Vengeance of the Pirate Queen (Daughter of the Pirate King #3)

Chapter 12

“ DO YOU THINK ALL the natives look like that?” Kearan asks, obviously referring to the sheer size of the men on watch, as we return to camp from another night’s scouting. “Or is there something dangerous in those underground tunnels?”

“We won’t know until we can get a look down there.”

“I don’t like our odds going up against them. I think we could win, but not without many losses.”

“I wasn’t planning on fighting them for access to the tunnel.”

“Then what were you thinking?”

“A diversion to draw them away.”

“How?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

A few days later, and I think we’re ready. We’ve observed that small clearing surrounding the never-dying campfire long enough to know when they swap guards or restock the place with more firewood and food.

Once I know the patterns, I feel confident striking.

I approach the crew just over a week after landing upon this frozen place. We’ve switched camp locations every evening, always keeping on the move.

I say, “Today, I want to get inside the cavern the enemy is guarding, but I’ll need help doing it.”

Before I can ask for ideas, Visylla perks up. “Perhaps now would be a good time for an explosion?”

“With what?” Philoria asks. “We didn’t bring much black powder. We’ll need it all for the guns.”

“That’s not strictly true …” Visylla kicks a barrel, and I hear a soft tink within.

Dimella rounds on her. “Are you saying you brought your hand bombs instead of more food?”

“Everyone else grabbed food. We needed protection, too! Besides, you can hardly grumble when the captain needs them.”

Both girls turn to me, looking for a verdict.

“Visylla, in the future, you will listen to your first officer. Dimella may discipline you as she sees fit. But today, we’ll use those bombs.”

KEARAN AND I SLINK between the trees like jungle cats. We’ve done this a dozen times now, but that doesn’t make us careless. If anything, we’re more cautions than ever. This has to go smoothly if we’re to pull an escape off.

Flowers pad my steps through the snow. It’s hard to believe that so much greenery survives in these temperatures, but I suppose almost anything can adapt. Maybe the type of flora here can only survive in a freezing environment.

As we approach the camp, it starts to snow. Little pinpricks of white make it through the canopy, brushing my head and shoulders. I hold out a hand in front of me to catch a large flake. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it snow. The northern islands in the Seventeen Isles sometimes have snow in the winter, but most of my time lately has been spent in the tropics.

When I come to a stop, Kearan doesn’t miss a beat. I crouch behind the brush, looking through icicle-covered branches to observe the lookouts in the treetops.

I haven’t seen the same men on guard duty twice yet, so their numbers are large enough to accommodate that, at least. I wonder how many live here and why our arrival was met with such hostility. Why did it have to result in Bayla’s death? Why am I stuck here now trying to keep twenty-three other souls alive?

There has to be a way to make up for all of it. If I can just save Alosa’s missing girls, then surely this will all be worth it. If I can still save more than I’ve lost.

Or maybe I don’t want to admit that I’ve bungled everything up and I never should have accepted this mission.

I shut out the doubts crowding my mind by replaying some of my latest kills. Knives driven through hearts, knives raked across necks, knives plunged into eye sockets. Every encounter ending the same way.

Samvin Carroter dead. Again and again.

His look of shock and disbelief accompanies me as we stay crouched low in the snow.

Waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

The girls spent the morning cutting down dry branches, covering them with what oil we could spare, making a pile perfect for a bonfire.

I don’t know how many of her hand bombs Visylla will use to ignite it and make a sufficient sound to draw away the guards, but I get an idea when the first blasts go off. Snow slides from a nearby mountain, the sound a deep rumbling that’s enough to get anyone’s attention.

While the men are distracted, Kearan and I creep ever closer, waiting for some of the guards to run and explore the sound. When their numbers are sufficiently thinned, we gain more ground, until I can see the opening in the rocks.

They left only two men behind aside from the lookouts, who now have their backs to us.

I don’t need to signal Kearan what to do. We each get behind one of the men and simultaneously slit their throats.

Normally, I know the men I’m killing. I know their misdeeds and their characters. I know why they deserve to die. This doesn’t feel quite the same. I don’t really know these men. All I know is they sunk my ship and killed Bayla.

But that’s reason enough for me.

Samvin Carroter dies again, and that small high carries me through the opening into the ground.

The light dims at first, only the sunshine at our backs lighting our way through a thin, rocky tunnel. But soon more light shines ahead, and I follow it into a cavern opening.

I am not easily impressed, but the sight before me takes my breath away. The ground, the ceiling, the walls—they all look as though made of light blue glass. But I know it’s ice. Cicles from the ceiling hang over our heads; some have grown so long they connect with the ground at our feet, making columns of ice. The sun shines through the transparent ceiling above us, lighting up the whole place brightly. There must be feet of snow above the icy ceiling, hiding this cavern from sight, but it’s not deep enough to keep out the light.

As I take my first step onto the ice, I nearly lose my footing.

“It’s slick,” I tell Kearan. I put one hand on the wall to my left to help me keep my balance, and we continue. Past the chamber of ice is another tunnel, this one just as slippery, and we traverse ever deeper and deeper. So far, the path hasn’t forked at all, so I’m confident about the return trip.

When more light streams ahead, I hurry for it, silent as ever, and come to a stop before I step foot in the new chamber, taking it in before I expose myself.

It’s much larger than the last opening, with more pillars and blocks of ice strewn about the place. Only this time, I can see shapes within the ice. When I deem the area empty, I creep closer to get a good look at one of the frozen blocks.

There’s a skeleton within its depths.

Kearan scrambles on the ice behind me, and I look in time to see him reeling from the discovery of another skeleton in the ice.

“Is this a graveyard?” he asks.

“Why guard a graveyard?”

“I don’t know.”

I meander around the ice, counting compilations of bones as I go. When I reach the end of the room, I get to thirty-six.

“Now what?” Kearan asks.

“There’s another tunnel.”

He follows me through it.

The light does miraculous things to the ice, distorting the shapes hidden within. Still, I know for a fact that the first skeleton I see in the next room belongs to a child. No trick of the light can mask that. The curious thing is the skeletons are all bare. No clothing or weapons or anything else to suggest who they were. Just bones frozen forever in a timeless rest.

“It doesn’t make sense that there’s nothing remaining but bones,” I say. “In this cold, it would take forever for the bodies to decompose.”

“Unless someone carved them up. Ate them first. You remember when we met those siren-enchanted cannibals?”

I don’t want the reminder. We lost Lotiya that day. I squint at another block of ice. “Look at them; they’re perfect skeletons. Not a bone out of place. Standing upright. What held them in place like that while they were frozen? How were they frozen like this to begin with?”

“There’s something at work here more than just the elements,” Kearan says. “Do you think any of these people were from the Wanderer ?”

“I can’t say. I don’t even know how to tell if a skeleton is male or female. Should have brought Mandsy with us.” She knows more about the human body than anyone.

We pass through more and more rooms, or rather crypts. Each is the same. Columns and blocks holding skeletons encased in ice. Some even stand in the very walls of each cavern. We walk deeper and deeper underground, passing hundreds and hundreds of the dead.

“Enwen would lose his shit in this place,” Kearan says.

I bite back a laugh, his comment so random it takes me by surprise. More surprising still is my response. I can’t remember the last time I wanted to laugh at something he’s said.

Just when I think it’s probably time to turn back before we’re caught, I catch sight of something new. A dark spot beneath the ice floor at the foot of the next tunnel. I crouch down in front of it to get a closer look. It appears to be some sort of metal plate?

I pull out a dagger to chip away at the thin layer of ice covering it. The second the tip of the blade presses down on the ice, there’s the twang of a bowstring, and an arrow shoots just over my head. Kearan, luckily, had been standing to the side of me, out of range.

He says, “It’s booby-trapped.”

“Then we’re getting close.”

“To what?”

“Whatever it is they’re hiding down here.”

I tap the plate a second time, but nothing happens, which means the traps have to be reset once they’re sprung. That makes things easier. I eye the tunnel ahead of us, seeing more dark spots down the path, and I start flinging daggers to activate the depression plates.

The second one sends a giant ax slicing through the frozen hallway. It cracks through a thin layer of ice in the ceiling before swinging down and across, embedding back into the ceiling once it reaches the peak of its arc. The third depression plate springs spears up from the ground.

“They’re not just guarding this place. They’re also maintaining these traps,” I note. “Else everything would just freeze over completely and be useless. They clean and sharpen and reset these constantly. They’d have to.”

“Best we see what they’re hiding from us.”

More daggers fly from my hands. A few more arrows spring free from different directions. A guillotine-like blade falls from the ceiling. I start to notice the holes and divots along the walls where all the traps spring from. When I strike the last plate, which deposits a net of some sort, I tread the path down the tunnel, retrieving my knives as I go.

Kearan follows but has to stop halfway down the tunnel, where some of the still-swinging weapons block too much space for him to squeeze past.

“I’ll wait here,” he says. “Talk me through what you find.”

When I reach the end, I enter a small room. Five skeletons stand in the ice walls, as though guarding the tomb in the middle.

“There’s another dead person,” I say. “Only this one is inside some sort of ice coffin. And he’s … not a skeleton.”

Far from it. His skin is pristine. Smooth yet hardened, like a boy who’s just become a man. His eyes are closed, each of his dark lashes visible underneath the inches of ice that separate us. His torso is bare, his legs in some sort of leather breeches. He doesn’t wear any boots. The man is well built, with tanned white skin, brown hair shorn close to his scalp. His jaw looks sharp enough to cut the glass around it. His nose comes to a soft point, and his brow is on the small side.

Why is he tanned if he’s in this place? Is this another prisoner who was captured? If so, why did they take the time to place him in a tomb? And why is he still made of flesh while everyone else is made of bones?

“What is he, then?” Kearan asks.

“Looks like he was frozen minutes ago. His skin doesn’t look pale, like the dead. His cheeks have some pink to them. He looks … alive but in ice.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m just telling you what I see.”

“Is there a lid to the ice coffin?”

“You want me to open him?”

“I’m just asking if it opens. I think it’s a valid question.”

I reach out a hand to touch the ice coffin, testing for a seam.

“Yes. It opens.”

He says nothing, and I say nothing.

After some deliberating, I announce, “I’m opening it. He looks like he’s still alive. Maybe he’s from the Wanderer .”

“Be careful.”

As if I’d be anything else.

It takes both arms and bracing a leg against the wall, but eventually I’m able to shove at the icy lid. It skids loudly, until it lands on the ground and cracks into a few pieces. The noise doesn’t rouse the man in the tomb.

I reach for a blade and place it near his lips. It doesn’t come away foggy.

“He’s not breathing.”

“Maybe check for a pulse?”

Right. I reach down my free hand to the side of his neck.

The second my fingers touch his skin, his eyes open, which should be a good thing. Rousing him is exactly what I was trying to do.

Except those aren’t human eyes. They’re a blue as iridescent as a peacock’s feathers, and they’re glowing . My body floods with cold, and instinct moves the hand holding the knife.

I stab it right into his heart.

The blade doesn’t skim bone and sink into a soft organ. Instead, it makes a chinking sound as if I’ve struck metal.

And then the room before me disappears.

I peered into the room where my little sister slept, knowing it might be the last time I saw her sweet face. I always liked to see her when she slept, because it was the only time she wasn’t in pain.

She was twelve, and the doctors were sure she wouldn’t see thirteen.

Unless I did something about it.

I had a plan. The ship would leave tomorrow, and there were already whispers about what we would find when we made port.

The panaceum. The cure to any ailment. Just what Kayra needed to survive.

I was going to find it. I was going to steal it for myself. I was going to keep my family together.

And I wouldn’t let anyone get in my way.

I know the memory isn’t mine, but I’m transfixed by it all the same. The determination and love of the owner fills my whole being. It’s akin to the warmth I remember feeling with my own family. That sensation of belonging gathers under my skin. It moves toward my chest, as though all the warmth within my veins is pulled to the very center of me, leaving my limbs numb from the lack of it.

Everything that I am, everything that I have—it’s all contained where my heart is.

And then it moves upward, a gentle tugging that I barely recognize, until there’s a pressure at my lips.

I wrench away so forcefully that I nearly drop my knife as it pulls free from the man’s skin. My eyes shoot open to find him sitting up now, and his lips were—

They were on mine.

My free hand wipes at my mouth while the one gripping the dagger prepares for another strike. Except that the last time that happened …

I halt the attack and instead back up from the tomb and the being now standing free from it.

“Sorinda, what is going on in there?” Kearan sounds exasperated, as though he’s been calling my name for quite some time. I hear ice cracking, and I think he’s trying to force his way down the tunnel, but I dare not take my eyes off the threat to check.

“ Lourech nem construnun mzchen nuow.”

The words should mean nothing to me. I know they’re in a language I do not speak, but my mind offers the translation: Thank you for freeing me.

“Get out of my way,” I say in Manerian. No, not Manerian. The world is Maneria, and it is far larger than we ever even imagined. I am of the Seventeen Isles, so I suppose I speak Islander.

The being’s gaze lands on my mouth. His eyes constrict, his pupils growing a darker blue, and he says, this time in my language, “You taste like hope.”

“The hell?” Kearan asks, his voice echoing lightly in the cavern.

I want to repeat Kearan’s question, but the being in front of me is looking me up and down in a very uncomfortable way.

“I said move,” I say.

“My name is Threydan,” he says instead of moving. “We’re going to do amazing things together, Sorinda.”

“The actual hell?” Kearan says, “Sorinda, get out of there. What are you waiting for?”

Threydan eyes the tunnel over his shoulder, and I take the chance to attempt leaping around him, but he moves with me, keeping himself between me and the exit.

“He’s in my way!” I call back to Kearan.

“Then gut him!”

The man called Threydan says, “Yes, gut me.”

If I was hesitant before, I’m now determined to do no such thing again. I don’t feel right. It’s almost like being sick, with every limb weakened from the body’s fight with the disease.

Except, instead of feeling weak, I feel nothing.

Something is very wrong, and it happened after I stabbed him. What would become of me if I did it again?

I pull out another dagger, just so my free hand can have something to hold.

“You have nothing to fear from me, Sorinda,” the being, Threydan, says. He tries to approach me, and I bring my daggers together in an X to ward him off. He halts. “Tell me your heart’s greatest desire, and I swear to let you pass.”

The hair on my arms stands on end, and I am overcome with the need to get out of this room now .

“I’m looking for some missing people,” I say, because what else can I possibly do? I’ve never had a situation I couldn’t get out of with something sharp.

Threydan steps away from me until his back hits the ice wall, leaving the exit clear. “I will help you find them. Then you will help me exact my revenge. I have it on good authority you excel at that.”

Horror seizes me in place for a full second as I realize he must have seen one of my memories just as I saw one of his. “What did you see?” I ask, tightening my grip on my daggers.

“You were so little, yet you dealt death so beautifully.”

My breathing picks up. I want to kill. I envision knives sticking through his skin. Blood dripping from a dozen cuts. His look of agony just before his eyes go blank …

A morsel of sense wheedles its way through my murderous thoughts. I start to inch my way toward the exit, taking careful steps, ready to back away should Threydan prove to be a dishonorable liar.

When I reach the tunnel entrance, Threydan moves as if he means to follow, and I raise my knives higher.

“I’m not about to stay in here,” he says, looking around. “It’s all right, Sora.”

That nickname coming from his lips almost makes me double over. I haven’t heard it in over a decade. I didn’t give him permission to use it.

Consequences be damned, I raise one of my knives and fling it. It lands square in his throat.

But Threydan doesn’t choke.

Doesn’t fall.

Doesn’t die.

He pulls out the knife and examines it.

Kearan’s cursing comes from behind me. And I inch back another step.

The sound of cracking ice thunders around me, and there is a rumbling above my head. Threydan and I both look at the ceiling. I register the ice above us crumbling, just as I realize I must have stepped on another pressure plate I missed the first time around.

A large shard of ice tumbles down, shattering against Threydan’s head and sending him toppling to the ground. At the same time, hands grip my hips fiercely and pull me backward.

Kearan hauls me out of the tunnel. When we reach the cavern on the other side, he shoves me ahead of him and yells, “Run!”

Just this once, I obey.

I slip onto my arse three different times as I try to make my escape back through the rooms of frozen skeletons. Kearan is not so quiet as he keeps up with me, just a step behind, though he sometimes manages to keep his feet better than I do.

Because I’m still reeling from the encounter. I saw things I shouldn’t have. I was distracted enough by them that he was able to kiss me. And I don’t feel right in my skin anymore.

I can’t feel the freezing temperature around me. There is nothing except my heart, which feels too hot within my chest. I would swear it has its own sentience. Pounding and turning and writhing with heat. It isn’t painful exactly, but it’s impossible to ignore.

And then I remember the moment my dagger pierced his heart. The way it changed me. The way it was drawing some sort of essence out of me. My stomach turns.

I shoot out through the last tunnel, finally landing aboveground. I fall to my knees in the snow and wretch and wretch and wretch. Up comes my breakfast and last night’s dinner and anything else that might have been within my system.

My ponytail is pulled behind my back the moment I start to heave, Kearan holding it out of the way from behind me.

When I think I’m done, I grab a handful of snow and shove it into my mouth. I know it should feel so cold against my teeth that it burns. But there’s nothing. No registering of the temperature.

Yet it still melts, and I swish it about and spit. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Don’t think about the fact that snow doesn’t feel cold anymore. That’s the least of your concerns.

“Did he … kiss you?” Kearan asks.

My body convulses again, but there is nothing left to upend.

“He did something to me,” I say when I can speak again. “Something is very wrong.”

“It’s all right,” Kearan says. “He’s dead now. No one could have survived that cave-in.”

I shake my head. “He’s alive.”

“How do you know?”

“I put a dagger in his heart and another in his throat. He’s still walking and talking.”

And then there’s the bit I don’t want to admit to.

The fact that I can feel him.

I don’t know exactly where he is, but I know that he is . We are connected somehow. From the moment I struck his heart.

“He called you Sora ,” Kearan says.

“That was my family’s nickname for me.”

“How could he have known that?”

“I—”

The point of a spear juts under my chin from where I still kneel in the snow. I was so distressed that I didn’t realize we were no longer alone.

And then it happens again.

“ You took something that wasn’t yours to take, Threydan. The siren artifact is the property of the king, and you will return it immediately.”

Spears were pointed directly at me from a dozen different direc tions, but I only laughed at their presence.

“ You can’t kill me. You can’t take the artifact. I am the panaceum now.”

A spear embedded into my shoulder, but I couldn’t feel the pain of it. There was only numbness as I pulled it from my skin. It dripped blood onto the green earth, but my skin was already healing, the blood replenishing and the wound disappearing.

Then Irushed them, determined to kill every last one of mycrewmates. They chose their side.

When the memory subsides, I look up to see more weapons pointed at Kearan. It’s the men returned from our distraction, finding us at their camp.

I can’t find the proper fear within me right now. Not when my body and mind no longer feel like I control them. That’s far more distressing.

One of the men says something in that unfamiliar language, but my eyes widen as my mind translates the words.

“You’ve woken him.”

Why can I understand him now?

What did Threydan do to me?

I stand slowly, so as not to get stabbed, and stare down the man who spoke.

“What is he?” I ask, somehow speaking their language back to them.

The man’s eyes widen in shock. “He’s already changed her.”

“What is going on?” I ask.

A different man steps forward, presses his spear against my cheek, and slices across my skin.

Kearan tries to leap to my side, but burly men restrain him. One throws a punch into the center of his stomach, toppling him. Meanwhile, my head whips back from the sting of the cut. I feel my blood drip down my face, though I can’t feel the cold air against the open wound.

“She still bleeds. He hasn’t performed the ritual yet.”

“What ritual?” I ask.

“Sorinda, what’s going on?” Kearan asks. “How are you talking with them?”

“We need to make sure he doesn’t find her body,” the one who spoke before continues.

“What do you want done?” another asks.

“To the deep with her.”

Something hard crashes against the back of my head, and everything goes black.