Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) (12 page)

The two youngest ones were sleeping, half curled up on my lap. I was glad for their peace.

The merchant’s blue eyes looked black in the dim cabin. I did not like the way he watched me. I had been sold into slavery before, and selling people was his business. Maybe he was already calculating how much coin he could earn for a healer.

I gently set the sleeping children aside and struggled to my feet. “If any of them start heaving, let them drink the medicine,” I said, then half lurched, half crawled back toward my cabin.

But instead of going in, I visited the tiger. Her eyes were glazed, her great side caved in. She had sores and open wounds on her skin. I suspected that the men poked and tortured her when the captain wasn’t looking. She was but fur. Even if the pirates decided to slaughter her now, there would be nothing to eat.

I sang her my spirit song to comfort her. She pushed a great paw out between two bars, but not to swipe at me. She left her listless paw lying next to my hand. I reached out carefully to stroke her. The tiger closed her eyes.

Dizzy with hunger, so did I.

I stayed there, stroking her matted fur and singing to her, as much as to comfort her as because I had no strength to move. Then Batumar came down below, lifted me up, and carried me to our cabin.

Chapter Ten

(The Red Tower)

By the time the hardstorms spit us out, we had lost most of our sails, and the ship was taking on water. We barely had any rigging left. The only reason we drifted toward land was because the currents pushed us that way.

“How long before we reach port?” Batumar asked One-Tooth Tum.

“Two more days.” The captain watched me. “We have nayver made it out of the storms with this little damage afore.”

I sensed he suspected that I had called the fish, and now he was uncertain how far my powers reached. Not far enough to feed us again.

We were all on board, enjoying the fresh air, dazed and starved. We could see fish in the water, but we did not have as much as half a rat’s tail for bait.

Two more days
, I thought, and then we’ll have survived the belly of the mountain, the hardstorms, and the pirates. I had never wanted anything half as much as I wanted to feel the paved streets of Ishaf under my feet.

One-Tooth Tum looked at me, then addressed his question to Batumar. “Have ye been to Ishaf of late?”

Batumar shook his head.

“Avoid ye the red tower,” the pirate captain advised.

“What’s in the red tower?”

“A sorcerer. The city fathers called him to the city to protect it. But he exacts a terrible price.” The captain pinned me with a sharp look. “What ye have, he would take.”

“Take how?” Batumar demanded.

The captain shrugged. “He leaves people empty.”

Then the captain looked over my head at some of his men and moved off. His shoulders seemed stiff, his stride maybe a little too measured.

I glanced at Batumar. He was now watching Grun, the captain’s second in command, who was standing in a circle of the most disgruntled pirates. The captain was looking out to sea, but I caught him checking the men now and then from the corner of his eye.

Casting insolent looks toward the captain, the men climbed down into the belly of the ship one by one. Tension took their place on deck, anticipation of something dark coming our way. Suddenly we were waiting for what would happen next, as we had waited for the hardstorms, the air filling with premonitions.

Batumar pulled me to the prow and put himself in front of me, keeping his hand close to his sword. Graho, the merchant, gathered the children around him in the most out-of-the-way spot he could find, behind a pile of empty water barrels that had been brought up again in hopes of rain.

Other pirates who’d been working until now sensed the unease and began positioning themselves in groups of twos and threes, no weapons in hands yet, but alert and ready.

I thought the men who had gone below might return with the captain’s treasure, claiming it for themselves, but instead, when they appeared, they were dragging the tiger cage up to the deck, grunting and cursing.

The tiger kept shifting but did not fight them. Maybe she thought that being out under the sky again meant her freedom was near.

Then, with one more heave, the cage was up on deck at last. The tiger suddenly looked to the east, and her tail and whiskers twitched as if she could smell the forests from here. Maybe she was saving her energy for an attempt to escape once the pirates docked the ship.

But swords scraped against scabbards as the men drew their weapons, ready to stab the emaciated animal through the bars, jeering and shouting now to work up the courage.

Sensing the danger, the tiger rose to her haunches and roared, swiping through the bars, but she could not defend herself from every direction at once.

“Leave it!” the captain shouted as he pulled his own sword and rushed the mutinous pirates.

Metal clashed against metal in an instant. Men fell to his left and right, wounded. As the last of his faithful men hurried to back him up, he charged his first mate with a ferocious blow.

Grun’s skull cracked, his spirit departing.

The captain and his faithful men growled and snapped at the rest of Grun’s crew. But after trading insults, the two groups pulled back from each other.

“The tiger is worth gold,” the captain shouted, and kicked the dead man hard enough so that Grun slid the width of a plank or two in his own blood. “He’s worth nothin’. Ye eat
him
, ye bastards.” He strode away, his chest heaving, his shoulders shaking with fury.

The men moved in around the body, their faces dark, emotionless masks.

My stomach clenched. I watched as the merchant herded the children down below. Batumar and I followed.

I glanced back at the tiger, which did not seem aware that a battle had been fought over her. She had her eyes on me.

Batumar kept as close to me as possible, even on the stairs. “She is safe enough now,” he said. “What the men eat today will carry them through until we reach port.”

I moved forward in the hope that he would be proven right, and that the captain would protect the tiger again should the animal face danger.

We closed the door to our cabin behind us, but soon the smell of roasting meat reached us anyhow—sweet and somehow foul at the same time, all wrong, turning my stomach more than the storms ever had.

We huddled on the floor in the corner, Batumar’s arms around me. His great body seemed to me as a bulwark against the world, and I leaned against him, wishing now even more that we were finally off the ship.

Silence ruled belowdecks. In it, I heard crying.

I pulled away from Batumar. “I shall go and tell the children a story.”

He frowned. I could see
no
forming on his lips.

“The merchant will not hurt me,” I hurried to say. “He has no reason.”

“There is danger in the air still,” Batumar said carefully. “I do not like it.”

“We will reach land the day after tomorrow.”

“Until then, we shall stay in here.”

He had not taken his sword belt off as was his habit whenever we were inside our cabin, but he had left his weapon hanging at his side.

In the end, I did talk him into letting me go. But he came with me.

Graho, the nine children, and I filled most of the room. Batumar’s large frame took up the rest of the space as he stood inside the door, his feet braced. I could not tell if he was guarding me from the merchant or from the pirates.

The children gathered closely around me, unsure of what to make of the giant warrior suddenly in their midst.

I started into a story I learned from my mother.

“At the foot of the Mountain of No Top, where it meets Bottomless Lake…” My mother always began the story in a hushed voice as if telling me a secret never told before, and I spoke the same way. “Lived a beautiful young girl called Lawana.”

“One day, a man came from far away to ask for her hand in marriage. Lawana folded up her clothes and veils and all that was most important to her and left her father’s house to go to him. When she was halfway, she turned back. She did not want to leave her family. Then she turned to the man. She truly wanted to go with him. She turned back and forth faster and faster, unable to make up her mind, until she spun so fast she drilled a large hole in the ground.

“The hole, deep and wide, drank Bottomless Lake and swallowed Mountain of No Top. An endless swamp took their place, and to this day, it is called Lawana’s Swamp.”

“What happened to Lawana and her parents and the man?”
I would ask my mother each time she reached this far in the story.

“The swamp swallowed them,”
my mother would say, her voice deep and grave.

She used to tell me many such tales, sometimes even about the Forgotten City of the Guardians, but mostly about young girls and all the hardships they faced and what happened after the choices they made. I liked that, the gentle way she taught me.

I finished the story for the children. They nodded with understanding. They were not troubled overmuch by Lawana’s untimely demise. Children’s tales were meant to teach, so they rarely had happy endings. Most were tales of warning.

I tried to pick one next that spoke of happier times, and told the children about the merchant and the beggar boy, then the story of the faithful wife, and ended with the Guardians and the Forgotten City.

“Do you know the Guardians, mistress?” the littlest of the girls asked. Nala, I had heard the others call her.

I smiled at her. “I do, Nala. I have been to the Forgotten City.”

Their sparkling blue eyes could not have grown larger.

So I talked to them about the Forum and the Seer and the Gate, the Sacred Cave. They listened with rapt attention until no more light came in through the porthole.

Then Batumar and I went back to our cabin.

He gathered me into his arms as we lay down on top of his fur cloak. He caressed my jaw with the back of his fingers. I ached for his touch, ached for more.

He outlined my collarbone with his thumb.

He dragged his lips over my eyebrows, then kissed his way down the ridge of my nose. His fingers circled my breast. Then his mouth sealed over mine.

The kiss was heartachingly gentle, then seeking, then mastering. Every part of my body responded.

I tried to push my hand under his doublet over his flat stomach, desperate to feel the warmth of his skin.

But he put his hand over mine to halt me.

All the jealousy I had left behind in Karamur flooded back into my heart. He had never stopped my caresses before. “Because of the Lady Lalandra?” I asked, my throat tight.

He stilled. “What is this now?”

I felt foolish beyond bearing for saying the words, but I could not stop myself. “You summoned her before we left.”

Silence stretched between us, unbearably long. I grew dizzy, for I was holding my breath for his answer.

At last, he said, “To inquire how they all fared. I owe them my protection.” He caressed the back of my hand with his thumb. “My brother’s concubines and children have been at the palace for nearly two full mooncrossings. I could ignore them no longer.” He tightened his hold on me. “I want no other but you, my Lady Tera.”

My heart thrilled.

He let my hand go and ran the pad of his thumb along my jaw. “Before I met you, I did not know that it could be like this between a man and a woman.”

Heat suffused my body at his softly spoken words.

He tilted my head up and kissed me in the darkness, starting all over again. Then he kissed me deeper. His large hand was covering my breast, its familiar weight unbearable torture.

As he explored my mouth and my body, my heart sang.

But too soon, he drew away with a tortured groan. “It is not safe. I must be ready if they come for us. But tomorrow we will spend a night at the best inn Ishaf has to offer, with a door that has a lock,” he promised, his voice strained.

And then he held me as I tried not to moan with frustration.

He did not let me leave our cabin the following day. He did not trust all the racket on deck. But the noise died down at one point in the night.

In the morning, when we stepped out into the passageway, we found belowdecks abandoned. We went up the stairs to the deck, and the first thing we saw was that the tiger yet lived and land was in sight, a dark strip on the horizon. Oh, how my heart thrilled.

But the next thing we saw was that at the prow of the ship, the deck was covered in blood. Five mutilated bodies lay in crumpled heaps by the empty water barrels. I jerked my gaze from the grisly sight, up toward the sky, only to see the captain dangling lifelessly from the front mast. His men had used some of the rigging to hang him.

Pek peeked from the safety of the crow’s nest, the lookout basket on top of the mainmast. The boy was a survivor if ever I had seen one, I thought for a distracted moment before I heard a soft cry and whipped around to see the merchant and the children in the aft, corralled by pirates with drawn swords. The merchant had his rapier in hand.

Next to me, Batumar drew his broadsword.

A dozen pirates immediately headed our way, their faces menacing, hate boiling in their eyes, words of murder spewing from their lips.

They now had the ship and their captain’s treasure. They had never wanted passengers.

Chapter Eleven

(Sea of Sorrow)

Batumar sprang into the fight, taking on three opponents at once, swords clashing.

I pulled out my small knife and stood back-to-back with the High Lord, holding the knife out in front of me. I knew not what to do if a pirate attacked, but none of the men lunged for me. Mayhap they saw me, and the children, as spoils, merchandise to sell in Ishaf, since their captain hadn’t let them sell us at Rabeen.

At least, while I was protecting Batumar’s back, they could not attack him from behind.