Chapter Seven
PEDR
Pedr sucked on his front teeth as he strode through the Erevast market, skimming the bold, annoying signs.
He recognized most of the languages, but only because he came to Erevast far too often.
They had the sweetest fresh water, and their grilled zharik fruit, both tangy and sweet, couldn’t be found elsewhere.
His body moved differently as he crossed onto the wooden pathway, distracting him. Without everyday pains, hunger, or thirst, all his attention honed into instincts that had quadrupled. Which didn’t begin to encompass his obnoxious sense of smell.
There was . . . so much.
Too much.
Every human he swept by exuded a different kind of stench. He couldn’t twine them apart; the scents were too disparate and overwhelming. Pedr held his breath as a particularly rank person strolled by, then paused.
Wait.
He didn’t have to hold his breath.
In fact, he didn’t have to breathe at all. Did he? Putting it to the test, he continued his pace and counted. His chest remained still. No pulse, nor breath, nor desire to breathe.
Fine.
Smelling wasn’t required, because breath wasn’t either.
Less overwhelmed, he continued his quest. The tables changed every few months.
Branstead, the crook and self-proclaimed head pirate, which wasn’t a thing, never let anyone stay too long selling their goods.
It might result in them usurping his power.
He had little in life except reputation and an inflated sense of his importance.
The man was the definition of ludicrous and lecherous.
The market made Branstead almost as rich as His Glory, the bastid ruler of Stenberg, but it was all a front for a nefarious trafficking ring that spanned islands.
The thought of running into Branstead and testing the newfound, building might in Pedr’s veins held particular appeal. What would it feel like to snap his fist into Branstead’s teeth?
Glorious.
His attention skimmed the tables as he clipped along at a steady pace.
Something caught his too-perceptive eye.
A twist of umber, almost black, curls. The ringlets sprang along the back of a woman with tawny skin, dressed in a simple cream linen with sleeves stopping above her elbows.
Her bare feet were charming. The way she stood, half turned away from Pedr, drew his attention. She arrested him mid-step.
Shite.
Who was she?
A woman didn’t walk so deliberately, yet somehow careless, without a reason.
She had such confidence and rapt fascination.
She smiled at a vendor as she pressed a fruit to her lips, closed her eyes, and inhaled.
Pedr stalled, affected all the way to his marrow.
When she handed the fruit back with an appreciative bob of her head, he was lost.
She continued meandering, pausing at each table long enough to inspect every item, but didn’t interact.
Her fingers trailed the tips of salt crystal vials and zharik fruit.
Her eyes roved each pearl-infused comb. She drank in the market treasures with untold intrigue, and had a lack of regard for those around her.
The smell drifting from her was intoxicating. Floral?
He wanted to stumble closer, ask her name.
Why?
Why did he care?
The moment Branstead sidled up next to this vision of a woman, in a poor display of being clumsy, Pedr snarled.
No, no.
Not on his watch.
But Pedr quelled the intense surge and remained close enough to watch but not near enough to draw Branstead’s focus.
The girl regarded the nasty pirate with sharp surprise, and then clear uncertainty.
Pedr almost laughed at the momentary consternation on Branstead’s face when she outright ignored him.
Two cronies cackled behind Branstead, out of the woman’s vision. Branstead sent them a rude gesture behind her back. The men waved several types of rare paper monies from a different island, and his eyes dilated. They pointed at her. He nodded.
Pedr’s teeth ground together.
The sick game intensified as the two men flanked Branstead on either side, sweeping down the market lane, almost out of sight. Ah. The three foul wretches would work together to seek customers who would pay for time with the girl. Sick idjits like them thrived on violence and lust.
The two men with monies stumbled behind vendors, ignoring the goods they overturned, the chairs they knocked over, in their haste to flank Branstead and the woman. While she categorically ignored Branstead’s every attempt to draw her attention, Pedr surveyed the familiar scene.
Closed off market, ending on a building.
Windows glittered on the multi-story hotel that Branstead ran.
Its rates were so exorbitant that few islanders could afford it; only the wealthy passing through.
The same wealthy islanders paid coin for Branstead’s lucrative trafficking trade.
Inside, his office had arcane-infused windows, masking them to appear like stone from the outside.
It allowed Branstead and his cronies to monitor the market for thieves without being seen.
They found new quarry through their sneaky tactics.
Pedr finalized his review of the tables, the number of people milling around, an utter lack of obvious guards, and the two cronies positioning themselves to pay for time with the woman.
He knew exactly what Branstead would do next; he heard the stories from Lubba, who boasted he’d find a way to do the same, and do it better.
The woman stopped at the stone wall, hemmed in.
Surprise lit her features as Branstead whispered something to her.
Pedr’s upper lip curled as he scooted around a group of tourists, a hawker shouting about roasted surnik birds, and retracted a hand knife from its hidden sheath.
Branstead’s words crossed the distance, a span Pedr would never have heard before.
“Come on, now,” Branstead whispered, “Be a good girl and say yes.”
Pedr slid into place behind her, a small hand knife drawn from his belt. “Or,” he drawled, “you can be a good bastid and take your filthy hands off of her before I help you swallow your teeth.”
Branstead’s beady eyes narrowed, his irises constricting, as his gaze crawled over her head in a glower. He glanced at the weapon in Pedr’s hand with a curious scowl. A tiny knife wouldn’t frighten anyone here.
“Who’re you?” he spat.
“I’m about to be the scariest thing you’ve ever seen,” he growled, “if you don’t take your hands off of her.”
Wisely, Branstead obeyed. The woman slid free, closer to Pedr. Without touching her, he smoothly stepped between them.
“Branstead, yes?”
“Who’s asking?” he barked.
“My boss.”
Confusion rearranged his unbathed features. “Who?”
“Lubba sends his regards. He’s out in the bay, in a frigate, awaiting you.”
Surprise overcame Branstead’s surge of anger. One of the cronies sidestepped closer. “Lubba?” he cried. “Is that who you said?”
Pedr confirmed with a nod.
Branstead bellowed, “In a frigate?”
“Stolen from the mainland.”
While Branstead fumed, Pedr shuffled a step to the side, cutting the second crony off from access to the woman.
All three eyed him, locked by indecision.
Pedr held out an arm, backing the woman into the wall behind him.
The men spread in a half circle. His blood boiled when he smelled the same sour, strange scent from all three.
He wasn’t certain what it meant, but he had a good idea.
“I’ve heard of Lubba,” Branstead snapped.
“You’ve more than heard of him,” Pedr replied. “You have a pending deal. Or have you forgotten? You might have been a little too drunk when you made it.” He nodded to the bay. “He’s waiting, and he’s already unhappy. Only a bastid would keep Lubba waiting. Not with what he can unleash.”
Branstead’s fascination with the girl fragmented.
He frowned, muttered something to the crony on his left.
Scowling, the man slinked into the crowds.
The second, as Pedr suspected, disappeared through the stone wall of the doorless hotel.
Arcane, indeed. He couldn’t imagine what foul lair awaited innocent women inside.
The woman hadn’t uttered a word. Wisely, she hadn’t proceeded in any direction with this hostile crowd.
“We’ll see now, won’t we?” Branstead asked through his disgusting teeth. “My boys will report back about Lubba. If you’re telling the truth, we’ll proceed to the ship together.” His features hardened. “And I will have the girl.”
Pedr deftly replaced his drawn knife. He held up his hands, showing they were empty, and Branstead relaxed.
Perfect.
The teeming rage hit a crescendo when Branstead turned his vile smile onto the woman, and Pedr let his awaiting eagerness fly.
His fisted hand smashed into Branstead’s teeth with a satisfying crunch.
Every movement slowed, and Pedr felt each one.
Beneath his blow, a crack split the air.
He felt the release as bones gave way, shattering.
Teeth cracked, Branstead’s fleshy mouth spread wide.
Pedr yanked his hand back.
An ear-splitting scream escaped from Branstead, sounding like an impaled miniature pig. The market confusion stilled all at once. Pedr whirled, touched the wide-eyed woman on the arm.
“Follow me.”
Branstead’s hands flew to his mouth as he hollered.
His voice gurgled from spilling blood. Men boiled out of the stone wall, shouting.
Pedr put a hand on her elbow and spirited the woman away from the wall, his body placed between her and the growing surge of Branstead’s cronies. He faced them, back to the market.
As they advanced all at once in a rush meant to overwhelm him, Pedr moved like lightning.
The woman stiffened with a low gasp, eyes wide.
He jerked an elbow into the neck of the first, kicked his foot into the chest of a second, and glowered at a third.
While Branstead’s friends toppled, gasping, the third skidded to a stop, hands raised in surrender.
“Nope,” he declared. “I ain’t an idjit!”
“Go!” Pedr urged the woman.
A glimpse of her molten eyes, a hitch of breath, and the woman spun away.
Her pattering footsteps took flight, and Pedr followed close at her heels.
Running in this new body required little more than mental effort.
He sensed no difference from strolling. No increased requirements for air, energy, focus.
Vendors, apparently used to brawls, scrambled to whisk their breakable items out of harm’s way. Branstead commanded his men to follow Pedr, and four buffoons surged in a half-drunk posse down the market lane.
“Left!” Pedr said under his breath. She obeyed by ducking through a stall and onto another market road.
The rowdy men shouted, “Stop!” but Pedr ignored them.
They raced through the few open spaces, dodging customers with baskets piled high.
At a junction, the woman slowed. Pedr grabbed her wrist and tugged her to the right, circling them around. Mayhem trailed in their wake.
A throwing star hit a wooden beam near Pedr’s face. “Shite,” he hissed. A rock sailed through the air, smashing his shoulder as they sped off, but it didn’t hurt. Pressure bore into his skin, but it didn’t break. No swelling, bruising, or ache. The temporary discomfort faded as quickly as it came.
The woman called over her shoulder as she pounded down the wooden path, heading toward the sand junction.
“Are you hurt?”
“Fine! Keep going!”
The ruffians chased them out of the market, but the young woman was fast. Not unlike him. He observed no gasping breaths or trailing energy. His long legs paced hers as she raced through the sand. Waves swept closer, reigniting the same sweeping ability that he initially felt on the boat.
Why here?
He didn’t feel the building power back there.
They hurried onto the dock, and Pedr pointed to the rowboat that brought him this far. She skidded to a stop at the end, hesitating at the lip, arms wheeling to keep her balance. Pedr glided past, climbing in.
“You aren’t afraid of water, are you?”
Her head jerked up. “What? No!”
He grabbed the rope and yanked. Light twined through it and the hearty knot fell apart.
“Hop in!”
Her eyes darted between him, the racing men waving weapons, and seemed to decide in a second. Stumbling into the rowboat, she hurried to the middle, sat in dead center, and clutched the board with white knuckles. Through closed eyes and gritted teeth, she muttered, “Ready.”
Pedr shoved away from the dock and reached for the oars. He needn’t have bothered. The moment he thought, I’d better row quickly, water swirled beneath the boat and away from Erevast.
Mentally bracing himself, he said, “Hang on.”
The rowboat whisked them away from the island at near-impossible speed. He had anchored his ship out of sight from shore and should see it soon. He never liked getting too close. One never knew when situations like this might arise.
Branstead’s cronies faded from sight as a current swept them from Erevast. Pedr ditched the unnecessary oars. The power swirling inside of him brightened the moment his arse hit the rowboat, and he sensed it also propelled them away.
Arcane, it had to be. What arcane afforded this steep of a change? This was no arcane artifact sold at a market.
It was inside of him.
His still heart.
His empty lungs.
Pedr forced his eyes away from the disappearing island and onto the woman again.
Without fear of her life tightening her eyes, she had an uncanny presence.
The determination in her eyes made her dynamic, her smell galvanic.
The top of her head would barely reach the bottom of his jaw, but nothing about her seemed petite or frail.
Her taut expression and calm eyes spoke to a hint of rebellion.
His prickling agitation settled. She was safe, and that was all that mattered.
For now.