how much she was deceived and how much she willfully deceived others, all those were things the courts would sort out.
So Panna was put in irons, and kept safe in the Palace. Not in the dungeon, however. The prince had developed a soft spot for this hard-headed but lovely creature. She had been well-tended; occasionally better-tended than she thought proper, considering her circumstances, but neither the prince nor anyone else had laid a hand on her.
Panna stuck with her story. Talon had claimed to have killed Packer, but Talon had said a lot of things that were completely untrue. Panna swore to Bench and the prince and anyone who would listen that if the Trophy Chase ever docked again, Packer Throme, and thus she, would be vindicated. He had gone to sea, and had been at sea. Talon, the mercenary, had been behind every incident but one, the attack at Inbenigh, which for reasons the authorities couldn’t fathom, Panna insisted was her own doing.
So when the rider came at a furious clip to the Palace, to tell the prince that the great Trophy Chase had been sighted far offshore, the prince granted the girl and Bench Urmand a fast coach to the docks. If Packer Throme was aboard, then she could be set free. Bench didn’t like it, but there it was. The prince had a flare for the dramatic.
Bench glanced at Panna now and then; it was hard not to. She seemed serene and confident and painfully vulnerable at once. As the ship drew close to the dock, Panna peered into the rising sun, straining to see Packer’s face and form; her dark hair tangled, her elegant clothing rumpled and torn, her face and eyes puffy from lack of sleep.
Bench smelled familiar smoke, the incense of a matchlock pistol. His eyes scanned the docks in search of the source. He left Panna’s side, crossed the dock to where a man with a scarred face and a grizzled beard stood leaning against a post, watching the ship approach. Bench stepped quietly into place beside the bounty hunter, Dirk Menafee. “Sorry, Dirk—this one’s off the books.”
The man with the grizzled beard was surprised, then angered by the presence of the Sheriff. But there was nothing to be done about it. Now that the Sheriff had stepped in, there could be no reward. Dirk raised his pistol, licked his thumb and forefinger, and squeezed the ember out with a hiss. No use wasting the wick.
The choppy seas were slate-gray, their foam caps pink, as the wooden prow cut through them, rising, falling, rising wet again as though the ship were breathing gently, sleepily. Packer stood again at the prow in the early morning, above the carved lion, watching the Port of Mann grow on the horizon. He feared that only the ruins of his life awaited him there. He wanted to hope, to find it in him to believe it was possible that Panna and Senslar were alive. But he couldn’t. Doubt sat in his stomach like grapeshot.
“She might well have lied,” Delaney told him. “Talon wasn’t what you would call honorable.”
Packer nodded. He didn’t have any illusions about Talon. But he had thought often of that last look, the way she had reached out to him for help. Was she in fact reaching out to God? Or did she simply die in fear and anguish, after a lifetime of ensuring that others did the same? “But something happened to her,” Packer said, “there
at the end.”
Delaney nodded. Packer had told him the story. “In the end, she feared God,” Delaney said with finality, looking out over the sea. “But what good it did her, no man can say.”
Packer smiled inwardly at Delaney’s pronouncement, the grizzled reformed pirate speaking as a priest might, with somber ceremony and respect. He said it as an epitaph. Packer hoped it had done her great good.
But that was over. She was gone; he had to live with the damage she had already done. Talon had set out to destroy him and his world forever. It seemed utterly vain to hope for anything else. He dreaded finding out, learning with certainty Panna’s fate, a certainty that drew closer to him with every passing moment.
Delaney saw the pale, plaintive look on his friend’s face. “You never do know,” he said quietly. “Look at Marcus. Everyone thought he was dead. But he only got a musket ball to the head, that’s all. Didn’t even kill him.”
Packer nodded. They figured Scat’s shot had ricocheted off the yardarm before hitting the boy. “No one’s skull is thick enough to deflect a ball the way Marcus’s did,” Packer had told Delaney. “Not even yours.” And Delaney had climbed out to the end of the yard to see, and sure enough had found a dent in the hardened oak timber, little more than a thumbprint in size. He marveled that such a little thing had made the difference in a life.
“That he came around in the ocean without drowning, and then found that shallop, and then that the Camadan found him, it was like he couldn’t be killed no matter what. And why? Because God decides, and saves who He wants. If I’m not being too blunt about it.”
Packer nodded. “No, you’re not. You speak the truth.” Packer believed what Delaney said, but he also felt that a man could walk into danger and end up dead so easily, it seemed to carry no greater mystery than the notion that one stupid choice will kill you. But it helped to hear it from Delaney, who’d seen far more untimely deaths than Packer had.
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