Princess at Sea

by Dawn Cook

  Jeck leaned closer, and I forced myself to make my motion slow as I eased back from the smell of leather. He didn’t notice, intent on the map. “You don’t know?” he demanded.

  “No, I don’t.” Duncan’s voice was indignant. “It was late at night, and they had me working in the galley most of the time. But Contessa, Alex, and most of the crew dinghied to shore and didn’t come back. The best I can guess is that we then retraced our path back to the capital and anchored in the harbor. That’s all I know.”

  Kavenlow’s motions were quick and sharp as his finger stabbed down to a third river. “That’s where they are.” Looking up, he fixed upon Duncan. “There’s a shallow river that no one lives upon. But the cove it empties into is deep enough for a shallow-draft boat. At full tide, they could row a dinghy up to here.” He pointed again, far inland. “Then ride the outgoing tide back down to the sea with the ransom. The road from the capital to Saltwood crosses it here. That’s where they are. That’s where they’ll stay.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. “Are you sure?” I whispered.

  Duncan’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t think it was that far north, but it could be. And it goes along with what I was supposed to tell you about the ransom.”

  I put my hands on my knees to hide that they were shaking. Duncan put his fingers atop mine, feeling them tremble. “I’m sorry, Tess,” he said softly. “They want the money in a wagon headed to Saltwood tomorrow at sunrise before they leave to rejoin the ones holding Contessa and Alex. They can see the gate from the harbor, so they’ll know if you don’t. You’re to keep moving until they’re sure no one is following, then they’ll come and collect it. After they have the money, they’ll tell you where your sister and Prince Alex are. No wagon tomorrow means one less royal. You miss the next sunrise, they’ll kill whoever is left and send you both their heads.”

  My stomach churned, and I couldn’t seem to breathe. “I’ll take it,” I said quickly. “I’ll be the driver.” The tingle of venom coursed through me, pushed into my blood by my pounding heart. Not a breath of wind stirred inside my head or out. I was too frightened to wonder why.

  Kavenlow’s face was expressionless as he watched me from over the map. “No,” he said firmly. “We will find them while the pirates are distracted by the promise of ransom and steal them back.”

  “I agree,” Jeck said. “We can put men on the wagon instead of money.”

  “I’m taking the wagon,” I repeated, louder, and Kavenlow frowned. “And there will be money on it.”

  “Tess,” Kavenlow said, the irritation in his voice tightening my fear. “We know where they are. We’ll get them back. And we can’t give the pirates what they want. It will only invite other attempts. You know it.”

  “We’ll retake the money after we get my sister safe,” I said, my knees going loose. “You don’t even know if that’s where they are. Duncan hasn’t seen them since they were dropped off yesterday. They could be anywhere by now, even the capital itself. And why would they send Duncan to us knowing he might tell us everything he knew? If you go up that river or road with guards and soldiers, you’ll find nothing. And then they’ll kill my sister for our having tried to rescue them!”

  Jeck shifted back a step, his gaze on Kavenlow decidedly mocking. Seeing it, Kavenlow’s frown deepened. “Tess,” he warned, “that is enough.”

  “It’s not enough!” I exclaimed, fear making me reckless. “I will not sit here and listen to you two plot and plan when all we have to do is give them the damned money and get them back. This is my sister’s life, not some foolish game!”

  “Tess!” Kavenlow thundered. “Sit down!”

  My breath caught, and I realized I was standing. Duncan was staring at me, and Jeck’s brow was raised as he leaned against the mantel, watching me find fault with my master’s game and probably wondering how Kavenlow could control his pieces if he couldn’t even control his apprentice. My jaw clenched, and I refused to be ashamed.

  “Sit,” Kavenlow repeated roughly, his face creased in anger as he pointed.

  “Excuse me,” I said abruptly. “I find I am in need of some air.”

  Flustered and angry, I gathered my skirts and fixed my gaze upon a dark archway. Duncan rose with me, and Jeck pushed himself from the mantel. Kavenlow was already standing, but I thought he would have remained seated in an unspoken rebuke that I had not been acting like a proper lady, shouting at him like that. Ignoring them, I headed to the archway that would lead to the palace grounds. My steps were loud in the tension-filled air.

  “I need to get back,” Duncan said, and I heard him start after me. “I’ve told you everything I know. They’ll want a response. What do you want me to tell them?”

  I paused at the archway, turning to see that Kavenlow had already bent himself over the map. Jeck, though, was watching me, which I didn’t like at all. “Tell them we will be doing what they ask, though there will be nothing on that wagon but sand,” Kavenlow said, and my heart seemed to clench. He had told Captain Rylan that the ransom would be paid.

  Duncan hesitated, and when Kavenlow said nothing more in farewell, he turned and headed after me. His head was down in worry, and his pace was fraught with indecision as he came even with me. My throat closed when his hand slipped familiarly about my waist, and we continued down the torchlit hallway together.

  Judging we had gone out of earshot, I dragged my feet and brought us to a halt beside a window yet unshuttered for the night. The moon was behind the low clouds threatening rain, and I kept my gaze fixed upon the lights of the city, glowing from the haze of a thousand cooking fires. They blurred and cleared as I forced the tears away. From the gardens below came a rush of wind in the green leaves of spring, then nothing.

  It was chill by the window, and Duncan’s hand was warm upon me. I could hear him breathe, and I longed to feel his arms about me again. But I couldn’t bear it. He was leaving. My entire world was falling in on itself. “Do you have to go?” I asked, thinking my voice sounded very small.

  “You know I have to.”

  “I know,” I whispered, eyes closing as I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You’ll come back?”

  He put his arms about me, pulling me to fall back into his chest. His lips brushed my ear in a whisper as he said, “I’ll try to help, if I can. When Kavenlow and Captain Jeck come to rescue them.”

  “I know,” I said, my face resting against him so I could hear his heartbeat. I should have left with him the first time he asked. I should have told Captain Borlett to sail on past the island and risk the shallows at Yellow Tail. I should have never suggested we invite that foul man on board our boat, my beautiful boat now wrecked on the sandbars. My sister was in ropes and going hungry. My life was twisted and turned until there was nothing left.

  “How did this happen?” I asked, wiping a clean hand under my nose.

  “I don’t know.” His voice was a rumble through me. He didn’t move, and we stood for a moment, just taking strength from each other. My eyes were on the lights of the city below us, and they flickered when a gust from the bay visibly flowed into the streets. The zephyr in my head heard it coming, and I held my breath and forced it to be still. With an excited chatter, the wind in my head settled.

  “I have to go,” he said softly, his grip tensing for a moment, then releasing. “If I’m not back soon, they’ll become suspicious.”

  “What about you?” I asked softly, stifling my worry lest the wind escape me. “What happens to you when we steal them back, and they find nothing in that wagon?”

  Fear flashed over him, quickly hidden behind a rakish grin that I could see through easier than springwater. “I’ll be fine,” he lied. “I’ll be on the boat. How could I have anything to do with an empty wagon?”

  “But they’ll know you told us where they were,” I protested, frightened. “When Captain Rylan realizes there’s nothing on that wagon, he’ll know you told us. He might kill you!”

  Duncan pulled me close s
o I couldn’t see the fear in his eyes. “I’ll slip away,” he said evenly. “Right before you steal them back.”

  “What if you can’t?”

  A sharp cadence of boots on tile pulled my eyes up to see Jeck. In his hands was a tightly rolled scroll of paper, and that awful hat was again on his head. His eyes met mine, and I fought the urge to push from Duncan at the disapproval in his gaze.

  “Duncan,” I said, as Jeck turned a corner and vanished, “what if you can’t slip away? What then? What happens then?” To you? To us?

  The wind from the bay finally reached the palace, flowing in a hush over the wall, across the gardens, and climbing the palace walls finally to slip in the window before which we stood. It brought the scent of fish and smoke to me, and a strand of hair that had escaped my topknot caressed my cheek. Heart pounding, I made sure the zephyr in me was silent lest it provoke a whirlwind.

  Duncan put his hands atop my shoulders and eased me back until he met my eyes. The corner of his eye twitched, and his smile became forced. “I’ll be fine,” he said. His gaze went past me and into the night. “I need to go.”

  I could say nothing. Miserable, I pulled from him. Arms wrapped around myself, I stared out the window, not seeing anything as the salt-laden air pushed gently on me. From farther inside the palace, a door slammed. Kavenlow wasn’t going to put any money on that wagon, and princess or apprentice, there was nothing I could do about it.

  “Tess,” he whispered.

  “You’d better go,” I said, bowing my head and pushing my fingers into my temple.

  He touched my shoulder, and I didn’t respond. If he tried to kiss me again, I would fall apart. Duncan’s hand fell away, and I listened to his steps move away from me, slow and reluctant.

  “Duncan,” I said. My head pounded, and I refused to look at him. A thread of venom slipped into me. Outside, the wind soughed in the trees. Inside, the wind in my head promised lies if I would only let it go. It made it hard to think, but I knew if there was no money on that wagon, they would kill Duncan. It was that simple. I wondered if this was Kavenlow’s plan, then dismissed it as being far too ignoble of him.

  “I’ll make sure that there’s money on that wagon,” I said softly, and the voice in my head fell to a soft, insidious chitter. “If they get their money, they won’t care if you told them where they were and they are stolen back.”

  “Promise?”

  The fear and relief in his voice pulled me around when nothing else could. Five steps from me, Duncan stood with his arms slack at his side. His red boots were ruined from salt, and the rings on his fingers glinted dully. The time spent at sea had left him thinner, the excess pared from him to leave a different man. He was stronger of body and will, but more vulnerable in his heart. More vulnerable because of me.

  The fear in him for what he would be returning to was well hidden, but it was there. He was braver than I was—going back knowing he would be blamed when we stole them away. There was nothing keeping him from running away, from not returning to the ship as planned. He was putting his life in jeopardy for my sister and Alex. For me. Money, I decided, is a small price to pay for the life of someone you love.

  “I promise, Duncan,” I whispered, and the wind in my head gibbered to be free. “It will be there.”

  Twenty-three

  The wind that had been clamoring in my head when Duncan left was nearly gone. Whispering. Slumberous. Soothed into almost nothing by Jeck and Kavenlow’s conversation. They were ignoring me, though I sat within fifteen feet of them. I didn’t care. I had been arguing with them; I was lucky to be in the same room.

  Jeck had taken my usual place beside Kavenlow as they pondered the chart spread atop the low table before the stone fireplace. It was lit more for the light than the warmth, and I curled up in my usual chair beside it, thinking how different everything was from just last night, when I had been shivering in the dirt. A wisp of worry went through me, and I hoped my sister and Alex weren’t as miserable as I had been, but knew they probably were.

  My gaze went to Jeck, his resonant voice catching my attention as he pointed down with a strong, sun-browned finger. I thought it odd that he and Kavenlow were working together as well as they were, their games meshing for the good of both of them, and a pang of jealousy flickered through me that Jeck was sitting where I usually would be, at Kavenlow’s right.

  “Here,” Jeck was saying, silently tapping. “If you bring men in from the water and hold here at this cove until we’re ready, you’ll remain undetected. I will bring men in from the land and take what they have ashore. You can then bring the water force around when I signal with smoke, and we will have them all.

  Kavenlow’s bearded face was empty of emotion. “I’m not taking the water force. You are.”

  Eyebrows high at the resoluteness of Kavenlow’s voice, Jeck leaned back and eyed him in question. “Why?” he asked flatly.

  “I don’t like the water,” Kavenlow said immediately, and I nodded, curling my feet up under me though I had been told not to more times than there were leaves on a linden tree. Kavenlow abhorred the water. I think it was because he believed his father had been a sailor and was afraid he might find him—though his father would be an old man by now.

  “You take the water force,” Kavenlow said.

  Jeck shook his head. “I’m going to have the men taking the area where the queen and Prince Alex are likely to be.”

  I pulled my knees up to my chin and clasped my hands about my shins. It was an inexcusable breech of protocol, but it was late, and even the servants had been sent to bed. And I didn’t care if Jeck thought I was an uncouth woman with no manners. But he probably thought that anyway, after seeing me barefoot and tied to a mast, doused with oil and dripping, standing on a beach in my underthings . . . The list was endless.

  “One of us needs to be in charge of the boats,” Kavenlow said, not noticing my feet on the cushion though Jeck did.

  “You do it,” he said, as his eyes slid from me. “You’re the master of the seas.”

  Kavenlow bristled. “Fine. I’ll get a second guard detail to do it.”

  “If you think that adequate.”

  “I don’t think it adequate, but seeing as you won’t do it—”

  “That’s right. I won’t.”

  They sounded like a married couple bickering, and I dropped my cheek to my knees to watch the fire. I was beginning to realize why two players working together was such a rare phenomenon.

  “If you’re so bent on it, I’ll take the water,” Kavenlow said with a poor grace.

  “Good,” he said, his annoyance tempered with a shade of satisfaction. “I’ll take the wagon and put my men on it in hiding.”

  My head came up as unease pulled me straight. “Are you sure there will be enough room for them with the money and spice already on it?”

  Jeck glanced at Kavenlow and away. Muscles bunching under his clean Misdev uniform, he stood and went to tend the fire. My eyes narrowed. Pulse quickening, I focused on my teacher.

  “Captain Jeck will have the wagon,” Kavenlow said, and my shoulders tightened at what he was not saying. “And I will take the water force. It will be close as it is, finding the best available men from those who are here and getting them into position without their being spotted.”

  “We’re going to put money on that wagon, not men,” I said, fear pulling me to the front of my chair and my feet to the floor. “I promised Duncan there would be money on the wagon.”

  Jeck poked the fire, his back hunched. Kavenlow stood. Drawing me to my feet, he took my hands and pulled me a short distance away to the dais, my skirts rustling in the absolute quiet broken only by the snapping of the fire. His eyes were pinched in what I recognized as heartache. “Tess,” he began, and I pulled my hands from his.

  “She’s my sister, and there will be money on the wagon,” I said, louder. My pulse rose, and I felt the tingle of venom rising. I took a slow breath, willing myself calm.

&nb
sp; Kavenlow pressed his lips together to make his mustache bunch. “Contessa and Alex have forbidden it, but more importantly, it’s my game, and there will be men, not money.”

  I looked to the floor, not seeing the bright-colored tile through the darkness. The venom made me feel ill, unreal. I wanted to shout at him, to rail against him, but if I did, the wind in my head would break free. Even worse, he would send me to my room, disgraced.

  Forcing my fear down, I whispered, “You know they’ll kill Duncan if something goes wrong. If you don’t get there in time, they’ll know he betrayed them.”

  “I’m sorry, Tess. He knew the risk. He went back willingly.”

  “He went back because if he didn’t, they would murder both of them!” I pleaded. “Did you coerce him? Did you use your magic to sway him?” I asked, ready to be angry, but he shook his head and ran a hand down his graying beard.

  “No. It wouldn’t have been right.”

  I glanced at Jeck, wanting to ask him the same thing, but I knew in my heart Duncan had willingly taken this risk. He had done it because I had promised the ransom would be on that wagon. “I have to sit down,” I said breathily, my mind whirling as I returned to my couch.

  “I’m sorry,” Kavenlow was saying, his voice sounding hollow. “We will do all we can.”

  “But you won’t put money on that wagon.” The back of my knees hit a cushion, and I instinctively sat. I could see a corner of the flames past Jeck. The fire leapt and I watched, too numb to look away.

  Slowly it began to take on meaning, making my heart sink to my belly. Duncan was going to die because he believed my promise. I couldn’t argue with Kavenlow, and I knew I couldn’t convince Jeck to side with me. Duncan was going to die. Because of me. I wouldn’t let it happen.