Chapter 15
Fifteen
Avalon
It took another five hours of sailing to get to the landing point on the northern edge of the lake where we decided to moor the boat.
In the whole five hours, our three passengers had said nothing as I tended to knife wounds on the back of the larger man, and wrapped the burns on the feet of the younger woman.
Not even Powell Ingmire had said a word, though he sat close to the other rescued captives protectively.
I’d been surprised when Hayle, wild with anger and horror, had appeared on the deck with not just Powell, but two more wounded victims of Yaron Vylan’s cruelty.
Hayle had said Powell refused to let them leave on a separate lifeboat.
That either they came with us, or he went with them, but there was no way Powell Ingmire was separating from his fellow victims.
Hayle had relented quickly; it didn’t matter if there were extras. Our agreement with Moran and Neho Ingmire was that we got their brother out, and that’s what we’d done.
Now, they all sat huddled on the small bed below deck.
I’d found them clothes and food, and they ate with the ferocity of people who hadn’t been fed properly in a long time.
Though I didn’t need to watch them eat to know they’d been starved—it was in the hollowness of their cheeks, the way their ribs painted a harsh contrast beneath the small lantern swinging above their heads.
I’d helped the girl dress, talking softly to her, bathing and dressing her wounds as she sat there, almost inanimate beneath my hands.
She didn’t even flinch away from my fingers, or hiss when I dabbed on an ointment to remove any bacteria from the wounds on her feet.
As soon as I was done, she’d just moved back toward Powell, huddling close to his body like he could protect her from whatever boogeyman haunted her thoughts.
Vox stayed up on deck, because the one time he’d come below, the girl had begun whimpering in fear. It had been tragic and awful, and I could see something breaking inside Vox at her response.
Once land came into sight, it was time we had a talk to our guests. They had options now, and decisions to make. Hayle and Lierick came downstairs to sit before the group. Vox descended too, but kept far to the back.
They’d decided that perhaps it was best if I spoke to them, like a woman was maybe less confronting after everything they’d been through.
“Does she have a name? Does he?” I asked Powell, pointing to the other man. He was older than both Powell and the girl.
“He’s Malak Trenton. He was once Yaron’s best friend.” Vox’s voice was expressionless, and I couldn’t tell how he felt about Malak Trenton.
I studied the man. He looked… broken. Haunted. “Should you be at the bottom of the lake too, Malak?”
Powell shook his head furiously. “No. Malak isn’t like them. He isn’t… He was…” Powell was clearly struggling to find the words, and I made a soft, calming noise.
“It’s okay, Powell. I believe you.” I cast a quick look at Lierick, who nodded. Whatever he saw in Malak, he wasn’t another Yaron. “And the girl?”
“Celis,” Powell murmured. “She hasn’t been with us long.”
Long enough to haunt the girl, though.
I nodded encouragingly. “We made an agreement with your brothers. We’re taking you north and hiding you, until it’s time to go home.
They said you’d know when that was. We can give Malak and Celis money to make it to Cyne, or to disappear into the mountains or any of the villages they wish, or return to their families. ”
Celis clung tighter to Powell, and the boy got a stubborn set to his jaw. “Celis comes with me, or I’m not going anywhere.”
Vox sighed behind me. Well, that made things a little more difficult. Still, these two had been through so much—if this was what they needed to start healing, so be it.
I reached out and patted Powell’s shoulder, and if I hadn’t been watching him so closely, I might have missed his flinch. “Okay, Celis can come with us. And Malak?”
Powell looked over at the man. “Malak can make his own decisions.”
I turned to the large, scarred man. There was evidence of years of torture on his skin.
“I have things that need to be done.”
Vox grunted. “Will you run back to my father?”
Malak’s jaw tensed. “Only to carve out his heart.”
Vox looked at Lierick, who was staring intently at the man. “He means it.”
“So be it.” Vox stepped closer, not reacting when Powell and Celis leaned further away, as if the distance would protect them. He squatted in front of Malak, his eyes burning. “Yaron is dead. If revenge is what you’re after, he is fish food at the bottom of this very lake.”
Malak shuddered, and I could almost see the relief that the monster was gone.
Vox dropped his voice even lower. “I am going to excise the rot from our Line, one person at a time if I have to—this I swear to you.”
Nodding jerkily, Malak shrunk back into himself. “There are still things I need to do. People who need to die.”
“Then may you become the nightmare who haunts their every waking moment,” Vox said softly, before he turned and climbed back up on deck.
We made Malak a pack with food, a waterskin, money, and spare clothes. There was enough there to start a new life, if that was what he wanted, or to fuel a vendetta.
After mooring on a rundown dock, we tiptoed across the rotted boards. The hounds went first, tired of being stuck on a boat. Epsy seemed content to wrap himself around my neck like a scarf, and I could already feel the icy breeze coming down from the mountains up north.
The winds of home.
Celis was dressed in some of my clothes, but we hadn’t expected her, so between us, there wasn’t enough to truly stay warm. We’d have to pick up some more coats in the next town.
I turned back to the lake. Even from here, I could see the small cloud of smoke that was rising from the fiery wreck of Yaron Vylan’s yacht.
Malak cleared his throat. “The Baron is going to come for you,” he told Vox in a hoarse voice, damaged from who-knows-what tortures.
Vox shrugged. “I hope he does. I’ll send him down to reunite with his firstborn.”
Malak nodded, his face conflicted. “It won’t be that easy. The Court, his counsel…” The First Line man trailed off, and he didn’t have to say more. They were used to being in power, so even if the Baron was gone, they’d likely continue to fight.
Malak didn’t know our secrets, not really. He didn’t know we had the Second Line, though he may have suspected that we had the Third, due to Hayle’s presence, and probably the Fifth, considering we’d rescued Powell.
It didn’t seem like enough, but it would be. I’d make it so.
“Then I’ll die trying and be the end of my Goddess-forsaken Line,” Vox told him softly. “Either way, their reign is over.”
Throat bobbing, Malak knelt in front of Vox. “Then I pledge myself to the true Baron of the First Line. I’ll stand in your army when the time comes.”
Vox didn’t deny him, didn’t deny he would be Baron, and we’d all come to the same silent conclusion. Vox might not want to be Baron, but he was our only hope.
“I thank you for your fealty, but I hope it doesn’t come to war, Malak. I hope you get a life of peace from here on out.”
Standing, Malak bowed his head. “There is no peace for men like us.” He nodded to the rest of us. He turned south, and we watched him walk along the lake’s edge until he disappeared into the darkness of the early morning.
Hayle came closer, wrapping an arm around my chilled shoulders. “We should go. I’d like to be at the base of the Vale Stairs before breakfast.”
The Vale Stairs weren’t actually stairs.
They were a cliff face of huge, hexagonal pillars that shot up into the sky.
They looked like large, smooth plinths, somehow both majestic and foreboding, and cut off the South of Ebrus from my home in the North, acting like the gates to the Ninth Line Barony.
It would be impossible to march an army over them, but if you knew the way, you could wind your way up, giant step by giant step, until you reached the top.
It would take all day, but it would be quicker and safer than going around across the lake, then up the border between the First Line and the Ninth Line.
We’d swaddled Celis’s feet in bandages and thick socks, but still, one of us would have to carry her the whole way. Vox could have floated her along behind us without much trouble, but being held in First Line magic would be too much for her.
Iker volunteered to go first, and he said something softly to the girl as squatted down beside her. She gingerly climbed onto his back, Powell helping her with gentle hands. She clung to Iker’s neck, though her whole body was stiff.
She was brave and strong. I hope she held onto that strength, because she’d need it.
Lierick turned away from the girl, his face disturbed, and I couldn’t imagine the darkness of her thoughts, or those of Powell. “Let’s go before the Dawn Army appears.”
We trudged toward the Vale Stairs, which loomed on the horizon like sentinels. It wasn’t a long walk, maybe an hour in the shadows of the cliffs, but Iker and Hayle swapped Celis between them. Our group was silent, the heaviness of the previous night weighing on us all.
I’d hated being stuck on the boat, waiting for the three men who held my heart to return. Hated not being there, in case something went wrong; it had such potential to go wrong. Not even Quarry flying around the boat, keeping watch like a shadow in the dark of night, had made me feel better.
When Hayle had reappeared without Vox and Lierick, my heart had shuddered to a stop in my chest and didn’t feel like it started beating again until a tormented-looking Vox had floated them down to the deck of our boat. Even the memory was making the air burn in my lungs.
Vox drifted closer, threading his fingers through mine. He didn’t tell me it would all be okay, and I appreciated him not lying to me.
Finally, we stopped at the foot of the Vale Stairs, where Hayle gently lowered Celis from his back. “Let’s eat before we begin the climb. We’ll all need the energy.”
Lierick emptied some of the food from his pack, handing it out to us. It wasn’t much, but there was an extra mouth to feed, and you never knew what could happen. Once we reached the top of the Stairs, it would be another two-day walk to Rewill at this pace.
Hayle pulled paper and a pen from his pack and wrote a message to my brother, Kian.
It was a carefully coded message, inviting him to hunt with the Third Line in the woods south of Rewill.
It could have been from anyone in the Third Line really—the Baron right down to Hayle’s younger brother.
Vague enough that anyone intercepting the Ninth Line’s messages would think it was just a frivolous activity of Heirs.
Kian would know, though. We’d decided that the best course of action for Powell—and now Celis—was to disappear into the North. Goddess knew there were a lot of places in the wild that had been abandoned for decades as the Ninth Line dwindled and failed under my father’s rule.
Hayle strapped the note to the leg of Quarry, and I could tell he was giving the raven strict instructions. I scratched my favorite bird on the head, before he burst into the air, wings strong and healed, flying north toward my home.
Stuffing the rest of his jerky in his mouth, chewing once and then swallowing in a way that reminded me way too much of his Spryrix, Hayle leaned forward and kissed me. “We should begin.”
I looked up at the mountain we had to conquer, and sighed. This was going to suck.