Boyett-Compo, Charlotte - WindTales 02 (41 page)

woman at all. As for the two men who had carried him into the cave—that he'd had no idea existed—he

remembered the elder as being a woodcutter in the village. None of those he remembered had ever

spoken a word to him yet here they were making plans to ensure his future.

He stayed very still, feeling the fever claiming him and hoping against hope he didn't start babbling like he

was known to do when the illness was on him. He felt the chills coming on and now and again he

shuddered, but kept his eyes closed.

His hands were aching, the old wounds in his palm throbbing with every beat of his heart. Despite the

pain, he flexed his right hand and could not stop the groan.

“You're safe, Milord,” Bryce Heil said, his hand going over Syn-Jern's mouth lest the man cry out.

“You're with friends."

Syn-Jern's fever-glazing eyes locked with Bryce's. He saw Bryce jerk a thumb upwards.

“You're in the cave under Holy Dale, Milord. You gotta be quiet lest they hear you. You understand?”

Bryce queried.

A slight nod of his head was all Syn-Jern could do for he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably from the

fever. The agony radiating through his head made him sick to his stomach, but he kept as still as he could.

“We got some nepenthe from Oceania,” Kerm suggested. “It'll take the edge off the pain, Your Grace.”

He slid his hand under Syn-Jern's neck and lifted the damp man's head. “Here. You drink this."

He wasn't given a choice. A cup was placed at his lips and he let the sweet taste of cherries burst on his

tongue. Almost immediately, his tongue became numb from the potent narcotic.

“You go back to sleep, Milord,” Kerm said. “You're safe with us. We won't let nothing happen to you,

Milord."

“Syn-Jern,” the fever-ridden man murmured. “Call me Syn-Jern.” His words slurred as the tenerse

began to take hold of his mind. “The farm at Delbenshire—"

“It's been taken care of, Milord. Just rest,” Bryce said. He stroked a lock of wet hair from Syn-Jern's

forehead. “You've got nothing to worry about now."

“Tell the McGregor to...” Syn-Jern closed his eyes and let the drug take him where it would. As his

world became muffled and slow, he thought he heard Rosa-Lynn's voice raised in shrill protest.

As sleep claimed him, he smiled.

The bitch was going to have a lot to protest in the weeks to come.

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“You've got to make sure he's all right, Weir,” Patrick said as he paced the cabin. “We've only their

word that he's safe."

“He's safe,” Weir sighed as he watched his old friend plow a nervous hand through his thick blond hair.

“How's his fever?” Patrick growled. He tugged at his golden curls. “Is he eating? Does he...?"

“Leave off, Kasella!” Weir snapped. “The McGregor says they are taking care of him!"

“We don't know that for sure!” Patrick threw back at him.

Weir cursed beneath his breath. “I give up with you, you stubborn Ionarian jackass. If you're that

worried about him, why don't you just diddlyscamp over there, knock on the door of Holy Dale and

demand to see the escaped prisoner they're harboring somewhere inside the manse?"

“In the caves,” Patrick grumbled, plopping down on Weir's bunk. He cast a jaundiced look to his friend.

“They've got him hidden in the caves that were used centuries ago by Viragonian pirates for storing

contraband."

“You know this for a fact, do you?” Tarnes inquired. He pulled the unlit pipe from his snaggletooth

mouth and pointed the stem toward Patrick. “You been scamping over there, have you?"

Patrick clamped his jaw tightly shut and refused to answer.

“Oh, Sweet Merciful Alel, you have!” Weir exploded, recognizing the militant look on Kasella's face.

“You were spying on them?"

“They didn't even know I was there,” Patrick mumbled, refusing to meet Weir's stunned gaze.

“By the great horned demon, you idjut!” Weir shouted. “What if you had been caught?"

“I wasn't, now, was I?” Patrick snorted.

Weir stared at Patrick, amazed at the man's bravura and—to his way of thinking—mindless stupidity.

“Don't,” he said through clenched teeth, “do it again!"

“Then find out for yourself how he is!” Patrick bellowed.

“The girl is going to take Tiernan and the magistrate through the hidden corridors tomorrow evening,”

Weir said, his eyes blazing, “and position them right beyond Sorn's bedroom wall. When he and the bitch

start talking about—"

“If,” Patrick snapped, “they start talking about the murder."

“They do nearly every day,” Weir shot back.

“Well, it would just be our luck tomorrow won't be the day!” Patrick complained.

Weir sighed heavily with exasperation. He understood Patrick's concerns about Syn-Jern; he shared

them, himself. But it wasn't going to be all that easy to make the villagers trust him enough to let him see

Syn-Jern anytime soon. It would be a waiting game for awhile and Patrick had to be made to understand

that.

“They could turn him over to the Tribunal,” Patrick said quietly, voicing his major fear. “If they catch

him, you know what will happen."

“They'd turn him over to me,” Weir said. “After all, I'm the Emissary's ship captain."

“We'd better hope no penal colony transport decides to take harbor here,” Tarnes told them. “Could get

a might touchy if that was to happen, Cap'n."

Patrick stood. “I'm going to turn in,” he announced. “I didn't sleep well last night."

“Wonder why?” Tarnes chuckled.

“Stay your ass on board this ship, Patrick,” Weir ordered. When Patrick turned to glare at him, Weir

nodded. “I mean it. Stay on board."

“And just what the hell am I supposed to do while the rest of you are fighting the Tribunal, Saur?”

Patrick grated. “Tarnes has been captaining The Revenge for you while you're getting all the glory being

the pirate captain of The Revenant, but by the gods, Saur, I want to see some action, myself!"

“Whyn't you put him to swabbing down the decks, Cap'n?” Tarnes suggested. His old eyes twinkled.

“Unless you think we ought to tie him to a mast and leave him stew for a mite."

“Go to hell you pox-ridden old salt,” Patrick insulted Tarnes, who thought the remark funny.

“We can't take a chance of someone seeing you who ought not to, Patrick,” Weir repeated. “Someone

loyal to Innis Hesar or have you forgotten who sent you to the Labyrinth, my friend?"

“There ain't nobody loyal to that queer,” Tarnes snorted. His face turned red and he ducked his head.

“Weren't meant as an insult to present company."

“Weren't taken as one, neither,” Patrick muttered in his best Serenian brogue and yawned widely.

“Get to bed, Kasella,” Weir demanded. “You're gonna need your strength for swabbing my decks come

morning."

Patrick frowned, but he didn't rise to the bait. He'd swabbed many a deck in his lifetime. What was one

more? With his shoulders hunched, hands dug into the pockets of his breeches, he sauntered out of the

cabin.

“That be a mighty worried man, Cap'n,” Tarnes proclaimed.

“Aye,” Weir agreed. “Make sure you set someone to watching him. I don't want him skamping off this

ship again."

* * * *

In his delirium, Syn-Jern was once more in the bowels of the Labyrinth. Hanging from the cross bar of

the whipping post, the blood from his ravaged back was seeping into the ground. His hair was matted,

clinging damply to his forehead and cheeks and neck. Flies crawled over his bearded face and lips and

he didn't even have the strength to blow them away. His body odor was so bad, he could barely stand to

draw a breath. Dimly, he thought he should be used to that stench by now, but he knew he never would.

He wished he could die.

They had worked him all night; the light of the harsh moon upon the rock field making it possible to see

the rocks into which his pick ax bit. The sound of metal to rock had given him a savage headache, but he

knew better than to speak of it. His migraines had gotten much worse during his imprisonment and the

one he came down with that evening was one of the really bad ones. When he vomited on the boots of

one of the guards, the retaliation had been swift.

The whip scored his back with nine fingers of fire, each gouging deeper than the one before. He thrashed

in his pain, trying to avoid the drag of the cat as it clawed its way down his spine again.

“Kill me!” he begged, wishing the cat-'o-nine would finish him.

He could feel blood running down his back, soaking the waistband of his tattered breeches. The

headache, the fever he could feel heating up his body, all combined to make his punishment an agony of

unending duration.

“Kill me!” he pleaded with his captors. “Finish it!"

“You don't want to die, Milord,” someone whispered and he felt hands lifting him, placing him on his

belly on a cool board.

“Kill me,” he whispered.

“We're getting you out of here, Milord,” the man told him. “Hush now."

He remembered the long, winding corridor; the drip of water against limestone as the men carrying him

wound their way through the bowels of the Labyrinth. He smelled the brimstone of the firepit and heard

the shriek of bats deeper in the underground caverns.

“Kill me,” he repeated over and over again.

“There's a ship waiting for you, Your Grace. She'll take you to Creel Point."

The last thing he remembered was someone touching his ravaged back as he screamed his way into

unconsciousness.

“What's he saying?” Sara asked as she ran a wet cloth over Syn-Jern's chest and side.

“Something about the Labyrinth,” Bryce replied. “I think he's reliving his escape."

“Wonder how he got away?” Kerm inquired. “I've heard tell it ain't no easy feat."

“Near impossible as best I can tell,” Fiels Spiel reported. “Had to have had outside help."

“But who?” Sara queried.

Spiel shifted his bony shoulders. “Ain't no telling, gal. Somebody what knowed how to get there and

how to go ‘bout setting him free."

“I would imagine it was his grandmother's doing,” Bryce suggested. “She had the money and the

power."

“He should have been released two years ago and when he wasn't, I'll wager she sent someone after

him.” She looked up at Bryce. “Makes sense, doesn't it?"

Bryce nodded. “Aye. She let him stand the punishment—what choice did she have—but when he didn't

come home, she must have known he wasn't going to be allowed to do so."

“He's got good King Innis to thank for that,” Kerm snapped.

“We've all got good King Innis to thank for many a rotten thing in our own lives,” Bryce spat.

“The gods damn the Hesars and all their kin!” Fiels Spiel said, turning his head and hawking a wad of

phlegm against the cave wall.

“Nay,” Bryce said. “Not the McGregors."

Fiels nodded. “Well, maybe not them."

“Genny!"

The others jumped as Syn-Jern sat bolt upright on the pallet, his eyes wild.

“Genny!"

Bryce reached him first. “It's all right, Your Grace. You're safe now."

“Genny?” The one word was a heartbreaking sound of fear.

Sara knelt on the pallet. “Your Genny is safe, Milord. She's safe.” She pushed a lock of wet hair from

his cheek. “And so are you."

“Genny,” he whispered, the word a talisman to ward off the terrors of his delirium.

“Lay down, Milord,” Bryce told him. “You've been sick."

He allowed them to push him down, half-expecting there to be agony in his torn back, but finally realizing

he was a long way from the barbed whips of Tyber's Isle.

“Where,” he asked, “am I?"

“In the cave beneath Holy Dale manor house, Milord,” Bryce told him.

His forehead crinkled for a moment, and then memory filled in the missing pieces. “The ship?” he asked.

“The Revenge?"

“She's in the harbor at Wixenstead, Milord."

Syn-Jern closed his eyes. He was sicker than he could remember being in a long while, his headache

worse, and he was starving. Sara touched his face and he opened his eyes. “Aye, Milady?’ he

whispered.

“Here, Milord,” she said and lifted a cup to his lips.

Syn-Jern smiled once more as Sara stroked his stubbled cheek. “You want to ask me something,

Mam'selle?” he inquired, his words starting to slur.

“Is he married do you think, Milord? The captain of the Revenge?"

“Sara Elizabeth!” Kerm gasped.

“Well, hell in a twig house, Kermit,” Sara snapped, craning her head to look at her brother, “you're the

one always going on about me getting hitched!"

“T'weren't that what amazed me, you brazen wench,” her brother snapped. “Leave His Grace alone with

silly fool questions such as that!” He pointed his chin at Syn-Jern. “Can you not see he's in no condition

to be bothered?"

Sara snorted and started to rise, but Syn-Jern reached out to take her hand in his own. When she

looked down at him, he brought her palm to his cracked lips and placed a tender kiss there.

“Ah, Milord,” Sara sighed, a flush speeding rapidly through her body.

“No, Sweeting,” Syn-Jern said, “he's not married and he has no lady. You'd make him a fine one,

though.” With that, he closed his eyes again and drifted off, her hand still clutched in his.

“Come away, wench,” Fiels said quietly, putting a fatherly hand on the girl's shoulder. “Let the lad

sleep."

Sara eased her hand from Syn-Jern's and was glad of the help Bryce gave her in standing.

“I think you just got his blessing,” Bryce said with a grin.

Sara's lips twitched. “Aye, I think I did, too."