Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (46 page)

“You’ve got
charisma, boy, and you always have. Your father had it too: he charmed his way
out of more executions than any man in history. But,” he raised his cane, and
Lysander crossed his arms defensively over his chest, “charm is something you
use on your enemies, not your brothers. And certainly not on my favorite son!”

“I’m your only
son,” Thelred reminded him.

Uncle Martin
inclined his head. “True, but my favorite nonetheless.” Then he turned back to
Lysander. “I have a mind to brand your arse with something ridiculous for every
year you wasted, but I won’t — provided you swear to never chase folly
again.”

“Fine, I swear,”
Lysander said. He stood straight when they shook hands on it, obviously trying
to regain some shred of his dignity. But all he did was give Uncle Martin the
opening he needed for one final cane-thrust to the gut.

While Lysander
was doubled over, groaning in pain, he leaned down and whispered: “By the way,
did you find it?”

He nodded
stiffly, and Uncle Martin ruffled his hair.

“Good lad,” he
said, his wide grin returning immediately. He straightened up and took a quick
glance at the rest of them. “My, my, picked up some interesting cargo on your
journey, eh? Well I — Gravy save me, it’s the Dragongirl!”

He squeezed between
Jonathan and Jake and snatched both of Kyleigh’s hands. “How very lovely to see
you again, my dear,” he said, planting a lingering kiss on the backs of them.
“Though I’m a bit peeved that you didn’t return sooner. Seventeen years ago, I
was a younger man … and my eyes were a bit sharper.”

Kael thought
Uncle Martin must have gotten his fair share of charisma. There weren’t many
men in the Kingdom who could wink at Kyleigh and live — much less make
her laugh. But that’s precisely what he did.

“I had work to
do, Martin,” she said when he released her. “Not all of us can spend our days
smoking pipes and harassing the cook.”

“Don’t even get
me started on the cook. That woman will be the death of me, I guarantee it.
But,” he wagged his eyebrows at her, “with all that’s wrong in the Kingdom, I
don’t mind saying that the sight of you certainly puts the wind back in my
sails.”

Jonathan hastily
turned his laugh into a cough when Thelred glared at him. Kael even pounded him
on the back to make it look more convincing.

“Shall I
introduce you to the rest of the crew?” Lysander said, tactfully interrupting
whatever string of nonsense Uncle Martin had been whispering in Kyleigh’s ear.

It turned out
that Uncle Martin had an entertaining opinion of every one of them, and he
didn’t mind sharing. He said all sorts of things to Aerilyn that would have
earned anyone else a slap in the face. But coming from Uncle Martin, it was
just hard not to laugh. “My late wife kept a whole wardrobe of dresses
upstairs, and I’ll bet we can find one that fits,” he said, after he’d ranted
about how her garb was
an obstruction of
a perfectly good view
.

Aerilyn’s face
lit up immediately. “Oh thank you, Uncle Martin! I can’t tell you how
exhausting it is to wear men’s clothes day in and day out. In fact, it’s
nothing short of torture,” she added, with a glare at Lysander.

“No problem, no
problem at all. My wife always used to say that there was absolutely no point
in being a woman if she couldn’t show off her figure. Of course, I didn’t argue
with that. And
I
always say that
Lysander’s no-dress-on-deck rule is the seventh worse thing to ever happen to
this Kingdom!” he declared, shooting a glare at his nephew — who rolled
his eyes in retort.

When Uncle
Martin shook Kael’s hand, his glance went immediately to his hair. “Poor boy,
we’ll have to find you a sharper razor.”

Kael tried to
flatten his curls, but felt them spring stubbornly back into place. “There’s
nothing I can do about it.”

“You could try
essence of sea urchin. I hear that’s what a certain fussy captain uses to get
his characteristic wave,” Uncle Martin said loudly.

“That’s not
true,” Lysander cut in. “I don’t fuss over my hair — it simply falls this
way.”

“Sure it does,”
Uncle Martin teased. “And when I wake up, my mustache looks exactly like this.”
He twirled one end into a perfect loop.

When it was
Jake’s turn, Uncle Martin had to fish him out from the back of the group
— where he’d been hiding. “A mage, eh?” he said with an inscrutable look.
“You know, we’ve got a whole room in the house that’s completely spell proof.
You could summon a rainstorm in there and it wouldn’t wet the curtains.”

Jake’s glasses
slid down his nose as his eyebrows shot up. “Really? Where is it?”

“Ha!” Uncle
Martin barked. “Not so fast. I know your lot — you’ll disappear into your
studies and we won’t hear another peep until you venture out for food. I’m not
going to miss your story. Sit through one meal, and then I’ll tell you where it
is. Fair?”

Jake nodded,
though a bit reluctantly.

Finally, it was
Jonathan’s turn. As they shook hands, Kael could feel the rest of the party
hold its breath. No doubt they were all thinking the same thing: if anyone
could offend their host, it would be Jonathan.

“And what do you
do?” Uncle Martin asked, crossing his arms.

Jonathan
mirrored him. “I’m a rogue, by trade. Though occasionally I like to do a little
string-twiddling. Here lately I’ve done naught but follow orders. Putting a
cramp in my fingers, it is.”

“I see. And what
music do you play when the old Captain isn’t cracking a whip?”

Jonathan leaned
in, like it was a very great secret. “The sort that makes you want to call up a
chord and kick it in the shin!”

Uncle Martin
laughed. “Strictly indecent, eh? I knew I liked you! You’ll have to fiddle for
us after dinner — I enjoy having a bit of rude music when I take my
pipe.”

Jonathan looked
absolutely delighted, but everyone else groaned aloud. Kael was just shocked
that all of his strange ramblings actually meant something to someone.

When the
introductions had been made, Uncle Martin stepped back and waved his cane at
them. “Enough chatter, let’s go get our bellies full!”

And they
followed him eagerly through the door.

The inside of the mansion was even
more spectacular than the outside. Uncle Martin chattered excitedly as he led
them through the main hall: a room shaped in a perfect circle. It was so large
that Kael thought the whole of Tinnark could have lived in it quite
comfortably.

“These are all the pirate captains
who’ve made Gravy’s mansion their home,” Uncle Martin said, gesturing at the
white statues that stood guard around the room. “They’re all here — from
Gravy to Matteo.”

“What about Lysander?” Jake asked.

“Ah, I shouldn’t hope to join them
for quite some time. You see, it’s only
after
a captain’s died that his likeness is made into a statue. Did you notice the
objects they have with them? Every one is either wearing or wielding the cause
of his death.”

And he was right. Most of the
captains, including Sam Gravy, held a cutlass. But there were some whose deaths
were a little less conventional. The man a few slots down from Gravy had a sea
serpent latched onto his upraised arm by the fangs. Another held a goblet in
one hand, and a bottle of poison in the other. Some were missing limbs, had
arrows in their hearts or axes at their necks, but each one of the captain’s
faces was surprisingly fixed and noble. Matteo was the only exception.

Kael was drawn
immediately to the sheer detail of his statue. His hands were bound behind him
and a noose hung around his neck. His head was bent slightly, every wave of his
hair flowed as if brushed by the wind. But it was the expression on his face
that truly made him come alive.

His eyes bored
into Kael’s, and though empty behind the white, they seemed to say everything.
Or perhaps it was the arch of his brows, or the ever-so-slight lines on his
forehead that told his story. No, it was definitely and without a doubt his
smirk: the bend in his mouth and the unspoken mischief behind it.

But when Kael
took it all in, Matteo’s face said one thing very clearly:
I have won
.

“Remarkable,
isn’t it?” Lysander said from at his shoulder — so suddenly that it made
him jump. “Morris was at his execution. He saw my father’s face just before
they kicked the barrel out from under him … and this was his final taunt.”

Kael could
hardly grasp it. “
Morris
carved
this?”

Lysander
smirked, and looked so much like his father. “It was the last thing he did
before … well, you know.”

No, Kael didn’t
know what had happened to Morris; he’d never felt like it was his place to
bring it up. But now that he knew what Morris had been capable of, it angered
him. Fate angered him. He thought of how it must burn to have such an eye, to
be able to see the potential beauty hidden in a slab of stone … and yet have no
means of giving it life.

He imagined it
felt horrible — worse than breaking a thousand bows.

“I thought your
pap died in the Whispering War,” Jonathan said, interrupting the long silence
left by Lysander’s words.

“He did,” Uncle
Martin replied. He grinned at Jonathan’s confusion. “Is this not what you
expected, Sir Fiddler? Perhaps you imagined him dying with sword in hand, hmm?
Well, the War didn’t end in the final battle, I can tell you that. Thanks to
our worm of a King …” Fury glanced his face for half a moment, searing his
cheeks before he managed to mask it with a smile. “But I digress. The important
thing is that Matteo died fighting for what he believed in. He may not have
been on the battlefield, but he still died a warrior’s death.”

A heavy silence
followed his words. It hung in the air like a raincloud until Aerilyn said:
“Were there any lady pirate captains?”

Uncle Martin
seemed relived that the conversation had roamed to something a little lighter.
“I’m afraid not, at least not officially. Though I’ve often wondered about
Slayn the Faceless.”

He nodded to one
statue that was a little more slender than the others. A cowl covered his head
and a piece of cloth was tied around his face, revealing only his eyes. Tongues
of flame lapped his legs and touched the palms of his noticeably dainty
outstretched hands.

“There’s a lot
about Slayn that makes me think he was actually a woman in disguise,” Uncle
Martin mused.

“Like what?”
Aerilyn said, stepping up to get a closer look.

“The story goes
that after Captain Crux perished, his daughter went out into the woods to mourn
… and never returned. Not three days later, this Slayn character appeared and
said he wanted a chance to duel for the captaincy.”

“And he won?”

“Aye, but there
after he always used a bow — a weapon more suited to a woman’s strength.”

Kyleigh stifled
a bout of laughter, and Kael elbowed her.

“Whatever
happened to Slayn?” Aerilyn said over the top of them.

Uncle Martin
laughed. “Well, he claimed that he wore a scarf over his face because he’d been
badly maimed by a witch’s spell. And do you know how he perished? In a fiery
blast from the Witch of Wendelgrimm! Blew him to dust.” He touched a finger to
the side of his nose. “They say that Fate doesn’t like to be cheated, and in
this case Slayn — if she was indeed the daughter of Crux — cheated
when she refused to give up her identity. So if you ask me, I think the
explosion was Fate’s way of laughing last.”

Jonathan strode
over, rolling up his sleeves as he went. “Seems to me that there’s only one way
to solve this mystery!” He shooed Aerilyn out of his way and stretched his arms
forward, his fingers curled and his eyebrows bent in intense concentration.
Then he lunged … and grabbed Slayn’s marble chest.

Uncle Martin and
Lysander both burst out laughing. Jake turned red. Kyleigh clapped a hand over
her mouth to hide her grin, and Thelred just raised an eyebrow.

“Get your hands
off of her!” Aerilyn shrieked, smacking him upside the head.

Jonathan had to
take his hands away to protect himself from her blows. “All right, all
right
! Turkey legs, we’re not even sure
she was actually a woman.” Then he turned his back to her, found Uncle Martin
and mouthed:
She was.

“Ah, well let’s
just let it be,” Lysander said, before Aerilyn could work herself into a proper
fit.

“Quite right,”
Uncle Martin agreed, still chuckling. He pointed his cane up at the ceiling,
where an elaborate spiral staircase drifted down from a large hole and touched
bottom gracefully in the center of the room. “Up there’s where you’ll be
staying. There’s no bedtime here — you can come and go as you please. Now
move along, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover!”

And he wasn’t
joking. Fortunately for Kael’s rumbling stomach, Uncle Martin didn’t give them
a full tour, but led them quickly through the many winding hallways. Any
comments he made were brief and on the move.

“There’re seven
doors in this hallway,” he said as they walked through a passage with walls
painted entirely red. “Don’t ask me why there’s an odd number. Our friend the
battlemage will be interested to know that behind one of these doors is the
spell room. But I’m not telling which one!”

Jake glanced at
a door so badly charred that there was a permanent line of black soot on the
floor from where it’d been opened. “I can hardly bear the mystery,” he said
dryly.

At long last,
they reached a set of doors at the end of the hallway and Uncle Martin stopped.
“This is my second favorite room in the whole place — the dining room!”
He pushed the doors open.

A table long
enough to be a small boat awaited them, laden with food. The seasoned fumes of
pork rose up from the tight skin of a roasted hog and made Kael’s mouth water.
And that was before he even saw the rest of it: mountains of fruit, fresh
vegetables, the golden tops of bread, and cheese — a dozen different
wheels just waiting to be eaten.