15. Chapter 15
Iexpected to see madness in his eyes, but the indifference I found caught me off guard. That was actually worse than madness. If he didn’t care about anything, he didn’t give a monkey about killing me.
“I told you,” I muttered. “Nobody sent us.”
“Nobody has entered or left this ship since she turned her back on me centuries ago, or perhaps millennia.” He ran the blade up and down my neck, and I fought every urge to swallow. “Which means you did not arrive here without her magic. Tell me the truth.”
“We got in here because of an amulet,” I said. “That’s it.”
Lying to him would only dig me deeper.
“Only Kendra can get in and out of here. So either you are her or she let you in. Which is it?”
His words made something click in my head. When Bronwyn had tried to use the amulet to get inside the ship, it hadn’t worked. The portal had only opened when I used the amulet. Did I open the portal because I shared a similar species consistency to Kendra?
“I’m like her,” I said. “I’m part mermaid and part witch.”
The Captain searched my eyes, for what, I didn’t know. If he looked for lies, he would find none.
Several moments passed in silence, and the discomfort of not being in the water in my mermaid form swept through my body like a fever. The waterproof bag stuck to my back and rubbed against my skin.
Abruptly, the Captain stood, holstered his dagger, and returned to his desk to down yet more from his decanter.
“Since you have imposed your presence upon us, I believe you owe us something in the way of compensation,” he said, holding the decanter in one hand. “You got in, and therefore, you shall get us out.”
Oh, so that was why he hadn’t killed me yet. I wanted to refuse him outright. The woman who had put him here had her reasons, and I didn’t want to cross yet another magical entity that could curse me. But I couldn’t tell him that if I hoped to get us all out of this, and since we had done the impossible and gotten onto the ship, I wasn’t about to leave before doing what we had come here to do.
“Perhaps I will,” I said. “If you allow us to go about our business.”
“And what business is that, wench?”
“My friends and I need to use your portals.”
“For what reason?”
“To undo something that should never have been done,” I said.
That was all he needed to know.
The Captain smirked and tapped the decanter with a twitchy finger. “We all feel that way about something. What is it that makes you so sure this business needs undoing?”
“Why do you care if it’ll get you out of here?” I asked.
“I care because witches like you play games with men like me.” The Captain drank again. “And to my recollection, they enjoy it a great deal. What makes you think I would let someone like you dip in and out of time without a second thought?”
“Because you’re desperate. You all are.”
The rings on his fingers screeched against the glass as his grip tightened on the decanter.
“Let us use the portals, and when we leave, we’ll take you with us,” I said. “Even if you don’t trust me, that’s the best deal you’ve had in centuries.”
I would have said just about anything to get us to where we needed to go. If we reached an agreement, I would have to figure out how to get out of it later.
The Captain watched me out of the corner of his eye for another long moment. “Banbury!”
The door flew open half a second later, and Eyepatch stepped inside. Had he listened at the door the entire time?
“Yes, cap’n?” he asked.
“Throw her in the brig with the others,” the Captain said.
“You’re making a mistake,” I said as the pirates swarmed in and surrounded me.
The Captain stood as the pirates hoisted me into the air. “The only mistake I stand to make is deciding too quickly. Take her.”
Without a second of hesitation, the pirates hauled me out of the Captain’s quarters, jostling me left and right. I was going to bruise like crazy after this.
They carried me down to the lowest levels of the ship, where the candles couldn’t fight the darkness. Eyepatch slipped a ring of bulky iron keys from his belt and unlocked a solid iron door with bars on the window.
A cry escaped my lips as the pirates tossed me through the doorway, and I slammed against the floorboards, skidding a little on the slick wood. The prick of a large splinter dug into my arm, and I winced as the door slammed shut, plunging me into darkness.
“Gods, Maeve.” His voice alone was warming enough, but Ben’s hands easing me into a sitting position chased the chill and the aches away. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“She’s just been half naked in front of a bunch of pirates. Of course she’s not all right.” Kira’s voice came from right behind me and made me jump.
But a moment later, a cardigan wrapped around my shoulders, and I slid my arms into it.
“Nothing exciting happened,” I said with a sigh. “Tried to do a deal with the devil, but he wasn’t exactly receptive.”
“What did you offer him?” Adrian’s voice asked from across the room.
“There’s only one thing he wants, and that’s to get out of here,” I said. “And I said we’d do it, but he isn’t very trusting.”
“You said we’d release them?” Kira’s tone shot up an octave. “Are you mad?”
“Yeah, actually. Mad about saving the island.” I wanted to tell Kira that I hadn’t meant it when promising the Captain his release, but who was to say Eyepatch wasn’t listening in through the door again? “It doesn’t matter, anyway. He didn’t care.”
“So now what do we do?” Adrian asked, the groan that followed grating on my last nerve.
What was there to do? Even if we could get out of the brig, we had no way of taking on the pirates who stood between us and the portal that could take us home. And going home meant giving up, which was not an option.
I flopped my tail against the ground, the discomfort of being in my mermaid form without water setting in. That the Captain had wanted time to consider my proposal gave me some hope, but hope seemed more than a little fruitless.
“I guess we wait,” I said.
***
Waiting in a place that had no concept of time had some weird effects. In a ship literally sandwiched between a multitude of different times, there was no way to tell if the vessel itself actually experienced time of day. The idea jarred my train of thought, and in the end I had to stop thinking about it.
With nothing to do but wait, we comforted each other in the dark. I dozed in Ben’s lap, unable to sit for long in my mermaid form. He stroked my hair, only stopping when he fell asleep too.
I drifted in and out of consciousness until the jangle of keys jerked me awake. The door creaked open, and Eyepatch entered the brig.
“Bring them all,” he said, gesturing to us.
My stomach lurched as pirates filed inside and seized all five of us, dragging us out into the candlelit corridor. I squinted as they carried me along. Even candles were too much light after what could have been hours in the dark.
My fears snowballed as the pirates took us up flights of stairs. Had the Captain decided not to take the risk and kill us after all? No, surely he wouldn’t have bothered lugging us all the way up to him if he had decided that. It would have been easier to have his grunts slay us in the confines of the brig.
The pirates took us into a room filled with tables and stools, and at the far end of the dining hall sat the Captain at the head table. A whole stuffed pig lay on the table in front of him, an apple in its mouth. The Captain, with a knife, fork, and some unnerving precision, cut himself a slice of the pig and picked up the whole thing on his fork, tearing a piece off with his teeth.
His crew threw all five of us onto the floor before the Captain’s table. I pushed myself up on my hands and could still only see the Captain’s large, feather-topped hat over the top of the pig.
“I accept your offer, wench,” the Captain said, with his mouth full. “But I have conditions.”
“Name them.” I glared at Eyepatch, who nudged me with his boot.
He shot me a warning look, which I ignored.
“While you see to your ‘business’, you will leave two of your party here in my charge,” the Captain said.