Shadow Hunted (The Collector Chronicles Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “That’s it?”

  Eran shrugged. “Does it have to be about more?”

  Carth was convinced there was more to it. “What about the rumors that he’s after an Elder Stone?”

  Eran snorted. “Those are rumors.”

  “They’re more than rumors,” Kiara said.

  Eran glared at her. “Are they? What we’ve seen of the Collector is nothing more than a chase for power. It’s no different than others we’ve encountered.” He turned his attention to Carth, holding her with a hard gaze.

  “I don’t want power,” Carth said softly. “I want what’s right.”

  Silence fell between them. Finally, Eran spoke up. “I don’t know anything more. We thought we could find a way to trade for better terms. Maybe something more.” He met her eyes and his were haunted. “There’s not much known about him. No one we know has even seen him. He manages to stay ahead of us, almost as if he’s playing with us.”

  Kiara nodded. “The only time we’ve gotten lucky was the time we came across one of his ships.”

  “And stole from him. Abducted several of his people.”

  “You can judge us if you want, but we have done what we needed to survive. We were going to trade for our livelihood,” Eran said.

  Wasn’t it the same for Carth? Perhaps not the abduction, but doing what was needed to survive. That was all she had ever claimed. She had done it a different way, and though she didn’t agree with the way the smugglers might have operated, that didn’t mean that her way was right and their way was wrong. Maybe she had to revisit what she believed of the constables also. They had been rigid and had refused to compromise on the structure of discipline they offered, tormenting Jenna because they thought they needed to, but these were not people that Carth needed to overrule. She needed to find some way to work with them. It was different than what she had come across in other places. There was not the same corruption, and without that, how could Carth do anything other than try to work with them?

  “I’m not judging, not anymore. I made a mistake judging you at all.”

  “That’s why you came to help?” Kiara asked.

  “I came to help because it was the right thing to do,” Carth said.

  Kiara looked at the others on the dinghy. “We’re not much, not anymore, but perhaps we could work together.”

  “I think we should,” Carth said.

  “First we have to get off the water.”

  Carth sighed and continued to push with her shadows, sending them over waves that lacked the intensity of the ones they had struggled against before. The wind didn’t push against them in the same way, either. It seemed as if they had caught a fortuitous current, and they moved even more swiftly than what she would have been able to achieve with only her shadows.

  Someone shouted and began to point into the distance. Carth stood and peered into the growing light, making out the faint outline of something in the distance. As they approached, it became increasingly clear that it was a ship. Somehow, they had managed to find someone else on the water. For a moment, she thought that maybe it was the Collector, but she recognized the shape of the sails and then the ship itself.

  “It’s the Spald,” Carth said.

  Kiara looked at her. “What?”

  Carth smiled. “It’s my ship.”

  She wasn’t sure if they would notice the dinghies. They were too small against the water and the ship was heading in the same direction, so for the Spald to notice them, they would have to overtake her. Either that or she would have to move swiftly enough for Jenna to see them from the mast seat.

  She redoubled her effort, using the shadows to push with more and more strength until she began to catch up to her ship. After a while, it seemed as if the Spald began to slow, and then it was clear that they had. The ship turned, coming about so that it could catch up to the dinghies.

  Carth felt a wave of relief as they approached. When she had entered the storm, she wasn’t certain that she would ever get to safety, and then when the ship had sunk, Carth had resigned herself to her fate, expecting that she would sink alongside the ship and the smugglers. Instead, somehow she had survived. Somehow, they all had survived. And now they would get to safety. Now they would reach her friends, and they would get free.

  When the Spald pulled up alongside, Alayna looked down and saw Carth among them. “You’re alive.”

  “So it seems,” Carth said.

  Alayna looked at the others in the dinghy with Carth and shook her head. “How is it that you managed to keep them all alive?”

  “She wasn’t the one who kept us alive,” Kiara said as Jenna pulled her into the ship.

  Alayna arched a brow but Carth only shrugged. “I didn’t. I attempted to keep the ship from sinking, but failed. I tried to push the dinghy through the water faster, but even in that, I wasn’t enough to outrun the storm.”

  Carth climbed over the railing, relieved to be back on the deck of the Goth Spald. She looked around and noticed Linsay watching her from near the stairs leading below deck. Carth nodded to her and Linsay smiled tightly. She approached and let out a deep sigh.

  “Thank you,” Carth said.

  “Why?” Linsay asked.

  “I don’t know that I would’ve gone after them had it not been for your reminder.”

  Linsay grunted. “I doubt you needed my reminder. You likely would’ve come around eventually.” She watched as the smugglers came on board. There wasn’t enough room on the ship for all of them, not for an extended sail, but that wasn’t what they needed. They needed only to get to port, where they could be let off. “What now? I was looking at your map—”

  Carth chuckled. “Did you have to push Jenna out of the way?”

  Linsay frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s not important. What were you saying?”

  “I was just going to comment on the places near here where we could stop. There are a series of islands nearby, and any one of them should have a place that could provide supplies. They could remain with them.”

  Carth looked over at the smugglers. That was the same thing that Kiara had said, though she had a sense that the other woman didn’t really want to be stranded on a smaller island. That left limited options, though there were some.

  “I think we need to head to Keyall,” Carth said. “There should be ships there, especially if the Collector went after the smugglers.”

  “And what if the Collector didn’t?”

  Carth sighed. “Then we need to stay in Keyall and offer whatever support we can to the constable and the merchants. We need to reopen the trade routes so that the people of Keyall don’t suffer any more than is necessary.”

  “I don’t like it,” Linsay said.

  “I thought you liked Keyall.”

  “Oh, I like the city well enough. It’s this plan that you have. I don’t like the idea of returning, especially if we don’t know what we might face.”

  “Who says that we will face anything?” Carth asked. “Maybe the Collector went after the smugglers, and maybe his people were caught in the storm.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  Carth shrugged. There had been that ship that she had seen during the storm. It might have been nothing more than her imagination, but if it had been real, then wouldn’t it be possible for the Collector to have lost his people to the storm?

  “I don’t know that I believe it, but maybe he was weakened. At least, we can hope that he was.”

  Carth turned back to watching the people as they continued to board and get settled. The smugglers made quick work of tying up the dinghies, keeping them attached to the Spald. Carth felt a strange attachment to her dinghy, especially as it had kept her alive.

  She turned back to Linsay and found that the woman was gone. What had upset her? Was it the fact that they had so many more people on board, people who might displace her from her time with Boiyn? If anyone should be upset, Carth would have expected it to have b
een Boiyn, especially as he was quite particular about having his own space.

  Carth joined Alayna at the wheel.

  “If you’d like to navigate, you don’t need to ask permission. It is your ship.”

  “No. You’re doing well enough.” When Alayna glared at her, Carth flashed a smile. “Besides, I’m feeling a bit too tired to do much more than observe.”

  “You did a good thing.”

  “It was necessary. Linsay was right about that.”

  “Still. You did a good thing.”

  “I would love it if doing a good thing were not quite so life-threatening.”

  “I would like it if being with you weren’t quite so life-threatening, but we don’t always get what we want with that, do we?”

  Carth chuckled. “No. I guess we don’t. Maybe the next time—”

  “Carth!”

  Carth looked up and noticed Jenna sliding down the mast. She ran over.

  “What is it?”

  “You take a look,” Jenna said.

  Carth glanced over at Alayna. The other woman shrugged. “See? What did I tell you about being around you?”

  “We don’t know that it’s life-threatening.” Carth looked over at Jenna, but the look on her face said more than enough. “What is it?” she asked.

  “You have to see this for yourself.”

  Carth used a surge of shadows to jump, landing in the mast nest. Jenna climbed up more traditionally and joined her, pointing out into the distance to the east.

  It took Carth a moment for her eyes to adjust, but when they did, she saw what Jenna had seen.

  Flames.

  She sent a surge of shadows behind her, pushing the ship quickly through the water so they could reach the flames. By the time they did, the other ship was already sinking. As it did, the flames remained on the surface, not extinguishing as the ship went below.

  It was the same as what had happened with the constable’s ships.

  “What happened there?” Jenna asked.

  “The Collector happened,” Carth said. Anger bubbled up within her, but there was helplessness, too. It seemed that no matter what she did, the Collector managed to harm others.

  “What are we going to do?” Jenna asked.

  “We are going to go to Keyall. We are going to ensure that no one else suffers like that.”

  “Why Keyall?”

  “Because the Collector seems to find it important for some reason.” Could it be the Elder Stone? Linsay believed it nothing more than rumor, but Boiyn felt otherwise… and she believed Boiyn knew more than Linsay. “And we will ensure he isn’t able to harm anyone else.”

  Carth half-expected Jenna to argue with her, but she didn’t. She did nothing other than nod. Carth didn’t have to question what Alayna would want her to do—she knew that she would agree—but what of the smugglers? Would they agree? Would they help and ensure that the Collector didn’t harm anyone else the same way they had harmed those in Keyall—and now out on the ocean?

  Maybe the best option was for Carth not to give them the choice. She could bring them to Keyall—and to safety—and they could decide whether they participated. If they did, Carth would have more help in slowing and possibly stopping the Collector. If they didn’t, she would have to somehow convince the constable to participate.

  For some reason, Carth thought that might be almost as hard as stopping the Collector.

  32

  They found a few more ships before reaching Keyall, but thankfully, none were burning. Why had they attacked the other one?

  There was nothing about it that was unique, not from what Carth could tell. Nothing that would give them a reason to attack.

  Then why?

  At each ship, Carth jumped over, trying to placate the crew before warning them to remain away from Keyall, at least for now. They would be able to return, but only once Carth had established her ability to protect them.

  As they approached the city, Alayna looked over at her. “Do you think they will even know what you intend?”

  Carth shook her head. “They won’t know. Maybe that’s for the best. Even if they did know what we did for them, I don’t know that it would change anything.”

  “And you don’t want to change anything for them?”

  Carth glanced over, arching a brow. “You know that’s not true.”

  “But you also don’t want the recognition.”

  “I don’t need the recognition. Wanting it is a very different matter.”

  “And you don’t want it, either.”

  Carth only smiled. “No. I don’t want it, either.”

  “Yet you’re willing to suggest that trade resume in Keyall.”

  “You don’t think that it should?”

  “I don’t know that it’s up to me. All I know is that you have spent plenty of time ensuring that the Collector is resisted, and we don’t know whether we’ve done enough to ensure that he doesn’t harm others in Keyall.”

  Carth stared at the city, trying to think of what she would say, how she would respond to Alayna, but knowing that she was right. It was possible that there was nothing that she could do to prevent the Collector from harming those she had intended to protect in Keyall. Then again, there might be nothing that she could do regardless. That had never stopped her before. And, Carth knew, it wouldn’t stop her now. She wanted to see what she could do to help those in the city, and she wanted to see—

  “Carth?” Alayna said.

  Carth shook herself and glanced over. “What is it?”

  “What do you see over there?”

  Carth stared into the distance. At first, she saw nothing more than the orange glow of the sun rising over the horizon. She had seen similar sunrises many times over the years, and each time, she had felt the same sense of wonder in the beauty that she observed. This time was no different. The sun glowed brightly, almost dancing as it shifted and shimmered over the water, the undulating waves making the sunlight seem to move almost as if it were flames.

  Carth’s breath caught. “That’s not the sun,” she said.

  “I didn’t think so either,” Alayna said.

  Carth glanced behind her. Several smugglers lingered on the deck. At any given time, she could often find several of them there. They seemed to prefer to remain there, not wanting to clutter up the cabins, and Carth didn’t blame them. Their quarters were cramped, and most had been happy to accept them, moving aside so that they had the space they needed, but Boiyn had not. Since the smugglers had come on board, Boiyn had kept mostly to himself. He had been reserved.

  “That will be the Collector,” she said to Alayna.

  “Probably,” she said. “Why attack now?”

  Carth clenched her jaw, hating that she thought she knew the answer and hating what it implied. “Because he didn’t expect us to be there.” The Collector had known that Carth had left Keyall. Somehow. “We have to stop this.”

  “I agree. But you don’t have to do it by yourself. Let the rest of us help. Jenna and myself can be enhanced, and maybe some of the smugglers would even assist.”

  Carth considered. She liked the idea of having help, but she didn’t know what they could do. If the flames were magical—and Carth wasn’t entirely certain that they were—then there might not be anything they could do. If they weren’t, even Boiyn hadn’t discovered any way of quenching them, and he had been studying them for quite some time.

  She started searching the shadows around the ship, creating a current that drove them forward with increasing speed. The city loomed in front of them, and a dozen ships burned in the harbor. In the early-morning light, the flames were unnatural. They were much different than what she had seen during the night, or even what she had encountered on the isolated ship out on the sea.

  The nearest ship was still not completely destroyed. Carth surged on an explosion of shadow and flames and landed on the deck of the nearest ship. She began to draw away the flame using her connection to the S’al, wanting to do n
othing more than pour the heat and flame into the ocean. Water hissed and the unnatural fire continued to resist her. She continued to pull, drawing as much as she could, stealing the heat from it, but it failed.

  Would the shadows help?

  Carth hadn’t tried them on the flames before, but they often acted as a physical thing. She had used them as fog and to mask her presence, but had never considered trying to use them to extinguish the flame. Would it even work?

  Carth began wrapping the shadows around the flame, pushing outward. She drew more and more, summoning the shadows, drawing from the smallest areas of darkness around her, but with the rising sunlight, there was a limit to how much she could summon.

  The ship began to sink, and Carth shifted her focus. How many were left alive on board?

  She looked around and saw none on deck.

  She created an explosion, forcing a hole in the deck, and dropped to the lower level. Down here, she searched for signs of life, racing along the hall and kicking open each cabin, but found no one. It was a relief, but where had they gone?

  Carth raced back and exploded back upward, jumping back to the Goth Spald.

  “What did you find?” Alayna asked.

  “There was no one there.”

  “No one?”

  Carth shook her head. Had they jumped? If so, who would have rescued them?

  “I tried to put out the flames, but neither shadow nor the flame was effective.”

  “Try this.” Boiyn stood behind her, holding a jar of a strange brown powder.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I think I was able to recreate what they did. This isn’t a magical flame.”

  “No. I don’t think so, either.”

  “And if it’s not magical, then it can be countered. I’ve been experimenting and I think I came up with something that will work. Linsay doesn’t think so, but…”

  Carth stared at Boiyn. He so badly wanted to help, and this was his only way of doing so. He wasn’t a fighter. He was a thinker, and his mind was the reason she had valued his presence. She had to trust him.