“You needn’t worry, captain,” Tobias said. “I’m not about to agree to his terms.”
Relief smoothed her brow. “Then what do you have in mind?” To Mara, he said, “Ujie?”
“Do you think she would answer another summons?”
“I don’t know. There are Ancients involved, so she might. But she won’t allow me to put off my… my boon again. She’ll take me away. I don’t know that I’d ever see you again.”
“Then you shouldn’t call for her.”
His smile made her heart ache. “Sofya would be safe. And so would you.”
“That’s not a trade she and I are willing to make.”
“If not Ujie, then what?” Larr asked, drawing their gazes.
Mara lifted her brows. “The mist demon?”
“My patience wears thin, Tobias!” Orzili called from the Kant.
Larr turned, keeping low. “Yadreg, sing! Now!”
Tears still ran from the old sailor’s eyes, but he answered with a jerky nod. He swallowed, tipped his face toward the night, and sang the song he had composed for the Shonla. His voice shook at first, but it strengthened as he began the verse a second time.
Mara spotted the cloud of mist racing over the sea in their direction. Simultaneously, the Belvora trumpeted a warning. She wondered if Orzili understood.
Apparently, he did.
As fog enveloped the Dove, shadows appeared amidships.
Tobias shouted a warning. He needn’t have bothered. A salvo of musket fear greeted the invaders. Orzili and his men fired as well. Pain blazed in Mara’s thigh. She screamed and fell back, clutching her leg. Blood ran hot through her fingers.
Weapons went off to her left and right. Men and women fell, some wearing black, some from Larr’s crew. Burnt powder stung her nose.
She saw Orzili drop his musket and reach for his pistol. A form flew at him and knocked him back. The pistol clattered across the deck to the base of the hull, not far from where she lay.
Tobias hammered a fist to Orzili’s face and another. The assassin landed a blow of his own, threw Tobias off. They locked eyes for a heartbeat. Then both scrambled toward the pistol.
Tobias reached it first, but Orzili slammed him into the hull, cracking his head against the rail. Tobias sagged onto the deck, his bulk covering the pistol. Orzili grappled with him, tried to push him away. Mara dragged herself along the wood planks, which were slick with her blood, and kicked out with her good leg. She caught Orzili in the side of the head, addling him, though not for long.
He hissed a curse, pounded his fist into her wounded leg. Mara bellowed. Tears blurred her sight. He hit her again. She sobbed.
By now, Tobias had recovered. He grabbed Orzili by the collar and threw him to the deck. Seizing the pistol, he pounced on the man and pounded the butt of the weapon across Orzili’s temple. Orzili blocked a second blow, took hold of Tobias’s wrist. He wrapped his other hand around Tobias’s throat.
Tobias clawed at that hand, struggled to free his wrist from the assassin’s grip.
Another shot from nearby made Mara flinch.
A ghostly yawl, sharp, ear-splitting, mournful, rose from the prow of the ship. Twisting to look that way, Mara saw a vague figure shudder and fall. It landed on the deck with a dull thud.
The mist and cold receded until the only cloud around the Sea Dove was the thin, gray residue of powder smoke. The form on the deck was gray, hairless, blunt-featured. Shaf. Thick, pinkish blood oozed from a wound to the Shonla’s chest.
Every man and woman on the vessel – sailor and assassin alike – paused to gape at the creature. Even Tobias and Orzili separated. Both labored for breath. Blood oozed from a welt on the assassin’s temple and from Tobias’s nose and lip.
Two Belvora glided to the ship’s deck, alighting on either side of the Shonla. They eyed each other and then dropped to their knees. Mara wondered if they sought to honor their fellow Ancient. It took her but a single heartbeat to understand that they intended to devour it.
Three muskets boomed in quick succession. Both Belvora spasmed. One tipped over and didn’t move again. Foul blood streamed from its head. The other screeched, writhing, bleeding from its neck. One last pistol shot snapped its head back, silencing it.
After another moment of stunned calm, assassins and sailors attacked one another again. Swords clanged. Pistols spat flame and smoke. Orzili charged at Tobias, shoving him back until they crashed into the hull. Tobias dropped his pistol. His feet left the deck. Mara was certain he would flip overboard and fall into the bay.
Somehow he righted himself. He wrestled Orzili back a pace and then another. Orzili tried to draw his knife. Tobias reached for his. Mara scrabbled to where the pistol lay. She pulled the powder and ammunition from her belt, desperate to load. Trying to keep from being noticed by the men wearing black.
“Hold, humans!”
A woman’s voice, deep and powerful. Yet, it was the words as much as the tone that stopped them.
Hold, humans.
Two of them stood near the prow. Near the dead Ancients. The woman might have been the most beautiful being Mara had ever seen. Even more lovely than Ujie. She had golden hair, milky gray eyes, and nut brown skin almost as dark as Mara’s. Her clothes were tatters, more befitting a street urchin than one of the Ancients.
An Arrokad stood with her, naked to his waist and scaled below. He was as pale as his companion was dark, with the slitted, snakelike eyes of his kind, and hair as black as pitch.
The Arrokad stepped to Shaf’s body with the grace of a dancer and knelt beside it.
The other creature stared at Mara, eyes wide with something akin to shock, or fear.
“You,” she whispered. Her ghostly gaze swept the deck. When she spotted Tobias, she froze. She raised a hand, her fingers curling, except the one she pointed at his heart. “You’re Tobias.”
Mara stared at her, viewing her now in profile. Recognition burned through her with the sizzle of a lightning strike.
“Droë.”
Tobias and Orzili both gawked in her direction before turning to the Ancient.
“You’re Droë?” Orzili asked.
The Ancient seemed to notice him for the first time. Her eyes went wide yet again. “Cresten?”
Color suffused his cheeks. After the briefest of hesitations, he nodded. “That’s right.”
Tobias eyed him. “Cresten? It almost makes you sound human.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He pivoted toward Droë. “What happened to you?” he asked.
“I want to know what was done to the Shonla,” a voice cut in before she could reply.
All of them faced the Arrokad.
“Come here, Droë.”
She cast a furtive glance at Tobias and Orzili, but retreated to the Arrokad’s side, as docile as a hound.
“Who shot him?”
The sailors and assassins eyed one another.
“Who!” the Arrokad demanded, his voice echoing with the power of a hundred breakers.
“Him,” a sailor said, pointing at an assassin. Orzili’s man sat propped against the hull, bleeding from a wound to his arm.
The Arrokad walked to him, silent, his mien as hard as carved marble. He made a fist of his right hand, a small gesture, barely noticeable.
The assassin gave a strangled gasp. His good hand scraped at his chest. He stared up at the Arrokad, teeth bared and clenched. After a few moments, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he fell onto his side. He kicked out a foot once, twice, and sagged.
“What about the Belvora?” Orzili asked. He pointed at Moth, Jacq, and Bramm. “Those men shot them. Will you punish them, too?”
“No,” the Arrokad said. He returned to the dead Shonla. “Belvora are predators,” he continued as he walked. “They prey on beings like you, who possess magick. You have every right to defend yourselves. You would be within your rights to kill Droë as well, if she attempted to feed on you. A Shonla…”
“Shonla attack ships.”
The Arrokad halted mid-step, half-turned to glare back at the assassin. Even in this, his body flowed like water. After staring for two breaths, he made a small motion with his hand. Acknowledgment, acquiescence. “Yes, they do. But I like them. I do not like Belvora.”
He continued to where Droë waited.
“We are leaving now,” he said to her.
“No,” Droë answered. “We’re not.”
Droë’s heart thrummed. Her hands shook. All that she had done and endured – her departure from Trevynisle, her endless travels with Tresz, her confrontations with Teelo and Maeli, Strie and Kreeva, her transformation from Tirribin to whatever she was now – had brought her to this moment. The Walkers were here, with another from her past whom she had forgotten. She would not leave. She would not allow herself to be dragged away.
She wasn’t certain she had learned enough to defy the Arrokad. She would know soon enough.
Hearing her words – words she could hardly believe she had dared speak – Qiyed went still. “You defy me?”
She met the serpentine gaze. No doubt he sensed her fear. She didn’t care.
“I do,” she said, her voice steady. “We are entered in a bargain. Freely, fairly. That doesn’t make me your servant or your slave. These are the Walkers I have sought. We will remain here until I have treated with them.”
A savage smile exposed the Arrokad’s honed teeth.
Magick charged the air between them. His assault, she knew, was meant to cause pain, and also humiliation. Brilliant and powerful though he was, he was also predictable. He had done this to her before, the night she first tasted desire. The agony remained fresh in her memory.
Vicious. Demeaning. A violation and a reminder of what he had done to bring her to this new form. Something he would never think to do to an ordinary Tirribin. Something a female Arrokad would never think to do to her.
She stiffened, saw the Arrokad’s smile broaden. The first hint of pain touched her. She forced herself to remain calm, intent. Panic is the enemy. Hate is the enemy. I need only myself to prevail.
Using the knowledge she had gained in recent days, she denied him access to her mind, shoving him out as if with both hands.
He stormed at her, buffeted her with magick, assailed her from all sides.
Droë fought back by not fighting at all. She surrounded herself with power, shrouded herself in abilities only recently realized.
Like a storm tide pounding at a rocky shore, like rain and wind lashing at stone, his attack came to nothing. She kept her back straight, eyes locked on his. His smile died a slow death.
He gave up, though not to surrender.
He darted a hand toward her neck, the motion a pale blur in the firelight. She blurred as well. A step, no more. Out of harm’s way. He tried to shift his grasp to follow her. She slapped his hand away, the smack of flesh on flesh as flat and loud as a pistol shot.
He flung a hand at her, a backhanded blow aimed at her cheek. She caught his wrist in her hand. For a fivecount he pushed against her grip, and she pushed back. At last, she forced his hand down.
His mouth hung open, his eyes bulged like those of a human denied air. Awe, shock. One might have thought she had turned herself to gold and sprouted wings.
“I am more than Tirribin,” she said. “I am more than Arrokad. I am more than you, Qiyed.”
She released his hand. He didn’t try again to strike her. Instead, he massaged his wrist where she had held him.
She blurred again, hooking one arm around his throat, an iron grip. She put her mouth to his neck, lips tasting salt on his skin.
“I will not take your years,” she said, whispering as a lover might, “though you have many, and I imagine they are sweet and rich with the promise of centuries to be spent journeying between the oceans. You will not hurt me anymore, or threaten me, or try to cause me pain. You will not hurt or threaten or kill any Tirribin. You will not hurt or threaten or kill the Walker, or his companion, or any other Ancient or human who is dear to me. Agree to this, and I will let you keep the years you have. Are these terms acceptable?”
Qiyed struggled against her, but she held him fast.
“They are,” he whispered.
“Freely entered, fairly sworn?”
“You are threatening me. Not freely entered.”
She released him and blurred back a step.
“Freely entered, fairly sworn?” she asked again.
He flicked his snake eyes toward the sailors and assassins, toward Tobias and the woman and Cresten. “Freely entered,” he said. “Fairly sworn.”
“Under threat of Distraint.”
He scowled. “Under threat of Distraint.” He spat the words as he would poison.
She didn’t allow herself a smile, but acknowledged his words with a nod.
“What of our arrangement?”
“You did all that I asked, and I have done all that you have demanded. Our arrangement is complete.”
He glowered. “I did more for you than you have done in return.”
“I disagree. And I wonder what the Guild might think of your commerce with other Ancients.” She flashed a thin smile. “Think on that. Right now, I have business with these humans.”
She walked back to Tobias and Cresten without waiting for his reply. Before she reached them, a sound snagged her attention. She had missed it before, had been too distracted by the Shonla’s death and her conflict with Qiyed to taste the years hiding below. A child. Sweet and young, but confused by misfuture.
Only a turn before, the promise of those years might have consumed her. Not anymore. She continued to the Travelers, one a friend from a long-forgotten past, the other a friend from a still-unknown future.
“You are at war with each other,” she said, halting before them. “Why?”
The one she knew as Cresten shied from her appraisal. Tobias did not.
The Walker was taller than she, with long, unruly bronze hair that fell about his shoulders, giving him a wild appearance. His nose was prominent, long, his lips full. Not a perfect human face, and even less so with the ugly scars on his cheeks, brow, temple, and jawline. So much time spent in pursuit of him, so many leagues traveled. She had altered her very being out of want of him, for the sake of a vision that had taken shape in her mind and glittered like gold next to this, the real thing. She should have been disappointed. Perhaps she was.
There was more to him, however. Some of it was physical. His eyes shone, a stunning green that would make emeralds seem dull. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow. Strong, large hands gripped his weapons.
He stood amidst this carnage, bleeding from a wound that stank of Belvora, with his back straight, his body coiled, the ferocity of a hawk in his gaze.
Standing so close that she could have touched a finger to his lips or to the small indentation at the base of his neck, just above the powerful chest, Droë understood that he was no less than what she expected. He was simply alive, a being independent of her imagination, and therefore different.
“We’re at war,” he said, the voice not especially deep, but clear and strong, “because he wants me dead.”
Cresten didn’t deny this.
She studied him. “Why do you want him dead?”
“Forgive me for saying so, but this isn’t your concern.”
“Not my concern, human?” she asked, allowing a rasp to roughen the question. “Was the Shonla killed because you want him dead? Were the Belvora? It is the concern of all Ancients. And I am here. Now, answer me.”
He couldn’t face her for long. “You can hear the reason,” he said.
She listened. “The child. What of her?”
Cresten and Tobias regarded each other with such venom, Droë thought they might resume their conflict despite her presence.
“What of her?” she demanded of them again.
“I left the Travelers’ Palace for the Court of Hayncalde, in Daerjen,” Tobias said. “Orzili assassinated the soverei
gn and his family. The child below is Mearlan’s last surviving heir. I’ve vowed to keep her alive. He wants to kill her. And me.”
“You call yourself Orzili?”
“For a long time now,” Cresten said. “Since Windhome.”
She turned to Mara, who sat on the deck in a pool of her own blood. Of the three of them, she had the strongest claim on Droë’s friendship, if only because Droë had declared the woman her friend most recently. Yet the mere sight of her filled Droë’s heart with hot envy.
“What is your role in all of this?”
Mara looked past her to Tobias. Droë followed the direction of her gaze.
Love. In his eyes and hers. Green and hazel, twined like ivy on a tree. Jealousy flared to rage.
“She’s my wife,” Tobias said. “Mother to the child.”
Mother… “But that’s not–”
“It’s a ruse,” Cresten said with contempt. “A deception intended to keep those they meet from asking about the girl.”
She considered them again – Tobias and the woman. Clearly she wasn’t the mother, anymore than Tobias was the father. Their love, though – that was no ruse. Even she, as yet not well-versed in matters of the human heart, could see as much. In that moment, more than anything in the world, she wanted to take Mara’s years. Every one of them, so that nothing remained of her but husk. Or better, only most of them, so Tobias would see her shriveled and ancient, her skin lined, sunken, her body bent and ravaged by time.
She hadn’t fed in bells. She would welcome a meal, nearly as much as she would welcome the woman’s humiliation, the chance to see Tobias’s love wither and die.
Tirribin Droë would have done it. Girl-thing Droë might have believed that with the woman gone, Tobias would turn to her for love.
Mara quailed at the touch of Droë’s gaze. She might have sensed the danger she was in. She was smarter than the others, at least in this. Perhaps rivals in love recognized each other, by instinct, the way prey recognized predator. Did she read her own doom in Droë’s scrutiny?
No. Droë gave the smallest shake of her head. That was enough. Mara inhaled, exhaled, reprieve in that one breath.
The changes wrought by Qiyed’s magick and her own embrace of whatever she had become had brought her wisdom on top of everything else. If she killed the woman, Tobias would hate her forever. That was love, too. That was passion. It didn’t jump from one creature to the next, like a Shonla seeking screams in a bay full of ships. It survived loss, death, denial. Tobias loved this woman.
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