Princess at Sea

by Dawn Cook

  The light coming in the broken ceiling was green with new leaves and dim. Lumps of the roof were scattered about, spindly saplings reaching for the sky around them. Squinting, I realized the humps weren’t chunks of fallen roof but unconscious men. The sharp acidic smell of venom was everywhere. My lips parted when I realized the men on the floor were the crew.

  For an instant I thought Jeck had discovered my trickery and gotten here before me, but then a jingling movement caught my attention and Captain Rylan rose to his feet from where he had been bent over the last pirate, fastening a knot tight. He turned, his wide grin vanishing when he saw me standing in the doorway to block the light.

  “Where’s Contessa?” I said, not understanding.

  “You!” he barked, the bells on his boots chiming as he drew himself to his entire height. “What are you doing here?”

  “Where’s my sister?” I repeated, voice shaking as my fingertips touched my knife hilts.

  “Where’s my money?”

  He took a step closer, and I fought to remain unmoving. My eyes had adjusted, and I shot a glance at the men slumped before me. Were they dead? I wondered, but then decided no one would tie up dead men.

  “I said, where’s my money?” he said, standing in his faded finery with the bells on his boots gently ringing.

  Confusion trickled through me, tightening my fear. He doesn’t know? “Duncan has it.” Frightened, I stepped inside and out of the doorway, fighting the urge to retreat onto the rotting porch. My knees went weak, and my throat closed up. Captain Rylan’s eyes narrowed, and I added, “I gave it to Duncan. He’s in the dinghy, taking it back to the ship. Where’s my sister?”

  “The ship?” he exclaimed, and a dove flew away from the rotting beams. “What the hell is he taking it there for?” Then he went deathly still in sudden thought, and I watched in alarm as emotions cascaded over him in a rapid fluidity. Question, followed by ugly realization, anger, and then fury. “The chull!” he said, and my breath came in a jerk. “The son of a chull!”

  Legs trembling and wanting to run, I pulled a knife and showed it to him. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. “I did what you wanted,” I said, and his attention jerked to me. “Where’s my sister?”

  Captain Rylan ran his eyes up and down me. In an instant, I saw his decision. He was bigger than I, stronger. I had three knives and a whip that was of questionable use in such a small space. Breath coming in a quick heave, I spun to the doorway to flee. I could only pray he wouldn’t use toxin to down me.

  “No, you don’t,” he said murderously softly, and a shriek slipped from me when the bells on his boots tinkled and his hand fell heavily on my shoulder. He spun me around, and I flowed with it, swinging my knife. He cried out in shock as my swing thumped to a halt. Swearing, he shoved me away. I stumbled back, cold when I caught my balance. My knife had a sheen of red.

  I’ve cut him. Oh God, he’ll kill me for that. Frightened, I gathered myself to run when a panicked voice shrilled from a second room, “Tess!”

  Contessa. I froze, then leapt past Captain Rylan fingering his white shirt where my knife had struck. He looked up as I passed him, his lightly wrinkled face twisting. I burst into a dark room, my bloodied knife still in my hand.

  On the floor by the wall were the dusky shadows of Contessa and Alex. They were both staring at me, bound about the ankles and wrists. Contessa had worked her gag free, and Alex’s eyes were hard with a frustrated anger. Stiffening, Contessa’s fearful gaze darted over my shoulder. “Behind you!” she cried, but I knew Captain Rylan was coming.

  A hundred ideas fell through my mind. I couldn’t free them and escape both. It was them or me. The decision was easy.

  Palming my last remaining knives, I leapt to my sister. Contessa screamed another warning, her gaze fixed behind me. My legs were pulled out from under me. I grunted in pain as I hit the moldy floor. My breath was knocked from me, and gasping for air, I pushed my knives at Alex. Pain pulled my eyes shut when he moved his black boots to cover them.

  “You little dock whore,” came Captain Rylan’s voice, hot and heavy on my neck. His weight lifted, and I gasped for air as he yanked me up, and I hung from his grip like a rag doll. “Duncan and I are going to settle this right now,” he said.

  He encircled my wrist, squeezing until my fingers went numb, and he plucked the knife I bloodied him with from my grip. The other two were safe with Alex, the darkness of the room having hidden my actions. I met the prince’s eyes for a fleeting second. “Don’t come back for me,” I mouthed, and my heart clenched when his face paled in understanding.

  “Let her go!” Contessa shouted, ignored as Captain Rylan jerked me back into the green-shadowed outer room. “Tess!” she cried, voice going fainter.

  I fought him, and the flat of his hand came out and struck a ringing blow across my head.

  Gasping, I staggered, feeling myself yanked forward. I stumbled, almost going down when my foot found a hole in the floor. Pain lanced through my ankle, and he jerked me up. A cry of hurt came from me as my ankle flamed into agony, twisted.

  “You’ll be yelping more than that before I’m done with you,” the captain threatened. “You best hope he’s in earshot, or you’re going to die for nothing.”

  “I gave you what you wanted,” I panted, hunched and trying to see past my hair. “I did what you said. Let me go!”

  “Stupid, stupid little rich woman,” he said with a sneer, pulling me out onto the rotting porch. “Still don’t understand, do you? I knew this was too good to be true. I broke my own rule and see what happened? I’ll skin him alive for this. You aren’t the only fool here. The difference is I’ll be getting my money, and you’ll be dead.”

  He spun me around, pinning me to him with a thick arm. His chest pushed against my back as he took a huge breath. The stink of green-slimed boards assailed me, mixing with the scent of salt and sweat. “Duncan!” he bellowed, making the horses at the railing start and shy. “Duncan! I have your palace whore! Give me the money, and I’ll let her go!”

  “I don’t understand,” I breathed, feeling unreal and dazed.

  “No surprise there,” he muttered, his eyes scanning the thick brush surrounding the slack river. The sun was lost behind new clouds, and the wind brushed the tops of the trees. “You’ve been duped by the best, missy. I taught that pup everything he knows, and this is what I get? Maybe I taught him a little—too—well!”

  He jerked his arm with the last words, pinching my bitten shoulder. Pain pounded from my shoulder, and I moaned as a shimmer of black flitted before my vision, then cleared. My knees buckled, but he held me up, the arm of his faded dress coat chokingly under my chin.

  “Yes,” he breathed harshly into my ear. “Make some noise. Make sure he hears you. Call for him.”

  I won’t, I vowed, then gasped when he dug his fingers into the newly healed wound. The dry rasp of my intake of breath was almost a scream in itself. “Duncan!” I shrieked, releasing the pain with my voice so it wouldn’t drive me insane. “Oh, God, Duncan!”

  “That’s a good girl,” he soothed, his raspy voice tight in anticipation. “Call him again.”

  “Duncan!” I raged, my throat hoarse and raw. I didn’t understand, and I feared if I killed him with my hands I never would. Captain Rylan’s fingers dug into me as if trying to meet his thumb on the other side of my shoulder, and I panted through the pain, almost passing out. A tickling trace of thought was forcing its way through the confusion and agony.

  Duncan and Captain Rylan knew each other? The cold shock raced through me, making my legs all but give way. The wind whistled down from the trees, striking the ground and billowing up into my face with bits of earth and bark. They already knew each other.

  “Duncan!” Captain Rylan shouted, jerking my hair to make me face the sky. “Hear her screaming? Don’t do this to me, boy,” he threatened. “There’s enough money for both of us. I’ll hunt you down. I know your hiding spots. I bloody well showe
d them to you!”

  “You know Duncan?” I panted, feeling the venom spill into me from where his fingers pressed my healing wound. My shoulder was damp and I could smell the metallic scent of blood. I think he had broken the new skin.

  “Know him?” he snarled. “I all but raised him.”

  My eyes warmed as the truth hit me, heavy and crippling. “You’re Lan,” I whispered. “You’re the one he took the thief mark for. You let them brand him for your crime and drag him through the street.”

  “He found me last summer,” he muttered, his eyes searching the brush. “Told me he had the scheme of all schemes. A kingdom’s ransom. All he needed was a little help from the master. Fifty-fifty,” Captain Rylan said bitterly, pinching my shoulder again. His fingers came away red with blood, and my vision started to blur.

  Captain Rylan filled his lungs. “This isn’t fifty-fifty, Duncan!” he shouted, deafening my ear. “Talk to me, or her next scream will be her last!”

  “He’s gone,” I said, dead inside.

  “Then you’ll be there to judge him at death’s door when I catch up to him.” Captain Rylan jerked me to the end of the porch so he could look down the river. “Duncan!”

  “He never loved me,” I said softly, the pain in my shoulder and ankle lost in a haze of heartache.

  “No, you silly woman. He used you, just like he used me.” Bells on his boots ringing, he turned to look behind him. “Duncan!”

  He never loved me.

  Muttering under his breath, Captain Rylan hauled me to the other end of the porch. The horses pulled back to the limit of their leads, frightened. “I’ll skin him alive and make a purse out of it,” he said. “I’ll cut off his hands and feed them to the dogs.”

  He lied to me, I thought numbly. The wind in my head gibbered at the wind in the trees, inciting it to swirl down to find me. It was a scheme, a play. He never loved me at all.

  Captain Rylan stopped his pacing and looked at the sky. The zephyr in my head howled joyously, and a blast of air beat down on the shack, sending the man to drag me to the back of the porch. I staggered in his grip, lost of will and empty of thought.

  It had all been a lie. Maybe not from the start, but it had turned into one.

  The wind chortled in glee, knowing it would win this time. It grew in me, calling the storm pushing on me to come and free it. “It was a lie,” I said, betrayal soaking into me like acid to leave an empty hole. It grew slowly, insidiously, then, like a dam breaking, it flooded my soul. “A lie!” I shouted.

  The wind gusted, pushing my hair back. The shack groaned, and Captain Rylan stumbled, gripping me to keep from falling down.

  “What out of hell . . .” he breathed, staring at the clear sky full of wind. “Sweet mother of us all. . . .”

  “He used me. For money!” I exclaimed, shouting to hear myself over the wind babbling in my head. It howled, it gibbered, it demanded release, but that would require a thought on my part, and I was dead.

  I hung in Captain Rylan’s grip. The toxin was pushed from my bite and flooded my body. My hands tingled. My legs shook from the poison taking hold and killing me. Raw force surged through me, and I flung my head back. “The foul bastard!” I raged, and a flash of venom-laced power raced through me.

  Captain Rylan cried out, falling to crash into the railing. The horses scattered, the sound of their fear joining the ecstasy of the storm. Free and unencumbered, I stood on the porch. The wind in my head ran unhindered through me. Anticipation and fury raced each other to be the first to be acted upon. Bursting, I admitted to the heavens, “He never loved me!”

  Flames licked at the sodden, green-slimed boards. The pines beside the house begin to smolder. The heat of anger and betrayal scoured through me. A distant roar echoed over the trees. It was the wind from the sea. It was coming to find me. It would take away my reason and sanity. And I welcomed it. God help me, I wanted to die from the hurt.

  Sounding like a living thing, the angry soughing grew closer. I looked to the sky as the noise grew, and with the sound of lions, it crashed down upon me. I fell under the weight of it. Staggering, I pulled myself upright.

  “He never loved me!” I exclaimed, and the nearby spring-sap twigs burst to flame. I fell to my knees under the blast of heat and dry wind.

  The dry-rotted shack caught faster than light tinder. Heat washed over me, pushed by the wind and rolling over me like a summer-warmed field. The wind babbled and howled. It struck me and beat the flames higher, swirling with promise.

  The air seared my throat, and I cried out when my breath was ripped from me and replaced with heat. The anger and hurt in me swelled, consuming me. With a whoosh, the nearby trees went up like an oil-soaked torch. The snapping and groaning of the shack burning behind me joined the tortured sound of trees waving and in flames. The heat of the burning walls behind me hit me anew, and I pulled my tear-streaked face up. My skin tightened from the warmth. Yellow with flames, the wall tilted and started to fall. It would crush me.

  A part of me panicked, but the larger, broken part said no. I wouldn’t move. I would choose to remain. I would end it. I had no life with Kavenlow, and now I had no life with Duncan. And how could I trust to love another? And without love, I might as well be dead.

  I bowed my head, the soggy wood under my hands warm and steaming. I took a last breath, then another, burning my lungs with the sound of tearing paper. The wall creaked again. I closed my eyes, willing it to fall.

  Something struck me, knocking me rolling into the railing and off the porch. I gasped, feeling the drop of air beneath me. Arms flailing, I struck the water. The roar of flames and wind was drowned out with the swirl of water. Cold shocked through me, my cry reaching the surface as a stream of bubbles.

  I burst from the water in a cloud of denial and anger, finding myself sitting chest deep in the slurry of black mud and silt. Above me was the burning rubble of the shack. It had fallen in on itself without me. Beside me pulling himself up to sit in the water was Jeck.

  “No!” I cried, hitting him as the wind clamored, angry that I was still alive. “You can’t. You can’t! Leave me alone!”

  Lips pressed and hidden behind his dripping beard and mustache, he pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me to try to contain me. I twisted and fought, helpless in the imprisoning strength of his grip, unable to accept there was compassion there, not believing it.

  The shack slid majestically into the river, and a warm rush of water cascaded past us. The trees above burned, a thick smoke coming from the death of the new leaves and old needles while the wind both inside and outside my head howled and tossed the branches.

  My fury rose that he’d try to save me, fueled by Duncan’s betrayal and my inability to accomplish even the simplest task of ending my life. The wind in me demanded freedom, and in a shared moment of loss, I looked skyward and called down its brother.

  Screaming its defiance, it fell from the heavens like a stone, flattening the water and sending Jeck to bow his head against me. But he wouldn’t let go, his voice within my ear saying that it would be all right, that I could survive this. I didn’t want to believe, and I felt my hands warm with his coming death. He would let me go, or I would end it this way.

  He felt it coming, and with the strength of the wind filling me, I stiffened when a surge of force pulsed through me. I screamed as it left me, burning my hands and my soul. Jeck shuddered, his grip slackening for an instant before it came back stronger, almost desperate. “No,” he rasped, panting. “My hurt is as great as yours. I can take anything you can give. And I’m not letting you go. Listen to me. Listen to me, Tess!” he shouted over the tumult. “Let the wind go. Let it go for good.”

  “Please. I can’t . . .” I begged, the water sloshing into a thick black silt as I struggled against Jeck with a faltering will. “There’s nothing left. I’ve lost everything. . . .”

  “No,” he whispered, the pain I had heaped upon him making his voice a ragged thread laced with determi
nation. “You’re stronger than that.”

  The wind bent the trees and fanned the fire, sending smoldering bark to hit us. It was angry that I was still alive and held its brother hostage, but in my head, the wind cowered, frightened by Jeck’s voice.

  “I can’t!” I sobbed. “He said he loved me. He lied and left me to die.”

  “Don’t end it this way. Not because of him.” It would have been unheard over the wind and fire but that his lips were brushing my ear. His arms pressed me into him, keeping me from moving. The smell of horse and leather lingering on him meant security, and the band crushing my chest eased. A choking sob broke free. I clung to the compassion I found in him, ignoring that he was a rival player. It was all I had. And I thought—I thought he understood.

  “Don’t let this kill you,” he whispered, and I realized I was clutching his shoulders, crying into his shirt. The wind in my head faltered, falling into a soft muted complaint, sullen that Jeck had found a way to reach me, breaking its hold on me. The wind fanning the flames in the trees abruptly lost interest, lifting its head to look at the sea. With it went my anger, leaving only the crushing reality that Jeck had bested me again. Again I had failed. Again he had seen me weak and foolish. God help me, I couldn’t even die properly.

  “But he lied to me,” I wept as I sat in the stream, the breath of reason sparking through me as the wind diminished. I was caught. Jeck had caught me and forced me to live. Leaning into him, I shook with my sobs. “He lied to me on the boat when he said he loved me. He saved my life only so I could bring him the ransom when I told him Contessa had forbidden it and I was the only one who could make it happen. I lied to Kavenlow!” I wailed, shamed and made into a fool by Duncan. “I lied to Kavenlow for him, and for what? This?”

  “Shhhh,” he breathed, his grip gentling when I started to shake. “It will be all right, Tess. Let the wind go.”

  “He used me,” I said. “He only wanted money. He sent me here to die. He didn’t come back. I called for him, and he didn’t come back . . .”