Chapter 13
Syla expected Fel to lead her and Teyla to a Royal Fleet ship with a captain loyal to her family. She didn’t expect him to hurry her down the pier to the most remote dock where an unassuming whaling ship was moored, burn marks and gouges from dragon claws visible on its hull.
“Captain Radmarik is taking us?” A briny breeze swept through the harbor, and Syla gripped the hood of the cloak Fel had found for her in the brothel, leaving a coin for its purchase.
He’d apparently thought a disguise, or at least covering, was a good idea for a traveling princess.
“I thought he left after receiving payment,” Syla added.
As her aunt had pointed out, after the last sailing Syla had gone on with Radmarik, he shouldn’t have wanted to take her aboard again. His vessel had survived—barely—but several of the accompanying guard ships had been sunk—or torched by dragon fire. This time, there weren’t any guard ships nearby.
Syla bit her lip. If Wreylith didn’t agree to take her to the various places where the components could be gathered, this would have to be the vessel that transported her all over the Sea of Storms and waited for her while she trekked inland.
Would a hired captain be willing to do that?
Since Radmarik had a link to the Freeborn Faction, a band of stormers who’d left their people to pursue peaceful relations with the Kingdom, that might bode well for her, but Syla had never met any of them.
She questioned how much assistance they and their allies would offer.
“He did leave,” Fel said, “but he returned while I was attempting to arrange transport. After talking to officers in the Royal Fleet and finding their loyalties had been more to the queen—or the years-dead king—rather than to you, I worried about telling them of your plans. One of them didn’t even know which child you were. ”
“Maybe I should have been more of a public figure over the years.” Syla had always preferred her duties in the temple as a healer and her books and collections to anything public and couldn’t help but wince at the notion.
“There was one captain whom you’d healed about a decade earlier.
I almost confided in him and asked for transport, but his first officer is someone I’ve seen in the castle before, chatting with General Dolok, so I had doubts.
It was as I stood on the deck of that vessel that the whaling ship sailed into the harbor. ”
The Striking Falcon read white-painted letters across the wooden hull, claw marks gouged through the G and F. Syla didn’t know if she’d caught the whaling ship’s name before, but if she was to sail on it again, she would make a note of it.
“The captain and I fought side-by-side on the deck against the dragons trying to uncover the decoy.” Fel’s voice had a fondness to it.
For the battle? Or for finding someone worthy of engaging in battle alongside?
Maybe the latter. “When my knee tried to buckle—” he scowled down at the offending limb, a stiffness to his gait suggesting it was wrapped under his trousers, “—he covered my back and kept a wicked set of talons from taking my head off.”
“In other words, you two bonded.”
“That’s right.”
Captain Radmarik stood on the deck, his half-chewed hunk of sugar cane in the corner of his mouth like a pipe, and he lifted a hand when he saw them. He didn’t appear perturbed by their approach.
“That is a less, ah, stately vessel than I imagined a princess sailing on,” Teyla observed, her gaze snagging on a harpoon loaded in a rear launcher. The tip hadn’t been cleaned, and what looked like dried blubber and possibly a piece of intestines dangled from it.
“A princess or the archaeologist cousin of a princess?” Syla asked.
“I do usually get slightly more refined transportation when I travel. I don’t mind roughing it though. It’s mostly because so many of my trips have been with Relvin, and he insists on a degree of opulence, that I’m used to it.”
“Traveling with him must be a joy.”
“I read and ignore his frequent pompous utterances.”
“Wise.”
“When you immerse yourself in a quality book, you can ignore almost everything.”
“I’ve found that to be true. Do you prefer a fictional story?
Or a historical tome?” For recreational reading, Syla usually chose biographies and real historical accountings, but she’d been known to enjoy a mystery or collection of myths and legends.
She itched to find time to read the book she’d snagged from the library basement on her great-great grandmother, certain from the title that it would offer a more fascinating interpretation of the queen’s past than she’d found in other texts.
“Historical and fiction,” Teyla said. “Ideally with romance, though the more torrid the love story, the less likely the history included is to be accurate. I enjoy borrowing books from the library, taking notes to mark all the inaccuracies, and then leaving my additions between the pages for future readers.”
“You don’t think other people are reading for pleasure and don’t care about the inaccuracies?”
“Don’t care?” Teyla gave her a scandalized look. “Everyone should care. Even if they don’t, they should be educated.”
“You don’t send letters of corrections to the authors, do you?”
“Only the authors who are still alive.”
“Well, that’s good. It would be awkward for the sexton to try to deliver the others.”
“That’s my belief too.”
Fel gave them a long look over his shoulder—what, was this a strange conversation?—before leading them up the gangplank onto the Striking Falcon.
“This is how women bond,” Syla informed him. “Not by fighting dragons but by discussing books they’ve read.”
She again noticed the newspaper he was carrying. He hadn’t yet shown her an article, so maybe he had picked it up for his reading pleasure. Either that, or the articles were so awful that he was waiting until they had time to discuss them in depth.
“If this adventure proves as challenging as I suspect from the little you’ve told me,” Fel said as they walked onto the deck, “you might get to bond both ways.”
“Won’t that be a delight?” Syla murmured.
“I brought my sword.” Teyla patted the scabbard tied to her back, a perkiness to her eyes suggesting she found the notion much more appealing than Syla did. Her first real battle might cure her of that perk.
“Welcome back, Your Highness.” Captain Radmarik removed his sugar cane and offered it to her, the moist, macerated end not any more appealing than it had been the first time he’d tried to entice her to chew on it.
Syla trusted this was a new piece, but she couldn’t be certain. The cane appeared immensely fibrous.
Syla lifted a hand to decline the offering. “Thank you for agreeing to let us sail with you again.”
“I’d say it was my pleasure, but it was more my wife’s insistence.”
“Is she here?” Syla peered about, curious to meet someone from the Freeborn Faction. A real member.
Vorik had claimed to be a part of the faction when he’d first been trying to gain her trust, but that had been a lie. Was it strange that she still wanted to spend time with him?
“Nah, we had a brief encounter—brief but wondrous—” Radmarik’s eyes rolled back in his head, but, thankfully, he didn’t go into detail, “—when I returned to Harvest Island. But, after the fall of the sky shield there, she left to attend a meeting with her people. I left because stormers were showing up on ships in the harbor as well as on dragons. The Freeborn Faction are meeting to decide whether to give assistance to your people or not. You clearly need it. But… even though my wife’s allies oppose the tactics of the rest of the stormers, they’ve never yet raised weapons toward the tribes, preferring peaceful interactions not only with the Kingdom but with their own kind.
Aside from a touch of spying, of course.
I don’t get filled in on everything going on with the faction, but I gathered from my wife’s comments after the battle that she was pleased that I’d survived and wanted to know who’s going to end up in charge of the Kingdom.
” Radmarik looked frankly at Syla. “I relayed that you said you might be interested in establishing peaceful interactions with them and allowing those willing to follow Kingdom laws to come to the islands, but she pointed out that you becoming the ruler is anything but assured.”
“That’s… unfortunately accurate.”
The look Fel slanted toward Syla suggested she shouldn’t have admitted that, not if they wanted Radmarik to sail them around.
“My priority right now is to repair the Harvest Island shielder,” Syla added. “It requires a journey.”
“That starts on Harvest Island?” Radmarik pointed his sugar cane at Fel. “That’s what your bodyguard said.”
Fel’s gaze had shifted to the pier. Two squadrons of Royal Fleet in black uniforms were jogging toward a military vessel. Several of the men glanced in the whaling ship’s direction.
Syla adjusted her hood, making sure they couldn’t see her face, but was that another military vessel getting ready to set sail from the other side of the harbor?
“Yes,” Syla replied. “I’m hoping to meet someone there.” Did a dragon count as a someone? “If they’re not able to help, I may need to charter your ship for a longer journey.” A much longer journey. “If you’re available.”
“We’d have to see about that. This someone isn’t one of the non-faction stormers, is it?” Radmarik squinted at her. “Like Captain Vorik?”
Syla wondered what kind of gossip had gotten out to the general public about her relationship with Vorik.
Nothing, she hoped, but when she considered all the people at Lavaperch Temple on Harvest Island who might have said something about her disappearing for a night into their tower with her prisoner, she feared gossip might be spreading throughout the Kingdom.
“I’m not expecting Vorik, no,” Syla said.
“He and his dragon sank two of the guard ships that were with us.”
“But he didn’t sink your whaling ship.”