Voyager of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  Distantly, she heard voices, and made herself walk toward them. Running was foolish, she was being foolish, those were no doubt her friends…but was Ransom there? She’d assumed he’d made it out of the city, but what if he was still there, trapped? Her head began to ache with worry, and she walked faster, terrified now of what she might find.

  The sounds led her to the formal dining room, made to seat thirty people. Doors glazed with tiny panes separated the hall from the dining room, so all Zara could see were swirls of color like smudged paint and the minute movements of people eating. She set her hand to the door latch, which had a brass thumb plate shaped like an oak leaf, told her heart to stop battering at her, and pushed the door open.

  Six people looked up at her entrance. Calliope Blackwood, presiding at the far end of the table. Theo, Arjan, Cantara, Belinda—and Ransom, setting down his fork and looking at her with a calm, indifferent expression that struck her to the heart. “You didn’t wait supper on me?” she managed to choke out. Her voice sounded scratchy, as if she hadn’t used it for a week.

  Then everyone except Ransom and Blackwood was shoving back chairs and standing, exclaiming and pelting her with questions. Belinda and Cantara threw themselves on her, Cantara in tears. “She tell us you dead are,” she murmured into Zara’s shoulder.

  “Who?”

  “Ghazarian,” Belinda said. “She has the Device—how did you survive?”

  “I…she knocked me unconscious, and she must have believed she killed me.” Zara extricated herself from her friends. “I take it she contacted you?” she said to Blackwood.

  “Yesterday morning. Sit, you must be hungry, after sleeping all day.” She rang a bell positioned at her left hand, and a servant emerged from a door behind her.

  “All day?” Zara felt dizzy again. She had missed far too much. “How long was I gone? I…feel so muddled.”

  “It’s been two days since you rescued me,” Ransom said. “May I?” He rose to lay two fingers along the pulse in her wrist, then closed his eyes. He looked perfectly well, but then he’d had two days to heal himself fully. After a silent, awkward minute in which no one spoke, he released her and went back to his seat. “You seem entirely recovered. Fortunate, because head injuries can be serious. I imagine you were only exhausted.”

  “But what were you doing all that time?” Theo said.

  Zara sat down and picked up a fork, twiddling it. The cold silver made her fingers tingle. Did Ransom guess what had really happened? “I’m going to eat first,” she said, and Theo made a noise of protest, “and then I’ll tell you everything. But you can tell your story first. What did Ghazarian demand?”

  “More than we can pay,” Blackwood said. “Probably more than the treasury at Aurilien could manage, even. She told us she’d killed you and had the Device, and she demanded five hundred thousand guilders for it.”

  “She could have been lying about the Device.”

  “She sent a lock of your hair along with the demand. It was very convincing.”

  It wasn’t something Zara would have taken as evidence, but she was older and more cynical than the ambassador. “So you turned her down.”

  “We had no choice. Even if we’d had the money, it’s our policy not to deal with pirates.”

  “I think this Device is more important than that policy.”

  “And give everyone from Eskandel to Manachen the idea we’re weak? No, Miss Farrell, we don’t negotiate with criminals.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What did she do when you sent back your reply?” Not that it was hard to figure out.

  Blackwood harrumphed and scooted back an inch in her chair. “Taunted us about how she was going to take it to the Karitians.”

  Of course. “That must have taken most of yesterday. What are you going to do now?”

  “Find Ghazarian’s ship,” Blackwood said, “board it, and take the Device by force.”

  “It’s lunacy,” Belinda said. “You’re going to get a lot of people killed.”

  “Yes, and most of them will be pirates,” Blackwood said.

  “I beg your pardon, but where will you get a fighting force? Recruit sailors?” Zara realized she’d paused with a forkful of peas to her mouth and quickly set it down. “You’re not in a position to raid a pirate ship.”

  “Two-thirds of the embassy staff are soldiers out of uniform,” Blackwood said with a grim smile. “Our security, should the Karitians decide their agreements with regard to Goudge’s Folly are null.”

  “Even so—”

  “Miss Farrell, I appreciate that the King respects your abilities, but you’re a civilian and unattached to the Tremontanan government in any official capacity. Please keep your opinions to yourself.”

  The sound of metal clinking against china ceased. Out of the corner of one eye, Zara could see Arjan looking at her as if waiting for direction. Blackwood looked placid, but the expression on her face was stony. She’s afraid I’ll force the issue, though what she thinks I can accomplish, I have no idea. Zara gave her a cool, indifferent look. “Of course,” she said. “I’m sure the King has already given you his instructions. No need for me to do his job for him. Though you’ll want to pass on some crucial information.”

  “What’s that?” Blackwood continued to look impassive, but her expression was cracking around the edges.

  Zara began pulling out fragments of the tracking Device. Theo leaned forward. “What’s that?”

  “It’s how Ghazarian was tracking us—more accurately, tracking the communicator.” She found the tiny stem and held it up. “Which no longer works.”

  Belinda gasped. Blackwood snatched the piece out of Zara’s hand. “Is this part of the Device?”

  “It is. Ghazarian’s prize isn’t worth anything without it.”

  “But that’s wonderful!” Belinda said. “Isn’t it?”

  Zara glanced at Blackwood, who didn’t look happy. They were once again on the same side, though who knew how long that would last. “The Device is still mostly whole,” Blackwood said. “If Ghazarian can convince the Karitians it’s valuable, they can take it apart and work out how to repair it. This only delays the inevitable.”

  “Ghazarian’s had a day to contact the Karitians and work out an arrangement,” Zara said. “Depending on whom she talked to, she could have a deal in place right now.”

  “We believe Dineh-Karit knows of the communication Device from its interception of our telecodes, though not how to use it,” Blackwood said. “We’ve detected a larger than usual number of telecodes being sent between Manachen and the capital Esfanyar. They’re still negotiating. Presumably their reluctance to deal with foreigners is at war with their desire for the Device. When that traffic dies down, we’ll know they’ve agreed to her terms. Or rejected her entirely.”

  Blackwood wiped her mouth with her napkin and pushed her chair back. “Excuse me. It’s good to have you back, Miss Farrell.” Her expression didn’t match her polite words. Zara realized she was holding her knife too tightly and set it down on her plate. Reacting to Blackwood’s insults was beneath her, and anyway, Blackwood was right: it wasn’t Zara’s business. Not anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When the door had swung quietly shut behind Blackwood, Theo said, “I need tools.”

  “You’re going to sit up all night with that thing, aren’t you?” Belinda said, teasing.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Theo tried to fit the two pieces of glass together, then dropped them on the tablecloth. “We need to get that Device back.”

  “What ‘we’ is that?” Ransom asked. He sounded as sardonic as he had the night Zara had met him.

  “Uh…I didn’t mean us, just…Tremontane. That ‘we.’”

  “I don’t feel all that much attachment to my country,” Ransom said. “Not that I wouldn’t want to give Ghazarian a poke in the eye, but there’s not much any of us can do.”

  “There must be something,” Cantara insisted. “I Tremontanan am not, but if Ghazari
an sells the Device to Dineh-Karit, it will be Eskandel that suffers as well.”

  “Her men caught me unawares,” Arjan said. “Let us catch them first and we will see who suffers.”

  “You want to go after Ghazarian’s pirates?” Ransom laughed, a short, bitter sound. “A fighter—”

  “Two fighters,” Cantara said. “Arakeli is more than dance.”

  “Whatever. Two fighters, an apprentice Deviser, a sharpshooter, and whatever Rowena is, against dozens of pirates who are all well-armed and ready to kill if it suits them? You’re out of your minds.”

  “Nobody’s proposing we go after them alone,” Belinda said, “just that we want to help. And I notice you didn’t include yourself in that list.”

  “Because I’m not a madman. I’m going back to Dineh-Karit in the morning, now that Rowena’s restored to you all, and I’m going to put this insanity behind me.”

  “I thought—” Belinda said.

  “I don’t care what you thought. I got you to Goudge’s Folly, as promised. And now I’m going to bed. I want to get an early start so I can avoid those nakati.” He shoved his chair back roughly and strode from the room.

  “I don’t get it,” Theo said. “Why is he so angry?”

  “I don’t know,” Zara said, “but he—” She threw down her napkin and ran out of the dining room. Ransom was halfway up the winding stairs. “Ransom!” she called out. He ignored her. She ran up the stairs, the carpet prickling her bare feet, and saw him go into a room across from hers. “Ransom!” she shouted, and pelted down the hall, stumbling to a halt at his door. She knocked. “I want to talk to you!”

  Silence. She was so sick of silence. She pounded on the door. “Open this door and talk to me!”

  More silence. “Ransom, I am going to stand here all night if I have to. And I’ll be here in the morning when you leave. So you can either try crawling out your window, or you can talk to me like a civilized person.”

  The door flew open. “I might have known you wouldn’t have the decency to take a hint,” Ransom said, his voice tight and angry.

  “And you don’t have the decency to say what’s really wrong. We are your friends. How dare you turn on us like that?”

  Ransom closed his eyes and lowered his head. His jaw was clenched tight. “Fine,” he said. “Say it. Whatever it is, say it and then leave me alone.”

  “What I have to say shouldn’t be spoken in public.”

  “More secrets?” Ransom let out a heavy, sharp sigh of frustration. “Am I going to get rid of you any other way?”

  “Of course not.”

  He stepped back and waved his hand toward the empty room. “Then let’s get this over with.”

  Zara walked past him into darkness lit only by the wedge of light coming through the door, which vanished a moment later. “Don’t you want the light on?”

  “I prefer the dark. It means—never mind. Say your piece.”

  “I want to know what’s wrong with you. You’re not acting at all like yourself.”

  “We’ve known each other for ten days. You don’t have any idea what myself is like.”

  “What happened to…what you said? About—”

  “About what?”

  That afternoon, the day he’d told her how he felt about her, seemed so far away. “Apparently nothing,” she said, feeling her heart freeze over to match the chill in the air. “You let yourself be imprisoned to keep the rest of us safe. That’s not the action of a man who’s indifferent.”

  “I told you I occasionally break out in a rash of chivalry. I usually regret it.”

  “That’s not it. Something happened to you, and I want to know what it is.”

  Ransom moved toward the window and stood looking out, making himself a black silhouette against the moonlight. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Your favorite phrase. I’m making it my business.”

  “Nobody likes a snoop. Let it go.”

  “No.”

  “I said let it go!” he roared, turning on her and making her take an involuntary step backward. “Did it never occur to you maybe the world isn’t yours to rule? That people might deserve a little privacy? Or is it just that you’ve decided you’re old enough to know better than anyone else how things should run? Maybe you ought to take a good look at yourself and figure out why you have this need to pick, and pick, until you’ve laid a problem bare that you should have left alone in the first place!”

  Breathless, Zara closed her fist against an angry reply. “Sweet heaven,” she said. “It’s eating you up inside.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Guilt,” she said. “You had to leave me behind.”

  Ransom’s shoulders sagged. He turned away from her. “Just go. Please. I can’t bear to look at you.”

  “This room’s too dark for you to see me. We were separated, and you left me, and now—”

  “Is there any way I can get you to shut up and leave?”

  “Talk to me, Ransom. Please.” Zara fumbled around until she found a chair, and sat. She heard him breathing in time with her, filling the silence with a rhythm that soothed her frozen heart, melting it. At least in one way, they were in harmony.

  “I lost you,” Ransom said, so quietly that if her ears weren’t accustomed to silence, she couldn’t have understood him. “It was so sudden—you were there, and then you were gone. I got out of the crowd and hoped you’d do the same, and I waited, and I didn’t see you. Then the Karitians began to notice me, stopped pretending I was invisible, and I couldn’t stay any longer.

  “So I went to the docks and I waited there, but the nakati could tell—I looked awful, like an escaped prisoner, which technically I was—and I had to take the first boat I could. I had to leave, Rowena, don’t you understand? They would have captured me again, and I could have endured it if I’d known you were safe, but…”

  He leaned on the window sill and pressed his forehead to the glass, which in the moonlight looked as cold as the room. “And Ghazarian captured you. In all my nightmares, that was the one I never thought to consider. She killed you, didn’t she?”

  “Ransom, it’s not important—”

  “Answer me!”

  Zara clutched the upholstered arm of the chair, crushing the velvet. “Yes. But I made her do it.”

  Ransom let out a groan that seemed to come from his innermost soul. “Rowena!”

  “It was either that or let her torture me to death.”

  He groaned again and flung himself away from the window. She heard the bed creak as he sat down on it. “Please, no more.”

  “It’s all right. You shouldn’t feel guilty. You did exactly what I hoped you’d do when we were separated.”

  “It is not all right!” Ransom shouted. “I should never have left. I should have searched until I found you.”

  “Absolutely not. Ransom, that woman was able to track me down no matter where I went. If you’d stayed with me, and we’d both been captured, you’d be dead now. I would have woken up next to your corpse. This was the best outcome.”

  “The best outcome would be for those damned Karitians never to have imprisoned me in the first place. Don’t try to make this better.”

  “Then stop trying to make this all your fault. You think you failed? Then I forgive you. You need to forgive yourself.”

  Ransom laughed that bitter laugh again. “For a canny old woman, you don’t understand anything.”

  “No? Then explain it to me. Explain why you’re beating yourself up so badly you lashed out at people who care about you.”

  Again she could hear nothing but his breathing, faint like a breeze barely touching new leaves. “Rowena,” he said finally, “I want to be someone you can depend on. Someone who can defend you from the things you can’t fight. And I failed you so completely I can’t believe you can bear to speak to me, let alone forgive me. The whole time you were gone—”

  “Stop,” Zara said, moving to sit next to him on the
bed. “Just—stop. I was sick with worry over you the whole time, not knowing if you were safe, blaming myself for not making the right decisions. So I think we might have failed each other.”

  “It’s not the same—”

  “I’m not finished.” She felt around until she could take his hand. His lay unresisting in hers, so she squeezed it and said, “The first man I loved…well, I don’t know that I really loved him, but I thought I did…anyway. He told me I wasn’t someone who needed to be cared for, to be protected, and he was right. I never gave anyone a chance to do that for me. Then my husband, Hank…we were partners, he and I, supporting each other, but he never tried to fight my battles for me. And I liked that. But now…”

  She squeezed his hand again. “I’m an old woman, and I’ve changed a lot over the years, and I’ve learned having weaknesses means giving others the chance to use their strengths on your behalf. That you want to do that for me means more than you can know. You gave up your freedom so I didn’t have to. You think I don’t know I can depend on you without question?”

  His hand closed gently on hers. “I take it back. You’re possibly the wisest person I’ve ever met.”

  “I don’t usually feel wise. Other people are easy to understand, but myself…half the time when I do things I surprise myself. And half of those times I do the wrong thing.”

  “That’s hard to believe.” Her eyes were accustomed to the dark finally, so she could see the outline of his face, the dark smudges of his eyes and lips, which curved in a smile.

  “You’ve seen me make all sorts of wrong decisions,” she said.

  “Really? Name one.”

  “Well…I might have told someone I didn’t want to fall in love again. That it wasn’t worth the heartache.”

  “And that was wrong?”

  “Isn’t love worth taking a chance on?”