Chapter 8 #2
“We know the how,” Vorik murmured.
“Well, yes.” Syla made a throat-cutting motion over her own neck.
“After hearing you’d been taken prisoner and that Fograth—I will not call him king—wanted to force your hand in marriage…
we came to rescue you.” In Syla’s mind, the word king brought to mind her own father—her kindly father who’d always made time for his children, even the youngest by many years who’d so often been left out of things.
She had no interest in changing that association.
“You were gone, and your father was dead in his suite.”
“I don’t understand,” Teyla whispered. “He was… I spoke to him before bed. Well, we exchanged yells more than speaking, but that’s not my fault.
He agreed to that marriage without asking me.
I thought he was angling for Relvin to get the throne, but he threw his weight behind Fograth in the end.
I didn’t realize why until the marriage thing came up.
And babies.” She touched her abdomen. “Having Fograth’s babies would be even worse than getting pregnant from—” Teyla looked around.
“Where is Sergeant Fel? Is he all right? Is he still with you?”
“Yes, he’s fine. Aside from the usual stiff hips and tight calves.”
“He moves more agilely than you’d think for a man with all those issues.”
“I’ll take your word on that.” Syla frowned, not wanting to think about her bodyguard having a sex life—even a magical-cactus-flower-induced one.
“He’s with Aunt Tibby, making sure nobody disturbs her while she works.
Were you aware that enforcers are rounding up people with moon-marks? And imprisoning them? Or worse?”
“Yes,” Teyla said emphatically, then waved in the direction the uniformed men had fled.
“That’s what those idiots were doing. Or so they said.
But do you think it was just chance that they saw my carriage and stopped it on the road to search for people like us?
” Teyla held up her marked hand. “The carriage has my family crest on it, so they could have guessed one of us was in it, but I don’t know.
How long have you been back? I was locked in my room for two days, but before that, I was in the capital, trying to dodge the chaos.
Castle Island feels like a lagoon full of electric eels right now.
You have to be careful where you go and who you talk to.
I don’t know how everything fell apart so quickly.
It’s like Lord Fograth was poised and ready to swoop in as soon as you left.
He basically did. That very afternoon after you sailed away with the weapons platform.
Oh, do you still have that? The rumor he’s spreading is that the stormers sank the ship carrying it, and you went down with it. ”
“Someone did sink that ship.” The memory was strong enough that Syla couldn’t refrain from giving Vorik a perturbed look. Even if she trusted him fully—he kept saving her life, and he was working with her now—it would be hard to entirely forgive all his past indiscretions.
“My apologizes, my queen.” Vorik managed a smile, which always dashed away his stormer fierceness and turned his face brilliantly handsome, and he bowed to her. “Orders, you understand.”
“I do. And, yes, Teyla, the weapons platform is… Well, I hope Major Hixun has managed to avoid the fleet and has retained possession of it.” Syla admitted that she’d given him a tall order in regard to that.
The fleet had so many ships it could send after him, and if the handful of vessels her team had brought from Bogberry Island ran out of room around Castle Island to flee and maneuver, they would have to sail into the unprotected sea.
Whatever those dragons were doing around the Harvest Island volcano probably wouldn’t keep them from noticing vulnerable ships nearby, and there was nobody on board who could fire the weapons platform.
“Teyla, I’m sorry about your father’s death, but I need to know everything that’s been going on in the capital.
There’s not much time.” Again, she looked at Vorik.
Time was of the essence for many reasons.
“I was heading that way when the enforcers waylaid me. You said you came to rescue me?”
“Yes, but from your locked bedroom. We didn’t know about the enforcers. Did you get away from your manor when… You said you were there this morning? How did you get away?”
“I had a guard outside my door for the last two days and nights, one of my father’s loyal men, someone who couldn’t be suborned by flirtatious smiles.
I did try, but Jokam is an old stick, and he always believed the lies Relvin told about me when we were growing up.
I’d be less disturbed if he’d been slain, though I guess I won’t wish for that. ”
Teyla didn’t appear that disturbed about her father’s death, and a niggling part of Syla wondered if her cousin was telling the truth. But she also knew it had been her mother that Teyla had been most alike and close to, not Relvin or their father.
“We didn’t see a guard,” Syla said. “Just some staff doing laundry who ran off when we arrived.”
“Were you on your dragon’s back?” Teyla asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s not shocking then that they didn’t stick around to chat.
Anyway, Jokam was gone this morning when I looked out, planning to go down for breakfast. I didn’t question my luck.
I grabbed a few things and sneaked out. I kept expecting someone to spot me, but it was early enough that most of the staff wasn’t working yet.
Only the coachman was in the stable, and he was willing to put together a team and a carriage for me.
” Teyla waved across the field. At the far end, a fence had stopped the mad run of the horses—maybe the animals had believed they’d gone far enough to escape the dragon.
“I thought about taking a single horse, but he happened to be in the stable and is on my side, agreeing that my father locking me up was egregious. Besides, it’s harder to hide your face on a horse than from inside a carriage, and I knew about the enforcers searching the cities.
I hadn’t realized they were also scouring the countryside. ”
“What were you going to do when you reached the capital? If that’s where you were captured, I’m surprised you wanted to return.”
“I was going to try to find out if you were really dead, and, if not, see if there was anything I could do to help you. I also want to find the moon-marked people and free them. Syla, a lot of them are our relatives. It’s bad enough you lost…
everything you lost.” Teyla swallowed and looked at Vorik again.
He’d dropped his smile and didn’t try to deflect the implied accusation.
“They’re technically all our relatives,” Syla said with a nod, “if you go down the family tree far enough.”
“Oh, I know. I did a genealogy study when I was in school.” Teyla tucked an escaped lock of hair behind her ear.
“We have to stop Fograth—I’m afraid he only wants to keep one moon-marked person, so that he can get into the magical doors around the Kingdom, and get rid of the rest. As if I would marry someone who did that.
It also crossed my mind to… take care of him if I get the opportunity.
” Teyla hadn’t sheathed her sword, and she lifted it and made a stabbing motion in the direction of the capital.
“Lord Abbingdar didn’t have a moon-mark,” Vorik said.
“No, Mom was our link to the royal family,” Teyla said.
“So, whatever he was murdered for, it didn’t have anything to do with that.” Vorik raised his eyebrows. He didn’t give a significant look to Teyla, but he had to also wonder if she’d been responsible.
Even if she had been, Syla doubted her cousin was a threat to her.
If bloodlines were followed as they were supposed to be when determining succession, Teyla was in line for the throne right after Syla, but Syla didn’t believe Teyla wanted the position.
If she did, she had hidden that ambition well.
Just a couple of weeks ago, she’d spoken longingly of taking an archaeology team back to the Dire Desert to further investigate the storm god’s laboratory for interesting relics.
It was hard to rule a kingdom while scouring the world for artifacts.
“I don’t know who could have wanted my father killed, or why,” Teyla said. “He’s on the right side. Well, not the right side, definitely not that, but the side that’s currently in power. Until you show up with your stormer and your dragon and fix everything, Syla. That’s the plan, right?”
“Yes, but I don’t possess either of them,” Syla said dryly, knowing Wreylith, in particular, would be affronted by the notion.
“You can possess me,” Vorik said easily.
“Until it’s time for you to return to help your people?”
“Well, yes. I would need breaks from your possession for such activities.”
Syla kept herself from saying that she wished he wouldn’t return to his people.
As amazing of a fighter as Vorik was, he was only one man, and she worried that, after the choices he’d made, every stormer except the lieutenant who’d come to speak with him would stand against him.
Storm god’s wrath, she didn’t even know if the lieutenant was on Vorik’s side.
What if he’d come to lure Vorik back, knowing the rest of the stormers would kill him?
“Alas,” was all Syla said. “Let’s get your carriage and continue to the city, Teyla. I want to accomplish all the same things you do. We can work together.”
“You also want to cut off Fograth’s penis?”
“Well, maybe not all the same things.”
“Decapitation is the appropriate historical precedent for usurpers, I believe,” Vorik murmured, “though I’m not as familiar with your history as that of my people.”
“There have been decapitations in Kingdom history, yes, but, for a man who wants to force me to marry and have children with him, dismemberment would be more satisfying.” Teyla made a slashing motion with her sword.
“I’d rather be beheaded,” Vorik murmured.
“I’m not letting Fograth vote,” Teyla said. “Syla, if he’s been doing more than rounding up our kin, he’s as bad as the stormers.”
“I know. That’s why we have to get to the city as soon as possible.”
“It would be easier to slip in by night,” Vorik said, “unless you’re going to openly and brazenly fly to the castle astride Wreylith.”
The red dragon used a tiny stream of fire to incinerate mud on her belly scales.
“As powerful as she is,” Syla said, “even she might not be able to dodge all those cannons and deposit us in the courtyard where we’d also have to dodge fire from dozens of men. I think we’ll have to approach with stealth.”
“Is that what you were doing when you flew down and turned the enforcer wagon into an inferno?” Teyla asked. “Using stealth?”
“We hadn’t started the stealthy part of the plan yet, no,” Syla said. “Am I naive to think we could sneak into the city? Even at night?” Syla pushed her hand through her tangled hair, wishing for a relaxing bath.
“With a dragon, yes,” Vorik said, “but, as to the rest, your capital doesn’t have a wall around it. It’s not difficult to sneak into. The castle may be more challenging. Though the last time I was there, there was a new entrance into the tunnels underneath it.”
“That your people blew open from the cliff near the harbor, yes. I ordered that sealed before I left.”
“Before I got an opportunity to explore the old laboratory down there that the stormer incursion revealed,” Teyla said a little tartly. “From what I heard of the description from the men who found it, it was probably also left by the storm god.”
“That’s a good reason to leave it alone and buried,” Syla said.
“Or excavated and explored as a place of historical significance,” Teyla said.
Syla shook her head. “We can’t get in that way, Vorik.”
“Unsealing the tunnel wouldn’t be feasible? For someone with explosives? Or a dragon?” Vorik arched his eyebrows and looked toward Wreylith.
“She’s not going to fit down there.” Syla realized she’d never seen the access point in person but presumed she was right.
“The stormer team didn’t excavate a dragon-sized hole for their incursion, right?
My people would have noticed a huge new gap in the cliff as they sailed in and out of the harbor. ”
Vorik scratched his jaw. “The entrance is very narrow, yes, but if it could be expanded, Wreylith might be able to get in. The laboratory itself had high ceilings and was made within a cavern. With a little excavation—” Wreylith used her fire to remove more mud, “—or incineration, she might be able to get in. And if you have any explosives…”
“I used all the ones I had in the mine, and I’m sure Aunt Tibby hasn’t had time to make more.
She’s prioritizing the shielder. Besides, people in the castle can hear explosions down there.
” Her tone turning dry again, Syla added, “Unless you’d like to bring one of your highly suspicious dragon-headed ships into the harbor to light off fireworks for a holiday celebration. ”
“I don’t think it would be healthy for my people to visit your harbor right now.”
“No. I’ll keep that cave in mind, but let’s find the missing moon-marked folks first. Not only because they’re our relatives—” Syla waved to include herself and Teyla, “—but because it could be handy for us to rescue people—people with magical gifts—who’ve been rounded up from all over the island and are in the same place. ”
“In the same place and pissed,” Teyla said. “Trust me, I know.”
“Because you’ve recently been imprisoned?”
“Yes, and that was in my own room with all my books and projects to keep me entertained. If they’re in a dank dungeon—or worse—they’ll really be irate.”
“True. I doubt Fograth sent them a copy of How a Lady Can Please Her New Husband to keep them occupied.”
“I could lop off his penis for that alone.” Teyla jammed her sword into its sheath and strode across the field to retrieve her horses and carriage.
“I don’t think she read the book on courtly behavior,” Vorik observed.
“Definitely not,” Syla said.
“You want to go to the capital now?”
“Tonight. I think you’re right and that our best bet is sneaking in under the cover of darkness. We can wait at the royal farm outside the city. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Captain Vonla will have finished her reconnaissance early and meet us there before we leave.”
“Do you think the ingredients are still in the farm’s kitchen to make blackberry cobbler?”
“The blackberries won’t be, but there might yet be a few late-season apples and pears dangling in the orchard.”
“Excellent.”