Chapter 35 Shadows on the Salt Wind #2
My expression must not look convinced enough because the young navigator persists.
“There is more at work than you’re aware of.
Movements, factions, people coming together and working against the tyranny of the gods.
Ireus, Trine, the other families. They toy with us mere mortals like we’re nothing.
Less than nothing. Now they want to spread Centurism across all the realms like a disease to make the god of gods more powerful than ever.
Rhyland wants the crown so he can overthrow his mother and father to claim it all for himself.
He won't use it to help you…if that's what you're hoping.”
Less than nothing. That part really stings.
It was those exact words Rhyland used to describe how he felt about me when we first met.
I’d been nothing to him, as inconsequential as soft wind.
But we’d learned better, hadn’t we? What life without that wind would spell, even for gods. It almost killed us all on this ship.
Something sparks bright within me, a hope perhaps. A chance for a better world. Maybe something can be done. Maybe I can save Máma and somehow help take down the godly hierarchy that started all of this…if I can just fool the trickster god after getting Máma out of his clutches.
I hesitate only a moment before nodding, let Cyprian lift and support my weight.
Aizen and Archer are out cold on the deck. Nicklas and Toby too.
“What did you do to them?” I whisper as we pass.
The corner of Cyprian’s mouth pulls down in a grimace. “I swiped an elixir from Mattias’ surgery. Mixed it into the crew’s rum. They’ll be fine. Maybe a light headache when they wake.”
An eerie prickle bristles down my spine when we pass more of them, familiar faces out cold.
The heaving of their chests—rise and fall and rise again—is a comfort, but leaving the Nightingale so vulnerable seems wrong somehow.
The feeling isn’t enough to stop me though.
Not when a chance at escape has practically hurled itself into my lap and with Rowan, too.
Perhaps my bad luck is finally running out.
I can’t help but revel in the knowledge that the distance between us hadn’t meant much.
That when it came to it, she would still protect me as I would her, even when it meant betraying Sabre.
But when my foot lifts to step off the gangway onto the wide dock, an awful shock jolts my stomach.
I turn my head and stare back at the Nightingale, the dark wood, her rolled sails. That magnificent avian figurehead.
A sort of fuck you to his father. Rhyland’s voice is there, an echo, a ghost, a dream lancing my thoughts. Piercing the very core of me. Can I really do this?
He went from my captor, to my husband, to my lover and now—my enemy? No. That isn’t the right word. A dark, relentless part of me refuses to write him off so quickly. It will take time to come to terms with everything. To sort through the lies and half truths and distinguish if any of it was real.
Salty wind blows at my back as if to urge me forward. Rowan’s turned, watching me with warm brown eyes and an offered hand. I take it and we trail after Cyprian, slipping into the shadows of the city.
Umbra, Staygia’s capital, is easily twice the size of Helgate. The outskirts are slum-ish, full of makeshift homes and dirty streets pocketed by filth and washed up driftwood. Cyprian doesn’t lead us toward the bronze gate at the heart, but rather to this poorer district surrounding the high wall.
“What’s the plan?” I ask breathlessly. We’ve been walking for ages into the night, avoiding the Mad Queen’s patrolling guard and straggler citizens drunk on spirits and their excitement for the coming games.
Part of me wonders if Rhyland’s made it back yet to find the crew out cold, his quarters empty of a prisoner.
The crown piece is heavier in my pocket. I haven’t brought it up yet, wise enough to be weary of Cyprian. This could be a test of trust from the pirate god, in which case I’ve already failed epically.
“Just a bit further,” Cyprian murmurs over his broad shoulder.
We pause at the mouth of an alley that bridges one street to another, and he peers around the corner before motioning it’s safe to move ahead.
The gritty walkway crunches beneath my boots.
Our path is shadowed, lit only by pools of warm orange that drips from shop windows.
We pass two taverns, an apothecary—the sickly scent of something sweet bleeding out from it.
“What exactly is a bit further?” A question that would have been better suited before I stepped off the ship with him, but time was of the essence.
Somewhat nervously, I reach up, fingers ghosting the rune still imprinted on the skin behind my ear before working to tame my wild hair into a tight twist so that the tendrils quit brushing my skin like the cold fingers of a dead man.
“The northern harbor. A man with a ship is waiting there. He can get us home,” Rowan offers, squeezing my arm.
She gives me a quiet knowing look. Home to me has never been Helgate, but I do need the crown piece buried there.
“Cyprian said he makes the journey from here to Ethirya often, and takes on passengers without asking too many questions.”
“That’s all well and good, but I can't leave yet,” I say.
Cyprian shushes us as two men stagger by, leaning into one another.
When the way is clear, we move across an empty street toward a low scatter of buildings, their walls flat and rough.
Less remarkable than the marble spread along the sprawling main harbor where everything was smoothed pillars and vaulting arches.
Here the poorer harbor district, a maze of weathered brick and timber, speaks of hard labor and salt-laced winds, a world away from the palatial city center, a saccharine peel covering bruised fruit.
Crooked shacks and stalls for fishmongers line the stone dotted pathways that vein out from the narrow street.
The smell of yesterday’s catch gets caught in my nose and turns my stomach.
Cyprian finally speaks, now that we’re well away from the babble. “I assure you, Avalon, getting out of Staygia is in your best interest. Talon will hunt you the moment he realizes you’re gone, and if he finds you—” The navigator swallows. “There will be no quarter. No mercy.”
Don’t mistake my mercy for your strength.
I have to shake it off—the pirate’s words, the emotions grappling for a foothold inside of me, warring with each other. I believed I loved him, fiercely.
“I know you think he loves you.” Can he somehow glean my thoughts, read my mind?
I turn my face away as he continues, “He’s a god.
Deception has been his forte since he started toddling amongst the stars.
He used your emotions to get exactly what he wanted, when he wanted.
You were eating straight from his palm.”
A flicker of anger licks just below my sternum.
I want to tell him he’s wrong, that he doesn’t know Rhyland at all, but how foolish would that be, when clearly I’m the one who’s been tricked yet again?
“You don’t understand,;I don’t want to stay for him.
I need to enter the games. I need to win the crown piece. ”
They both stare at me as though I’ve sprouted wings and a trunk.
“You have nothing to enter with,” Cyprian says with a strained edge of impatience, like speaking to a child who just isn’t quite grasping the threat of danger that lurks at the edge of the wood. Who keeps waddling back for pretty stones and acorns.
Run, his eyes scream. Run, run, run.
And how did I not see it? How absolutely dangerous Rhyland is? As though I’ve been blind until this moment. Playing the gods's games—losing all the while.
My throat aches and my fingers twitch toward the coal-stove crown piece, but I don’t tug it free. Don’t drag it into the street light. Not yet.
“I—I’ll figure it out.”
Rowan shakes her head, the current of her long red hair damp with sweat that catches the glow. “Let’s secure passage before it’s too late. After that, we’ll see what can be done about getting you into the games.” She hesitates—soft lines form between her eyebrows. “Please?”
She knows I can’t deny her and perhaps I shouldn’t. Getting her out of here is a priority, even if I have to slip away after seeing her safely onto the returning ship.
“Alright, lead the way.”
They both seem satisfied enough. Cyprian takes up the head again.
We pass the empty stalls, barrels leaking ripe fish guts, and keep walking to a section of the district that feels long abandoned.
A shipyard, I realize, quite quickly when the hulking shadows take form.
Half built structures are held up by strong wooden beams to keep them steady until they’re finished.
Pine tar and pitch replace the rank smell of fish and salted oysters.
A smaller harbor sits in the distance; a scatter of ships bobbing near docks on the inky tide.
At the center of the ring of skeletal ships, a lone warehouse rises in the dim light, planks of rotted wood and rusted iron holding it together, and I’m quite certain a stiff breeze could blow it over.
The sign overhead hangs from a single chain, the other corroded and broke loose, reading: Salt Wind Shipping Co. : Finest ships this side of the Dread!
It’s almost pathetic compared to the grandeur of the main harbor. Cyprian pushes in the faded green door, fissured with chipping paint. Its hinges creak and groan so loud there’s little doubt whoever’s inside knows we are here now.
“Barlot!” Cyprian’s sudden shout into the silence makes me flinch.
I breathe in deep, clutching Rowan’s hand. Wood rot and dust perfume the air as we move further in behind Cyprian. Chains hang from the ceiling, dirt and a layer of dried salt coats the floor. It’s so dark I can’t see much of anything past that.