Chapter Twenty-Nine A New Heading #2
A brisk breeze blew across the quarterdeck, sending a shiver over her skin despite the balmy night. Caelan inched closer, and she smiled to herself.
The song changed, and the energy on the ship exploded. Apparently, it was one everyone knew. Reya finished her drink in a single gulp, wincing at the burn, and the Acadia quaked as every sailor moved in a unified stomp, clap, stomp to the beat.
A lone sailor approached. He was about her age, maybe a little older, his brown skin not yet sun-spotted from years at sea. But he had the arms of a seasoned deckhand and tattoos like the one on Kalúe’s neck.
A dark curl fell across his forehead as he tipped his head in Reya’s direction.
He grinned and extended his hand. Nearby, several crew members were nudging one another with laughter in their eyes, as if asking her to dance had been some drunken dare.
Soon the entire crew was looking at them, chanting.
And it might have been the liquor. Or it might have been the sudden lightness in her chest. But she took his hand. And all around her, pirates cried out in delight.
The Acadia was as silent as a grave.
The red sails had fallen still, and the stars overhead had winked out. Reya stood on the forecastle deck, staring out at where they floated in an ocean so still it looked like glass.
“Caelan?” Reya asked. No answer.
She peered over the railing, but couldn’t see her reflection in the water. She spun. Where was the crew?
You should not be here, mo réal.
The voice of the numen was stronger than it had been before, and this time, a menacing anger laced its words. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it, a presence that hovered just on the other side of her reality. Reya blinked.
“Why?”
You’re too far. I cannot see.
“What do you want from me?”
Everything.
Reya twisted, trying to locate the source of the voice, but it kept moving.
“I don’t understand.”
Then suddenly she could feel it behind her.
Hands like shadows snaked around her hips, cold fingers curling into the soft skin of her lower abdomen almost possessively.
She shuddered, back bowing involuntarily into the presence of the numen as it said into her ear, He will lead you to war and pain and ruin. Do not risk your life for his again.
Reya didn’t understand. It had told her to accept the help that was offered.
It won’t be long now.
Beneath her feet, the Acadia began to sink.
Reya jolted upright with a wheeze. Her hammock swayed beneath her in time with the rocking of the ship, which was still afloat, still sailing north along the lush eastern coast of Ianess toward home. Outside their porthole window, she could see the Etellinian Mountains.
“Thief?” Caelan said, voice stark with concern.
“I’m fine,” she lied, rubbing at a sharp pain in her side.
Only when she was certain Caelan had gone back to sleep did Reya lift her linen tunic with trembling hands, already knowing what she would find. There, on either side of her stomach and lower back, were ten half-moon grooves—swollen and red from phantom nails.
Reya hadn’t spoken a word all night. They were all gathered on the rear balcony of the Acadia around an antique table Kalúe had brought outside for them.
Reya and the Alethians took most of their evening meals now with the captain and her first mate.
Dozens of red candles wept onto the mahogany, the wax drip a glue reinforced over what looked like years to keep the centerpiece from sliding with the tilt of the ship.
The snapping wicks flickered off the glass in her hand.
The captain was recounting a story to Caelan and Zantae while Omira and Thance argued over the use of Delthian soldiers in an attack on Bladestone Prison.
Caelan kept trying to catch her eye from across the table. Are you all right?
She couldn’t look at him.
Reya had spent the last thirty minutes tuned into Thance and Omira’s conversation, biting her tongue and downing her rum.
Their plan was not going to work. Reya was coming to realize just how much Sages loved a head-on approach.
Even given the option of stealth, Reya was convinced they would still want to march up to the front door, magic blazing.
It was going to get them and any reinforcements killed before they could make so much as a dent in the Rhiterran forces.
But she was too anxious to tell them that, not wanting to participate or give Caelan and the twins the wrong idea.
When they made landfall, she was going to Delthia. Not as a Guardian. Not as an ambassador of the Order of Light, but as plain old Reya Connery. She downed the rest of her rum, chair scraping as she pushed back from the table.
“I need some air,” Reya said, knowing it was a stupid thing to say when they were already outside. But she couldn’t stand another minute.
Ignoring everyone’s curious glances, she closed the balcony door behind her.
The crashing of waves broke the hollow quiet of the hull as she emerged onto the main deck, taking comfort in a sound that had grown so familiar over the last month.
She tried and failed to avoid the notice of a group of sailors playing dice around a crate.
She forced a smile and offered a friendly wave when they called out to her, hollering challenges and invitations for her to join.
Yesterday, she would have taken them all for every coin they had.
Now, she couldn’t skirt them fast enough, the numen’s words echoing in her ears.
You should not be here, mo réal.
She made her way to the forecastle deck, standing exactly where she had been in her dream.
Almost home, she told herself. The only question was whether they could get there in time.
Kalúe was convinced they could make up the time they’d lost in the Deep under sail, but even then, she would be cutting it close.
Reya felt Caelan’s heavy footfalls on the deck behind her and sighed. He didn’t say anything as he approached where she leaned against the railing. He just stood beside her, offering her a haven from the chill.
“They’re going to get themselves killed,” Reya said finally.
“So tell them that.”
“I’m not their general.”
Arms crossed, he leaned on the railing, shifting to face her but still giving her space. “Then walk me through it.”
She scrubbed at her forehead. “If you send a Delthian army charging at Etellinian walls, it will break upon them. It doesn’t matter how many soldiers you can rally, Caelan—this will end for you exactly how it ended before. Your war will be over before it begins.”
Caelan didn’t smile, but his eyes practically danced. “How would you do it?”
She took a deep breath. “You need time. Weeks, if not months, to gather intelligence on more than the layout of the prison. You need to know exactly how many guards are inside and where they are stationed, if the stations rotate, whether those guards have families, if they like to gamble, where and how often they take their breaks. You need to know when they get supply shipments, what’s in them, and the name of the driver and his horse.
You need to know where the prisoners are being kept and why, when they get served meals.
” She took a breath. “What if you come out of that secret tunnel and run right into a group of guards because you didn’t know the shift change?
What if one gets away and sounds the alarm?
You need someone on the inside. Someone to light the spark. ”
Caelan could no longer fight his grin. He shook his head as if in wonder. “Have you ever considered that perhaps this world doesn’t need a Guardian? That perhaps the world just needs you exactly as you are?”
Sucking on her teeth, Reya turned away, knowing her cheeks were coloring as she tried not to cry.
He will lead you to war and pain and ruin.
“I’m going to Delthia, Caelan. And not as an emissary.
Permanently.” For the first time, she was sorry she couldn’t tell him the whole truth of why.
But the secrets of her ancestors were not hers to tell.
“Reyanwyn, do you realize what will happen if we fail? Even with the Delthian aid, there is a chance we will lose. And if we do, Rothmire’s stain will spread.
He will conquer Delthia as surely as he conquered Etellina.
” Caelan tenderly cupped her face and tipped it up to his, brushing her hair away with his thumbs.
“The thought of you in war makes me ill, and it shouldn’t.
I thought I understood how this would go.
” With a pained look, he leaned in carefully, like he wanted to graze his nose along hers but didn’t trust himself to close that distance between them.
“I don’t know what to do with you. I want you to leave, but I don’t know what will happen if you do. ”
They were quiet for a long time. “But you know what will happen if I don’t,” she finally said.
“People always have justifications for hurting others. Lennox kills and schemes because everything is expendable for power. The king persecutes magic-born because he claims he’s making the world safer.
The Order kills to avenge what they’ve lost and protect their own.
” She swallowed. “I’ve been someone’s weapon most of my life.
I don’t want to hurt people anymore. I can’t be owned again.
If I stay with you, I will be forever part of the coming conflict.
I will make thousands of enemies all over the world, enemies who will come after my brothers to get to me because that is how this works.
I will be made to summon the God Power again and again for the army you are bringing back here no matter what it costs me.
And I will be hunted until the day I die on a field. ”
Caelan closed his eyes, and his hands tightened on her skin like the mere thought was repulsive. There was more she couldn’t tell him, but she hoped he understood.