by Silas Post
“Our mistress gave you this harbor,” they said. “The goddess of shifting sands will take her due.”
“She’s no goddess,” I said as we approached the pier Wick’s guards led us toward. Her impatience, her thirst for other’s pain, her refusal to heed Redelia’s psychic call. It should have been clear much earlier. “She’s an infernal.”
“She’s a fecked up freak,” Wick replied. “Might as well be a god, what’s the difference?”
“The difference is justice,” I said. “The difference is peace or suffering, creation or war. The difference is the weight of a man’s soul. You have to tell your father to abandon this course before Araine destroys him and everything Greenloft has stood for.”
Wick stopped walking. We had reached the end of the pier and the sand-hewn gangway that led to the stern of the ship. He cocked his head to the side and regarded me with apparent disbelief while Merla doubled over herself and sobbed for her lost son.
“Araine is nothing,” he said. “She can’t hurt the kingdom. She can’t even leave this fecking island. Guards! Stow him in my cabin for now. I’ll oversee anchors-up and we can shove off this worthless rock.”
The guards pushed Merla toward a set of stairs at the center of the deck while they pulled me toward the boat’s stern. I caught only a glimpse down the stairwell that led to the holding area they forced Merla into. In the belly of this boat, men and women sat with their heads bowed and their shackles glinting sadistically. Each spark of infernal light meant despair, and this ship was rife with it.
A forceful shove knocked me to the floor of the captain’s cabin. The door shut and locked behind me.
The cabin was small and not built for sleep. A desk sat against a wall with a porthole window, though wooden bars wrapped tight around the glass. A few crates piled high in one corner while a bin of parchment rolls stood in another. I made my way to that bin and turned my back toward it, reaching with arms bound behind me for a scroll.
Somewhere, below this wooden floor, were a hundred or more people all waiting to learn what fate Greenloft held in store. I wondered the same, and unfurled the paper in my hands hoping to read a map or a letter with instructions on the kingdom’s next moves.
I sat with the poster and used my feet to flatten it along the floor. When I stood, I was disappointed. It was a wanted poster. Of me. Victor Coin. Guilty of Taron’s murder and other crimes. I lifted my feet and the parchment curled at the edges, but its center stayed flat and open.
Still, there were other scrolls to investigate so I repeated my process. This time, when I stood, I found another wanted poster, but not of me. Of a woman named Zoalina Taslin. She was a woman I had seen before, even spoken with. She was the hooded temptress who refused to give me her name in Telapa’s central square.
Wanted! Zoalina Taslin. For the practice of foul witchery and other crimes. Travels alone. Reward for live capture: 50 gold coins.
As I stood there, staring at the perfectly drawn face of the woman who taunted me back in the port city, my ears homed in on a faint whimper. I released the poster from my feet, allowing it to curl slightly beside the first one. I stood straight and closed my eyes, tuning my ears to the muffled sadness that lurked behind the cabin’s walls.
A series of disjointed rasps of breath taken quickly. A pitiable squeak. Another series of rasps.
Zoalina was not the only ghost of Telapa haunting this cabin. I recognized that sad cry. “Wolly?” I asked.
The noises stopped abruptly. “Wolly,” I said again. “That must be you. How did you find yourself aboard this boat? It’s fine, young man. I harbor no grudge that you ran off when last I saw you. Please, come speak with me.”
The whimpering resumed and soon a wooden slat in the floor jostled. It was half covered by the crates in the room’s corner, so I kicked those aside to let the boy climb up. His small pale hands lifted a loose floor panel and he pulled himself through it.
His face was dirty and his clothing tattered as he emerged from what seemed to be a narrow gap between the cabin’s floor and the ceiling of the deck below.
“H- h- how did you know it was me?” he asked. His cheeks were wet and there was snot pooling inside his small nostrils.
“I could nary forget the forlorn bawl of your distinctive brand of melancholy,” I said.
“W- what?” he asked.
“You have a unique way of crying,” I said.
“Oh,” he replied. He glanced around the room and caught sight of the twin posters lying on the floor. Fear crept across his face as he looked from my wanted poster back to me.
“That’s you,” he said, backing away until he was flat against the far wall.
“You’re a smart boy,” I said. “This beard has fooled adults at every turn, but not you.”
“This means you’re a criminal,” he replied. “You’re just like Pa, aren’t you?”
“No, Wolly,” I said. “There are bad men in charge of Greenloft. Men that want to hurt the innocent and the vulnerable. They’re upset because I protected people.”
“What people?” he asked.
“The women I’ve mentioned,” I said. “Although, the bad men that run this ship want to hurt them too. Do you know what this boat is?”
Wolly shook his head.
“This is a slave ship. The prince has captured people from their homes and trapped them here so he can use them as slaves back in Greenloft. He’ll force them to work hard for no pay, and he’ll whip them if they speak against him.”
“Why would the prince do that?” Wolly asked. “That’s not the right way to treat people.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not. Prince Wick will be a cruel master.”
“I had a master once,” Wolly said. “I don’t ever want to go back to Pa.”
“No one should have a master,” I said. “That’s why I want to protect these people, but there’s not a lot I can do right now. What about you, why are you here?”
He sat on the floor and folded his hands in his lap. “I brought the silver coin you gave me back to Pa, but one of the other kids took it from me first. Pa beat me for coming home empty-handed, so I ran and ran.
“I remembered what you said about the boats,” he continued. “One was going to freedom, but I didn’t know which one so I just climbed aboard and hid. I didn’t tell the other kids because I didn’t know if I could trust them, so I’ve been hiding here alone.”
I wanted to put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, but I had no way to comfort him with my hands cuffed behind me. “How many other kids are there?”
“I d’know,” he said. “Five, sometimes six. Not always the same ones. Is this the place freedom is? Is it safe here?”
I twisted my arms until I could sneak a finger into my pant pocket. I prodded until the wooden toy I had hastily tucked away came free. “I want you to take this,” I said. “It’s a sphinx.”
“What’s a sphinx?” he asked.
“It’s a protector, just like I am,” I said.
His eyes darted toward the door, but he stepped toward me and took the wooden toy from my hand. “She’s pretty,” he said.
“Don’t let her good looks fool you,” I said. “She’s a mighty warrior who looks after boys like you. Keep her close and you’ll always be safe.”
He wiped his nose with his sleeve and smiled as he scrutinized the toy in his hand. A warm confidence grew in his eyes. “I want to help those people. I want to be a protector.”
“I won’t lie,” I said. “That would not be easy. How well do you know the ship?”
“I’ve been here two days,” he said. “The walls are doubles, with an inside and an outside. Same as the floors. I fit between them. I’ve seen the whole ship.”
“Do you know where the anchor is?” I asked.
“Below,” he said.
“Yes, below. There should be a crank that lets the sailors reel in the anchor so we can sail away,” I said. “If they do that, we’re trapped on a path to slavery. Find
the crank and break it so we cannot leave this shore. I’ll even give you my last copper farthing to keep.”
Wolly looked down at the sphinx in his little hand. “No,” he said. “I’ll just keep this. And maybe, when this is through, I can find a home here, away from Pa forever.”
“You have a good heart, Wolly,” I said. The boy beamed at me, happy to receive a kind word and a sense of purpose.
Then a set of keys jingled at the cabin’s door. “Go!” I whipsered. “Hurry!”
Wolly peeled away the loose floor panel and slipped beneath it while I stood, ready to block whoever entered from looking directly his way. The panel snapped back into place just as the door flung open and Prince Wick stepped through, two sword-wielding guards close behind.
He pulled his greatsword from its scabbard and pointed the blade at my chest, aiming the long strip of infernal black energy at my heart.
“It’s time we had a talk.”
19
“So you’re the one that killed my brother,” Wick said, lowering his sword. “Some say you did me a favor. He was first in line for the throne, and now I have a real shot at running Greenloft one day. The truth is, I don’t want the throne. Never did.”
A faint scraping sounded beneath us and Wick’s gaze wandered toward the floor. Somewhere under those wooden beams was the small boy I was counting on, and being caught would be disastrous for us both.
“Then what do you want, Wick?” I asked, hiding the sound of Wolly’s escape with raised voice.
Wick backhanded me, taking me by surprise and knocking me on my ass.
“It’s Prince Wick,” he said. “The throne is a seat of glamour and fame. That doesn’t suit me. I love the thrill of battle too much, the rush of victory. I will lead our army to greatness as the realm’s most fabled general, thanks in part to the unnatural advantage our kingdom has earned.
“My reputation, of course, bolsters with bringing you home to face your justice,” he said. He kicked me in the stomach while I was already on the floor, forcing my body to curl up in pain. The shackles around my ankles glinted as my nerves screamed from the prince’s impact.
My lungs struggled for air while Wick’s attention again drifted toward the floorboards. Wolly had shimmied his way toward the room’s other edge, but his progress was slow in that tight space. I gasped and tried to speak over his small sounds, but I had no air for words.
Wick stomped on the floor with his armored boot. “I will not bring rats back to Greenloft,” he said. He pointed at one of his two guards. “You, check this out.” The man nodded and hurried away.
“Now,” Wick said, turning his attention back toward me. “Marching you off the ship and into Greenloft’s port must be the right kind of spectacle. I’ll need you bleeding and swollen by the time we pull into port. A torpid, pathetic sack of pitiful contrition. Prepare for two days at sea with nothing to eat but your own regret.”
I was on the floor, writhing from his last attack and paying little attention to my own posturing. Redelia’s pendant was a lump that bulged beneath my leather vest. It remained unobtrusive when I kept hunched forward, but now my back arched and my chest puffed out, pressing the stone against my tight clothing.
“What is this?” Wick asked. He pressed the tip of his sword below the bulge in my leathers, then traced upward toward my neck. He scraped his sword along my skin until the thin chain to Redelia’s pendant caught against his blade. He lifted it, dragging the amulet’s chain until its holy gem emerged from beneath my vest and dangled freely, casting a warm white light speckled with dancing motes of color.
“A magician’s trinket?” he asked. With a quick tug of his blade, he snapped the necklace chain and sent Redelia’s artifact jewel skittering across the floor. He stooped to pick it up.
“I said, ‘what is this?’ ” He kicked me in the chest, ruining my attempt to draw fresh air enough to answer him. With the holy pendant in his open palm, I knew Redelia could once again watch. She would see a villain lording over me, her failed emissary, captured and beaten in the hull of a slaver’s ship.
Wick peered into the gem, its white gleam emanating faint wisps of prismatic color alongside it. “You’re in league with some kind of sorcerer. Where do we find them so that we might steal their life and feed it elsewhere?”
A loud thud from beneath signaled Wolly’s struggle to find a route amid the rafters and beams of the ship’s frame. As Wick’s attention nearly diverted, Redelia’s gem flickered and pulsed in a vibrant display of colorful light. Reds and yellows mixed with purples and greens in a divine distraction that would buy Wolly his peace.
Wick lifted the gem closer to his face and stared into its depths with one wide eye while the other squinted shut. My breath was coming back to me now as the prince stared, beholden to the kaleidoscopic beauty of that divine artifact.
Then, Redelia surprised me. She released a burst of searing radiance from the pendant, forcing me to look away.
Wick’s open eye was caught in the center of that blast. His fingers curled around the stone and whipped it away from his face, but it was too late. His blue iris was a mottled cloud around a diminished pupil. Blood vessels were swollen and broken around it, releasing a stream of red down his cheek.
“A sock!” Wick yelled. “Give me a damned sock!”
The pendant cooled and darkened in Wick’s hand, likely the last burst of holy energy Redelia had access to without the ability to sip from the well of life as freely as she deserved.
Wick’s second guard yanked off his boot and handed his prince a thick, damp sock. Wick dropped Redelia’s pendant inside the makeshift sack and handed it back to the guard. “Keep that blasted thing hidden and get it off my ship. I want it sent to my father right away, with caution that our friend is best suited to dispose of it.”
“Right away, my liege,” the guard said. He took his boot in one hand and left with a single naked foot.
I stood while Wick cried blood from his blinded eye. I might not have this chance again.
I charged.
Running headfirst with my hands behind me, my legs were only free to separate a short distance by the infernal chain that linked my ankle cuffs. I rammed into Wick with my shoulder and knocked him over, forcing the sword from his hand as I kept shuffling forward.
Through the door from his private cabin, I emerged under the summer sun at the ship’s backside, which faced the beach directly. Guards littered the top deck, hauling ropes from one place to another, tugging at the lines that would raise multiple sails, and securing supplies for the journey ahead. None noticed me until Wick emerged from his cabin, clutching his bleeding eye.
“Stop him!” he yelled.
The guards rushed me from all points on the ship. I headbutted one guard and plowed past him but then my legs tried to spread too far and sprint when they lacked the range. The chain in my shackles pulled taut and tripped me. I rolled to a stop in the center of the ship, alongside the guardrail that extended around its perimeter. Two guards lifted me by my arms and held me tight.
Wick stepped toward me, his palm covering his blind eye and his sword raised in his other hand.
“My father demands a spectacle,” Wick said, “but there’s more than one way to achieve it. Your head could return on a pike, for instance.” He touched his blade against the side of my neck, then pulled it away and brought it back, quickly. I flinched at how easily he could have followed through on that threat.
He laughed for a moment, but then stopped abruptly. A woman’s voice called his name from the beach below.
“Oh, Prince Wick?”
“Feck me,” Wick said, turning his attention toward the beach. He walked the short distance to the ship’s rearmost point and leaned against the guardrail. “Araine, make yourself scarce. Your assistance is no longer required.”
My view was impeded, standing a few feet behind Wick while his goons held my arms tight. Still, I could see enough of the scene that played out on the beach below.
>
Araine, the brown-skinned woman with coconut eyes, stood on the beach in her flowing white toga. She was no goddess — she lacked the respect for life’s creations a woman like Redelia exuded — but she was powerful. A series of small cyclones churned along the beachfront, waist high at this point but capable of growing exponentially.
“You were set to sail,” she said. “I was promised sustenance, and you would leave me with nothing.”
“You are not my pet to feed, you’re his!” Wick yelled. “Take this up with your master and return my slaves to theirs.”
“I am not a patient woman,” she said. “Learn that now.”
The beach surged with sand, rolling in a wave toward the ocean. The piers and docks Araine had built disintegrated with the flick of a finger, building their material into the swell of sand that approached us.
“Do not disrupt our departure,” Wick yelled. “He’ll cut your tits off for this!”
“The king?” I asked. “Bold of you to make such threats against an infernal on behalf of a mortal man.”
“Not the king,” Wick said. “My father is the benevolent face of a peace-loving people. His sniveling infernal auxiliary has ten times the power Araine does. She’s signing her own death warrant now.”
“There’s another infernal?” I asked.
“An army of them,” he said. “And they’re supposed to follow their leader, but some infernals are idiots.”
The cyclones by Araine’s side grew larger, their incessant winds pummeling the ship and forcing it to sway.
“Sire,” one of the guards said, “what do we do?”
“Go,” Wick yelled to the men preparing the ship’s sails. “Go, go, go!” Those billowing folds of canvas were heavy and expansive, but the sailors doubled their efforts in pulling the halyard ropes that hoisted the massive sheets.
The row of boats parked at the beach’s edge drifted toward the open sea, aided by the wind in their rising sails. We drifted too, putting slow distance between ourselves and the self-styled goddess that commanded the shore.
