Chapter 14
CHAPTER
I don’t believe we need to stand watch tonight,” Koen confessed, leaning against the railing of The Red Corsair and staring out at the vast, churning sea.
Reid didn’t disagree. Splitting the night between Koen and himself was a pointless endeavor.
Even if Sachia’s crew did turn on them, their group was pathetically outnumbered.
A single guard wouldn’t make a difference.
“If they wanted to kill us, they would have already,” he agreed.
“Or perhaps they’re waiting until we make port. ”
“Perhaps,” Koen mused.
Reid turned to get a better look at his friend.
The closest thing he had to a brother. Koen’s adoptive father, Kier, Reid’s predecessor as headman, had been a close family friend to Melisina.
It only lent to a closeness between Reid and Koen as well.
They had never once been able to escape each other, but the truth was that Reid had no interest in escaping Koen.
In fact, he wasn’t certain anything could separate them for long.
Which was why he knew when something troubled his friend. “You’re worried,” Reid noted.
Koen slid his eyes to Reid and adjusted his spectacles. “Only a fool wouldn’t be.”
“Neither of you needs to be out here,” Sachia said, sauntering down the stairs from the deck where she and Reid’s mother had just been training.
Her shoulders had dropped and her jaw had unclenched; Melisina was teaching her to release the magic slowly instead of allowing it to build to a breaking point.
So far, it seemed that many of the techniques his mother knew applied to Sachia.
Yet the feel of their magic was vastly different; Sachia’s made the air around them sharp, whereas Veragi magic felt more like prying, seeking threads.
“You should get some sleep. It takes energy to infiltrate the capital of Asterya.”
“You speak of treason, Pirate,” Reid said. “It is not infiltration when I am the rightful emperor.”
She scoffed. “You’re a jilted divorcé at best, Wolf.”
Reid shook his head, though Koen let out a small chuckle at the pirate’s boldness. Sachia would have gotten along swimmingly with Kosana, had the commander been here. A calm comfort had overtaken the crew at the group’s presence. Even Joná? had already begun to spend time with them willingly.
Reid didn’t know how to explain it, but he had a gut feeling that trust could be found here.
“We need to cut your hair,” Sachia said. “And shave your beard.”
Reid furrowed his brow, and Koen snorted. “Good luck,” his friend said.
“You look Icrurian,” Sachia reminded him. “You look like Reid of Mireh.”
She had a point. Reid ground his teeth. “How much farther do you estimate?”
Sachia pulled a spyglass from her waist, extending it to Reid. When he took it, she pointed to the horizon. “Do you see those mountains in the distance?”
Reid peered through the glass, seeing the dark shadow of something along the line where the sky met the sea. The moon was bright enough tonight to illuminate the dark and give him vision. Even the persistent snow had halted. “Yes.”
“Those are the Iron Peaks. We’ll make port tomorrow.”
Koen stood up straight, hand snaking out to steal the spyglass right from Reid’s hands. “Where is the prison?” he asked.
Sachia’s tone went cold. “On an island deep inside the bay, off the shore of the main port. You won’t see it until we’re much deeper in.”
“Do you have an escape plan yet?” Reid asked.
“I will.” She rolled her shoulders as if she needed to revel in the calmness while it lasted. “I can cut your hair now, or I can cut it tomorrow.”
Reid released his hold upon the gunwale, sighing. “Now is fine.” He tried to exchange a glance with Koen, but his friend’s attention was still occupied. Still entirely glued to the spyglass, pointing to the Iron Peaks. He stayed like that, perhaps trying not to laugh.
Faintly, Reid knew that he and Sachia weren’t the only fools sneaking into this port in order to find someone.
While Koen would have come here in service to Reid, in service to Vaasa, these circumstances were different.
Reid understood infatuation. He himself had been transfixed by Vaasa the moment he met her, even in the nights when he’d tried not to be.
There was nothing that would have kept Koen from this city.
Not with Amalie still missing and not a single word about her whispered at any port.
It had been confirmed that Vaasa was alive.
The same couldn’t be said for Amalie.
“You can take the first shift,” Reid said, though both he and Koen knew they had just agreed to end their separate watches. Koen simply wanted quiet. A chance to think.
Koen glanced at him for a moment, a readable gratefulness in his eyes at the fact that Reid had not yet asked the question, hadn’t tried to pry information from Koen about the depths of his feelings for the young witch.
Perhaps Koen didn’t know the extent of it. Perhaps Koen not knowing something made it all the worse for him.
With a strong breath, Reid sauntered after Sachia.
Mekes was more massive than Reid had ever imagined.
“Are you prepared?” Reid’s mother asked.
He looked to where she stood beside him, and his heart sank.
The weeks on the water had worn her down; darkness shaded beneath her eyes, her usual warm smile replaced with a downward tilt of her mouth.
The hammocks did no favors for her older limbs.
A bit of magic darted around her hands, a telltale sign that she was too tired to contain it.
“You should have stayed in Innisjour,” he whispered.
She shook her head in resounding disagreement. “They are my girls,” she said, voice softly cracking. “And they are in pain.”
His jaw clenched. Reid had asked a few times whether his mother had heard the voice of Veragi again, but each time he asked, she only shook her head in defeat.
“I’m prepared,” he told her instead of asking another time. He couldn’t manage to hold his voice steady. Fear plagued him, and though he did his best to swallow it down, the truth of it still lingered.
He had no indication as to what waited for him here.
His mother turned to him, and when she looked at him like that, he realized it wasn’t just Vaasa and Amalie she had come for. He was foolish to suggest she stay in Innisjour; his mother, no matter his age, was never going to let him walk into danger without her.
The most powerful Veragi witch in history.
A fact that had complicated their relationship at times, but that had taught him to live with the nuances of others’ identities.
People were hardly ever the singular version he wanted to see them as; his mother had made it easier for him to accept people for who they were.
“I’m not certain I can get used to you with short hair,” she confessed. “And no beard. Just like on your wedding night.”
At that, Reid conceded a small chuckle. Sachia had taken the lengths down to what she assured him was an Asteryan style; it no longer hung to his shoulders, and instead was cut much closer to his head, with the locks of it framing his ears. “I look less like Father,” Reid confessed.
The auburn color of his hair had come entirely from his father’s side, and Reid had grown it out the moment he could.
“Ah, but you will always look like you,” his mother said.
She rested a hand on his shoulder, and they stood quietly together, taking in the granite-built silhouette of the city. Somewhere in that cluster of buildings, Vaasa lay in wait. Amalie lay in wait.
By the time the sun had fully risen, they had docked in the Mekes port and unloaded the silks and fabrics they’d pilfered from the dead merchant Reid had first paid to bring them here.
The barrels of black powder stayed aboard, and Sachia confirmed it was best they remove those when night blanketed the port once again.
Reid’s gait adjusted to land, even with the sway of the docks beneath his feet.
This transition had become like breathing to him.
Five years working in the High Temple of Mireh had not taken the river from beneath his feet.
The smell of fish rode the air, so different from the crisp salt and light breeze of his home.
This scent was rancid and cold, painful to the nostrils.
Up on the slope leading to the Iron Peaks, the fortress of Mekes loomed.
He gazed at the many towers, at what appeared to be patios and bridges connecting them all, and wondered exactly how much black powder it would take to send them cascading down the side of the mountain.
It took considerable restraint not to storm up to the gates at that very moment and begin looking for his wife.
“Come,” Sachia said, gesturing with her head toward one of the narrow streets.
Koen stayed at his side while his mother stayed aboard the ship.
The less they traipsed about the city, the better—their language would place a target on their backs.
Members of Sachia’s crew stayed aboard the ship at all times, and though it pained him to leave his mother, she’d assured him that she felt safe.
Reid trailed behind Koen as if he were a guard, his hand on the sword Sachia had loaned him. This was their agreed-upon disguise—to present the man who could speak Asteryan as a wealthy merchant and relegate Reid to what they already believed about him: an Icrurian brute.