Chapter 23
23
Toorin
From outside the bar came a scuffle of feet, followed by a shout. Someone tore the fabric away from the doorway, and it fluttered to the ground. The bright sunlight streaming in blinded anyone who looked that way.
Bodie and I held up a hand to shield our eyes.
“Oi,” the barkeep said. “Bloody oafs. What’s the ma—”
A large figure filled the doorway, cutting off the barkeep’s reprimand and plunging us into near darkness again. The man held up a lantern.
No. Not any man. A chancellor guard.
“Against the wall. All of ye.”
Another man came in behind him, only bigger and with blades crisscrossing his chest. I had no doubt he knew how to use them.
A patron sitting in the corner drew a blade, large by most standards, but the guard’s blades put it to shame.
“Do as he says,” the barkeep told the man. “If ye tear up the place, you’ll have no place to drink.”
He put the blade away, cursing while he did. People stood and lined up against the wall. Bodie and I thought about running for it. After all, we had a clear shot to the doorway. We thought better of it.
“There’s no telling how many more guards are outside,” Bodie whispered in my ear.
“Against the wall,” the armed man ordered again as he stepped toward us. We had our blades, but we were way outmatched. Better to comply than die.
We lined up with the others, the barkeep hooking onto the end of the line. “What’s this about?”
“We’re looking for a man.” The one with the lantern said as he went from man to man, holding the light to people’s faces.
“Who would that be?” someone asked. “Maybe we’ve seen him.”
The bladed man walked up and down the line of seven men before answering. “Marcelis Toft. Heir to the Tranquility Provence.”
Bodie elbowed me in the ribs, and I swallowed my gasp. The old man who’d spoken to us before sputtered out a chuckle. “Ye won’t find no spawn of a chancellor here. Ye’ve lost yer bloody mind.”
The guard with the lantern held the light on a man second to the end of the line beside the barkeep. The man had thick, curly, reddish hair duller and with more blond than Marc’s had ever been.
“Bring Thyle in,” the bladed guard ordered.
This time, Bodie stomped on my foot, and I bit down on the groan. I knew that name. Marc often spoke of the cart boy who’d helped him escape Toonu. Marc had wondered if he’d survived.
I guess Marc never thought they’d use the man to hunt him down.
Another guard brought in a man with his hands bound in front of him, sporting a black eye that had faded to yellow. He must have been Thyle.
“This him?” the lantern guard asked.
With little more than a glance, Thyle said, “It’s not him.”
The bladed guard caught Thyle’s jaw in one brutal, meaty hand, his fingers digging into Thyle’s flesh. “Look again, spawn.”
Thyle refused to look up at the man until the guard pressed his fingers in harder. Thyle struggled to keep from crying out. He looked directly at the man against the wall and, through gritted teeth, said, “It’s. Not. Him.”
The guard released him, and Thyle walked out of the bar with the guard who’d brought him in.
“Go now. All of you,” the barkeep said. “If the spawn of a chancellor were here, we’d know it.”
After one last scan, the bladed guard turned and left. The second guard followed. We all held our breath for a beat or two.
“Moon and mars,” the curly-haired man said. “I thought—”
The barkeep clapped him on his shoulder. “Ye be fine. No one would accuse you of being nobility if they saw you in the light of day.”
It took everything I had not to bolt for the wharf. I tossed my head toward the open doorway.
“Go ahead,” Bodie said. “I’m right behind you.”
I snatched up the bit of cloth from the ground that the guards tore off and stepped into the sun. Several guards searched the nearby huts and shacks. They were going door to door searching for Marc.
I’d known the chancellor guard was looking for him, but I didn’t think they’d come this far to find him. It seemed extreme, but then again, this was Toft we were talking about. From some of the stories Marc told me and what I knew about the man from selling my scrap around Toonu and the rest of the province, nothing that man did surprised me.
I waited and waited, my anxiety like a jagged ripple under my skin as the guard continued their search. The only thing keeping me from running for the wharf was that I knew the chancellor didn’t have a water fleet. Marc would be safe on the Lark.
I started to head back into the bar when Bodie emerged with the cloth from Linus’s hut and an expression I knew all too well. “What? Tell me.”
“Nothing,” Bodie said. He glanced at the position of the sun. “Juniper should be back at the dinghy by now.”
He increased his pace, and even though I had a long stride, I nearly had to jog to keep up. “Tell me what took you so long.”
He spun in a slow circle and then kept walking. “Bloody guards everywhere.”
“ Bodie .”
He stopped walking, and I skidded in the dirt to stop beside him. “I asked the old man the name of the camel guy he knew and where to find him.”
“We’re not going to Dry River.”
“Exactly. So why are you making a fuss about it?”
I cursed under my breath, and Bodie laughed. “Yeah, love you, too.”
Our supplies awaited us on the beach near our dinghy, protected by a spawn barely big enough to lift the heavy blade by his side. I glanced around but saw no sign of Juniper.
“She’ll be here,” Bodie said. “We’ll pack the dinghy, and she’ll be here.”
“You can go,” I said to the boy. He scrambled back away, heading toward the market and his next job.
Bodie climbed in, and I started handing supplies to him, the dinghy nearly overflowing full when we’d finished. Juniper would have to ride precariously on top if she didn’t want to swim because I wasn’t making another trip. I’d risk losing our supplies before I’d risk the guard finding Marc.
“Here she comes.” Bodie pointed down the beach. “Told ye.”
I glanced over. Something wasn’t right. She was speed-walking down the beach and looking over her shoulder as if the chancellor guard were searching for her instead of Marc.
“Gotta go, gotta go,” she said as she ran the last bit. “The chancellor guard—”
“We know,” I said as I handed her to Bodie. She settled on top of the supplies, and there was barely enough room for Bodie to get settled between the oars. “We ran into them at the bar.”
“They’re swarming the other end of the beach, looking for anyone willing to take them out. They’re going to search the boats, one by one.”
I shoved the dinghy into deeper water and hauled myself on board. I couldn’t get to the second set of oars, so Bodie did all the rowing himself.
“Over there.” Bodie tossed his head toward the far end of the beach, where a handful of dinghies took off from the shore. Two guardsmen in each boat, from what I could see. They were fanning out, and no telling how many more boats they’d get to do their bidding. It was only a matter of time before they made it to the Lark, and then what?
“Faster,” I said, even though Bodie was already rowing as fast as he could.
We weren't fast or nimble with only him at the oars and our dinghy overloaded and sitting low in the water. If a large wake came, we’d be lucky if it didn’t capsize us.
The sweat came to Bodie’s brow, the red to his skin, and the worry to his face. We’d anchored farther out than most. Maybe that would buy us more time as the guard first searched the vessels closer to shore.
By the time we got to the Lark, Bodie panted as if he’d been running through the exclusion zone for a week straight.
“Hurry,” I said as we clipped the dinghy into the lift and hoisted the boat up the side of the Lark.
Darwin, Lyric, and Marc came to the side.
“What’s going on out there?” Marc asked. He had my binoculars around his neck and must have seen the commotion at the shoreline and the small flotilla of dinghies fanning out from the shore.
“They’re looking for you,” Bodie managed, his breath running short between the rowing and the hauling of ropes.
Juniper scrambled over the side, and I handed her and Marc the supplies.
Bodie climbed aboard after them. “Lyric, weigh the anchor. Darwin and I will hoist the sail.” He turned back to me. “Will you be unloaded by then?”
“I’ll make sure we are.” All our supplies may be rolling around on the deck as we set sail, but that was a problem I was willing to live with if it meant getting to deeper water before the chancellor guard could board us.
Marcelis
I stood at the stern as the settlement fell away, the flotilla of guardsmen and dinghies getting smaller and smaller. Toorin came up behind me, putting a hand on the small of my back. I jumped, even though I knew it was him.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I’m jumpy. I can’t get the thought out of my head of what could have happened if they’d boarded before you’d returned.
“They might not have recognized you.”
“They had Thyle.”
“Do you think he would have given you up?”
That was the question of the day. “If he were smart, he would.”
“He helped you escape. He’s on your side.”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know what to believe anymore. And discovering that the guard had traveled so far from Toonu, I worried about how far they’d spread out in the search for me. Would we find them in Turtle Bay, too? It would seem impossible for a guard without a sea fleet, but then again, I’d thought Toorin overly cautious when he’d told me to stay on the Lark.
“Captain,” Darwin said.
We turned around and gave Darwin our attention. He had the fabric in his hand that Toorin and Bodie had brought back. “’S no good. It’s all dry-rotted.”
He tugged at the fabric, and it nearly disintegrated in his hands. “As soon as the wind hits it, it will tear again.”
Toorin took the fabric from him, bits of thread falling to the deck. “Bloody perfect.” He scrubbed a palm down his face. As hard as Darwin’s words hit him, Toorin might as well have taken a body blow to the gut. It took a moment before his usual calm descended on him. “Then we stitch up the sails without using the cloth as reinforcement and hope for the best.”
“Aye, Captain, we could, but…”
“But what?” The irritation in Toorin’s words wasn’t aimed at Darwin. He knew it. I knew it. And it seemed that no matter what we did, we couldn’t catch a bloody break.
“Lyric tried. The repair won’t hold,” Darwin said. The mainsail is nearly as dry-rotted as the fabric you found. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.”
Toorin leaned back against the railing. The bad news kept landing, blow after blow. “What about the foresail?”
“It’s not much better than the main. The whole lot’s in need of a refit.”
Toorin laughed, dry and humorless. “Right. We’ll just pull into the next port and buy more sailcloth than I’ve seen in a decade.”
Darwin stood there. Toorin’s mouth opened and closed. No orders came, and Darwin finally asked, “What will you have me do?”
Toorin took my hand and squeezed. He sucked in a deep breath and blew it out before turning to me, defeat etched into every thin wrinkle and line at the corners of his eyes. He spoke to Darwin but looked at me when he said, “Call everyone together. We have a decision to make.”
It took a few minutes to wrangle everyone together for the group meeting Toorin wanted. I didn’t know what was up, but the tension in how Toorin carried himself and his grip on me told me we might not like what he had to say.
Bodie stood at the helm, so we all grouped around midship. Juniper was whittling something with her blade that looked a lot like another blade, and Lyric and Darwin gathered up the scraps of fabric and the mainsail so we didn’t trample all over them.
The Lark cut through the water, our speed half of what she was capable of. It felt as slow as riding a camel with three sore legs—we might get there, but it would take much longer than anyone expected.
I held up a hand to block the sun from my eyes while Toorin paced before the helm.
“Stop, already,” Bodie said. “You’re making me dizzy with all the back and forth, back and forth.”
After two more passes in front of the helm, Toorin turned at one end to see us all. “We can’t repair the mainsail.” Which probably came as no surprise to anybody. “Not with what we have on hand. As it is, the foresail is also in jeopardy of failing.”
Juniper stopped her carving. I didn’t think she was paying attention. “And what if it fails? Then how do we get anywhere?”
“We don’t.” Bodie guided the bow into an oncoming wave. “If the sail fails, we’re dead in the water.”
“Then what about Toorin’s heart?” she asked.
This mirrored my concern.
Bodie and Toorin locked eyes. Toorin shook his head, and Bodie frowned.
What was that?
“They’re not telling us something,” Lyric said.
Bodie refused to look at Toorin when he said, “There’s another option—”
“ Bodie ,” Toorin warned.
“No.” That single word had enough authority to shut Toorin down. “You called us together. They need to know all the options.”
“You say that as if we have many.” Toorin sounded tired. And not the kind of tired that a good night’s sleep could cure.
Bodie shifted course, and the sun no longer shone in my eyes. The exhaustion highlighting Toorin’s features had me grabbing a nearby stool Darwin and Lyric had been using and putting it behind him.
“Sit,” I said. It took a hand to Toorin’s shoulder before he did as he was told.
As if Bodie wasn’t sure Toorin would tell us what we needed to know, he started talking for his friend. “Instead of going in at Turtle Bay, we can sail downriver to Dry River Port. It’s faster, plus crossing the badlands will be shorter there.”
“And when the sail fails,” Juniper said as if the failure was a foregone conclusion—which, to be fair, it probably was, “we can float downstream. We won’t need the wind.”
“She’s not wrong,” Darwin said, making Toorin’s frown more severe.
“It’s also the most dangerous.” Toorin couldn’t remain seated any longer. He stood but managed to control his urge to pace. There’s a reason most choose Turtle Bay and a longer trek through the badlands. We’ve been to Dry River Port, or nearly so. Almost didn’t make it out with the Lark… or our hides.”
“If we sail straight through, it will be faster and safer,” Bodie insisted.
“ Safer doesn’t mean safe .” Toorin raised his voice. He rarely did that. “I’m not sending my crew down the Dry River all because of me.”
“Bloody boob.” I’d gotten used to Bodie’s scowl, but it was new to see Darwin’s.
His words took Toorin aback. “That’s not how you speak to your captain.”
I’d learned that Toorin only pulled the captain thing when annoyed.
Lyric chuckled, his long skirt billowing in the IP breeze. “It is if the captain is out of his head. Maybe you lost one too many brain cells along with your heart.”
Bodie barked out a laugh, and Toorin cut him a look. “What? He’s not wrong.”
That telltale furrow deepened between Toorin’s brows. “Nothing is wrong with my head.”
Lyric held up a hand. “Wait, are you saying you don’t want to take the shorter trip down the river because you’re worried about us ?”
“Yes!” Toorin practically shouted as if he’d been trying all day to get us to see things his way.
A rumble of chuckles went through the lot of us.
“The most notorious pirate on the IP boarded us,” Juniper said.
“And we’ve run from the chancellor guard,” Lyric supplied. “More than once. The danger doesn’t scare us.”
Toorin raised his hands and let them drop at his sides. “It should.”
I liked that Toorin’s crew called him out on his nonsense. They cared. A lot. That said something about Toorin the captain. About Toorin the man. A ball of heat formed in my chest that I could only describe as pride. I was proud of Toorin and the man that he’d become.
And prouder to be the man he’d chosen.
I wanted to take him into my arms and show him exactly what he meant to me.
There would be time for that.
Later.
“I’ll take the river over the Toonu fringe any day.” Juniper held the carved blade up, scrutinizing the grip.
“I’m with her,” Lyric said.
Darwin jumped in, not letting Toorin get a word in. “And if we can get to Mercy faster, we should.”
Bodie grinned.
“You can wipe that bloody smile off your face,” Toorin said.
Bodie’s grin widened. “Does that mean I can say I told you so?”
They’d already had this discussion between the two of them? And Toorin had been planning on choosing the longer route because it was safer for us but infinitely more perilous for him? The longer it took us to get to Dr. Hahl and return Toorin’s heart, the less likely he’d be to survive.
And after seeing the bruising on his chest, I seriously doubted he could withstand another incident like before.
Toorin didn’t look convinced. I stepped up to him, my hands on his hips, standing close until I blocked most of his view. “If we have to tie you to the mast until we get to Dry River Port, I can arrange it.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’d mutiny?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Toorin took a half-step around me to see everyone else. “You all are telling me you would mutiny?”
“Aye, Captain,” Darwin said.
Lyric rolled his eyes. “Bloody right.”
“I’ll stand guard over him,” Juniper said, giving the carved blade a measured swing as if testing the balance.
Toorin’s eyes cut to Bodie.
“We have plenty of rope in the hold,” Bodie said, “And I’m a quick hand with knots.”
Toorin’s chin fell to his chest. I lifted it with a finger. “Hear me and hear me well. We’ll face whatever treachery we must to put your heart back where it belongs. You matter, Toorin. To me, to Bodie, to everyone on the Lark.”
Toorin’s hard swallow told me how difficult those words had been to hear. “Okay, then.”
He kissed my cheek softly, then sidestepped me to take the helm. Bodie let him without a fight.
“If we’re going to Dry River Port, I’ll need a new heading.”
Bodie grinned and didn’t even sound sarcastic when he said, “Aye, Captain.”