Chapter 21 The Serpent #2
On the ship, I could not feel the force of what was happening, but the screams were a sweet clue. Walls shuddered. Soil fractured. Great pots of molten stone the House of Blades drew from their fiery pools in their cliffs spilled over the gates, swallowing some of Hesh’s patrols in a blaze.
I watched, dark delight alive in my chest, as the ground quaked and groaned.
My gaze drifted to the peak directly behind Hesh’s fortress.
Smoke billowed from the vent at the top.
A fire mountain. The longer the earth bender commanded the soil of the Ever to give, the more that mountain spluttered out bursts of ash and cinders.
Flames caught hold of sod roofs. Folk ran, their littles smashed to their bodies, desperate to escape the rainstorm of fire from their own hills.
I did not revel in the screams of children, but my crew was there to shuffle the innocent toward our skiffs in the surf. Sewell led the gathering, Aleksi at his side, shouting for littles and women.
Valen’s fury unleashed the fire beneath the soil of the House of Blades. If Hesh remained a stubborn ass, he’d watch his small part of the kingdom fall to the sea. The blade lord gaped at the chaos in a bit of horror.
“By now, I’m certain you realize,” I whispered, gripping the back of his throat. “The earth bender king did not take too kindly to your threats against his people.”
“My King, please!” The woman from Hesh’s chamber, wrapped in a quilt, sprinted across the deck. “Please, stop this. I beg of you.”
She fell to her knees, gripping my legs, tears in her eyes.
“Not me you ought to beg, lady. Your lord would watch it all burn to keep his secrets.”
Her glassy eyes drifted to Hesh. A flush burned through her cheeks, and her tears dried. “My King, please, my wee one remains on land. I-I-I’ve no one to reach her. She’s alone, she’s innocent.”
Godsdammit, Hesh. “And my queen is lost to me. Seems we both have trials, lady.”
The woman’s jaw set with such force it was as though her bones were trying to reposition teeth that had gotten loose. “His lordship speaks a great deal when he beds a woman, likes to spout off his feats and such. Tis the only way he gets off, talking about himself, I’m afraid.”
Laughter rippled across the deck from those who’d come with us.
“Shut your mouth or lose your tongue, Evanlee,” Hesh gritted.
“Oh.” I struck his head again with my fist. “Who will be taking it? You? I doubt that. What do you know, woman?”
She blew out a breath and slowly rose to her feet. “He said only he could find the hidden place where a new king is building his forces. A place on the edges of the Dark Isles.”
The fragile, stony exterior keeping me from sinking the whole of the house into the sea was cracking. “The Dark Isles. He’s been in the Dark Isles all this time.”
Mere lengths from the royal city. Mere lengths from the Tower. I’d sailed around my songbird without even knowing.
“If it be true, dark curses live in this hidden land,” Evanlee whispered. “No one else leaves without losing their way back, he tells me. Only he knows the way. ‘Tis marked within him. It calls to the curse of that gods-wretched soil.”
“Within him?”
“On his bones, My Lord.” She nodded frantically, ignoring Hesh’s curses and threats. “‘Tis over his heart. Told me himself, showed me the burn of the spell.”
You’ll find me in the heart.
I pinched the woman’s chin. “Thank you, lady. You and your child will find refuge in the royal city.”
Her breath quivered. She pressed a kiss to my fingers for a mere moment before I tossed Hesh backward. There was no telling how delicate this spell might be. I would not risk a wrong move. Not when we were this close.
I cupped the back of Gavyn’s neck. “I need you to go to the shore.”
“For what?”
“Bring me Fleshripper.”
“Erik, no.”
“Do it, Gavyn. Or do your own fears outweigh her life?”
Unfair of me, no mistake, and Gavyn would likely resent me for putting such an impossible choice atop his shoulders. I cared little.
He said nothing before dropping over the rail, part of the tides.
The House of Blades burned in the distance. A few sloops and row boats were skittering across the sea toward the House of Kings with the displaced, Evanlee and her daughter included. The rest would be left on their scorched lands to await their king’s return with a new lord of their house.
They would be waiting for some time.
Hesh still breathed, but he would not the moment his usefulness was spent.
We’d returned to the Ever Ship after sending the Fire Storm to the deepest ravines in the sea.
A few paces away, Valen drank an herb tea brewed by Skulleater to aid in replenishing the fury in his blood.
The way he’d broken the earth enough to spout fire from their cliffs had brought a great deal of fatigue to Livia’s father.
Still, he eyed Hesh over the tip of his mug with a bloodlust that bordered on madness.
Gavyn and Celine stood near Sewell like twin shields, both flinched when I approached. Celine pleaded under her breath. I ignored them.
“Sewell. Gavyn told you I have need of Fleshripper.”
Sewell shifted on his feet. “That was his whisper.”
I gripped his shoulder, voice low. “I know what I ask is a risk.”
The soft, kindhearted expression shifted to the man I’d known as a small boy—the bold lord who’d defended his kingdom, who’d sailed the most vicious of seas. “For our fox, little eel?”
I clapped his shoulder. “For our fox.”
Sewell approached Lord Hesh. Spoken words muddled on his tongue at times, but Harald’s torture had never dampened Sewell’s sea voice.
“Erik, if this gets him killed . . .” Gavyn didn’t finish his threat. He didn’t need to. This would expose Sewell. No one had the voice of the former bone lord, and for his sacrifice, I would spend the rest of my living days ensuring he was unharmed.
Folk who’d believed as Thorvald, those who would still see Sewell as a traitor, were dying off, either through war or assassination by a young lord. But it was time to let Sewell Fleshripper, at last, be free. He’d committed no sin in my eyes for loving his mate, nor had his children.
Sewell crouched in front of Hesh, grinning. “See me?”
Hesh squinted, searching Sewell’s face he kept hidden under brims and a wild beard and new scars.
After a moment, Hesh paled. “You’re alive.”
With a deep laugh, Sewell shoved Hesh flat onto the deck and straddled his hips. Injured and weakened, Hesh still tried to scramble away until an axe with a black blade sliced into his shin. The blade lord shrieked in agony.
“You took my girl.” Valen stared down at Hesh.
“No . . . I did not, earth king. Bonekeeper—”
“Yes, I’ve heard that name a great deal. Seems you aided the son of a bitch. Might as well have grabbed her yourself.” Valen backed away, trembling, and rolled his second axe in his grip. “If you do not want the other, you’ll stay put.”
Sewell flatted his palm over Hesh’s chest and hummed, soft and haunting. Much like a thin piece of parchment catching flame, Hesh’s bloodied skin over his heart burned and ebbed into ash until bone remained.
The blade lord’s eyes rolled back into his head. Murmurs lifted amongst the crew as they watched Sewell work. Fleshripper, a great value once to King Thorvald, was a man who could peel flesh from the bones while a soul still lived.
Harald always bemoaned what a pity it was to kill Fleshripper since he’d admired Sewell’s exquisite knack of torturing to get answers, to threaten, to keep folk trembling beneath the feet of the nobles of the Ever.
Layers of skin peeled away over Hesh’s body, but under Sewell’s touch, the edges scorched and cauterized, burning back the blood.
Gavyn told me King Thorvald had used Sewell many a time to leave gaping wounds on enemies—decidedly painful, yet they never bled out, simply lived for weeks, months, with monstrous, weeping holes in their bodies.
A few retching sounds came from the back of the ship. Jonas lowered to his knees, followed by Alek, as though the two princes were wholly fascinated.
Sewell’s voice cut off once Hesh’s chest was flayed, open and exposed. His bloody breastbone revealed. There, burned into the bone, was a symbol surrounded by small script written in a language I did not know.
I’d drag out any damn scholar, any witch, any sea fae who understood old words before the night’s end. I would find her tonight.