“So,” I said. “Eldring wearing armor. That’s different.”
“It is,” he nodded. “We spotted the first one about nine months ago.”
“Are they steering the ship too?”
Krillos let out a snort. “They still need us for that. But the King puts at least one with every unit he sends out now. They’re perfect for intimidating villagers.”
“It’s a shame he’s using them for thugs. They seem capable of much more.”
“They certainly have one hell of a nose for rooting out Shinree. Draken employed the Kaelish to chase down dissenters, but more recently he’s been adding those damn beasts to the hunt. And as you’ve seen, they’re a lot harder to fool.”
“Malaq said he doesn’t have the men to go against Draken.”
“He has some loyal soldiers. But Malaq’s discouraged most of his supporters from backing him publically. If Draken knew the extent of his brother’s popularity, he’d be worried. Then he might not name the Prince heir.”
“Why does that matter? In fact, why hasn’t Malaq slit his brother’s throat and name himself King?”
“Because that’s what Draken would do. Malaq wants a legal claim to the throne. He wants the people to accept him because he isn’t Draken. And then there’s Jem Reth. We’d be crazy to think he isn’t watching, even when he isn’t around.”
Looking down at the tusks again, Krillos shook them at me. “I like these.” He pushed off the rail to go.
“Captain, wait. Those men that died in the hold, the ones that came to help me...?” I waited for him to nod. “With so few of you on board, I assume you must all be close, so I wanted to say… I’m sorry. And, thanks. Thanks for all of it. The clothes. The food. The rescue. The company. It helps.”
Krillos stared a moment. “Gods, you really don’t remember me, do you?”
“No,” I confessed. “But I’m sure I will soon.”
With a laugh, he turned away. “Then I better go hide the forks.”
NINE
The room was dark. There was an outline of a man lying on the bed. “Jarryd?” Limping, I ran over. I touched him—and my hands sunk into warm wetness.
“Sienn!” I screamed, staggering back. “SIENN!”
Rummaging blindly, I found a lantern on the table. My damp fingers shook as I turned it on. Yellow light flooded the bed, revealing a body that was cut and torn in far too many places. The blankets beneath were sopping and red. So were my hands.
This is it, I thought. This is how it happens. This is when I make the choice.
Sienn wasn’t coming. It was my responsibility. Either I magically bound myself to Jarryd and linked us for the rest of our lives. Or I let him die.
My shouts had brought the owner of the Faernore and his wife stumbling out of their room. Crowding in the open doorway, the woman cried out at the gory sight. “Murder! Murder!” she wailed.
“No.” I turned to her. “He’s still alive.”
Her eyes fell to the bloody dagger stuck through my belt. “It was you,” she gasped. “You killed him.”
“I said he’s not fucking dead!” I kicked the door shut in her face and went to the bed. “Stay alive,” I told him, kneeling down. “Just a few more minutes, you stubborn, Rellan bastard. Just stay alive.”
Hiding, the little girl poked her head up over the side of the table to gawk at me. I didn’t react to her presence. Content to let her believe herself invisible, I went on sharpening my swords. I had nothing better to do anyway, as I waited for her father to come home from tending an ailing woman in the village. Broc’s son, a decent healer in his own right, was off delivering a neighbor’s baby. That left me alone with the daughter, whose face was concealed more by a mess of long, stringy, perpetually uncombed hair, than it was the table.
“When is my father coming home?” she said.
“Not soon enough.” I put down one sword and picked up the other. “Do you have a weapon?”
The girl’s eyes danced around. “I…”
“Would you like me to sharpen it for you?”
“No. I mean…I don’t have one.”
“Then you must be watching me for another reason.”
She stood up and still barely cleared the edge of the table. “I don’t like you.”
I ran the stone down over the blade a few times before I answered. “Your father does. If he didn’t, I think he would have told you to hide a bit better than you are.”
She squared her shoulders. “The only thing my daddy told me to hide was the wine. He said you’d drink all our stores in one night if I let you at it.”
“Kit, your father is a smart man.”
“My name is Kit’anya.”
“Sorry. My mistake.”
“Only my family calls me Kit, and you ain’t that.”
“You’re right. But your father is like family to me. He saved my life many times.”
Getting brave, she blurted out, “I want to heal animals.”
“Do you?” I lowered the sword to my lap and looked at her. “Why not people?”
“People don’t deserve it.” Boldly, she shoved the rest of the hair out of her face. “They get hurt in a fight, you heal them, and they go right out and fight someone else. It don’t make sense to me.”
“It doesn’t make sense to a lot of people.”
“My brother thinks I’m stupid. He wants to be a soldier, like you.”
“He can’t. He has healer’s blood. He doesn’t have the magic for fighting.”
“Don’t need magic to swing a sword. Anybody can do that.”
“There’s doing it…and then there’s doing it well.”
“Doesn’t matter. The Rellans won’t let him anyway. You’re the only Shinree they ever let fight. And after what you did, I’m thinking they won’t be letting another fight any time soon.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re probably right.”
“Course there isn’t even a proper army anymore now. My brother thinks he might have a chance of getting in when they make a new one. But Daddy says it’ll be years before that happens. He says it’s okay though. Since you killed the Langorians too, we should be safe for a while. And he guesses things are even.”
“You talk a lot for such a tiny girl.”
“I’m not tiny. I’m short for my age. And daddy says I’m going to do something great one day.”
“Like I said, he’s a smart man.”
“You aren’t trying hard enough.”
I trained my pale eyes on Jarryd so hard it made my head hurt. “How the hell would you know?”
“I can read you, Ian.” He dumped the contents of his cup out in the grass. Opening the bag at his feet, he shoved the cup inside. “We need to get this right.” He emptied the tea from the pot and shoved that in too. “We need to be able to block the link between us solidly and quickly. There will be times we won’t want to know what the other is feeling.”
“Like now?”
Jarryd paused in his tidying up to glare at me. With his brown hair pulled back in a tight braid, the dents in his forehead were visible. His jaw was set tight. Tension had taken the youthful charm from his face days ago. “Why are you angry?” I asked him.
“I’m not angry.”
I laughed. “I can read you, remember?”
His glare worsened. “I’m not the one who keeps secrets, Ian.”
“So we’re back to that? I told you. I didn’t want you mixed up in my mess.”
He raised his hand, displaying the marks I’d carved into his skin. “This has me mixed up plenty.”
I bit back the curse on my tongue. A day and a half had gone by since I employed the ancient Shinree binding ritual to save Jarryd. I supposed that wasn’t a lot of time to get used to the idea of being magically connected for the rest of our lives.
Jarryd threw himself down next to me on the ground. “I’m sorry. This is just all so strange. I keep second guessing every reaction, every notion, not sure if it’s mine or yours
. I thought if we knew how to block each other, some solitude now and then might do us good.” He pulled a wineskin from his pack. Before leaving the inn, I heard Jarryd ask the barkeep to fill it with Langorian liquor. Still, I hadn’t thought he would drink it.
“Back in Kael you said Langorian coura tasted like cow dung,” I reminded him.
Jarryd opened the cap and took a sniff. “I said horse. Not cow.”
“And how is that any better?”
He smiled crookedly. “It’s not.”
TEN
I threw the blanket off and sat up. As a precaution, I grabbed the bucket on the floor beside the bed and stuck my head in it. The position was familiar. I’d assumed it many times, for far too many days in a row. Krillos warned me the seas’ mood was about to change. I just hadn’t realized it was going to become such a raging bitch.
Deciding I wasn’t going to retch, I put the bucket down and got up. I didn’t have a table anymore. It had slid across the floor and smashed into the wall days ago, along with the candle and the bowl of water. The cask in the corner had plenty to drink, though.
Eyeing it, I grabbed onto the bed, then the wall, then whatever other stable piece of the ship I could reach, and made my way over. Having digested little but water and memories for the last three days, I’d hoped to stop noticing when the ship rocked one way and my stomach went the other. I’d hoped for a break in the weather. But the storms kept coming and the ship kept heaving and falling like the bouncing bosom of an out of breath whore. Wherever my ‘sea legs’ were that Krillos kept razzing me about, I hadn’t found them.
There was one benefit to being deathly ill. I’d been in no shape to act on the reckless thoughts in my head. The ones that begged me to flee the ship and find Jarryd Kane. I understood now why the need was so urgent. It was only natural to want to keep a man safe once you’d given him half your soul.
The spell I employed to save Jarryd’s life was an ancient rite, used to enhance a Shinree soldier’s ability to fight. The binding exchanged memories, skills, and characteristics. It created a permanent, magical link through which flowed a constant swap of emotions and sensations, and a less frequent exchange of new memories.
The practice died out when our empire fell. My father revived it in an attempt to lessen the madness I cast on Draken during the war. I used it to bring a hotheaded, impetuous, young fool back from the brink of death. I made Jarryd Nef’taali. My other. And because of that, because I made him important to me, he was rotting in a Langorian prison cell cut off from our link by the same drug I’d been swimming in for two years.
Jarryd was Rellan. Kayn’l wouldn’t affect him like it did a Shinree. But our connection was born of magic and the drug jammed it so completely it was like a part of me had been severed. It was a terrible, empty, hollowed-out feeling. I’d only been aware of it a short time and already I hated it. Jarryd had been living with the abyss inside him for over two years. I could only imagine what it had done to him.
Reaching my goal, I gripped the cask with one hand and popped off the top with the other. I scooped up some water and took a few drinks. Splashing my face, as I ran wet hands back over my hair, I heard Malaq’s long, sure strides in the corridor.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, coming into the hold. “I sent a man down a few hours ago. Didn’t he tell you I was back?”
Shaking out my hair, I glanced at Malaq; arms crossed, leaning carelessly against the wall. “He told me.”
“Krillos says you’ve been sick.”
“Yep.”
Lifting his cloak up above the inch or so of water on the floor, Malaq came closer. “I know that tone. Is there something in particular pissing you off? Or is it a general dislike of the world?”
I ran a sleeve over my face. “You said you would help him. You said you would find a way.” Slamming the lid back on the cask, I gripped the edges and looked at him. Malaq’s face was blank, but I knew better. He knew exactly who I was talking about. “Why haven’t you mentioned him? Is it guilt?”
He winced. “Ian, I did try.”
“Not hard enough. Or he’d be here.” I made my way back to the bed.
“I want Jarryd free, too. You have to know that. But we needed to get you out first. We need your magic.”
Sitting down, I caught Malaq’s gaze and held it. “Are you telling me Jarryd is still locked up because he isn’t necessary for your plans?”
“I’m telling you, I have found no way to get Jarryd out of a cell that is underneath Draken’s nose without compromising everything I’ve worked for.”
“So you’re protecting yourself. Typical Langorian.”
Struggling with his anger, a twitch ran through Malaq’s jaw. “A lot of people will suffer if what I’m doing is exposed. Not just me. And if Jarryd was willing to die for Rella two years ago, I’m damn sure he would understand now if I told him the only hope his people have of getting free of Draken’s rule lies with you.” His anger abating, Malaq’s voice turned somber. “Don’t jeopardize others for him, Ian. We both know Jarryd wouldn’t want that.”
“I didn’t want that, Malaq. But you made the choice for me when you collapsed that mine on top of all those people. You’re right though,” I conceded, talking over his annoyed groan. “You need to safeguard whatever strides you’ve made against Draken. I’ll get Jarryd myself.”
“How? He’s hundreds of miles away, in the bowels of Draken’s keep. And in case you haven’t recalled, Darkhorne is an impenetrable fortress on top of a barren mountain, built on a mine rampant with hornblende. Even if you had magic, you can’t cast there.”
“What’s hornblende?”
“It’s the only stone from the western mines a Shinree can’t channel. It makes your magic unpredictable. It twists your spells.”
“Then I won’t use magic.”
“Wonderful. You can barge in headlong and announce to Draken and Reth you’re still alive. If we’re lucky, they’ll torture my complicity out of you before they boil you in oil.”
“Fuck off, Malaq. You can’t hide me forever.”
“Not forever, my friend. Just until you repair the Crown of Stones.”
I shot up from the bed. “That’s what you want me for? That’s why I’m here? You son of a bitch. Do you have any idea what Draken put me through for that fucking crown?” I gave him no time to answer. “What am I to you, Malaq? Some goddamn prize you and your brother toss back and forth for kicks? Maybe,” I rushed up, “you two have a wager going on. Is that it? A bet to see what makes me talk faster…torture or feigned friendship?”
Malaq’s gray eyes were hard as steel. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“You better. Because I’m starting to think I just traded one shit-hole prison for another.”
“You need to calm down. The crown—”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with the fucking crown! I can’t fix it! And why would I? It’s destroyed too many lives already.” I stepped away. “Including mine.”
“I understand you’re upset.” I laughed, and he got loud. “If I’m pushing you, I apologize. If you believe I didn’t have a more personal reason for setting you free, then I’m sorry for that too. I couldn’t overcome your suspicions before you forgot me. I don’t know why I thought I could now. But our enemies grow stronger every day, Ian. The eldring are everywhere. They’re smarter and more resourceful than we realized. You saw what one did here. Imagine what whole troops of them are like. And your father’s got hooks in far more than eldring. He’s training Shinree to fight—training them with Langorians. We’re afraid he’ll bind them together.” He hesitated. “Like you and Jarryd.”
I thought about the implications of that. “You take a man trained to fight and bind him to another with the same skills…over time their attacks become seamless.”
“We have no confirmation. For now it’s only speculation. But Sienn thinks—”
“Sienn?” I jumped in. “Is she here?”
“Sienn
prefers not to leave our camp. I wish she did, though. We could certainly use her.”
I flopped back down on the bed. “I think Sienn has been used enough already.”
Malaq reached into his cloak for a flask. He opened it and took a long draw. When he offered it, and I refused, he sighed. “I know why you won’t drink with me. You’re still sore I dosed your wine so Neela could marry Draken in peace.”
“First off, peace and Draken don’t belong in the same sentence. Second, I haven’t recalled that little gem of information yet—about you drugging me—so thanks.”
Rolling his eyes, Malaq pushed the cork back in the flask. “If I had any idea Neela was luring you into an ambush, I would have drugged you harder.”
He wanted me to grin. I was too angry. “I’ve been remembering some of my dreams of her. I don’t think I realized back then just how screwed up they made me. But seeing it now, I doubt Neela had to lure me anywhere. If she’d asked, I probably would have given myself up. Who knows, maybe I still would.”
“Oh, no.” Vigorously, Malaq shook his head. “I didn’t drag you up out of that pit to ruin everything. Neela Arcana made her choice. And it wasn’t you.” He tucked the flask in his cloak. “You’ll be off the ship in about ten days. Krillos will see you personally to the camp and get you settled. In the meantime,” he stepped away, “get some air. It’ll make you feel better.”
“You’re going? I thought you wanted to talk about the crown.”
“You aren’t in the frame of mind for that. And I can’t sit here and butt heads with you all day.”
“We didn’t butt heads before?”
“Always. But it’s been a long two years, Ian. I’ve lost the taste for it.” Malaq stopped in the doorway. He gave me a tense, but supportive smile. “Rest. Recuperate. Remember. We’ll discuss how best to move forward once you’re back to your old self.”
“Sure,” I said, as Malaq left, but they were empty words. From what I’d learned of my old self so far, I wasn’t all that anxious to get back to it.
The Crown of Stones: Magic-Scars Page 8
