Vessel of the Gods Boxed Set

by Jada Fisher

  Their job was to disrupt that transfer and get her out before anyone in the sect even knew what was happening.

  Ukrah clambered upward, looking for a dark spot in the rafters. After all, people rarely ever looked up, and with the dark rags she was wearing, she would certainly blend in. It helped that the lanterns were set down toward eyes level, where they could be easily grabbed for someone to look at supplies late into the night.

  She just had to be patient, calm and quiet.

  …admittedly, several traits she wasn’t exactly strong on.

  She felt her magic bubbling up, Voirdr’s influence significantly reduced since he was out with Eist. While he had been good for the first day of collecting info, he was far too unique-looking to be with her for their big plan. Besides, the last thing she wanted was for him to end up kidnapped while she was caught up with trying to rescue the next vessel.

  Because they were so close to being done. According to her dreams, there were only two…maybe three vessels left in total? Not many. And if they rescued the singer, that meant there was only a single one left, maybe two at most.

  That thought made her chest swell, but she had to tamp that feeling down. They weren’t there yet.

  It felt like ages had passed while she was tucked into the rafters, tucked in a way where she could escape easily if worst came to worst, but she wasn’t exhausting her muscles. Because, even if their plan went completely perfectly, she was going to have to have a lot of running to do.

  Finally, the door slid open and sure enough, two hulking men walked in with the singer. They stopped her in the middle of the room, where they put a collar on her and ran a chain through the loop at her neck through the loops on her cold bracelets. Ukrah hadn’t even realized that they had been manacles; they were certainly the prettiest, most jeweled restraints she had ever seen.

  Not that it made them any better.

  Once she was all chained up, they put a thick headscarf on her then wrapped her up in a blanket. From there, they were right out the door.

  It took all Ukrah’s willpower not to jump down and stop them, but that wasn’t her part of the plan. And she needed to stick to the plan.

  She waited until they were out the door and she was sure no one was following them before clambering down herself. From there, she had a choice: to risk opening it and being caught or sliding through the window on the blind side.

  She decided to take a chance and slide out the door. But first, she pressed an ear to it and listened.

  She heard nothing at first, but then it drifted to her—Cassinda’s voice, high and cloying.

  “What are you talking about? We have plenty of coin! I want to buy your slave.”

  “She’s not for sale.”

  “What kind of slave isn’t for sale? My father wants her to perform for our tavern in the capital. She would bring in so much more there! What do you need, a stipend? A percentage?”

  Her voice was growing shrill by the end, but it was clear the guard’s eyes were solely on Athar. Ukrah couldn’t blame them; Athar was absolutely a physical threat.

  Too bad he wasn’t the physical threat they needed to look out for.

  Ukrah waited until Cassinda was at her peak, gesturing and putting her finger in one of the men’s face. Then she darted forward, jumping on the closet one’s back and wrapping her arm around his throat.

  Despite the fact that she hadn’t fought anyone seriously in over half a year, her body still knew what to do. Her thighs clamped around his middle, doing their best to pin his muscled arms to his side, and her hand tucked into her other arm’s elbow, using the bend of her arm of tighten the pressure against the man’s throat. It was a chokehold one of the hunters in her village had taught her and worked on almost anything with a throat.

  She heard a yelp of surprise, but it was quickly cut off as Athar slugged the other man right under his jaw. He crumpled to the ground, and only a few non-breaths later, her target fell too.

  “Are you— Are you—”

  Ukrah was surprised by the woman’s voice. It was lower than she expected, and a bit raspy. Instantly, she felt drawn to her again, and she reached out to grip her wrist.

  “Come on, we have to get you out of here.”

  She looked wildly to the three of them, but Athar were already dragging the two fallen guards back into the storage room, where they would no doubt be hidden for at least a while. But they couldn’t stick around for that part. Ukrah and the vessel’s job was just to run and get to where Ethella or Fior could sweep down and haul them up.

  Which was easier said than done. Although the city wasn’t anywhere near the size of Rothaiche M’or, the buildings were still far too tight together for one of them to land without significant civilian casualties.

  Which they didn’t want, of course.

  So they booked down the alley that Crispin had scouted the day before, running as fast they could. To her credit, the young woman didn’t say much, just bolted after Ukrah as best she could even with her bare feet and chains.

  They reached a main road quickly, but that didn’t guarantee their safety. As far as Ukrah could tell, the alarm hadn’t been sounded yet, but they had to have moments at best.

  “This way,” she said, hauling the woman across the main road and down another set of alleys. It was away from the sect hideout, but still so far from where they needed to be.

  “Wait, I know of a better way!”

  Ukrah wanted to turn and tell her that it was alright, that they were about halfway there, but then a figure jumped down in front of them.

  She let out a shout and jumped back, hands raised to fight, but the instinct to fight quickly vanished when she realized it was Crispin.

  “Holy— You scared me, you oaf!” Ukrah hissed, slapping his arm.

  “He’s one of yours?” the woman asked, sidling toward him. Crispin looked down at her with wide eyes, and it was interesting to witness her influence on others close up. The young man’s eyes went from fully open to half-lidded, and he was leaning toward the slightly older woman like a fish on a hook. His breathing sped up, and Ukrah could see the flush rising to his cheeks.

  Who was this vessel? One thing was for certain—her abilities were nothing like Helena’s but also nothing like Ukrah’s or Marcellin’s either. She wished Tayir was around so he could explain what was going on.

  “We should go,” Crispin said slowly, tearing his eyes away from her to glance at Ukrah. “It’s only—”

  He was cut off as a series of shouts sounded back where they had come from, and Ukrah was fairly certain she heard Athar’s bellow.

  They needed to hurry!

  “Come on!”

  She took off again, tugging the woman. She ran along with them for a few beats before digging her heels in. “What are you doing?”

  Ukrah whipped around to look at her. “Getting you out of here, thought that was obvious.”

  “Then why are we heading right toward one of their garrisons?! Come this way!”

  She pulled Ukrah in the opposite direction and the desert girl resisted for a moment, but then gave in, letting her lead. After all, the girl had been in the city longer than Ukrah had and been with her captors even longer. She earned some measure of trust.

  “Wait, why are we going this way?” Crispin asked, easily keeping up with them. “This feels like very much the wrong way.”

  “You don’t understand how many posts they have set up. They’re hoping to catch people like you, like that blond man who was here before. I’m just as much bait as I am a coin-grabber.”

  Ukrah swallowed hard, a strange feeling while running as fast as she could. “So, they plan for people trying to save you on the regular?”

  “Yes. I tried to help when I could, but we’ve never gotten this far. You’re the first who have thought to get me out so close to the tavern.”

  There was a shout behind them, and Ukrah glanced over her shoulder to see three nefarious-looking men exiting a building and point
ing at them. Drat, it seemed that their luck had run out.

  But they had plenty of a head start, and she was sure they were almost to where Eist would be able to swoop in and pick them up.

  “We’ll lose them this way!”

  The girl jerked her to the side, ducking into a narrow space between two buildings. They all had to turn sideways, but she figured that it would stop any of the men from barreling down after them.

  They erupted out of the gap and onto another main street, where the woman yanked them between two vendors and down another alley. Ukrah was so turned around that she had no idea where they were going, but she kept running at full speed anyways.

  She wished that they had had more time—that she knew the woman’s name, or anything about her—but all of that could wait until they were up in the sky on a dragon’s back.

  They jerked down another alley, and then another. She could hear shouts and footsteps wherever they turned, it seemed—not quite on them but close, too close to let up.

  “This way! We can cut through the butcher’s yard and then we’ll be out past their circle of influence!”

  “A-are you sure?” Crispin asked. “I don’t know how I’m so lost. We scouted all of this—” He cut himself off with shout as a sword burst through a shuttered window beside them, followed by a heavily-muscled arm. How were they losing ground so quickly!?

  “Here! This door!”

  The girl rammed into a solid partition that actually gave way to her. Ukrah and Crispin quickly followed, barging into a place that smelled of blood and guts. “Quick! Block the door!”

  They rushed to do so, grabbing nearby barrels and shoving them over. The girl herself grabbed a length of wood and shoved it against the hidden door at an angle before yanking Ukrah’s hand again and going down what looked like some sort of waste tunnel.

  “This was built so they could discard of certain parts that were useless for everything. They drop out into a large pit on the very border of the city, where the farmers come and collect them to enrich their soil. I found these the first time I escaped, but I had to turn back because it was night, and predators certainly love to hang around the pits after dark and find delicious food for themselves.”

  Ukrah nodded, even though the girl couldn’t see her. The tunnel was far too dark, and Ukrah was behind her. What kind of stories did the woman have? First escape? That implied that she had tried many times. How long had they had her? And had she always been their honeypot, or had she been subjected to horrors like Marcellin?

  The thought made Ukrah’s insides rage again, the magic bubbling up. For the first time since they had started running, the girl came to a stop.

  “Is that you?”

  There was no point in denying it. “Yeah, sorry.”

  She paused for only a moment more before continuing. “No need to apologize. Just glad to know I’m not the only one like me. We’re different, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” Crispin muttered from the back of their little train.

  Perhaps the conversation would have continued, but the sound of splintering wood filled the air behind them. It seemed that the secret entrance had been found and they were working their way through the mini barrier that the escapees had erected.

  “Hurry!”

  They hadn’t exactly been leisurely in their escape down the dark and rotting tube, but they went from carefully moving along to full-on running. It wasn’t exactly easy footing on the slippery, definitely decomposing ground cover.

  But they barreled forward relentlessly. Ukrah wasn’t about to let them get as far as they had without getting the latest vessel to safety. She had a hundred-percent success rate as of yet and wasn’t looking to change that.

  “There! I see light!”

  She was right, and although looking right at it was blinding, it did allow them to see their footing more easily. Ukrah rushed forward, her stomach squeezing hard. They were so close, so close, so—

  They rushed into the light like arrows out of a crossbow and although the air wasn’t fresh or crisp, instead smelling of rot and death, the blinding light shone across her face and she could feel its warmth.

  Or at least she could until something slammed into the back of her head.

  What?

  She stumbled forward, only to trip over something in front of her. She crashed to the ground, hearing Crispin let out a cry behind her, then a now-familiar burning sensation was pressing right into her spine.

  No. No! They couldn’t be caught. They couldn’t!

  Struggling, she tried to get up, only to feel a foot press on her spine right where she had been burned, then another blow to her head.

  The world swirled around her, heady and thick. Craning her neck to the side, she saw Crispin wrestling with the two men trying to pin him down.

  But the singer was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hurry up, already. It took you long enough to catch up. If I hadn’t redirected them, we’d all be long gone.”

  That voice. But it couldn’t. That didn’t make sense.

  With the last of her consciousness, she tilted her head up to try to see where it came from. Sure enough, bare feet were in front of her, leading up to shapely, muscled calves. Ukrah couldn’t look up any further, but the woman crouched so that the desert girl could see her face.

  “Sorry we had to meet this way, love. But it was good to meet you.”

  Ukrah opened her mouth to say something again, but then something was pressed right under her nose and she drifted off into nothing.

  9

  Turn About is Fair Play

  Ukrah awoke slowly, her head spinning and her stomach squeezing to make entirely uncomfortable counterpoints of sensation. It hurt, and she wanted to vomit more than anything else, but she couldn’t quite remember what had happened or why she felt so sick.

  She rolled to the side to hear the rattle of chains and her mind tried to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, she was back in that caravan, bound to her fellow wild folk as they waited to be transported and sold.

  Wait, no, that was a long time ago. She was older now, and far away from ever having to worry about being a slave again. But if she wasn’t being sold, then why was she—

  Reality snapped back to her, and her eyes flashed open. Everything was a wash of gray, brown, and green for a moment, but slowly, it began to solidify into something that made sense.

  The worst kind of sense, but sense, nonetheless.

  They were in some sort of basement or underground room, the walls made of old stone with dirt simply used as the mortar between it. While it wasn’t the massive hideout of the thieves’ community that they had broken up, or the cave where worshippers of the Three had kept a pregnant Eist, it was still large.

  There was a bit more pomp to it, however, with carpets being thrown across the stone floor and fancier lanterns hanging from the old, roughly-hewn ceilings. There were about three dozen men, some of them watching carefully and others tending to various tasks. But at the center of it, up on a little dais that had obviously been carefully made, sat a throne. And on that throne was none other than the singer.

  She wasn’t dressed in her small, jeweled performer outfit anymore. No, not at all. Instead she was dressed in a pair of plain Margaidian breeches and a long, long tunic similar to the one Crispin had been in before. Her hair was tucked up under a practical scarf and all her jewelry was gone.

  “I… I…” She didn’t have words. She could tell simply from the layout of the people in the room that the woman they had tried to save was actually the woman in power, but that was making her thoughts blink out.

  A groan sounded from beside her and she realized that Crispin was beside her, a sigil burned right on his cheek and blood caked to the side of his face. Was he alright?

  Obviously not. They were chained together and to the floor, their bonds going through steel loops that had been welded to the stone. Had the sect members put those there just for Ukrah and Crispin, or had
they already been there?

  She didn’t know. She felt like she didn’t know anything, and that feeling was only amplified when she realized that they had drawn a circle around the two of them, runes drawn all around the edges. She could pick out what certain ones meant, barely, but she didn’t need a full translation to know that it was definitely a binding circle.

  Did they really need that on top of the sigils burned into them? Once more, Ukrah felt completely cut off from her magic, and it made her sick. She hated it.

  “Get her some water. I’m sure she needs it.”

  Ukrah was surprised at the order from the woman. It was so different from how she had spoken before. There was no fear, no tremble. No, she was cool and collected, as if everything was normal and exactly as she had planned.

  Which, actually, it probably was.

  A man rushed forward, tankard in hand, and he pressed it to Ukrah’s lips. A moment later, her mouth was filled with some sort of cider, but she responded by spitting it back out in his face.

  “Really?” the woman asked, sounding disappointed.

  But everything in Ukrah boiled over, and since her tongue had been wetted, she found her words spilling out rapidly. “You’re a vessel! And you know you’re a vessel! Why are you doing this? Why would you work against your own kind?!”

  Ukrah wasn’t sure what she was anticipating, but it certainly wasn’t for the woman to laugh, her voice drifting down and wrapping around the desert girl like more ropes. Except they were bindings that Ukrah didn’t mind being wrapped in. They urged her to relax, to just enjoy herself. She deserved nice things, right? She worked so hard all the time.

  “I’m not working against anything, love. Not even you, really.” She sat forward, her face pleasant but serious. “You see, part of the reason why the old spirits were tamed so easily was because they were divided. Separate, even. They had rivalries, and disagreement. Their worshippers picked specific aspects of them to praise, to celebrate, causing a sort of competition for their affection.