28. Maren
28
Maren
R ough hands gripped along my sides. Lifting me. Sound and light joined and collapsed, obscure and foggy. My head rolled over my shoulder, and when the rap of hooves stopped, the hands yanked me down with a fistful of my dress.
I didn’t know if I was awake or dreaming. Didn’t know if I was moving or sitting still. But I suddenly felt the sensation of tipping sideways, my weight sending me through open air until something hard and sharp slammed into the back of my head. The smell of earth and grass hit me, and I realized I could breathe. Breathe, but not move. Soft, tickling blades whispered across my brow.
The aroma, noise, light, and motion whirled around me, and I closed my eyes, shutting it all out.
Warmth oozed from my skull as though my head had been cleaved open. A dull burn coated my skin, the ash slowing the healing properties of my Naiad blood.
Kriska had tied my wrists behind my back. He’d wrapped a swath of cloth around my eyes, damp across my brow from sweat.
Dizziness swept over me, and every inch of bare skin vibrated with quiet stinging, my face and mouth raw. Pain rippled from my crown. Though I laid still, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was slowly spinning.
Don’t throw up.
Don’t do it, don’t do it—
I did it. Leaning heavily to the side, my arms ached as I tensed against my binds. Heaving the fish I’d shared with Kye in frothy bile.
Beside me, Kriska clicked his tongue. I recognized his scent as he leaned over me. Oil and unwashed skin. Moth-ridden canvas and molded rope. Cedar and pine. The flat edge of a blade pressed against my cheek, cold and solid.
“Good morning to you, malá ryba,” he said. The jovial tone he’d carried while sailing Darkness’s Hourglass had gone, his words laced instead with the calm static that tingles in the air just before lightning strikes. “I was worried you had gone off without me, leaving me with a deal unfinished after doing me the favor of ridding me of my beloved ship. The one I purchased is a worthy replacement.”
He trailed the knife along the curve of my jaw, down the column of my neck. A warning, spoken without words. Behave.
I thrust my chin away and called to any nearby water.
Nothing answered.
I didn’t even try to sing. If he carried shield weed, he knew how to avoid becoming a vacous .
I blinked, willing my fuzzy vision to sharpen. “You didn’t buy a new ship.”
He chuckled beside me.
Ignoring him, I focused on my surroundings. A fire warmed my feet, small by the sound of it. Water gurgled quietly in the background. Wind blew against the bare skin of my chin and throat—we were still along the canyon ridge, or near to it. I listened for the beating of other hearts nearby but only found the steady rhythm I recognized as Sero, his pulse slower and louder than a human heart.
Kriska adjusted his weight beside me, chewing on something. The thought of food made water gather in my mouth.
“Where’s Nikolaos?” I rasped.
“Dead.”
My stomach twisted. My lungs closed. Rage flooded my veins like a violent river, crashing through me with a force so overwhelming I was swept away before I could reach the surface for breath.
I might have clawed the ground to reach him. To rip out his throat, carve out his eyes. Hands bound, I could only thrust forward with a low snarl. He shoved me away with a boot to my ribs, leaving me to lay panting in the grass, the raw throb of pain lancing through my chest.
“If not yet, he will be soon,” Kriska said, his mouth full.
I swallowed, my tongue and throat dry and scorched. “I don’t trust a word you say.”
Kriska laughed. “Oh, malá ryba. I have missed you and your charismatic ways. No more talking.”
Cheek buried in the dry grass, I mulled over his deflection.
He hasn’t managed to capture Kye.
The thought sparked a breath of relief, even as heat threatened the corners of my eyes.
We’d almost made it to the mountains. To the safety of Calder. We’d come so close.
The fire at my feet slowly died. I grew cold. Wind charged over me like a bull in a pasture, leaching into my clammy skin, stealing my heat until my body became wracked with shivers. My shoulders ached; my head pounded. The sun set. I didn’t sleep.
Morning brought chirping birds and filaments of light through the cloth wrapped around my eyes, though not enough for me to decide if my vision remained blurred. Kriska yanked me to my feet, his hand thrust around one bicep, and I cried out loud at the jarring pain in my tied wrists, still tied behind my back. My feet couldn’t seem to obey. Sluggish and numb, I stumbled into the pirate, my nose landing square into his chest. Kriska chuckled, petting my hair, his breath warm over my ear.
He mounted Sero, then dragged me up to sit in front of him. The position proved less painful than being tossed over Sero’s back, though Kriska’s arms wrapped around my stomach, my tied hands resting between his thighs, and I almost would have preferred the pain of riding face down astride his saddle again instead. I pressed my fingers hard against my back, desperate to avoid touching him.
Sero snorted at the burden of two bodies, but the pirate kicked and he responded, hooves tamping down over the soil. The wind whipped at my dress. I called and called for water.
How long had Selena said it would take for a Naiad to metabolize green shield weed? A few weeks? How long would it take to rid myself of the toxins that ash provided?
I couldn’t let myself think about it.
When Kriska came to a stop, I slid off Sero and into the dirt. My knees shook, but I caught myself before I fell. He dismounted beside me, pacing a few feet away and then back, exhaling with frustration. He guided me roughly to the ground with a palm to my shoulder—rockier than the last place he’d chosen, thick with trees and roots. Branches rustled overhead.
I listened to the sound of his lungs, steady as he stood above me, facing the direction we’d come, and wondered why he wasn’t making camp. What was he waiting for?
He smelled sour. Like fear—or some lesser version of it. Worry, perhaps.
The pirate captain was waiting for someone.
Kye?
He stood for what must have been an hour with me at his feet. Then, all of a sudden, he ripped the cloth off over my head. I glared up at him through the blinding sunlight and the riotous curtail of my own hair, static lifting the strands around my face.
The sun cast his eyes in shadow under his hat. Everything he wore was black, including the coarse fur sewn in patches over his shoulders. Clothes for climbing a mountain. Six knives tucked into the layers of his attire, though something told me there were more than that on his body. His beard hid the shape of his mouth, the lines of his face and body angular and hard, and he studied me with a look in his eyes I could only describe as calculated hatred.
No bow, no arrows. Whoever had shot at us must’ve stayed behind to fight Kye. The sound of metal clashing rang in my memory, and a familiar gnaw in my belly scraped at my insides.
“Did you know that I was promised enough gold for you, malá ryba , that I could retire? ” he asked, throwing a glance over his shoulder as he fidgeted with the handle of his rapier.
The pirate couldn’t help himself. He loved to talk. I forced a smile over my mouth, gazing at the blurred colors of his face. “I couldn’t be happier for you. Did you buy Demyan a summer home?”
Kriska laughed, his eyes full of malice. “Something about sirens and pirates. I almost want to abandon the deal I made. Buy that summer home and lock you inside. Then I could listen to your jests the rest of my life.”
“It wasn’t in jest. I think you’d make an adorable couple.”
Kriska chuckled as he leaned in. The tip of his knife slid down my dress, peeling the fabric away with his blade until the edge of a folded paper emerged, tucked against my skin. Kriska plucked it out.
I trailed the red wax glob as it flitted into the air. “Where do you plan to take me?”
“Is that why you stole this? Thought it might tell you?” He smiled, scratching idly at his beard with his knife. “Thought it might explain who hired me? A pirate doesn’t kiss and tell, malá ryba. ”
I clenched my jaw, wondering how to keep him talking.
Manipulating humans wasn’t in my skillset. Not without the use of a song.
“I don’t need you to tell me,” I lied. “I figured it out on the ship. Aleksei gave it away.”
His smile dissolved, the flat edge of his knife disappearing under his whiskers, and he held me in a stare so hard and still something squirmed in the base of my stomach.
We remained there, locked into each other against the wind, until a sound called our attention away. Two horses slowly rode uphill toward us. I straightened, focusing on the details of their shape, though neither was Kye. My intuition told me that well enough.
Beside me, Kriska frowned, then stood. He left me sitting in the roots, long grass shifting behind his calves as he met the two of them, body rigid with unease.
I scooted into the base of the tree an inch at a time, then leaned my pounding head into the bark, listening to the sound of them speaking in Kravan. Their volume grew until their words became thunderous across the dead canyon air, and someone grabbed my boot, yanking me away from the tree.
I stared into the face of a man marred with scars, raised claw marks across an eye that had gone white in the weeks since I’d last seen him.
Burian smiled at me. “Thought you’d left me dead in the sea, didn’t you?”