Chapter 44
The Lowmarket streets thronged with people—dockhands stumbling towards taverns, women cooing from brothel windows—and twice Richard and Kaelen had to press into doorways as guards marched past.
It was twilight by the time they slipped back into the Cup and Crook.
The inn’s common room was a hubbub of chaos.
The circus had taken over the long table near the hearth, and the lyre player was leading a song, stamping her feet to the jester’s drums. Tilda and Wren were singing along, Talia was coaxing Master Clemens to clap his hands to the beat, and Svetra was dancing on the table.
And in the corner, ringed by bowls of stew, sat the five children.
Daisy spotted Richard as he sidled to the stairs. Her face brightened, and she rose onto her knees, mouth opening to call out.
Richard placed a finger to his lips, and with a confused tilt of her head, she sank back into the bench.
Guilt twisted Richard’s gut. No doubt the children had searched for him throughout the day. But their time together had come to an end. The mission awaited.
I shall inform Byrom. Richard climbed the stairs behind Kaelen. Mirthwell Circus may well perform in High Ardenia. We shall pay them double.
He’d barely cleared the threshold of his room when Flint was upon him.
“Where the ever-loving fuck have you been?”
Flint had his pack slung over a shoulder, his boots laced, and his cloak clasped. By the muddy prints on the floor, he’d been pacing.
“Flint—”
“Hours I’ve been waiting. Hours. We were meant to be slipping out the harbour by now.
The tide doesn’t give a shit about your sightseeing schedule.
There are guards crawling over the street, because some gods-forsaken lunatic put an arrow through the man on the pyre.
Some prize specimen of a halfwit decided that what this city needed, on the very day of our exit, was for an arrow to come sailing into the chest of the king’s prisoner.
Now every guard in Vexmara is hunting a bowman—”
“That fool,” Richard said, crossing to his cot and dragging his pack out from underneath, “was Kaelen.”
Flint spluttered. “What?” He swung to face Kaelen, who had arrived at the door with his own pack. “You fucking, fuckety fuckwit.”
Kaelen lifted his chin. “I could not bear to do nothing.”
Flint made a shrill noise at the back of his throat. He threw his hands up and glowered at Richard.
“He’s going to get us killed, handsome.”
Richard hummed. “Maybe.” He yanked the drawstring of his pack tight. “It is fine. It is fine, Flint. Let us simply get on that ship.”
Flint cursed under his breath. “Fine. She’s already tied to the Eastern Harbour. The master’s on board. We walk down the dock as if we’re his hired help come to shift a few crates.”
“I suspect the master onboard will object somewhat to being robbed of his livelihood.”
Flint bared his teeth in a grin. “Don’t you worry your pretty head about that.”
* * *
The Eastern Harbour reeked of brine and rotting fish.
Richard followed closely behind Flint along the seaward edge of the warehouses.
Beyond the harbour wall, the open sea stretched endlessly, and along the curve of the beach, the surf glowed in rippling streaks of turquoise.
Richard caught Kaelen staring and tugged at his sleeve to jolt his attention back.
The man was absent of his bow, left hidden under the inn’s bed.
Flint led them down the quay at a lazy stride, hands tucked in his pockets, whistling a sea shanty. A pair of chatting guards glanced up, took in the three dishevelled figures, and looked away again—likely figuring that it was just another late-night loading.
The ship Flint had chosen was moored at the very end of the quay, where the lamplight dimmed. She was a sleek thing—single-masted with a curved prow shaped like a fish’s tail. Her name, painted in red along the stern, read ‘Maiden’s Promise’.
“Expensive taste,” Richard murmured.
“Aye. And it’s ours.” Flint led them up the gangway and onto a deserted deck, before moving towards the ship’s rear.
Walking past coils of rope and stacks of crates, he ushered Richard and Kaelen down a flight of steps into the captain’s cabin.
It was a lavish place, with an oaken desk, a bunk hung with velvet curtains and a lamp swinging from the ceiling.
On the floor, trussed like a hog, sat its master.
He was a man of perhaps forty, with silver-black hair tied back from a thin face.
A strip of cloth was knotted between his teeth.
When he saw Richard and Kaelen enter behind Flint, his eyes bulged, and a muffled, pleading sound slipped from the gag.
He thrashed against his bonds, creaking the floorboards, and Flint clucked his tongue.
“Now, now, Master Marek.” Flint crouched beside him. “None of that. We’ve discussed it already. You’re going to be very helpful, and then you’re going to be very lucky, and everyone will go home pleased.”
Marek’s eyes flicked between Flint and Richard, wet with terror.
Flint pulled out his knife and, ignoring Marek’s whimper, sliced the rope that bound the merchant’s ankles and wrists.
“Up you come. There’s a good man. To the wheel, if you’d be so kind.”
Marek staggered to his feet and let himself be manoeuvred up onto the deck. Flint kept a hand on his shoulder and the knife at his hip.
Richard followed and shook his head when Kaelen shot him a troubled look.
“Leave it be. I sailed to Frostheim many years ago and watched the helmsman work, but the finer points of sailing elude me.” He sighed. “It is better, I suppose, for us to travel with a guide.”
“We do not need one,” Kaelen muttered. “The generals briefed me on charts and bearings, and the basics on how to steer a ship. I know enough—”
“Regardless, you have never sailed.” Richard entered the deck. “Marek has. Let him show us, and then we shall send him home.”
Further ahead, Flint had Marek working the lines. The merchant moved with dazed efficiency, loosening the moorings, hauling the mainsail by its halyard, leaning his weight into the boom. The canvas snapped open with a thump, and the Maiden’s Promise eased away from her berth.
Richard’s stomach lurched as the deck shifted beneath him.
“Steady there.” Kaelen’s hand found Richard’s elbow for the briefest moment before falling away.
The ship glided through the moonlit harbour.
The quays slid by on either side, then the arm of the breakwater, and finally, they were out into the open swell, with the city’s lights dwindling behind them.
Marek, hands trembling on the wheel, looked over his shoulder at the receding harbour, and a keening noise escaped his gagged mouth.
Flint let him weep his way through it. Only when Vexmara had become a smudge on the horizon did Flint at last unknot the merchant’s gag.
Marek spat the cloth from his mouth and gasped. “Please. Please, sirs, I have a wife. I have children. I have done nothing—”
“Hush, hush.” Flint patted his shoulder. “We’re past such a point, Master Marek. We’re at the part where my friend here shows you where we’re going, and you tell us how to get there. Easy. Kaelen?”
Kaelen drew a roll of parchment from inside his cloak and spread the map across the top of the binnacle. “Singers’ Teeth is where we’re headed.”
Marek’s knees buckled, and he had to clutch the wheel to remain upright.
“No.” He shook his head. “No. No, sirs, no, you cannot mean that, you cannot—Singers’ Teeth, no sailor goes within ten leagues of those rocks, no sailor who wishes to keep his bones in their proper order.
I have known plenty who tried, and none—none—returns alive.
I will take you to Skythe. To Neprass. To the ice of Frostheim even, if it pleases you, but not—”
“Master Marek.” Flint held up the knife between them and turned it slowly, so the blade glinted in the lamplight.
“Honestly, I’m not a patient man—and by the gods, do I never hear the end of it from my lovers.
So I’d be ever so grateful if you would tell us how to point the ship and how to read the wind.
Please do so quickly, because my arm grows tired and my temper short. Do we understand each other?”
Marek swallowed, a tear sliding down his cheek. “I…yes.”
He spoke for a long time. He showed Kaelen on the chart how to reach there in eight hours, and warned of the uncharted sandbars that would gut a hull at low tide.
He explained the trim of the sail when the wind backed east, and the smaller jib at the bow that should be set when the swell rose.
He showed how to read the trailing log to measure their speed, and how to mark the hours on the slate beside the binnacle.
Kaelen listened intently, asking quiet questions and repeating unfamiliar terms under his breath. Richard stayed by his shoulder, trying to absorb the same.
When at last Marek had finished, he turned to Flint with a hopeful smile.
“There. There, sir. You have it all. The ship will carry you wherever you wish if you mind the trim.” He licked his lips.
“There is a rowing boat aboard, sir. A small one. I should not need much—a flask of water, a loaf, no more. You would never see me again. I would never speak of this. You have my word, sir, on my dear children’s lives—”
“Oh, you can leave now,” Flint said with a warm smile. “Of course you can. You’ve earned it, Master Marek. You truly have.” With an almost graceful flourish, he stepped behind the man and slashed the knife across his throat.
It was done in a blink. A startled, choking sound, and a waterfall of black-red spilling down the man’s front. Marek sagged, then collapsed onto the deck, eyes unblinking.
“Flint!” Kaelen unsheathed his sword with a roar.
“Put it away!” Richard seized Kaelen’s wrist. “Do you wish for a bloodbath in the middle of the sea? Keep it sheathed.”
Kaelen obeyed, face stricken and chest heaving. His glare did not leave Flint, who was squatting, calmly wiping his blade on the dead man’s shirt.
Richard snapped at the bandit. “Explain.”
Flint shrugged. “He deserved it.”
“That is hardly an explanation—”
“All right, all right.” Flint straightened, tucking the knife away.
“Master Marek here has no children. Though he has, in the past, smuggled children through the port—mage children, you understand. Brought into Vexmara from the surrounding isles as slaves to entertain or shape. He paid for this pretty ship, and his pretty wife, and pretty mansion, with that trade.” Flint nudged the body with his boot.
“Maybe he didn’t dabble with it himself, but he’s as guilty. So give me some grace.”
Richard pinched the bridge of his nose. “You might have told us.”
“Didn’t fancy the argument.”
Richard grimaced. “Help him with the body, Kaelen.”
“But—”
“Help him with the body,” Richard repeated. “Throw it over. Recall that we are on a mission for our realm and must endure such discomfort.”
With a stiff nod, Kaelen took the dead merchant under the shoulders. Flint took the feet, and together, they carried the corpse to the rail.
After the splash, Kaelen stared down at the water for a long while. The wind blew through his hair, and his shoulders were rigid.
Richard folded his hood around his neck. “Kaelen?”
The knight startled and made his way back, but his face went a pasty mix of grey and green. He opened his mouth, then closed it again and pressed the heel of his hand against his lips.
“Kaelen?”
The knight bolted for the rail, and the sound of retching filled the air. Flint chuckled from near the stern. Richard winced and crossed the deck to Kaelen, rubbing slow circles between the shoulder blades as Kaelen heaved up his lunch.
When Kaelen finally straightened, swaying, Richard kept the hand in place.
“It is the swell,” Richard murmured. “The Frostheim crossing took me the same way on my first night. You shall grow accustomed to it.”
Kaelen groaned and slumped against the rails. “I pray it happens with haste.”
Flint approached them, raking his hair back into a ponytail. “So, is it full sail ahead—”
“We must anchor her, Flint.”
Flint frowned. “We’ve a tide—”
“Anchor her. We are three landborne Ardenians on a ship, trying to navigate foreign waters. Marek warned us about sandbars near the second headland. I do not propose to find them in the dark. We hold here, where the waters are shallow, until dawn.”
“When you put it that way, handsome.”
Flint headed to the anchor crank. The chain rattled, and the Maiden’s Promise slowed before settling. As Flint sang another sea shanty, Kaelen hung his head over the rail and retched. Absently, Richard kneaded Kaelen’s back.
Kaelen had been right. These past few days, Richard had lowered his guard.
Flint was, in the end, a bandit. The leader of a guild that had robbed for years.
A man who’d tortured and killed a witch—and perhaps many more—without hesitation.
A lover whose vengeance would be fierce if he ever learned the face of the Ardenian king.
Flint would kill him.
The realisation made the hairs on Richard’s arms stand up. Above, the moon hid behind a cloud, and as if a curtain had been swept across, the seawaters went black.