Shadow Hunted (The Collector Chronicles Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He drifted past her and Carth waited long enough to see if he might glance up, but he never did. Could this be the Collector? The occasional furtive glance around him made that less likely, as did the fact that he came alone. If this were the Collector, Carth had a sense that he wouldn’t be leaving by himself. He would have others with him. Should she follow? If she did, she abandoned watching for the Collector, but maybe the Collector wouldn’t reveal himself the same way. It seemed as if he were smart, possibly clever enough to know that she attempted to observe him. If so, he might not leave the building himself.

  She would follow. That way, she could at least get some information. It might not be the same as finding the Collector, but she could find someone who would help her learn what he was after.

  Carth crawled along the roofline, keeping hidden in darkness, dampening the sounds of her passing with a surge of shadows. She used only the slightest amount, not wanting to draw any attention if this man were somehow attuned to them.

  When he disappeared around the corner, Carth decided to jump to the next rooftop. She could have crawled along the street, but up here it was easier to remain concealed and not be so dependent upon the shadows. When she jumped, she hoped that she wasn’t too visible and that anyone who might be on the street below wouldn’t be looking up at the same time. She’d wrapped the shadows around her, attempting to make herself as difficult to see as possible, but didn’t know whether it was effective.

  She caught sight of the man still moving in the distance. He was headed toward the outer row of buildings that lined the ridge overlooking the sea. From here, she could watch him easily. When he started along the slope leading down toward the water, Carth could follow that as well.

  As he disappeared from view, she jumped down and hurried toward the street in the distance. From that vantage, she could just make him out, and he disappeared down the road as it led down to the docks. It was a strange time to be departing, a time when no one was out in the night, only this man. What was he after? Was there something the Collector didn’t want observed? If that were the case, this would be the way to do it. Even the constables seemed to be holed up for the night, as if they didn’t care for the darkness.

  From here, she could see him heading farther down the shore, and then toward a ship.

  She glanced into the deeper part of the harbor, where the Goth Spald was anchored, but he wouldn’t head that way. His path wouldn’t take him to it. Wherever he was heading was nearby, close enough that he could get to it.

  It was a small ship. The boat was not large enough to make a deep-water crossing but was large enough to navigate along the coast. Carth found that interesting.

  The ship backed out under several sets of oars and quickly sliced through the water, heading north.

  Carth watched, curiosity making her wonder whether there was anything that he might be heading toward that would give her some answers. She thought of the smugglers along the river, but a ship like that wouldn’t be swift enough to reach them. Not easily.

  She wanted to follow.

  No, she thought that she needed to follow.

  Carth glanced back into the city, knowing that anything she did now, any way that she might track this man, would leave Jenna stranded. She didn’t want to leave her there for too long, but could this task only take a little while? Could she find some answers and use Jenna’s captivity for some benefit?

  There wasn’t anything that she could do now, anyway. Without knowing exactly what the constable might try to do, she wasn’t willing to break Jenna out of the stockade. Her friend was suffering, but hopefully not so much that Carth couldn’t bring her back again.

  She pulled on the power of the shadows, drawing them into her to strengthen her, and jumped.

  The jump took her all the way to the shoreline. She landed with a soft thud and hurried along the dock, making her way toward her ship. She would need to be quick if she intended to figure out where this man was going, and moving quickly meant that she would have to rouse the others on board the Goth Spald.

  Following a small boat such as the one this man had taken would be difficult in hers. She would draw attention. There was no way that she wouldn’t be seen sailing after him.

  What she needed was something smaller and less obvious.

  That meant she might have to take something, and she wasn’t opposed to it, but she feared that she would draw even more attention from the constables.

  If she didn’t, then the Collector would be able to get his man away, and she wouldn’t be able to determine what he might be after.

  No. She needed to figure this out. She wasn’t opposed to borrowing another boat. She would return it.

  What she needed was something easy enough to handle on her own, but sleek enough that it would move with some speed. She could augment the boat’s speed using the shadows, so she didn’t worry that it needed to be the swiftest of boats.

  She found it nearest the shoreline. It was a transport boat, with a sharp keel and a narrow profile that she could make good time with. Carth looked around, pulling the shadows around her as she approached it, and quickly untied. She pushed off with the oars, sweeping them through the water, and sent a surge of shadows behind her to press her more quickly. Soon she was moving rapidly through the water, trailing along the coastline as she followed the other boat.

  She was somewhat concerned that she might have lost sight of it, but in the distance, she caught up to it and continued sweeping toward it. Carth rolled the shadows around her in a fog, thickening them so that she would draw even less attention, but made certain to position herself closer to the shoreline. That way, she could move even more quietly and be less likely to be seen.

  The boat steered toward a section of rock along the shoreline.

  Carth withdrew her connection to the shadows, slowing her boat. She drifted, moving more cautiously now. The other ship navigated around a rocky prominence and disappeared.

  Had Carth seen that same prominence when they had sailed?

  She didn’t think that she had, but they hadn’t spent much time looking here. She had gone looking for the smugglers’ village, less concerned about searching for interesting rock formations. Perhaps that had been a mistake. Maybe there was another location here that the Collector used.

  Carth kept the oars out of the water. Using them would only make noise, even if nothing more than a splash.

  She drifted slowly. The ship reached the rocky prominence, and Carth hesitated, now using a combination of both the shadows and the flame to veer around the rock.

  Her heart fluttered. She was only somewhat nervous that she might be caught, but mostly because the last time she had encountered the Collector’s men, she had not had the advantage of her magic. If nothing else, she knew about it now and was prepared for an absence in that ability.

  Besides, her intent here was not to fight. Her intent was to gather information. She would observe, see what the Collector might be after, and then she could return better prepared for whatever else she might need to do.

  She noticed a blackened cavern cut into the rock, blocking access.

  The ship was nowhere to be seen.

  Yet she knew where the ship had gone. It had disappeared into this cavern.

  Carth didn’t think she could bring her boat in here. If she did, it would be difficult to escape if she needed to do so.

  She brought the boat around the rocky prominence again and found an area where she could loop it around a section of rock, enough that she could keep it tied in place.

  She crawled along the rock, making her way toward the cave opening. She moved slowly, keeping the shadows wrapped around her as little more than a buffer. If these were the Collector’s men—and she suspected that they were—there might not be much she could do other than to hope that the darkness around her would conceal her passing. A small ledge of rock allowed her to make her way deeper into the cave, but it wasn’t much, and a single misstep would lead her to tumb
le into the water. Even now, the sound of her breathing seemed to echo off the rocks and she struggled to control it, trying to quiet any sound that she made, uncertain whether she was effective. How much control over the darkness did the Collector’s men have? They had already proven that they could see through the darkness, but could they hear when she used the shadows to mute her passing?

  She pulled on the shadows enough to look into the distance. Drawing them this way strengthened her, but it also made everything lighter, enough that she could see more clearly even through the darkness. She saw nothing. There was no sign of the ship, no sign of any movement. If they were here, there must be some other place that they had gone.

  Carth saw no evidence of it.

  She continued forward. As she went, she allowed herself to move more freely, less concerned about making too much noise. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the cavern. Maybe it veered off the farther she went.

  A more troubling possibility would be that the Collector and his men had some other way of concealing their passing. Could he have hidden his ship in some way? If so, perhaps the Collector was more dangerous than Carth had realized.

  No. It didn’t seem likely. If he had been able to do so, wouldn’t he have done it out on the sea? Why do it now, waiting until only Carth followed? They had already proven that they weren’t afraid of her and that they could effectively counter her, so it didn’t seem as if they would be that concerned with her connection to the shadows.

  That meant there was some other place here in which they had hidden.

  Carth continued to make her way along the rock, beginning to lose track of time as she went. Eventually, her friends on the ship would begin to worry about her disappearance. Yet, now that she was here, she felt an even greater desire to figure out what was going on and whether the Collector and his men were hiding from her or hiding from the smugglers.

  Maybe she would find those she had rescued from the Collector.

  After what seemed an impossibly long time, she noticed the shape of the cavern began to change. Carth crept along the rock, keeping her head low as she went, keeping her back pressed against the rock, not wanting to reveal herself before she needed to. She eventually saw movement and she stopped.

  Ships.

  There were several of them. All were large, and they reminded her of the ship that had attacked hers, armed with ballistas and prepared to attack if it were necessary.

  This was a fleet.

  The Collector had an entire fleet at his disposal?

  That was worse than what she could have imagined. She hadn’t expected the Collector to have so many ships available to him, and the fact that he did put her at a disadvantage. How could she control his attacks if he had so many weapons at his disposal?

  She continued to crawl forward, moving slowly now. As she did, she saw men working on board one of them. The others were empty, but Carth doubted they would remain so for long. It would be easy enough for them to navigate out of here, and this was a perfect place to remain hidden. It would be difficult to detect and yet was incredibly well protected.

  It was hard to believe that the Collector managed to keep his presence hidden from the constables. These people would have known the waters around their shores, and they would have known that such a place existed. Knowing that, how could they not have come looking for where the Collector hid?

  Unless the Collector had paid off the constables.

  Considering how much the constables seemed to value their lawfulness, Carth had a hard time believing that they would have allowed such a thing. Then again, she had seen many men over the years who’d succumbed to the promise of coin and profit.

  She tried moving closer, but there wasn’t much of a ledge left for her to walk along. If she went any farther, she would have to swim.

  Carth considered doing that and had begun lowering herself into the water when she heard the gentle swishing of movement behind her. Another ship.

  She turned and searched for a way to conceal herself. The oncoming ship approached quickly and seemed to know exactly where it was going despite the darkness.

  Even if Carth were sailing through here, even with her connection to the shadows, she doubted that she would have been quite so confident navigating into this chamber.

  She was missing something. But what?

  Carth pressed her back against the wall, keeping herself as concealed as she could. As the ship passed, little more than a shadow moving in front of her, she counted the men on board. There had to be a half dozen, and thankfully none of them looked in her direction.

  The ship pulled to a stop in front of the others, seemingly easily able to tell exactly where it was going. That impressed her almost as much as the fact that it had come in through the cave with confidence. Carth started to move forward, lowering herself into the water, when she heard someone shout on one of the ships.

  They had seen her.

  She dropped into the water, trying to mute the sound of her passing, trying to keep from splashing too loudly but uncertain whether she succeeded.

  She wouldn’t wait here, not with this many ships and not with the fact that they had already managed to overpower her. No. She could return with help. Now that she knew this place existed, she could come back.

  She started swimming, keeping her head underwater, pushing with the shadows as she went. There seemed to be a faint edge of resistance and she had to surge against it, trying to ignore the pressure that fought against her and managing to succeed. When the cavern changed directions, she popped her head above the water long enough to take a deep breath and peer back the way she had come. She saw several small boats in the water, all searching.

  She had been seen. This despite the fact that it was as dark as it was.

  That, more than anything, troubled her. She shouldn’t have been seen—not so easily.

  Even when she planned to return, would it be safe to do so? Would they recognize that she had been there once already?

  She swam along the cavern, not bothering to try to climb back out. She could move faster in the water than she could along the ledge and didn’t want to risk any of the men in the dinghies reaching her before she could get back into her boat. The water was cold, but she could use her connection to the flame to keep herself warm were it necessary.

  When she finally reached the mouth of the cavern, she let out a relieved sigh.

  She found the rocky prominence and crawled around it.

  The dinghy was gone.

  18

  Carth flopped onto the deck of the Goth Spald, breathing deeply as she did. She was exhausted from her swim and wanted nothing more than to rest. Dawn was beginning to creep above the horizon, enough that she realized that she had spent most of the night trying to understand the Collector and his men.

  Alayna appeared on the deck and glanced over at her.

  “What is it?” Her brow furrowed and her green eyes glittered with the morning sunlight.

  “I found the Collector’s ships,” Carth said.

  “You found ships?”

  Carth nodded and pulled herself up, taking a place near the mast, which she leaned against, breathing out heavily. “I was watching the Collector’s compound last night and I saw a man coming out of it.”

  “And you followed him. Alone.”

  “I did.”

  “You didn’t consider seeing if any of us would come with you?”

  “I thought about it, but you needed to stay with the ship.”

  “You thought about it and decided not to involve the rest of us.”

  Carth sent a surge of heat through her clothing, forcing the moisture out of them. Despite that, she shivered and fought the urge to lie down and sleep. Jenna still needed her.

  “I didn’t want to risk the rest of you ending up like Jenna.”

  Alayna watched her, as if trying to decide whether she believed the explanation or not. Carth hoped that she did, as she didn’t need to anger Alayna. She needed
her friend to remain on her side through all of this. “She’s still up there. We’re no closer to getting her out through lawful means,” Alayna said.

  “No. And if it comes down to it, we may have to break her out through unlawful means. But I fear the moment we do that is the moment that we have a third challenger. Already it’s enough with the Collector and the smugglers, trying to figure out what they’re all after. The moment we add something else—”

  “It’s about more than that,” Alayna said.

  “It is,” Carth said.

  “What?”

  Carth breathed out a sigh. “I’m not convinced that they’re wrong,” she said.

  “You’re not convinced that they jailed Jenna wrongly? I don’t know how you could say that. This is your friend. How could you say that you’re not sure that they’ve her captured wrongly?”

  “Did she get into a brawl in the tavern?”

  Alayna shrugged. “Most likely.”

  “And if she did, then who is responsible?”

  “You know that would be Jenna.”

  “Right. When we’ve gone places before, we’ve always intended to make things better. If we destroy the constabulary and the connections that they’ve kept up, we might end up making things worse and not better. That isn’t something that I’ve ever wanted to do.”

  Alayna nodded. “At what point will you decide that she can’t remain there any longer?”

  “She’s suffering. I know that. We have to somehow help ease her, and if we can, then maybe we can give her some peace to buy us some time to get her back out.”

  “And what if the constables are working with the Collector?” Alayna asked.

  Carth patted her friend on the shoulder. “You’re beginning to think too much like me.”

  “I thought that’s what you wanted of us.”

  “It is what I wanted. Don’t get me wrong; I’m pleased. I wasn’t sure that you would ever get to that point,” she said with a smile.