Chapter 19
19
Marcelis
In the short time since I’d received Toorin’s heart, I’ve gone through many scary things—being chased by Keon and the chancellor guard, being kidnapped, almost drowning… twice . However, I don’t think you could ball all those fearful experiences together to equal the sheer, sweat-inducing, heart-thudding terror I felt as the pirates closed in.
We now had the wind in both our sails, gaining speed as the dark water of the IP slipped beneath us.
Except the wind blew straight toward the pirates.
Toorin had the helm, and Bodie and Darwin were doing everything they could to adjust the sails to give us maximum speed, but the thing about sailing boats is you were at the whim of the wind and to make your way in a direction that didn’t have the wind at your back meant you had to zig and zag to get there.
And as hard as Toorin tacked, the pirates course-corrected and steamed straight for us and continued closing in.
Our running only gave Juniper time to find the Lark’s stash of blades and distribute them to everyone. We strapped the sheathed metal to our bodies, but I didn’t kid myself into thinking we’d all come out of this alive.
I held on near the helm, my knees absorbing the chop of the waves beneath the Lark as if I were born on the IP, yet feeling like I should be doing something when there was nothing I could do besides watch our pursuers steam closer and closer, their black smoke curling into the air and obscuring the blue sky.
A sound I’d never heard sent a shock wave traveling up the hull and into my feet. The whizzing sound passed my ear and instinctively had me waiting for an explosion and the Lark to disintegrate beneath my feet.
“ Fuck ,” Toorin spat as he yanked me to the deck.
Darwin dropped to the deck, taking Juniper with him and shielding her body with his. Her shout of outrage meant she would likely gut him if he did that again, but we’d have to survive the attack for that to happen.
I had no clue where Bodie and Lyric took shelter, but I didn’t have time to give that too much thought before a hunk of metal skipped up the deck and disappeared off the bow, leaving a jagged scar in the deck but missing anything vital like sails or crew.
What the ever-loving fuck was that?
I went to stand, but Toorin stomped a boot in the middle of my back. “Everyone, stay down!”
Toorin cranked the wheel, but a boat like the Lark wasn’t built for agility. Even with my sheltered life in Toonu, I could easily see that.
Besides, if he turned us too hard, we could lose the wind and all our precious speed.
I shifted, and Torrin took his foot off me, sparing me a glance before refocusing on the water before him.
“Bloody harpoons.” Toorin locked eyes with me. “If they put one below the waterline, we’ll surely sink.”
Two more shots came in rapid succession, the sound of the harpoons launching, I now knew. My hand instinctively went to the blade at my hip, though little good it would do me against a hardened mass of razor-sharp steel.
Instead of skipping up the deck, the second harpoon went through the mainsail, leaving a jagged hole that started ripping from the pressure of the wind. It would tear in half if we didn’t get that sail down.
The third one lodged into the side of the forecastle, about at the level of the galley.
Bodie sprinted up from the stern. I hadn’t even seen him make his way back there, but I guess that’s what being held down on the deck will get me. Don’t get me wrong. I understood why Toorin did it.
He had his heart to protect, or all of this was for nothing.
“They’re loading the grappling hooks,” Bodie said. “The bastards will be aboard us in minutes. We can try to cut their lines, though it’s likely to get one of us killed, or—” Bodie cut his eyes toward me. I took advantage of Toorin’s inattention and scrambled to my feet, the Lark losing much of her speed as the mainsail continued to rip—a tearing, renting sound I don’t think I’ll be able to scrub from my brain. It was the sound of hope shearing.
Darwin must have sensed something because he shoved Juniper behind a barrel and rushed over. Why did the three of them keep looking at me?
“What? What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
Toorin looked away, but Bodie didn’t. “If we keep running, there’s a good chance we’ll face heavy casualties.”
I had an idea where this was going, but my heart thumped and bumped, and my empty belly soured. “And if we surrender?”
Toorin’s eyes narrowed. “We’re not—”
Bodie placed a hand on Toorin’s shoulder, and this time, Bodie couldn’t look me in the eye. “We must. You know this. With the Lark disabled, it’s our best chance at survival.”
With those solemn words, Toorin deflated before my eyes, and I witnessed a brief glimpse of the quiet devastation of a young boy who had seen too much too soon.
“Heaving to,” Toorin called out.
I couldn’t tell if his voice cracked or if the wind whipped the words from him. He turned the wheel, the rip in the mainsail splitting to the boom seconds before he’d taken the wind out of the Lark’s sails.
Bodie squeezed Toorin’s shoulder, and they shared a long, quiet look as Darwin and Lyric went to drop the foresail.
The Lark settled deeper into the water as we slowed, our wake catching up to us. The quiet shattered a second later with the unmistakable clatter of grappling hooks hitting and catching the railing at the Lark’s stern.
In a voice I’d never heard from Bodie before, he said to me, “Do whatever he bloody well says as if your life depends on it because it does.”
He said it like he… cared?
I opened my mouth, but I had no words.
Darwin and Lyric had the foresail down, and the ripped main flapped in the breeze. It felt like we’d already stopped dead in the water, but when the pirates set the grappling hooks, it jerked the Lark, sending us a step back to maintain our balance.
I swallowed.
The last time I had that much difficulty swallowing, I’d been a mere boy with swollen glands the size of my fists and fevered dreams that made me delirious for days.
Only this time, I wasn’t delirious.
We were being boarded by pirates.
Toorin
I turned to Marc, locking eyes on his as if this wasn’t the hardest thing I’d ever done, knowing the likelihood of losing the first person who’d meant more to me than a friend wasn’t zero.
Far, far, far from zero.
My voice came out thick and low. I didn’t hide my emotion. I didn’t want to. Not from him. “Do what I say. Exactly what I say.”
He nodded, grim determination on his face.
I turned to go. I didn’t want Bodie to have to face the pirates alone. Then I turned back, Marc’s chest bumping against mine as he stopped short. I tried not to think about what that contact did to me, even with probably a score of pirates about to board. And that terrified me nearly as much as the pirates did. “Don’t say a word. Not. A. Fucking. Word.”
I didn’t need Marc speaking. One word out of him, and it would be obvious he didn’t belong on the Lark. I didn’t need anyone wondering who he was. With the reward hanging over his head, he’d be worth more than anything the pirates could steal from us.
Marc laid a hand on my chest, the heat from his fingertips braising my skin. This could be the last time I was alone with him, and I’d regret it if I missed this opportunity to let him know what he meant to me.
With a finger under his stubbled jaw, I tipped up his chin, pressed my lips to his, and tried not to think it could be the last time I did that.
Mmpf. The softness… the pure sweetness of that kiss made the back of my eyes sting. “I—I want you to know that you matter. To me. You .” I tapped him in the center of his chest. “Not what’s beating in there.”
His eyes softened, and water flooded his lower lids. “I already knew that.”
“Oi, you smelly, dirty sods. Where is your captain?” Came a shout from the vicinity of the stern.
I broke away from Marc, cursing myself for not being with Bodie when boarded. I should have been the first person the pirates saw. Not my crew.
I was better than that.
Bodie knew it, but I now had my doubts.
What kind of captain is more concerned for the man who warms his sheets than the safety of his crew?
But Marc was more than that. So. Much. More.
I didn’t have the time to convince the voice in my head. I had more important things to think about. Life and death things. But the guilt of having Bodie be the voice of reason when it came to surrendering the Lark the moment I knew we couldn’t escape ate at me. Gnawed at me. Left me wounded and flayed.
I didn’t make it five steps before my crew walked up from the stern, their hands in the air as men from the other boat marched them at blade point to amidship.
The pirates were a motley crew, even by today’s bottom-basement standards. Torn clothes, rail-thin bodies, scabbed and scaly skin, rat-tangled hair… desperate eyes.
They outnumbered us two to one, and that wasn’t counting the men they’d left on their boat.
Marc moved to step around me, and I put my hand out to stop him.
Darwin, Bodie, and Lyric had been stripped of their blades.
“Bind them,” came the distinctly feminine voice from behind the group of men. Their captain, no doubt. But that voice…
I knew that lilt, that hard edge…
Then she came into view and pointed at me and Marc. “Strip their blades and bind them, too.”
Metta.
We’d fooled around once or twice. A lad and a lass curious as to how our bodies worked. Enough for me to learn that I preferred blokes. I hadn’t seen her since I’d told her.
“Hello, Metta.” I raised my hands at my sides and pasted on a disarming smile. “Is all this necessary?”
Marc shrunk back a step as she stomped in my direction. The plates of her body armor made her look bigger than she was, but she’d grown nearly as tall as me and now had the brawn to back it up.
Three more of her men flanked her with their long blades drawn as the remainder of her crew tied bindings on my men.
Men.
It hit me then…
Where was Juniper?
I didn’t look around. I didn’t want Metta to think someone else was on the Lark. Moon and mars and the stars, I didn’t want to see what would happen if they found her.
Metta yanked my blade from my hip, and I made no move to stop her. Marc eased closer to me. Not more than a fraction, but I was so attuned to him that I couldn’t miss it.
One of Metta’s men stripped the blade from Marc before the three fanned out behind her, prepared for whatever we would do.
Did they think I’d had my head kicked in by a camel? There was no fighting. Not when we were this outnumbered. All I could do was try to minimize the damage and get them to leave before they killed us all and took the Lark. They had the crew for it.
“This doesn’t need to get ugly, mate,” I said.
She whipped my blade up, the point sticking beneath my jaw with enough pressure that a warm trickle of blood ran down my neck. “I’m not your mate.”
I wasn’t sure if she recognized me. “It’s Toorin. I—”
“Stars, boy. You don’t think I recognize you?”
“She does have a knack for faces,” the man to her right said. “Remember that time when—”
“ Enough. ” The look she flayed him with was sharper than the blade at my jugular.
“You don’t think I’d recognize this bucket of bolts and rotting wood from a mile away?”
I didn’t think she wanted an answer, so I didn’t offer one.
She dropped the blade at her side, the sun shining off the sun-bronzed skin on top of her shaved head. “Bind them.”
The man on her right grabbed me. The one on the left took hold of Marc’s arm and wrenched it around his back. Marc grunted.
“Easy.” As soon as the word left my mouth, I wanted it back.
Metta’s eyes narrowed, her gaze shifting from me to Marc and back again. She tilted her head in Marc’s direction. “Who is he?”
“Nobody.”
She took Marc in, looking him up and down, up and down. His hair had grown a bit since Juniper had shaved it, but it wasn’t anywhere near the fiery mane he’d had when we’d first brought him to the Lark. Besides, what was the likelihood she knew what the chancellor’s spawn looked like?
“What’s your name?” she asked Marc.
“Don’t you think your time is better spent collecting chips than names? There are more boats out there to plunder.”
One look from her was enough. Enough to feel the blade at my throat even though she hadn’t lifted it. She didn’t need to.
She turned away. “Search the ship. If it’s not nailed, bolted, or welded on, it’s ours.”
A round of ‘Aye, Captains’ went around.
The cord binding cut into my wrists, my fingers already going numb. Instead of feeling the pulse in my restricted hands, all I felt was the steady increase in pressure from my restricted circulation.
The ripped sail billowed and snapped as the two men shoved Marc and me against the main mast and secured us to it.
“You all right?” I asked as soon as Metta’s men were out of earshot.
“Never better.”
I huffed out a laugh.
“Where do you know her from?” he asked.
“Long story.”
“I seem to have a bit of time.”
He did. All of us did.
As Metta’s crew searched the Lark, I told Marc how I’d found Metta fending for herself on the fringe while Bodie and I scavenged one of the abandoned office buildings for anything of value. Many places had been stripped of the easy stuff like copper wire and electronic components.
But Bodie and I risked our lives cutting away the metal studs and supports, the very things keeping the decrepit buildings from caving in. We’d learned how much we could push it without dying.
“My sire taught Metta how to sail.” Marc blew out a breath that somehow came out sounding ironic. “And she taught me that I prefer men.”
Marc chuckled. “Lucky me.”
“Oi,” one of Metta’s men shouted as he dropped a sack of my dodgy chips on the deck. They weren’t hard to find. That was the point. “What’s so funny?”
“Your face,” I countered.
“You bloody—”
Metta appeared from my cabin and slapped the guy upside the head before he could come for me. “Stop flapping ye jaws and get back to work.”
The man shot me a look. The kind of look that said he’d toss me over the side of the Lark if Metta gave him a chance. “Aye, Captain.”
One by one, Metta’s crew scavenged the ship better than any harbor rat I’d ever seen, both the four-legged and the two-legged kind. They brought our valuables onto the deck and dumped them in a pile. Food. Clothing. Casks of mead. Bedding. They would take anything they could offload for a chip here or there.
I couldn’t blame her. She was doing what everyone did—using everything in their power to survive.
From across the deck, I caught Bodie’s eye. The three of them seemed to be fairing alright, considering. Bodie waited until no one was watching before he mouthed one word. Juniper.
I raised my brows. Asking the question that weighed heavy on my mind. Where is she?
Bodie jerked his head toward the bow. There was nowhere to hide up there. Metta’s men had already combed that area. How had they not found—
Then it hit me. The storage compartment in the bow for the anchor line. She must have been small enough to fit. I didn’t see how. Now, if she only stayed put long enough to not get caught.
Metta had the hatch cover pulled off the center hold and climbed down the ladder, and three of her men followed her below decks. They tossed up more of our precious supplies and even wrangled a barrel of tar we used to patch leaks.
Not ten minutes later, she stomped up the ladder. She picked up the bag of damaged chips and shook them in my face. “Where are they?”
“Where are what?”
“The good chips.” She pulled the tie from the neck of the bag, stuck her hand in, and let the handful of chips rain down on the deck. “These are the decoy. Where are the good ones?”
“We traded them in port.” It wasn’t a lie. Yet it wasn’t the full truth.
She gripped my jaw, her fingers digging into my flesh. “Where. Are. They.”
“You could search this boat from stem to stern and never find them. Or…” I let the remainder of the sentence drop.
Let her think about it. Let her stew.
Her grip tightened. Oi . The woman had some grip strength. “Or?”
“Or you could leave us with provisions, and I can show you.”
She squeezed even tighter. I gritted my teeth and held her fierce gaze. There used to be a hint of softness there. Not anymore. Even so, she wouldn’t squeeze the truth out of me. “Tell me.”
“Do we have a deal?”