Chapter 30
“Where is it?” Silver Stroud howled, hurling objects off the ornately carved shelves in his quarters.
Zanta closed the door quietly and locked it behind her.
The tantrums and strange behavior had become more frequent the past few months, and the crew was taking notice.
It wouldn’t do for one of them to walk in on this.
“Where’s what?” Emilie shouted, then ducked as an expensive spyglass flew at her, lens shattering as it hit the wall.
Zanta stepped closer. Stroud hadn’t noticed her yet, but Emilie’s gaze cut toward her, warning her to stay back.
Emilie always tried to placate their captain during his episodes, but Zanta had lost her patience for him long ago.
She wished they could just lock him in and let him sweat it out alone.
But Emilie was too kind for her own good, whether or not anyone but Zanta could see that.
She wanted to help Stroud, even though it was clear in times like these that there was no reasoning with a madman.
Even as talk of mutiny rumbled through the crew.
A brass navigation instrument crashed to the floor among a flurry of charts.
“What are you looking for?” Emilie repeated, trying to exude an air of calm, though she looked frightened.
She wasn’t equipped for this. Neither of them were.
But Stroud had appointed Emilie first mate after the previous one had absconded in Kefrye with a sackful of valuables.
They’d muddled through so far, but this was the worst episode yet.
Worse than Stroud’s insistence on sailing so close to the Storm Ring without proper supplies.
Or his accusations about other crew members stealing from him.
Worse than his rants about his missing daughter, who Zanta was no longer sure had ever existed.
“My eye!” Stroud wailed, whirling on them. “My green eye! I’m ready to use it now. There’s no other option.”
Eye? What the fuck was he talking about? He had two perfectly good eyes in his head, and neither of them were green.
“That greenish marble?” Emilie asked, her false, soothing voice edged with strain. “You lost it in a dice game, remember? You said it was useless.”
Stroud stilled, a brass chart divider in one hand, its pointed tines quivering with the shaking of his body.
“Lost?” His eyes were wide and crazed. A shiver ran down Zanta’s spine. This was not the man she knew. Not the captain she’d served under for almost three years. There was only madness in those eyes.
“No. No. It can’t be lost,” Stroud muttered. “How will I find her if I can’t see her? How will I find my little girl? My Nianthe?”
Nianthe, Stroud’s missing daughter who Zanta suspected was just a figment of his imagination, or long dead. No one on the current crew had been with Stroud back when she’d supposedly gone missing. There was no proof on board the Silverfin that she’d ever existed.
“You’ll find her some other way,” Emilie soothed, holding one hand out, placatingly. They all stared at each other for a moment, the destruction of Stroud’s tantrum scattered around them. Zanta took a tentative step toward Emilie, thinking it was over.
Stroud’s crazed eyes sliced toward her. He brandished the divider in her direction.
“You. You must know where my eye is. I need it!” This last part was almost a scream, his face turning red beneath his silver beard.
“It’s gone,” Zanta hissed. She had no idea if what Emilie had said was true or just designed to calm Stroud’s rage, but she could hear the other crew members outside. They could surely hear everything. Even if Emilie and Zanta managed to calm him, they would have a mutiny on their hands after this.
“It can’t be gone!” Stroud screamed, hysterical, his voice reaching a fever pitch.
“I’m ready to use it now! I can find her!
” He raised the divider, but this time it was pointed toward himself.
Emilie and Zanta both surged forward as Stroud stabbed the prongs into his left eye with a desperate wail.
“Stop!” Emilie shouted. She grabbed his arm, and he tried to shake her off, gouging the instrument deeper and popping the eye out of its socket with a sickening squelch.
“Stop…” This time it was a plea. Tears streamed down Emilie’s face. She cared for him. They both did.
Zanta tackled Stroud, and all three of them collided with the shelves.
The ornate wood splintered and broke under their weight, sending them crashing to the ground amongst an avalanche of charts, instruments, and artifacts.
Stroud’s elbow struck Zanta’s temple, and her vision went blurry for a moment.
Emilie screamed and Zanta tried to scrabble toward her despite the fuzziness in her head. Her fingers slipped on something wet.
When Zanta’s vision cleared, her heart went cold.
Stroud pinned Emilie to the boards, knees digging into her chest. Emilie bucked, but Stroud was bigger, stronger. He raised his arm, the bloodstained divider glinting in his hand.
“No!” Zanta lunged forward, grabbing the first thing she could find, a large splinter of wood. Stroud struck, stabbing the sharp prongs of the instrument into Emilie’s throat just as Zanta reached them.
An anguished snarl ripped from Zanta’s chest, and she drove the sharp splinter into Stroud’s back, between his ribs and into his heart. A killing blow, just as he’d taught her.
A shocked exhalation was the only sound that escaped him before his body toppled to the side among the debris of his madness.
Zanta scrambled over him, knees and hands slipping in the gathering pool of blood.
“Emilie…” Her beloved’s name escaped her lips in a sob as she knelt beside her. Emilie’s cornflower blue eyes met hers, light fading fast. Her pale fingers fluttered uselessly over the spot where the divider tines pierced her throat.
“Emilie…honey…” Zanta’s bloodstained hand cupped Emilie’s cheek.
Emilie exhaled shakily, as if trying to speak, but blood gurgled up around the tines and at the corners of her lips. A single tear clung to her pale blond lashes, but she did not look away from Zanta’s face as she breathed her last and the light faded from her eyes.
Grief, dark and desperate, coiled through Zanta’s chest, dragging her down into its lonely embrace. She looked back into Emilie’s now lifeless eyes and sobbed, repeating her name over and over as if to call her back from the icy depths of the underworld.
It did not take long for the crew to break the door down.
They found Zanta soaked in the blood of her captain and her lover, clutching Emilie’s body close.
It was too late for them. And it was too late for Zanta.
The grief in her had already hardened to something vast and all consuming.
She was born anew from the blood that coated her skin.
She’d killed the killer of her love. Driven a piece of his own ship through his heart.
She was reborn as Splinter Zanta, captain of the Silverfin.
July 16th, 1668
Zanta slept, her breath deep and her skin warm beneath the light blankets.
Nia watched her for some time, holding back from touching so as not to risk waking her.
She’d fallen asleep without first donning her silk hair wrap that Nia had seen her wear sometimes when urgent business took her away from morning routines.
The little braids at her temple fell across her face where she lay with her cheek pressed to the pillow.
One of the bright glass beads had become trapped under her cheek and would leave a mark when she woke.
Nia’s fingers itched to free it, but she had things to do.
When Nia was sure Zanta would not wake easily, she carefully extracted herself from the warm, sex-disheveled bed. Her limbs felt heavy with satiation, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl back in. To kiss Zanta’s lips, gather her up, and succumb to sleep.
Well, almost nothing.
Nia could not let her feelings cause her to forget her purpose, both aboard the Monsoon and in Zanta’s bed. The true reason she had decided to seduce Zanta in the first place.
Her treasure hid somewhere in this room, and she had to find it.
Nia retrieved her chemise from the floor to cover her nakedness. She could not search Zanta’s room in the same state of undress she’d just lain with her.
Guilt pricked at Nia’s heart as she knelt in front of the first cabinet at the side of the room and eased it open. Zanta had been nothing but kind to her, and here she was rifling through her possessions as she slept.
The chest was not within the first cabinet, nor the second.
She rifled through their contents, knocked softly against the bottoms and backs of the cabinets, and dug her fingers into knots, searching for hidden compartments.
She found nothing but papers and books, navigational tools, trinkets, and clothes.
All the normal possessions of a life at sea.
The hinges of the fourth cabinet squeaked as she opened it. She froze, only her head turning to look at Zanta’s slumbering form. Zanta sighed and rolled over onto her back, one hand dangling off the edge of the bed.
Nia waited for her to open her eyes. To find Nia elbows-deep in her belongings. But Zanta’s eyes remained closed.
Fuck, Nia would have to be quicker. Her heart fluttered nervously in her chest. It had to be here. She would have died weeks ago if the treasure wasn’t on this ship, and she’d searched every other place but this room.