JAMES
We’re twelve hours into loading the ship and everyone is exhausted.
It easily takes thirty minutes to even get to the vault, and hauling out bags and trunks full of heavy gold coins and bricks is not easy.
Every single person on the crew is involved, whether they’re in the vault helping pack things up or rowing it all to the ship to load up the brig.
To make things even more stressful, the path we found through the fortress is not stable.
There have already been a few cave-ins and just now, two crew members appear to retrieve me from the shore saying there is something concerning in the vault.
They lead me through the gold and as we near the back of the massive chamber, the ground under me grows wet. I round a large mountain of gold bricks and see Caspian and Van looking at the back wall. The water is now a small stream a few inches deep and I immediately see what the problem is.
Caspian has a frown on his face. “I’m not sure whether it’s us causing the disturbance or something else, but this crack is slowly getting bigger.”
Van runs a hand over his face. “Eventually the water pressure will get to be too much and it will break open. I’m not sure how much water is behind this, but I don’t think we should be around to find out.”
“How much time do we have?” I ask.
Caspian shrugs. Van shakes his head.
One of my crew runs a hand along the fissure and turns to me. “Few hours. Few days—”
“So we don’t know,” I state.
I look back at the progress. We’re not even making a dent and the ship is already nearly full. I’d hoped to be able to come back here, but it appears as though nature is going to take the rest of it.
“Alright, get this last bit loaded—we only need about another hour or two to fill the hold—” My words are cut off as a massive tremor shakes the ground under our feet. The four of us watch in horror as the crack snakes up the wall at a terrifying speed.
“Everyone out!” I yell. “Everyone out now!”
Water that was simply dripping out before is now gushing, telling me whatever is behind that wall is worse than we thought. We run through the gold with the water rising under our feet until we’re splashing through it.
I yank one of my crew to a stop by their collar. “Find Harrison—tell him to get everyone to the ship now!”
Caspian and I stand at the doorway, ushering the crew through.
As soon as the last one crosses the threshold, I grab Caspian and we run.
The tremors don’t stop when we enter the passageways and tunnels, and debris and dust rain down on our heads.
Everyone ahead of us panics when water starts to collect under our feet.
Caspian and I are the last to run through the giant pillars at the entrance and we see Harrison standing on shore, holding the row boat. A look of relief crosses his face when he sees me.
Water is seeping up from the ground or the ice is sinking, I’m not sure which, but the rumbling is worse out here. I can hear the ice cracking, a sharp, haunting sound that echoes across the water. Caspian and I sprint for the boat and we row back to the ship.
Once back onboard, I turn at the rail to see the pillars collapsing and everything falling in on itself.
It seems too cliche to say we got out just in time, with a boatload of gold, but it’s the truth.
Regret stabs at me as I watch a millennia of history sink into the water—not to mention all the gold still in that vault, now claimed by the sea.
“Get us back out into open ocean,” I bark.
I head down to my cabin with Caspian and the others following me.
“I think it’s time to talk about that plan for Anders now, Captain,” Caspian says. “Best case is he’s not waiting for us, but on the off chance he is…”
“We’ll have to sneak past them at night,” I answer.
“Navigate the Straights in the dark?” Harrison states incredulously. “That’s a death sentence.”
“It’s a death sentence to sail straight into an enemy fleet too,” Caspian says.
Harrison glares at him but doesn’t say anything.
There’s a fifty-fifty chance Anders has ships waiting for us on the other side of the Straights.
Although, another part of me thinks he’d be stupid to wage a naval battle so far from a safe port with so much at risk.
If he sinks the Tempest , he sinks the gold.
“We sail out in the dark and hug the Straights until dawn.”
“Our supplies are dwindling,” Lan says. “We have enough for a week, two if we stretch.”
“Stretch it,” I order. “We’ll take the long way around to Foxhollow.”
Van looks to Caspian but the Prince only nods. “It’s the nearest safe port.”
“It’ll be close,” Harrison says. “Real close.”
“We’ll be sitting low with all this gold,” Flynt reminds us. “We won’t have the same speed as before.”
“What’s the weapons situation like?” Caspian asks.
“All cannon are ready to go,” Flynt answers. “Enough to hold our own, but not against a fleet.”
Van sighs. “So we hope we don’t run aground in the Straights, get attacked by Kraken and avoid the potential fleet waiting for us—if we’re lucky we’ll make port before we all starve?”
When no one says anything to contradict him, Caspian gives him a humorless smile.
“Looks like you have the gist of it, mate.”
“Once we reach the mouth of the Straights, I want silence on deck at all times; no lanterns and all reflective surfaces covered,” I state.
“No one is to have a spyglass up top—understand? No glass, no gold, nothing that could be seen from afar. If someone so much as sneezes on deck they’ll get a dagger in the throat.
” I look around at all of them. “No excess noise, no splashing—I need this ship to be a ghost.”
Tensions ran high on the ship as we drew closer and closer to the reckoning waiting for us on the other side of the Straights.
Everyone knew how high the stakes were and no one was very happy with the current odds of getting out unscathed.
The stress took its toll on everyone and in consequence, I didn’t see much of Caspian.
I spent most of my nights on the quarterdeck or pacing my cabin, going over every possible situation and outcome we could come into contact with between the Straights and Foxhollow.
I’m on the quarterdeck now and while I tell myself I’m not purposefully avoiding Caspian, I can’t deny I haven’t been seeking him out either. The revelation that we are nearing the end of this journey together has put the reality of this thing between us front and center in my mind.
What am I supposed to do after this? Continue on with my vendetta to kill the King?
Find a place to sit on my gold for the rest of my life?
But how can I do that when it isn’t really about the gold anymore?
In fact, I’m convinced it probably never was—because the only question I really care about is what does this mean for Caspian and I?
A very unsettling feeling has been popping up the last few times we’ve been together—a feeling in my chest that gets stronger each time he gives me that small smile I know is only for me.
I’m afraid the reality is, if we part ways after this, he might just take a piece of me with him and I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.
So, I’ve been avoiding him. Because I don’t know what question I want to ask; is he going to leave? Or is he going to stay? And worse—I don’t know what my answer will be when he inevitably turns it back on me like he always does.
In a few hours we’ll enter the Straights.
I’m leaning against the railing on the bow, looking out over the water.
A brilliant sunset is happening on my right, all deep purples and blues with streaks of fire in between, and maybe that’s what distracted me because I don’t hear him come up next to me until it’s too late to run.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’ve just been trying to make sure we get out of this alive,” I grumble.
“You mean you haven’t been spending all this time daydreaming about how you’re going to spend all your money?”
I glance over to find him smirking at me, humor in his eyes.
“Trying to avoid thinking about that actually,” I admit.
For once, Caspian just nods and looks back out over the ocean.
“I don’t want to think about it either,” he says quietly.
We stand in silence until the sun dips below the horizon and the colors deepen, then he grabs my arm and pulls me away.
“How about we go not think about it together.”