Jules took two long, slow breaths.
She stepped inside quickly, nerves twitching in fear of being attacked by the knife of the other Mage. Or, worse, having a Mage spell remove her arm, or turn her into an insect. No one knew exactly what Mages could do, but none of the stories circulated among commons were comforting.
Nothing happened. She heard a soft, wheezing noise, gradually realizing it was the sound of someone’s labored breathing.
Jules waited, her eyes growing accustomed to the dark inside the cabin, finally making out the shape of the second Mage, who was lying in the bunk. Jules flexed her hold on the Mechanic weapon, forcing herself to walk closer.
The Mage didn’t move, didn’t seem to be aware that she was in the cabin.
She had to get very close to the Mage to be sure of hitting him with the shot. Jules took two more steps, gazing down at the Mage, who lay with closed eyes on rumpled sheets. The man seemed to be very skinny, bones standing out in the angles of his face.
He wasn’t skinny, she realized. He was very old.
The Mage’s eyes opened, fixing on her own.
Jules almost froze again, but she raised the revolver to point it at the old Mage.
He didn’t react at all, merely looking at her.
She felt a curious mix of anger and reluctance as she looked back. One Mage had ruined her life. Others sought her death. They hurt others and showed no signs of caring.
Why wasn’t she pulling the trigger?
Jules glared at the ancient Mage, all of the questions that had tormented her tumbling through her mind. Why had she been chosen for that prophecy? Why did Mages act the way they did? Why couldn’t the Emperor protect her instead of being a threat? Why was all of this happening?
But only one word came out of her. “Why?”
One corner of the Mage’s mouth twisted slightly. He spoke in a weak voice tinged with distance, as if already halfway gone from this world. “A shadow asks the ultimate question.”
Was that really a trace of humor she’d heard in that quavering voice? “What’s the answer?”
“There is no answer to why, but the answers are so many they are beyond number,” the Mage gasped.
“What does that mean?”
“Think on it. Perhaps even a shadow can learn wisdom.” The Mage’s eyes lingered on her again. “The prophecy was correct. This one sees it. That one’s line will produce the daughter who destroys the Great Guilds. This one wonders why that one was chosen.”
Jules heard her own voice quaver with pent-up emotions. “I’ve been asking myself that a lot. Do you know the answer?”
“There is no answer, and the answers are beyond number.”
She’d let the revolver droop, and now raised it again to threaten him. “What does that mean? Tell me!”
“Wisdom must be found,” the Mage said. “Do not demand it from illusion and shadows. Seek it inside.”
Jules stared at him, wondering why this Mage was so talkative, why she kept catching traces of feeling in his voice and seeing them on his face. Perhaps his age was the answer, the Mage’s iron control breaking down as his old body and mind finally failed. “I don’t understand.”
“If that one understands that one does not understand, then that one knows the beginning of wisdom.” The old Mage shuddered slightly, his eyes staring upward. “This one will cease soon. Very soon.”
Had she really heard the emotion that she thought she had? “Are you afraid?”
“This one is alone, and the last door beckons.”
He was afraid. A very old man, on his deathbed, staring into the emptiness. Jules let the hand holding the revolver drop so it was pointed at the deck. She felt a strange and inexplicable desire to comfort the Mage. “You’re not alone.”
“That one is a shadow. All are shadows. Only this one exists, and soon that will end. What will become of the illusion then?”
“Shadows? You think other people are just shadows?”
“This one knows. Nothing is real.”
“Nothing?” Jules waved to the room around them. “I’m standing on a deck on a ship. That’s real.”
“A shadow stands on an illusion.”
“Is that why Mages act the way they do? They believe that people like me don’t even exist? That even this ship is just some kind of trick?”
The Mage didn’t answer, the slow, shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed hesitating before continuing.
Jules glared at him. “Listen, if a daughter of my line is supposed to do something someday, doesn’t that mean that everything is going to continue? If Mages can see that future, then that future must exist, won’t it? My line—which means somehow I’ll still matter, I’ll still continue. Somehow. People don’t just cease. If they did, that prophecy couldn’t be real.”
The Mage’s eyes sought hers again. “That one sees wisdom this one did not. Can that one understand it?”
“I don’t understand anything! How is she going to do it?” Jules demanded. “I can’t figure out what you’re saying. I can’t even talk to any other Mages because they’ll either ignore me or try to kill me. How is that daughter of my line going to get Mages to help her? How is that even possible?”
The Mage looked back at her. “That one will learn wisdom.”
“That one? You mean the daughter of my line?”
“The shadow asks many questions. The shadow seeks wisdom given. Wisdom cannot be given. Others can show the path. But only that one can walk the path and find what lies…” The Mage paused for a long time before finishing, his words tailing off. “At the end…”
“Do you mean me this time? Why can’t you just say what you mean?”
The Mage didn’t answer, his eyes fixed and unmoving. Jules, feeling revulsion, reached out to touch him. No one touched Mages by choice.
She nudged him. He didn’t react. He’d stopped breathing.
Jules put the revolver back in its sheath, looking down at the body of the old Mage.
She’d finally been able to talk to a Mage, and instead of answers had only gotten more questions.
And yet, for just a moment, he’d felt like another person rather than a monster. Which meant that inside, somewhere under those inhuman exteriors and dead faces, Mages still had something human left in them. But it must be buried very, very deep.
Would the daughter of her line find a way to touch that? To reach the people left somewhere inside Mages?
Outside, the brightness of the day seemed blinding. Jules had to pause again to let her eyes adapt to the glare. She saw everyone still standing on deck, watching her. “The Mage is dead,” Jules said.
“We didn’t hear your weapon,” Ang said.
“I didn’t need it.”
A ripple of astonishment ran through the crowd as they stared at her. Astonishment and…awe? Was that what she was seeing? What was wrong with people? “He died,” Jules snapped at them. “That’s all. He died. Just like anyone else.”
“We heard talking in there,” Liv said.
“Yes. I talked to him.”
“You talked to him? A Mage talked to you?”
“Yes.” She felt a strong reluctance to say anything else. And what could she tell them? She hadn’t learned anything. No answers, and answers beyond number. Would she ever be able to forget that? Jules glowered at those watching her. “What are you all looking at? Didn’t we just capture this ship? Doesn’t anyone have anything they need to be doing?”
Men and women pirates jerked guiltily and began rushing about.
Ang gestured to the body of the first Mage. “What do we do with the Mages? This one and the one in there?”
“Bury him,” Jules said. “Bury both of them. Just like you would anyone else. Bury them at sea.”
“But they’re Mages.”
“They’re people. Bury them.” She walked away, feeling the darkness inside her despite the light of the sun beating down.
* * *
The evening, ba
ck on the Sun Queen, she laid the revolver on one of the mess tables and used her dagger to pry out the cartridge that hadn’t worked. She saw that the silvery round part in the center of the flat end was compressed where the hammer had struck it. That looked exactly like the ones that had worked. Otherwise, the cartridge seemed like the others. It just hadn’t worked.
What had one of the Mechanics said when talking about “ammunition”? Something about a quality problem? Was that what he’d meant, that sometimes the cartridges didn’t work? But how could that be so? Mechanic devices always worked. She must have done something wrong. Pulled the trigger in the wrong way, maybe too hard or too soft. Or that Mage had managed to do something to this cartridge to keep it from shooting.
Not knowing what else to do with it, Jules put the cartridge back into the cylinder of the revolver along with the three cases left from the first three.
Even if she couldn’t make that last cartridge work, the revolver wasn’t entirely useless. As long as no one else knew that cartridge couldn’t work for whatever reason, it would seem that she had one shot left.
“Jeri?” Ang said, speaking with unusual shyness. “I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?” Jules said, looking over to see that he had walked up as she worked on the revolver.
“Yes, sister.” He sat down next to her, but facing out away from the table, looking out into the below decks. “You know that Mages killed my mother. One of the hardest parts of that has been knowing that nothing would happen to them for that. No one would punish them. No one could bring them to account. Mages could do whatever they wanted, and we just had to put up with it and bury our dead.”
He paused, looking down, his hands tightly grasped together. “But today you killed two Mages.” Ang held up a restraining hand as Jules began to deny credit for the old Mage’s death. “Let me finish, Jeri. You made them pay. So I wanted to thank you for that.”
Jules smiled at Ang, blinking away sudden tears. “You’re welcome.”
“I just hope,” Ang continued, “that they felt it. At the end, I mean. That when you killed those two Mages, they felt the fear of death as it laid hands on them.”
She nodded. “I know at least one did.”
“Good,” Ang said. “That’s good. I just wanted to thank you, Jeri.”
He got up and walked away, leaving her to think about what she’d done and what it meant to different people. About what it meant to learn that Mages were still people deep inside, but thought all others literally weren’t people, literally didn’t even exist. No wonder Mages acted the way they did toward others.
What did it all mean?
No answers.
Answers without end.
Chapter Ten
Selling the cargo they took from captured ships wasn’t simply a matter of pulling into an Imperial port where demand would likely be high. Even out-of-the-way places where inspectors were more easily bribed were too dangerous at the moment for the Sun Queen and the Storm Rider. So the two ships steered north and west until they reached Kelsi’s settlement again, encountering some rough weather the day before reaching the shelter of the harbor.
Meeting a ship on its way out of Kelsi’s, they confirmed that no Imperial warships were visiting. “No Mages to be seen, either!” the captain of the departing ship called across the waters separating the ships. “It’s like they all went somewhere else!”
Somewhere they expected to catch her? Jules wondered. But it was good news as far as Kelsi’s settlement was concerned, allowing her to ride the Sun Queen in instead of risking another isolated stay somewhere away from the port.
They’d barely tied up when Captain Erin came aboard, shaking her head at Mak. “That mast cracked again. I’ve got to get it replaced, Mak.”
“Can they do that here?” Mak asked as Jules listened.
“Not here. They can’t do that kind of work here yet. I’ll have to take my ship east to Marida’s harbor. You can’t follow me there, not with this girl aboard, and the repairs will take a while.” Erin nodded to them both. “We should be fine. There’s enough illicit trade flowing through Marida’s these days that even our haul won’t stand out too much. But if anyone asks about the Sun Queen, and about a certain girl who rides that ship, we’ll say that we’ve no idea where you’ve gone. So don’t tell me where you intend heading next. I’d hate to tell a lie.”
Jules laughed along with Mak.
“Fair winds,” Mak said, extending a hand to Erin. “I hope we can work together again.”
“To be sure,” Erin said. “Take care, Mak.” She looked at Jules. “You, too. I wouldn’t want to trade places with you, but you’re handling it better than I could.”
“I’m just trying to stay alive, free, and feeling like I matter,” Jules said.
Erin smiled at her, the sadness in the smile all too evident. “Good luck, girl. You’ve got some rough waters ahead no matter what happens. A bit of advice from one whose heart has weathered a few storms. Pay no heed to the men who say they love you while they’re trying to get you into bed. That’s true of any woman, but more so of you because of that prophecy. No, wait until you’re having the worst day of your life, when you hate everything and everybody and are biting the heads off anyone who looks sideways at you, and watch for the man who stands beside you anyway. That’s how a man really says I love you and means it, by being there for you when you know you’re not a joy to be around.”
“I’ll take that advice to heart,” Jules said. She watched Erin leave before turning to Mak. “Where do you suppose the Mages are, Captain?”
“They can be invisible, people say,” Mak replied.
“Meaning I shouldn’t go ashore?”
“The Imperials have their share of paid agents in this harbor,” he said. “Some of whom would doubtless love to get their hands on you to please the Emperor.”
“Meaning I shouldn’t go ashore.” Jules looked toward the ramshackle town that was rapidly putting up new buildings. “My life wasn’t all that great, but I miss it.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Jeri. I can’t give you back that life. But I’ll lay you odds at this moment every sailor ashore is talking about the young woman who killed two Mages. Not the young woman who’s going to establish the line of daughters that fulfills the prophecy, but the one who faced down Mages and killed them. And the one who successfully captured an Imperial warship. Has that ever been done before? By anyone?”
“I didn’t do it,” Jules said. “I would have caused a disaster, remember? Captain Erin should get credit for that.”
“Erin never would have thought of it,” Mak said. “Next time you see her, ask her and she’ll tell you.”
Jules shivered, feeling cold. “I wish I could think of a way to protect my child. Or children. Whichever it turns out to be. It still feels so weird to know I will have a child. And that the moment I do, a lot of people are going to want to kill that kid.”
“I wish I knew how to protect those children,” Mak said. “But I couldn’t even protect my own.”
She flinched and gave him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I keep reminding you of things that make you unhappy.”
He smiled at her. “You also remind me of good things, Jeri.”
* * *
They spent three days in Kelsi’s as Mak arranged the sale of their cargo to people who wouldn’t ask questions about where and when the goods had been acquired. The crew spent most of that time trying to spend every bit of their shares on the diversions that every port offered to sailors with money in their pockets. All except for Jules, who stayed aboard and out of sight, which was boring but much safer than risking being recognized ashore. Early on the fourth day, the Sun Queen left Kelsi’s, her crew poorer but happier than when they’d arrived. The plan had been to head all the way south, to the waters off Landfall again, hoping to throw off any Imperial pursuers or Mages who would’ve heard that Jules’ ship had been seen in Kelsi and would be heading north in hopes of findin
g her.
But as the dawn just began to touch the sky a few days later as the Sun Queen passed east of the Sharr Isles, the lookout called a warning. “Lights to starboard! They look like Mechanic lights!”
Before the sun had risen, one of the metal Mechanic ships had pulled alongside the Sun Queen. Jules, standing on the quarterdeck with Captain Mak, gasped when a different light appeared on the Mechanic ship. Intensely bright, it cast a beam across to the sailing ship as if a shaft of the noonday sun had been captured. The light played across the Sun Queen, coming to rest on the quarterdeck and then on Jules herself, who had to cover her eyes against the radiance. “I guess we know who they’re looking for,” she said to Mak to try to hide her nervousness.
She heard that unnaturally loud voice calling across to them from the Mechanic ship. “Follow us into port!”
“Apparently we’re going to make a port call in Caer Lyn,” Captain Mak announced to the crew, who had all come on deck in response to the arrival of the Mechanic ship. “Come about and follow in their wake,” he ordered the helm. “We’ll have to tack against these winds. Hopefully the Mechanics will give us some leeway for that. Jeri, you’d better get ready.”
“Ready, sir?”
“Either you’re going to be hauled off for another interview, or they’re going to come aboard. Either way, you want to look your best. Use my cabin. Sponge yourself off. Make sure your shirt and pants look neat, your boots polished. The Mechanics are going to be judging you.”
“Like an inspection,” Jules said.
“That’s right.”
She went down the ladder and into the cabin. The captain had a bath pan under his bunk, with a sponge resting in it and a pitcher of water nearby. She stripped down fast and stood in the pan, scrubbing with the sponge. She finished up by pouring the remainder of the water over her head and rubbing some of the rough soap through it to clean her hair.
Jules stood for a moment after she was done, naked in the bath pan. Plenty of men had seen her like this. Modesty was a luxury at sea or in the orphan homes. But she hadn’t been touched by them. And now, how could she? Knowing what might happen to any child who resulted from it?
Pirate of the Prophecy Page 20
