Chapter 9 Sofie
Chapter nine
Sofie
Imade myself scarce as Vigilance neared Blue Moon, reluctant to acquaint myself with more pirates. I regretted more than ever that Jax had taken my books. As if I’d tear out a page and use it to send a message! The thought of it sent me into a cold sweat.
So I lay in my makeshift bed, trying to sleep, constantly interrupted by raucous laughter as a gang plank extended between the two ships.
About an hour later, the door to the captain’s cabin burst open.
“Wife, this is Oasis,” Jax announced, his silhouette blurry in the doorway. I squinted into the light, silently reviewing a list of additional curses I could toss at him for waking me. “Oasis, this is wife number nine. We call her Sofie just to personalize things.”
“Shouldn’t name them,” Oasis chided. “You’ll just get attached.”
A wave of rum followed them into the cabin. Oh, good. More drinking. This time in the middle of the day!
“Ah, but it’s safe to grow fond of this one. She went to fancy magic school and knows everything.” Jax took a swig from a flask in his hand just before settling in at the little dining table. “Or at least she thinks she does.”
“So this is the bride who’ll finally save our hides?” a woman dressed like his twin asked. Even the tattoos on her arms reminded me of the ones Jax had, almost mirroring them in places. She yanked the flask out of Jax’s hand. “Really hope you’re right about this, Jackson.”
Jackson?
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “What did you just call him?”
Oasis guffawed. “Haven’t you heard? He’s descended from Jack the Great, thief extraordinaire. The very Jack who found a magic plant that transported him to another realm.”
Ah, the fairy tale. Jax, for his part, looked abashed.
“I had an active imagination when I was younger,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “My mother told me the tale…”
“And he told it to the rest of us juvenile rabble, and never lived it down.” Oasis flashed her teeth at him, one of which was gold. “‘Course, Jackson isn’t his real name.”
Jax’s eyes went wide. “Oasis—”
“It’s Alvyrjax,” she said, practically beaming.
My eyes darted between them, wondering whether she was serious. The blush creeping up Jax’s neck suggested it was true.
“If that was my name,” I said dryly, “I’d go by Jax, too.”
Oasis and Jax both stared at me—then burst out laughing.
“I like this one,” she said. Turning to me, she added, “I hope you don’t die.”
“I’m hoping that, too,” I said, realizing Jax had stopped laughing.
“Show her,” Jax urged, sounding sober.
Oasis produced not a flask from her coat, but a compass. She held it out to me, crossing the invisible line into my half of the cabin.
I stared at it in her palm, reluctant to touch it until I understood what I was looking at. And rightly so. This object was clearly magical. I could sense a pulse of wild chaos that matched the ticks of its shifting arrow.
When Oasis cleared her throat impatiently, I took it from her.
“Why did I think an enchanted map showed the way to the Hidden Isle?” I murmured, wondering what else the crew had misled me about. Everyone was always talking about a map.
“The maps are a decoy,” Oasis explained, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We’re hardly the only pirates who want the thing.”
I turned over the compass, befuddled when the dial began to spin in complete circles.
“It’s an ornery thing, as magical objects go,” Jax said. “It only shows the right direction four times a day.”
“How did you get it?”
“Do you really want to know?”
I looked up at Jax, scrutinizing him. Try as I might, I couldn’t read the open and earnest expression he wore, except as one brought on by too much rum.
“It would be helpful,” I replied.
“It was headed for Dewspell on one of the ships we raided.” He scratched the underside of his chin. “It’s how this whole mess began.”
“But how did you know it would lead you to the Hidden Isle?”
“I didn’t. I only knew it had powerful magic on it, and that I wanted to puzzle it out. Figured it must lead somewhere good.” He paused, patting his chest until a belch came out.
“Charming.” I curled up my lip in a sneer.
“I did promise to be a gentleman,” he mused, sounding like he was genuinely weighing this rather than making a quip. “Oasis, have I ever been a gentleman?”
“Of course not. You’re a gutter rat through and through.”
“Surely I used to have better manners.”
“Only when your mother was alive.”
I paused, not daring to look up. I had guessed she was no longer of this realm, but I’d also gathered how important she was to Jax. Even so, I didn’t expect to feel this much sympathy for him.
I wasn’t close to my mother—the gods knew she never went out of her way to visit since I left home, even missing my graduation ceremony—but I couldn’t imagine losing her.
For one thing, Aegle was a stronger, safer place while she could still handle a sword and spear.
The world was safer with a shield-maiden like her, able to dispatch scores of draugr, the walking dead Haakon the Harbinger tried to invade Aegle with, singlehandedly.
“Alas, my social graces are yet another thing fallen by the wayside,” Jax said, holding out his hand for the flask.
“More like tossed overboard.” Oasis took a swig before returning it…empty.
Jax sat there shaking it anyway, as if he could dredge up a few more drops of rum. “I do believe I could’ve gotten magical training with you if I’d wanted to,” he said to Oasis.
She leaned on the back of the other chair, tipping it. “What good would it have done you? You’re too stubborn, and you probably knew most of it anyway. No, you always had your eye on the sea, even when we were knee high.”
I glanced between them, the compass strangely cold in my palm. “I’m not sure I can picture Jax as a child.”
“Wasn’t much of a childhood,” Jax grumbled.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is this the part where you tell me your tale of woe and how it justifies your career of piracy?” I asked. “I’m not sure I’d believe it.”
“I don’t justify my actions to anyone,” Jax said in a low, oddly alluring voice. “Anymore than you do, pet.”
At the endearment, Oasis stiffened. When I glanced at her face, her attention was on Jax. She looked so alarmed, I’d have thought the Bride herself had just strolled in.
“I’m not ashamed of being a pirate,” Jax continued. “Just the opposite. Are you ashamed of how you earn your keep, wife?”
Sometimes. “No,” I said, even as my mind displayed the face of the infant Princess Auravelle—the child I’d had no choice but to curse. “I only wish the world was different at times.”
“This is getting morose,” Oasis complained.
Ignoring her, Jax met my eye. For some reason, it felt as though he were sitting closer—almost as if we were the only two in the cabin. “So you’re merely ashamed of the world. At least you aren’t grandiose, pet.”
“On the contrary. I wish I was a smaller player than I am.”
“You’d wish away your power?” Jax made a rumbling sound in his throat. “I doubt that very much.”
“Then you’ve much to learn about me.”
“Break the curse,” he said, “and maybe there’ll be time to learn it. It’s a long way to travel, from the Hidden Isle to Aegle.”
Oasis clapped her hands. “Get a grip, Jax. What’ve I told you about making plans for the future?”
He chuckled, the connection between us suddenly lost. “Ah, yes. ‘Don’t.’”
“That’s right. No falling for doomed brides. Now let’s go get some more rum.” She held out her hand to me.
Stunned by her words, it took me a moment to realize Oasis wanted the compass back. “I’d like to study it longer—“
“The compass doesn’t leave my sight until we reach the Hidden Isle,” she said, flashing her gold tooth at me. “Not ever.”
With a huff, I handed it over.
“Let’s get a move on,” Oasis urged.
“I’ll be a moment longer,” Jax replied, sounding casual.
She shot him a warning glare, then strode out of the cabin—leaving the door wide open in the breeze.
As if expecting wobbling from all the rum, Jax stood slowly. But instead of following his friend, he took a pair of strides towards me.
He stood on the edge of my half of the cabin.
“If you hadn’t made me promise to stay on my side of the room,” he said, that low, smooth voice returning, “I’ve had just enough rum to think it a fine moment to kiss you farewell.”
I shrank back, unsure if I was horrified or flattered or—something else.
Something that was making my heart beat faster.
“Good thing you promised, then,” I said. “That would be a terrible idea.”
“It would,” he agreed, leaning forward. “But wouldn’t it be beautiful in the moment?”
I tried to wear a steely mask, and probably failed. “I like to think farther ahead than that.”
“So do I.” He slid his boot closer, still leaning over the invisible line that halved the cabin. “But you know me. Even my schemes have schemes.”
Except I didn’t know him. Not really. And raiding the ship I was traveling on, then hypnotizing me into a marriage, wasn’t exactly romantic.
“Jax,” I began, wary, “what happened to the old captain of this ship, and its crew?”
He didn’t flinch as he answered, “Dead or sent off in a lifeboat with some water and supplies. With the small gods of Prevaria’s help, some of them might’ve made it to shore.”
“You really are a heartless brigand,” I said, my voice almost hushed.
“A heartless man wouldn’t have given them water. Or a boat.” He straightened. “Maybe in another life, I would’ve kissed you just now. And maybe you would’ve let me.”
“I might’ve,” I admitted. “Sometimes I mistake you for a person.”
He clasped at his chest, as if wounded. But a half grin crept onto his face. “Good night, Sofie,” he said—a puzzling sentence, since it was barely past lunchtime.
But true to his word, he did not return that night. I dined alone, and was awakened not by Jax’s dragons-blasted early rising, but by Jovus.
“Time to go ashore, madam,” the boy said, still not calling me by my title, but at least improving. “We’ve reached Starfall. The captain’s waiting for you on deck.”
It was time to learn what an isle of pirates was like—and how they felt about Dewspell’s fairy godmothers.