Chapter 3 #3
Not only had the kidnapping gone off without
a hitch, but the wind had shifted in their favor as if on cue. As
if the fates had ordained everything that had happened was meant to
be. Yet by a cruel twist of those same fates or the gods or dumb
fucking luck, Roark had fallen head over heels in love with Alina
the moment he’d spied her racing her horse on the beach, legs bare
and hair flying.
He told himself over and over Alina would be
kept safe, that she was worth a king’s ransom whole and intact. Yet
he couldn’t ignore Leif’s salacious interest in her, or his threat
of leaving her for his father, which could have simply been Leif
spouting off. Or not.
Roark shook his head and toed the deck with
his boot. Roger was many things, but foolish wasn’t one of them. He
had to know Jerrik’s retribution would be swift and merciless
should anything happen to Alina.
“Damnation.”
“Sir?” Roy stood holding a bowl of the
morning’s porridge. “Captain said you’d likely want to take the
princess her breakfast yerself.”
Roark took the bowl down into the hold and
held it out to Alina, who sat on her pile of furs glaring at
him.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t taste any better
than it looks,” he said as he handed the bowl of half-congealed
groats with a boiled egg sitting on top to her. “But it’ll fill
your belly and keep your bowels moving, which can be a problem on a
ship.”
“So I’ve been told,” she said, taking the
bowl from him and peering at its contents.
He sat down beside her as she took one
distasteful spoonful, swallowed with a grimace, and then another.
He recalled the delicious food he’d eaten at the festival. Princess
Alina had likely never been forced to eat such a piss-poor excuse
for a meal in her life. Still, she finished the bowl without
complaint. Something Gwyneth never would’ve done. With Gwyneth, the
porridge would’ve ended up on the floor or the wall and the entire
ship would’ve heard about it.
“Do you want more?” he asked when she handed
him the empty bowl.
“No. That was quite sufficient.”
He glanced up at the open hatch but saw no
one lingering about. “I’ve heard Roger’s and Donald’s telling of
how they came to be in the Green Isles many times over the years,”
he said, speaking low. “Will you tell me your version again, in
more detail?”
She told him of her parents’ long, strange
courtship, of how her father happened to be in port when his
brother, Bard, died of a wasting sickness, how his family had
begged him to assume the cursed throne. She told him of how her
Uncle Aaron died saving her father from a rock slide, of her father
sailing east and marrying her mother in her home before bringing
her to Sea Ridge as his bride and queen.
She told him of Fenrir’s and his wife,
Ermelinde’s, campaign of lies and betrayal against her parents, of
how her father had believed their lies, as had his father, causing
them both to deny their wives. She told him how her father began to
doubt Fenrir’s lies, how he and his men set a trap for Fenrir and
his yellow beards, of the public trial that followed, where the
water scryer and the stable hand who’d spoken against her mother
confessed their lies, forced on them by Fenrir.
She retold the rest, how her father had
killed Fenrir in a trial by combat that Fenrir had demanded, how
Jerrik had then banished Fenrir’s widow and two adult sons and
their families from Sea Ridge, along with the yellow beards loyal
to him, when by rights, he could’ve had them all killed. The events
had been witnessed by hundreds of people. People who’d chosen to
stay at Sea Ridge under Jerrik’s and Alyssa’s rule and had
prospered there along with the thousands of others who emigrated
there. Facts, she reminded Roark, he’d seen with his own eyes.
“Thank you,” he told her, taking her empty
bowl and climbing the ladder back up to the deck.
If he’d had been back at North Shore Keep,
Roark would’ve taken a long ride through the countryside to go over
all he’d heard, seen, and done since the The Rover had
dropped anchor in the port of Sea Ridge. But all he could do on the
ship was pace back and forth across the deck under the curious
watch of Leif and the ship’s crew.
He’d heard Roger’s and Donald’s story so many
times he could repeat it by heart, along with their grievances
against King Jerrik and Queen Alyssa, at whose feet they placed all
of their ills and troubles. Which weren’t that bad, considering
Roger was now a wealthy, landed laird of a keep in a prosperous
port town, and Donald his right hand and chief counsel, several
steps up in rank and wealth from men at arms for this Fenrir.
As far as Roark could tell, their only real
losses had been those of their elderly mother and infant sons on
the journey to find a new home. Hard losses, true, but losses both
men griped less about than their banishment.
Listening to Alina’s version of her father’s
ascension to his family’s throne, Roark had been struck by two
particular coincidences. One was the stable hand who had confessed
his lies at the trial, and the stable hand Pavel, who’d told Roark,
unasked, about some trouble he’d gotten into twenty years ago due
to Jerrik’s uncle, and how he’d learned his lesson about lying
because of it.
The other was Jerrik’s brother, King Bard,
dying from a wasting sickness, which had actually been a slow
poisoning by Fenrir’s orders if not his hand, which sounded
uncannily similar to how Ronald, the old laird of North Shore Keep,
had died six moons after naming Roger his heir.
A hand clapped him on his shoulder from
behind and he stopped his pacing.
“What are you thinking so hard on?” Leif
asked.
“I was thinking on how well our plan to
kidnap the princess worked out,” Roark told him. “Wondering how
it’ll turn out.”
“It’ll turn out with our father ransoming the
princess for enough coin to set all of us up for life,” Leif said.
“For you and Gwyneth to start your married life in a grand fashion.
That was the plan, wasn’t it? As you yourself said, it’s gone
amazingly well.”
“So far.”
“So far?” Leif spun Roark around by the
shoulder to face him.
“Any number of things could happen between
now and when the ransom is collected. If the ransom is
collected.”
“What do you mean if?”
“King Jerrik could kill Murtaugh when he
presents the terms of Alina’s ransom and send his warships to
attack the North Shore and take the princess back rather than
pay.”
Leif shook his head. “My father will make it
clear in his demands that Jerrik’s precious daughter will die at
the first sighting of any warship. Jerrik wouldn’t dare chance
it.”
“He could pay the ransom, retrieve his
daughter, return to his home, and then send his warships to
attack.”
Leif snorted. “You worry too much,” he said.
“I’m sure my father has thought of any and all possibilities and
made plans to deal with them.”
“If he has, he hasn’t mentioned them to
me.”
“He doesn’t tell you everything. As smart and
important as you think you are, there are some things he keeps to
himself or tells only Donald or me, his true son.”
Roark let the insult slide, but not the point
he was trying to make. “If Jerrik is the vindictive bastard your
father says he is—”
“If he’s what my father says he is?” Leif
spouted. “What sweet poison was the bitch pouring into your ears
down there?”
“She only complained about the porridge.”
“She took her sweet time complaining
then.”
Roark shrugged. He’d have to be more
circumspect in his dealings with Alina for the rest of the voyage.
Leif may have been a hothead who sometimes did stupid things, but
he wasn’t a stupid man. “Your mother and aunt will be pleased with
the bolts of worm weave you’re bringing home,” he said, changing
the subject. “Gwyneth will look pretty in the blue. Did you promise
Edna a gown?” he asked about the neighboring laird’s daughter, whom
Leif was generally known to be courting.
“I did.”
“What about Jenny?”
Leif grinned. Jenny was the maidservant he
was not so secretly spending time with.
“No gown,” he said. “I did buy her a night
shift of sheer worm weave from an innkeeper’s harlot.”
“For her, or for you?”
“Now why would I wear… Oh, I get it.” Leif
laughed and slapped Roark on the shoulder. He continued to laugh to
himself as he walked away from Roark and toward the ship’s
prow.