Chapter 20
20
Marcelis
Do we have a deal?
Considering the circumstances, tied to the mast with pirates sacking the ship of all valuables, our very lives in their hands, I shouldn’t have thought about how sexy those five words sounded. Toorin sounded strong, not defeated. I don’t think I’d ever felt such pride for another person as I did right then.
My heart swelled in my chest—or at least it felt like that — because my lungs felt too small and my chest too tight.
Metta shoved Toorin’s face away, then turned to her men. “Leave them three days of provisions and a pot to cook in. Some of the clothes and bedding, too.”
My heart ratcheted down a notch or two. Enough that I didn’t feel it pounding at my temples and roaring in my ears. I couldn’t see the reaction of Bodie or the rest of the men because they’d tied me facing away, but leaving us with something must have meant they didn’t plan on killing us.
At least not as long as something didn’t go wrong.
“ But Captain—”
Those were the only words the man got out before Metta whipped her blade up, the tip beneath the man’s jaw. My neck hurt from craning so hard to look. I could only see out of the corner of my eye, but it was enough.
Metta got in the man’s face. “Who is the captain?”
“You are, sir,” the man said.
“Best remember that if you don’t want to be filleted and fed to the fish.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Her blade fell away, and he went to supervise the other men, her attention returning to Toorin. “Tell me where the good chips are.”
“Cut me loose.”
She hesitated, swinging her gaze to her men and them back again, calculating the risks to her safety. One unarmed man against the rest of her men must have looked like decent odds because she shifted to Toorin’s side and cut him free from the mast, though his hands remained tied behind him.
Toorin and Metta disappeared into the galley. Her men divided the bounty, tied much of it up in the blankets, and started hauling it off the Lark. They didn’t leave us any mead. Most of what remained were the most thread-bare clothes and flour that had gone to the weevils days ago.
I tried to look on the bright side. At least we were alive.
With Toorin off the mast, I twisted around to get a better view of Bodie, Darwin, and Lyric.
Bodie had schooled his expression. Darwin looked murderous, especially as the other men hauled Lyric’s favorite pots off the boat. Lyric, well, he looked—
His head popped up at the same time I caught movement from the bow. I knew where all Metta’s men were. They were either on their boat or packing up stuff to take.
It had to be Juniper.
Bodie eyed the men. They weren’t paying any of us any attention. They were focused on loading up and getting out of there. Then he turned his attention to the bow as the top of Juniper’s head popped over the top of the forecastle. Bodie shook his head. Then shook it again more emphatically before looking away.
There was too much going on to think that one of Metta’s men might not happen to glance over at the wrong time and notice Bodie’s attention had turned toward the bow and discover Juniper. That couldn’t happen. We were too close to potentially getting out of this alive to let it all fall apart now.
Toorin appeared out of the galley, his eyes finding me first. I don’t know what he’d feared he’d find when he returned, but his shoulders fell, and the muscles in his jaw relaxed. I don’t think anyone else noticed. I was probably the only one who studied Toorin’s every move, ate up every soft inflection in his voice, and noticed the way the crew loved him for the flawed, benevolent leader that he was. He would need to be to command their loyalty.
You didn’t earn that from the blade.
You earned that from the heart.
Metta came out behind him, stuffing a small camel hide bag into the waistband of her trousers.
Toorin’s eyes dropped to the dwindling pile of supplies in the center of the deck. “ Oi.” He turned back toward Metta. “Leave the tar, or we’ll sink before the end of the month.”
The sturdy deck beneath my feet didn’t feel so sturdy anymore. I didn’t think I’d sleep so well at night knowing we could spring a leak large enough to sink us.
“One,” she said, loud enough that one of her men dropped a cask of tar in the small pile of supplies Metta had allowed us to keep and reached to take something else.
Ever since Toorin and Metta came back on deck, Bodie’s focus kept drifting to the bow. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see much. Then again, I didn’t want to call obvious attention to the area where Juniper remained in hiding.
Bodie nudged Darwin with his foot to get his attention a second before I saw a rush of movement and a blade appearing between Metta’s legs, the business side of the blade pointing up.
“Unbind them, or I’ll cut off your balls and put them in a jar beside me bed,” Juniper said, sounding more like a pirate than the pirates did.
Metta’s men drew their blades. She shook her head, calling them off and raising her hands to the side, showing she wasn’t holding a weapon. Juniper stood and snagged the blades from Metta’s belt.
“If I had balls, they wouldn’t be as big or as foolish as yours, little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl.” Juniper’s blade inched higher, slicing through the trouser fabric.
With Juniper distracted, two pirates tried to skirt up the other side of the Lark and circle around to come up behind her, but she snugged the blade tighter to Metta’s body. “Call them off.”
“You heard her,” Metta said.
The two men returned with their blades drawn.
I was so focused on Juniper’s blade that I didn’t notice one of Metta’s men sneaking up behind Toorin until Bodie shouted a warning. “Behind you.”
Toorin tried to use his shoulder as a battering ram, but the man easily sidestepped it, wrapping an arm around Toorin’s neck and pressing a short blade against his jugular. Toorin stilled.
“Tell the lass to drop her blade before I behead her captain,” the man said.
“No,” Toorin said, surely about to get his throat slit. Both captains had blades held to vital places on their bodies. “Unload your boat, and we’ll let your captain live.”
“ Toorin ,” Bodie said under his breath but loud enough for everyone to hear on the quiet deck. The Lark creaked and squeaked as it bobbed in the water, the useless sail flapping in the gentle breeze.
It had never been Toorin’s idea to surrender. That had been Bodie’s.
Toorin winced as the man dug the blade into his skin. A slow trickle of blood oozed to the surface and dripped down the side of his neck.
“Not him,” Metta said to her crew. Then she locked eyes with me. “ Him . Bring him to me.”
“Leave him be,” Toorin said, which only made Metta grin.
One of her men cut me free from the mast and marched me at blade point across the deck until I stood in front of Toorin with a blade to my neck.
“It’s okay,” I said, though clearly it wasn’t.
“Toorin?” Juniper asked, sounding like me. Like Metta had cut her off at the knees. It was the first time I’d seen Juniper unsure and her stubborn confidence wavering.
“Let. Him. Go.” The low voice and the sheer violence in Toorin’s three words stopped my heart for half a beat.
Instead of taking Toorin’s words as the warning they were, it emboldened Metta. “Who is he?”
That question from earlier. The one we’d somehow avoided answering.
One of Metta’s men inched closer, the one who’d dare to question her. He got close. Close enough for me to smell the rot on his skin and the sour mead on his breath. “Bloke looks familiar if you ask me.”
I kept my mouth shut the way Bodie and Toorin had instructed me. I didn’t think I sounded any different than the rest of them, but maybe I did.
And I’d much rather take my chances with pirates than learn what my sire would do to me if anyone brought me before him.
The man poked me in the chest, his face inches from mine, demanding answers. I held the words inside. I held them inside and locked eyes with Toorin. Toorin’s slight shake of his head reminded me to keep quiet.
Locked on Toorin as I was, I noticed the split second his eyes lost focus, and he swayed on his feet. His knees gave way, and he crashed to the deck, unmoving.
“ Toorin! ” I couldn’t keep his name from bursting from my chest. No. No, no no no no. Not now!
The man who’d held the blade to Toorin’s neck nudged him with a boot. “What in the bloody—”
“His heart stopped. He will die if we don’t restart it for him.” Bodie’s words sounded calm, but inside, I knew he had to be screaming like I was.
Juniper dropped the blades and backed away with her hands raised. “Let me help him. Please.”
I didn’t know pirates were capable of true mercy, but Metta waved her hand, and Juniper scurried past me and dropped to her knees beside Toorin.
She pushed and shoved on his shoulder, her bare feet slipping on the deck as she rolled him to his back and slammed her fist in the middle of his chest hard enough to make my sternum hurt.
One of these days, it wouldn’t work.
We were running out of time.
She hit him again and again, stopping only to put her head to his chest to hear if the whir had started again.
“I need someone stronger,” Juniper pleaded.
I had to close my eyes to the pain and growing panic in hers. My racing heart a thunderous, erratic beat in my chest.
“Then I guess he dies,” Metta said, without any hint of the mercy she had shown mere seconds before.
The low rumble of the laugh of the man behind me made me want to head-butt him. Anything to shut him up. For good, preferably.
“Bloody old cow,” Juniper muttered.
I waited for Metta to snatch her up by the collar, but instead, Metta laughed. Not the spine-tingling laugh of the man behind me who seemed more than willing to spill my lifeblood on the deck, but the full belly laugh of a woman thoroughly amused.
Still, Metta made no move to help.
Juniper clamped her fists together and raised them over her head, bringing them down with the full force of a human sledgehammer.
Toorin
My chest burned like fire from the seven suns— if there had been seven suns. I opened my eyes to see Juniper with her hands clasped over her head.
“Stop,” I gasped, my arm coming up at the last second to block the blow and send Juniper rolling to the side.
Fuuuck .
If I hadn’t nearly been dead, I would have wanted to be if she’d landed that blow. I’d have a big bloody bruise the size of Toonu on my shoulder as it was.
“You’re alive!” Juniper wrapped her arms around my chest and buried her face in my neck. With my arms tied, I couldn’t hug her back. My chest ached from the blows but more from the fear I saw on everyone’s face.
“And I plan to stay that way.”
The bright sun stung my eyes as I glanced at Marc to find his swimming with moisture. He blinked once. A slow, disbelieving blink. When he opened them again, all I felt for the briefest of seconds was… love?
Liquid swamped my eyes, and by the time I could see again, that look in Marc’s eyes had vanished. As fleeting as it was, it still made my chest tight.
I had no time to contemplate that because Metta hauled Juniper to her feet. “Enough.”
Metta tucked Juniper’s blade beneath the belt at her waist and held her blade at her side. She motioned to her men and the remaining bounty. “Get the last of it.”
“But —” the man behind Marc said.
“You heard me.” Metta had the same tone I used when I wouldn’t put up with nonsense.
Slowly regaining my strength, I rolled to my knees, balanced myself, and stood like a man who’d stepped onto shore after spending a lifetime at sea.
Having your heart stop took a toll on the body.
The men picked up the last of their plunder, and Juniper put her arm around my waist to steady me. Marc moved as if he wanted to go to my other side, but I shook him off, not wanting to draw undue attention to him.
Metta glanced at Juniper, and her eyes softened for an instant. Then she glanced from me to Marc before focusing on Juniper again. “They treating you well?”
“Aye. They’re me family now.”
Metta lifted Juniper’s blade and handed it to her hilt first. “Make sure they keep it that way.”
Juniper accepted the blade, sliding it into the sheath at her side. “They’re not my foe,” she said in a tone that made it clear who the enemy was and me think Metta might take the blade back. Instead, she laughed and shook her head. “You’re more like me than you think.”
Juniper straightened. “Sod off.”
I braced to block a slap to Juniper’s face at the least, but Metta turned and headed for her boat. Marc, Juniper, and I followed a few cautious steps behind in disbelief that there hadn’t been any bloodshed. One of Metta’s men waited at the stern, only one of the grappling hooks holding her boat alongside ours.
Metta had one leg over the railing when her man snapped his fingers and pointed to Marc. “I know where I know you from.”
Metta stilled, straddling the gunwale. “Where?”
“Toft’s spawn. Got a reward on his head, he does.”
Marc laughed as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Juniper rolled her eyes. It took everything in me not to react.
To school my expression.
To harness the panic.
My knees knocked, and I didn’t know if it was from standing so long when all my body wanted to do was lay there or from the adrenaline flooding my system. We didn’t nearly survive a plundering by Metta and her men, only for her to steal my most precious cargo at the last second.
“You been blinded by the scurvy, have you?” I managed. I turned my attention to Metta. “You should see to that.”
Under her breath, Juniper said, “Scurvy doesn’t cause bl—”
I jabbed Juniper in the ribs with my elbow to shut her up.
Metta narrowed her eyes at Marc, taking him in thoroughly a second time. I’d heard that back before the war, there were things called pictures that took likenesses of people. But of the technologies salvaged in the near century since, that wasn’t one of them. If you’d never met someone, you wouldn’t know what they looked like, not enough for identification.
Unless they had an identifying feature that gave it away.
Like a scar running up the center of their chest?
“He’s a ginger,” the man said.
“Stealing the chancellor’s spawn would be suicide.” Not a lie. I didn’t for one second think that any of us would survive if the chancellor guard caught us.
Marc kept his mouth shut.
I stepped close to Metta’s man, even though he was the one with the blade. “There are other gingers in what’s left of the world. Have you seen him? Have you seen the spawn with your own eyes?”
After a long pause where there was no sound besides the incessant whirring in my chest, the screech of a seagull overhead, and the ineffective flapping of our torn sail. The man broke eye contact. “Not with me own eyes.”
For the hundredth time that day, Metta asked, “Who is he?”
I stepped in front of Marc. My body blocking him from view on instinct alone. “He’s mine .”
The words were out before I had the chance to meter them, but in those brutally honest words, Metta must have seen that she wouldn’t take him from me without a fight. I didn’t care that I was bound or that I’d be outnumbered. I didn’t get this far, only to lose him now.
“If I find out different,” Metta said, with the same finality to her words I’d had in mine. “I’ll be back.”
She slid down the rope and landed on the deck, followed by her man. As soon as his feet landed on the deck, Juniper pulled her blade and hacked through the rope. The grappling hook dropped on our deck, and she picked it up and tossed it into the IP.
I didn’t expect Metta would be back. She’d robbed us of almost everything we had. Most , but not all. To be cautious, I turned to Juniper. “Make sure they don’t try to re-board.”
“Aye.” She made a motion to Marc and me. We turned around, and she cut our hands free.
“Oi,” came Bodie’s impatient voice from amidships. “Untie me.”
“Don’t get your bloomers in a twist,” I hollered back.
Since Metta had stolen nearly all our blades except Juniper’s, I strode back to mid-ship and found a small blade Lyric used in the galley amongst some of the things Metta had left. I cut Bodie, Darwin, and Lyric free.
They rubbed at their red, swollen hands and the tightness in their shoulders.
I collapsed on the deck beside them, putting my back to the gunwale and dropping my head to my knees to gather myself.
Marc plopped down beside me. I knew it to be him, even without looking. He put a hand on my back.
Turning my head, I looked at him. “You alright?”
“Are you?” Moisture filled his eyes again. He looked away.
I turned his face to mine. “I am.”
The moisture spilled over. The for now unspoken.
“I—I thought…”
“I know.” I’d thought it, too, as I’d fallen face-first onto the deck. I reached up and touched the tender lump at my temple. My fingers came away with a smear of nearly dry blood. “I have no plan to die anytime soon.”
It was meant to reassure him, but we both knew sheer stubbornness alone couldn’t keep me alive.