Chapter 26
26
If you wish to know someone, share adversity with them.
~ Grandma Korbian
“Out,” Isla’s strongman said, flicking his sword tip at Kaylina.
Still sitting on the bench, she wrapped her hand around the hilt of her own sword, but should she attack when these were Isla’s people? Essentially Vlerion’s people?
“Put that away, Kolaff,” Isla said. “She’s just a girl, and you’re not to hurt her.”
“She is not just a girl , my lady.” Because of the shadowy interior of the carriage, the strongman hadn’t noticed the sword yet, but he eyed Kaylina’s marked hand. He’d heard all about that, had he?
She willed a branch to fall on him, but she didn’t think there were any trees near the waterfront. Other than a patch or two of grass, there wasn’t any foliage at all. No plants here could help her.
“Nonetheless, you’ll subdue her without violence and carry her to the Blowing Whale. The crew has been paid to take her south.” Isla looked toward Kaylina without meeting her eyes. At least that suggested she felt some shame about lying, about these tactics. “They’ll give you a cabin as soon as the ship is underway. It shouldn’t be an unpleasant voyage as long as you don’t try to escape. And there’d be no point in attempting that once you’re at sea. Once you’ve reached your Vamorka Islands, I beg you to stay. Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.”
The strongman sheathed his weapon, but his tone was no less gruff when he repeated, “Out,” and crooked his finger toward Kaylina. “We’re going to the ship.”
Kaylina scooted to the door with the sword in her hand.
“Actually, both women will be going to the ship,” a new voice spoke from the fog behind the men. An accented voice that Kaylina had heard before. “The ship we’ve hired . ”
Isla’s strongmen whirled, raising their weapons. Kaylina slumped back on the seat and groaned.
Blades clashed, the noise muted by the fog but still alarming. She jumped out, abruptly afraid for her life—and for Isla’s life too. Isla had been responsible for this, but Kaylina wouldn’t be able to look Vlerion in the eyes if his mother died at her feet.
Cloaked sage assassins had come out of the night, two Kaylina hadn’t seen before and one who stood back to supervise. It was the leader who’d attacked Kaylina in the park. He looked past the battle and straight at her, his face cool.
Isla swore as she crouched in the carriage doorway, gaping at the battle. She glanced at Kaylina, saw she had the sword, and surprised Kaylina by taking it from her.
For a bewildered second, Kaylina thought Isla was a secret sword master and would leap out to slay their enemies, but she tossed the weapon back into the carriage.
“They’ll kill you if you dare swing at them with that,” she whispered.
“We can’t let them kidnap us.” Or kill us, Kaylina added silently and drew her sling. “Stay in the carriage,” she ordered before thinking to add a proper, “My lady.”
“I was planning to!”
Trusting the assassins would get the upper hand soon, Kaylina planned to shoot them. But they were shorter and faster than Isla’s muscled men, and she struggled to find a decent target.
Only when one of the strongmen cried out and dropped to one knee, raising his sword over his head in a last-ditch effort to defend himself, did she get a clear view of his attacker. As the sage assassin lunged in, knocking the blade aside to deliver a killing blow, Kaylina loosed a round.
Her lead ball slammed into his forehead, startling him for a second. Isla’s man rolled away and tried to scramble to his feet, but the assassin recovered and sprang after him. Kaylina fired another round but wasn’t fast enough. Her target’s blade plunged into the strongman’s back, piercing his heart. Too late to help, her round struck the assassin in the jaw.
With fury burning in his eyes, he pulled his sword from the other man’s back and whirled toward her.
Fear made her hands shake, and Kaylina barely managed to get another round into her sling. Again, she was too late. Moving faster than any normal human being could, the assassin sprang and caught her, fingers wrapping around her wrist, stilling the sling.
She tried to punch him with her free hand, but her fist caught only air. The assassin kicked her legs out from under her as he spun her about, pressing her back to his chest and restraining her with his arm.
Another cloaked assassin leaped into the carriage. Isla screamed, a cry for help rather than pain, but she had to be terrified.
The scream cut off abruptly. Because she’d been gagged? Or—Kaylina winced—knocked unconscious?
Isla’s captor leaped out with her hefted over his shoulder like a rolled-up rug instead of a noblewoman. She groaned weakly. The bastard must have struck her.
In an equally bad position, Kaylina could do nothing to help. Worse, her captor twisted her wrist until pain made her release her sling. He pulled her knife from its sheath as well.
The lead sage assassin watched dispassionately. He hadn’t moved, instead letting his men handle Isla’s people. It had been enough. The chauffeur wasn’t in sight and might have run away, but the two strongmen were down—dead. They’d been no match for the assassins.
Kaylina made herself meet the leader’s eyes and glare defiantly at him. Any second, he would make some demand, wanting to know where Vlerion was or talking about how she would be good bait for a trap.
But maybe he’d spoken to her enough. He pointed his chin toward one of the docks stretching into the fog, then looked toward the city, in the direction of the royal castle and ranger headquarters. Was he waiting for Spymaster Sabor to show up with the larger bag of gold? But that was for Vlerion’s death, wasn’t it? Not for capturing his mother and girlfriend.
The assassin didn’t explain, merely waiting as his men carried Isla and Kaylina down the dock. Kaylina found herself hoisted over a shoulder, the same as Isla.
She wasn’t bound and might have kneed her captor, but she didn’t see any point. After watching the sage assassins fight—her ear throbbed at the memory of her own experience against one—she doubted she would get the best of any of them. At least she and Isla were being kidnapped, not killed. Frayvar’s words about the odds of surviving that being better than living through murder attempts came to mind. She decided to bide her time for a better chance to escape.
Though it wasn’t late at night, the harbor lay quiet, and they didn’t pass anyone on the dock. Now and then, voices floated off the decks of moored ships, but if anyone had heard the struggle on shore, they didn’t come to investigate it. Maybe Lady Isla, not wanting anything to interfere with Kaylina’s kidnapping, had arranged for people to look the other way.
Their captors took them past several docked ships, some fully dark and others with lamps burning on the decks, to one partially lit at the far end.
Kaylina twisted as they approached a gangplank and looked back toward the waterfront. The fog was dense enough that she could no longer see the assassin and could barely make out the buildings across the street from the docks. She couldn’t see the royal castle or the plateau it perched upon at all. She did manage to read the name of the ship her captors were boarding.
It wasn’t the Blowing Whale , the one Isla had arranged to take Kaylina south. This was the Hunting Osprey , and a pale-skinned man waited on deck near the gangplank. He wore a horned helmet, had a greasy and scraggly beard, and gold chains dangled around his neck. He reminded Kaylina of the pirates she’d encountered back home. They tended to wear whatever bounty they fancied that they’d stolen from innocents, and they bathed infrequently.
“I thought we were only holding one girl for you boys, a young pretty one.” The pirate looked at Kaylina, then raised his eyebrows when he took in Lady Isla.
“Fortune has delivered two,” Kaylina’s captor said. “You’re to keep them locked belowdecks, nothing more. You’ll be paid after Venegarth completes his assignment.”
Venegarth? Was that the leader? He’d failed to introduce himself to Kaylina during any of their encounters, but assassins were known to be rude.
“Nothing more?” The pirate eyed Kaylina’s rump, which was, unfortunately, thrusting upward since she was slung over her captor’s shoulder.
“Nothing more,” the assassin said in an icy tone. “These are bait for a trap. They’re not to be molested. Our people are honorable, and if you’re taking our coin, you’ll be honorable too.”
The pirate’s grunt didn’t convey agreement that Kaylina could detect. Isla moaned softly again and lifted her head.
“Belowdecks,” the assassin said. “Lock them up, and be prepared to stand guard. We’ll be waiting nearby, but the one who will come for them is dangerous.”
“Vlerion,” Isla whispered softly. “This is a trap for my son.”
“Don’t be alarmed if you hear growls or roars,” the assassin said.
“The guy you’re waiting for might bring a taybarri?” the pirate guessed. “Is it a ranger?”
“Something like that.”
The assassins handed Kaylina and Isla to the crew, then waited with weapons drawn as the pirates searched their captives. They didn’t bother with bindings, but numerous men pushed Isla and Kaylina down steps leading belowdecks, and Kaylina didn’t like their odds of escape.
In a narrow corridor, the pirates tossed her weapons into a storage cabin before locking her and Isla in another. Inside, there were no furnishings, only a bucket to pee in and a ceramic jug of water.
Kaylina was tempted to call it a cell, not a cabin. The only opening was a circular window in the metal door, cross-shaped bars ensuring nobody could squeeze out through it.
“You ladies are lucky.” The door clanged shut, and one of the men turned a key in a lock. “We don’t take on a lot of prisoners, so we don’t have a proper brig. These are the accommodations that usually get reserved for the cabin boys.”
“The cabin boys don’t warrant bunks?” Kaylina asked.
“Nah, you gotta keep ’em lean and tough so they learn how to be properly respectful to their superiors.” The man winked before ambling away.
“Everyone in the north is obsessed with instilling respect into people.”
Isla, who’d flopped onto her side as soon as her captor released her, groaned softly.
“Are you okay?” Kaylina looked around, as if she might find a first-aid kit or something else useful that she’d missed in her initial perusal of the tiny cabin. “I didn’t see what happened. Did one of them club you?”
“That big oaf struck me, yes.” Isla pressed a hand to the side of her head. “Which I did not appreciate, but I’m mostly bemoaning the situation I’ve gotten myself into.” After a pause, she added, “With actual moaning.”
“It was more of a groan.”
Kaylina removed Isla’s shawl, impressed that it hadn’t fallen off, and moistened it with water. She knelt and pressed it to her head, though she doubted it would do much. The cool water might at least make the knot that had to be swelling there feel better.
“I thought I was being clever by engineering this, clever if deceitful.” From her side on the deck, Isla turned her face toward Kaylina. “Maybe I deserve this fate.”
Kaylina almost said, I don’t deserve this fate , but decided not to be snarky with Vlerion’s mom. “Let me think for a minute. I’ve read dozens of romantic adventures, some with heroines who’ve been kidnapped by pirates. Maybe I can remember something one of them did to escape.”
“I don’t think fictional tales are meant to offer practical advice.”
“I’m not sure that’s true. Anyway, my brother has read countless encyclopedias and says they don’t teach you how to escape from cells either.”
“Perhaps there’s a deficiency in the kingdom reading materials.”
“In one of my favorite books, the heroine seduces the captain of the pirate ship and manages to pickpocket the keys while they’re, uhm, engaged.”
“A method I’d have to rely on you to pursue since I’m past the age of effectively seducing anyone. Even when I was younger, I wasn’t the most voluptuous maiden.”
“If that guy with the horned helmet and greasy beard is the captain, I might pass on seducing him. He’s not nearly as appealing as…” Kaylina stopped herself from saying Vlerion, since her interest in Isla’s son was what had prompted this whole kidnapping scheme. The first kidnapping scheme anyway. Isla couldn’t have anticipated the sage assassins butting into her plot.
“Vlerion?” Isla managed a chuckle. “He was never the most handsome boy, but we’ve discussed the allure of the beast.”
“He is handsome.” Hot, was the word Kaylina almost said, his rugged face forming in her mind.
“Polite of you to say that.”
“Especially with his shirt off.”
“The rangers do train hard and have admirable physiques,” Isla said. “More than once, I’ve caught myself noticing… Well, it wouldn’t be proper for an older widow to notice the physiques of younger men.”
“You’re not that old, and, since your husband has passed, I think you get to admire anyone you wish.”
“The young men might be horrified to be lusted after by a woman more than twenty years their elder.”
“Nah, they’d be pleased and smug about it. Which one stirs your fancy?”
While they spoke, Kaylina eyed her hand, wondering if her magic could help them escape. If the sentinel had spoken the truth, she had power of her own; it wasn’t lent to her by the brand or the plant, as she’d previously believed.
Isla sounded shy when she answered. “Vlerion’s friend, Jankarr, is quite appealing.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s hot. Especially when he smiles.” Something Kaylina hadn’t seen him do since she’d commanded the vines to release him in the preserve—and it had worked. Now, he looked at her warily every time their paths crossed.
“Yes. It would have been helpful if you’d developed an interest in him instead of Vlerion.”
“Then we never would have met. Wouldn’t you feel bereft without my presence in your life?”
“Not if it meant we weren’t now sharing a cell. And those men—those assassins —weren’t using us to lure Vlerion into a trap. They know what he is, don’t they? They’ll be prepared to face him.” Her voice turned grimmer. “He might die tonight.”
“He won’t. We’re going to escape and warn him to stay away from the harbor.” Kaylina patted Isla’s shoulder, handed the shawl to her, and rose to her feet to peer out the window in the door.
“Are you seeking a pirate to seduce? With your beauty, it might be feasible.”
“We’ll put that on our list of escape ideas under the heading last resort .”
The corridor outside was empty. Quiet voices floated down the ship’s ladder from the deck above, but Kaylina couldn’t make out the words.
A squeaky chitter came from the opposite end of the corridor where crates were tied down. Some animal? Shadows hid it from view.
“Hello?” Kaylina called encouragingly to whatever it was. She’d been mourning the lack of trees and bushes near the docks, but if an animal was drawn to her, maybe she could get it to help. “What are you?”
It didn’t sound like a cat or a rat, and she didn’t know what else might be stowing away on a pirate ship. The odd squeaks sounded again, and an animal scurried into view.
“A beaver?”
No, it was too small for that. More familiar with southern animals than northern, Kaylina dredged through her memory, trying to recall some of the critters she’d read about in the ranger handbook.
“A muskrat?”
It squeaked again. It probably would have responded no matter what she said.
“Are you a stowaway or a mascot?” Kaylina patted her pockets, hoping to find a pouch of honey drops, but she didn’t have anything. With the way her life had gone lately, she might have been wiser to bring sweets instead of the sword.
“Who or what are you speaking with?” Isla pushed herself into a sitting position against the wall.
“I think it’s a muskrat.”
The brown furry creature looked curiously up at Kaylina.
“Can you climb?” she asked it. “Like a ferret? Maybe you could fetch the key and bring it to us.” She patted the rim of the window, as if she were speaking to an animal as intelligent as the taybarri and it would understand and hurry to obey.
The muskrat wandered past, sniffing the deck, probably hoping for food.
“The seduction plan might have more merit,” Isla said dryly.
“I know, but there aren’t any horny pirates in the corridor at the moment.”
“Alas.”
Though the muskrat had its back to her now, Kaylina willed her power to allow her to communicate with it in a way it could understand. She tried to thrust a vision into its mind, showing it retrieving the key, climbing to the window, and delivering it to Kaylina.
The animal squeaked and slapped its long tail on the deck a few times, then paused, snout in the air. Again, Kaylina tried to share her vision with it. Her brand warmed faintly but not with the intensity that it had at other times. Maybe her power was telling her this wouldn’t work and it was foolish to bother.
When the muskrat moved on, it left droppings behind. It bounded up the steps without looking back.
“It’s possible my great druid magic wasn’t successful in convincing it to help,” Kaylina said.
“Is that the druid magic you intend to use to lift Vlerion’s curse?” Isla’s tone wasn’t exactly mocking, but it was dry.
“No, I’d hoped to find instructions on how to do that in some druid ruins.” She thought about mentioning the plaque that Frayvar had translated, but since nothing curse-related had come out of that, there was little point.
“There are some ruins on the estate that have never enlightened anyone. Traps too that their people left behind. Or at least deterrents.”
“It would be hard for me to check them out from the Vamorka Islands,” Kaylina said.
“Many of the cursed Havartaft men have studied them over the years. And other Daygarii relics as well. As well as all the books in the university library. None of them ever found a way to lift the curse.”
“None of them had druid blood.”
Isla grunted noncommittally. Maybe skeptically.
Kaylina sighed, wishing she could do something to prove to Isla that she did have power that could be useful in lifting the curse. She gripped the bars in the window and willed magic to flow into them and break them, or at least loosen them so that she might twist them free. This time, her hand didn’t warm in the slightest. Metal, it seemed, wasn’t anything a druid could manipulate.
A faint roar drifted to her ears, muted by the distance and the fog. Even so, she recognized it.
“Uh-oh.”
“What is it?” Isla must not have heard it.
“Vlerion is about to walk into their trap.”