Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (57 page)

Kael gave
Chaucer a glare that he hoped might melt the man’s face off, but he only
smirked.

“Fine.” Reginald
snatched the quill and scribbled on the line. “There. Now what?”

“Your pendant.”

Reginald pulled
the solid gold medal over his head and slapped it into Chaucer’s palm. “You’re
probably going to melt it into coin the second you get the chance.”

Chaucer smirked,
but said nothing. He passed the medal off to one of his cronies, and it
disappeared among his coat pockets.

“I’ve signed
your bloody contract, now set me free!” Reginald snapped.

“One moment,
please.” Lysander strolled into the room. His hair was even more tangled than
it had been before and a good amount of Aerilyn’s lip paint stained his neck.
“I have a some questions for the former Duke. It’s about the slave trade.”

Chaucer made a
disgusted sound. “Slavery? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Yes,” Reginald
said, his eyes hard. “There hasn’t been a slave in the Kingdom for three
centuries. Everyone knows that.”

“The young
people taking refuge in my hold would say otherwise,” Lysander countered.

Reginald
sneered. “Well I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

All at once,
Kyleigh broke from the shadows. She grabbed the back of Reginald’s chair and
dragged him across the room, only stopping when she had him against the
wardrobe.

“What are you
doing?” he said as she walked away. He squirmed against his bonds but couldn’t
wriggle free. “You swore I’d have my life, Chaucer! You swore!”

“I’m not going
to kill you,” she said. She stood next to Kael, their shoulders touching. “My
friend here is fairly good at sniffing out falsehoods. So I’m going to ask you
a question. And if he thinks you’re lying … he’s going to throw a knife.”

Reginald’s jaw
locked down. The whites showed around his eyes.

“Tell us about
the slave trade.”

“I know nothing
about any slaves!”

Kael threw a
knife. It whistled through the air and thudded into the wardrobe — a hair
from the top of Reginald’s head. He moaned, and his face shone with sweat.

“Why are you
selling the people of the High Seas to Lord Gilderick?”

Reginald licked
his lips. His eyes were wild, but still defiant. “I’m not.” He shuddered when
the next blade landed beside his throat. “I know you won’t kill me!” he
screamed through gritted teeth. “That whelp is a whisperer — he can’t
miss!”

Kyleigh inclined
her head. “True.” She nudged Kael with her elbow. “What does a man with no
title need with two ears?”

“You know, I
can’t think of a reason —”

“Stop!” Reginald
cried, just as he was preparing to make his throw. Sweat dripped off his chin
and stained the gold threads of his shirt. “I admit it — I was selling
slaves to Gilderick.”

Chaucer snarled
and the other merchants broke out in heated whispers. They glared a hole
through Reginald as he stammered on.

“I don’t know
what he wanted them for, probably to tend his blasted fields. All I know is
that he paid me well. The logbook is in my office, in the top drawer of my
desk. It has everything recorded: how many males and females I traded, the
dates they were traded on, the dates of future trades — it’s all there!”
he finished. His eyes went back to Chaucer. “So now you know. I’ve told you
everything. I demand that you honor the terms of the contract and set me free!”

After a long,
icy silence, Chaucer nodded to two merchants at his side. They untied
Reginald’s bonds, but kept him held between them.

“Set me free!”
he demanded again.

Chaucer’s face
was unreadable. “The terms of the contract said only that you would be allowed
to live out your days in peace — it mentioned nothing about freedom. Take
him to the dungeon.”

They could hear
Reginald’s boots scraping the floor the whole way down the hall. He screamed
and threatened them with brutal deaths until a heavy door slammed shut, cutting
him off mid-rant.

“Let’s go find
that book,” Lysander said quietly, while the merchants were occupied. And they
followed him out the door.

*******

When they made
it up to the Duke’s office, one of the merchants was already rummaging through
the desk. He pulled out a rough, leather bound book and stuffed it hastily into
his coat pocket.

“Now see here,”
Lysander said as he marched up to him. “If we’re going to stop the trade, we’re
going to have to read —”

“That book is
the property of the merchants,” Chaucer said from behind them. He pushed past
Lysander, took the logbook and planted it inside his own coat.

While they
argued about who had the right to read what, Kael watched Kyleigh. She’d
discovered Bloodfang’s body next to the window. She knelt down in front of him
and closed his eyes with her fingertips. Her head was bent, strands of dark
hair hid her face.

“No, I’m going
to destroy it,” Chaucer barked. He was standing chest to chest with Lysander.
They looked like a pair of bucks sparring over territory. “We’ll hold the vote
for high chancellor within the month — and I can’t let nasty rumors like
slavery affect my bid!”

“Blast your
bid!” Lysander snapped back. “These are innocent people we’re talking about,
our
people!”

Chaucer snorted.
“Your people are murderers and thieves. Mine are the masons of society —
and I’ll not risk their lives to attack the Endless Plains. You
do
know that’s what it would take, don’t
you? A full-fledged war with Gilderick and his army of giants. No,” he held up
a firm hand, “I’ll not risk it. The seas have only just got the wind back in
her sails. We haven’t the army to face Gilderick, not while we’re nearly rotted
out the bottoms, ourselves.” He held out his hand. “Your services are no longer
required, Captain. Take your rats back to their nest.”

Lysander seemed
on the verge of cracking him across the face. But at the last moment, he
relented. With a heavy sigh, he took Chaucer’s hand. “So that’s it, then?”

“Most
definitely. If I see your face again, I’ll be sure and put a dagger through
it.”

“I trust you’ll
give me two days peace?”

Chaucer smirked.
“One. And that’s entirely too generous.”

He gestured for
his men to leave the room and shooed Lysander out behind them. Kael brought up
the rear. Chaucer stopped in the doorway and glared over his shoulder at
Kyleigh, who was still crouched in front of Bloodfang.

“What’s she
doing?” he said with narrowed eyes.

At this point,
Kael was so fed up with Chaucer that he could no longer control himself. He
shoved him hard in the back and sent him stumbling out into the hallway. Then
he slammed the door, barring it with crossed arms.

“Just what do
you think you’re —?”

“Move,” Kael
snapped.

Chaucer blinked,
then frowned. In the end, he seemed to think better of challenging a whisperer.
He turned and stomped down the hall instead, swearing under his breath at every
step.

Kael waited
until he was gone before he opened the door. The window was shattered —
Kyleigh and Bloodfang were gone. He closed the door quietly and left to rejoin
the pirates.

*******

“You done it,
lad!” Morris was waiting for him at the helm. The minute Kael got within range,
he slapped him across the back. His arm was so covered in goo that it stuck to
his shirt. “Sorry about that,” he said as he pulled free. “That blasted mage
took us all for a trip.”

“At least I
managed to get it fanned back,” Jake muttered. He nodded to the west, where the
fog was slowly drifting out to sea.

“What will
happen when it strikes land?” Kael wondered.

Morris shrugged.
“There isn’t a thing in the Westlands but monsters and barren ground. That’s
where the Kings used to send the worst villains in the realm. They’d pack them
up and ship them off with a doomed captain and his crew.”

Kael waited
until Morris went to tend to other things before he slipped the remnants of
Bartimus’s impetus to Jake.

“What’s —
oh.” He turned the gold disk over in his hand, his eyes narrowed. “You killed
him, then?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was
hoping he wouldn’t manage to crawl away.” He slipped the disk into his pocket
and held out his hand. “Thank you. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay your
kindness.”

“It was a gift,”
Kael said, which made Jake smile.

Not
surprisingly, Jonathan managed to pilfer several bottles of wine from the
ballroom. He drank from one as if it was a flask. “Slayer of witches, toppler
of thrones,” he said as he stumbled into Kael. “Here, have a nip of His Former
Dukeness’s finest wine!” And proceeded to pour it down his collar.

Every pirate
aboard
Anchorgloam
stepped up to
congratulate him. They shook his hands and ruffled his hair, offered him
tankards of grog and plates of whatever delicacies they’d nicked from the ball.
By the time he made it through the crowd, his ears were rattling from all
good-natured pats on the back.

Lysander and
Aerilyn stood at the front of the ship, dancing to no music whatsoever. Her
hair was loose and her face paint was divided between them in equal smears.

When she saw
Kael, she threw her arms about his neck. “You were brilliant!” she said into
his hair. “I don’t know what I would’ve done, had the pair of you not arrived
when you did. Reginald was getting very pushy,” she added, wrinkling her nose.

“Yes, and what’s
happened to our favorite halfdragon?” Lysander said, craning his neck above the
revelers. “Has she run off?” When he caught Kael’s nod, his face softened.
“Don’t worry your head over it — to leave is in her nature. But she
always comes back.”

He didn’t want
to talk about Kyleigh. The wound in his chest was still too fresh. He wanted to
shove his worry aside and find something else to occupy him. “What will we do
now?”

Lysander took
Aerilyn back in his arms and smiled hard. “That’s for you to decide, Wright.
You’ve done me — and all the people of the seas — a great service.
My ship is at your command.”

Kael was
impatient to get back to his quest. He wanted to see Amos rescued and his
village avenged. But the thing Geist said haunted him. It plagued the back of
his mind and made him worry.

What if his army
wasn’t big enough to face Titus? What if he marched off right away and led the
pirates straight to their deaths? As much as his heart ached for home, he
couldn’t risk their lives — not when there was a large chance they might
not succeed.

He decided
quickly. “If we’re going to storm the mountains, I think we’ll need more
swords.”

Lysander raised
an eyebrow. “I see. And where do you plan to find them?”

“I hear the
giants are good to have in a fight.”

Lysander smiled
in relief, then threw his head back and laughed. “Aye, I’ve heard that, too. So
it’s off to the Endless Plains. And I suppose you have a plan of attack?”

That was the
frustrating part. “I wish we had that logbook. It’d make things a great deal
easier.”

Lysander grinned
mischievously and reached inside his vest. “You mean
this
?”

Kael caught the
book he threw at him and could scarcely hide his astonishment. “When —?”

“Ah, not when
—
how
,” Lysander cut in. “A
thief doesn’t need time, remember? Only opportunity. And I’ll bet Chaucer’s
wishing he would have done up his buttons, right about now. The nerve of that
blighter,” he said darkly. “
Chancellor
Chaucer — can you imagine? I’ll have to make sure the votes get tampered
with.”

“But won’t he
follow us and try to take it back?”

Lysander
snorted. “He’ll have a rough time catching us without his sails.”

That’s when Kael
looked up and noticed
Anchorgloam
was
outfitted with new billowing blue sails, stamped with the emblem of the High
Seas. Aerilyn gasped and smacked Lysander in the shoulder.

“What? Mine were
all gooey,” he said.

She crossed her
arms and tried to look severe. “You’re a bad man, do you know that? An absolute
villain.”

He silenced her
accusations with a kiss.

The evening sun was falling, washing
Gravy Bay in orange light. It fell behind the cliffs and bled out onto the sea.
Anchorgloam
was a toy boat in the
distance — a shadow bobbing gently on the waves. Kael watched her rock,
watched the gulls circling hopefully about her sails and for a moment, felt at
peace.

And then a great
head of wiry hair blocked his view. “Is it sunset, yet?” the man the hair
belonged to said. And the planks of the dock creaked as he stood on his tiptoes
to see over the woman in front of him.

Kael clenched
his fists tightly as more bodies shifted to look at the sun. He tried not to
think about the fact that there were naught but a few planks between his boots
and the ocean — or how the sheer number of people packed onto the docks
must be buckling them.

But he thought
he could hear the wood grunting under their weight.

He turned back
around and nearly got clipped by Lysander — who was pacing nervously in
the space between Kael and Thelred.

He wore a clean
white shirt and his customary tanned breeches. His hands twisted behind his
back and Thelred watched him carefully — as if he might fling himself
into the ocean the first chance he got.

“How much
longer?” Lysander snapped, and this time it was Thelred who replied patiently:

“Hardly another
minute.”

“Good. I don’t
think I could wait much longer.” He reached up to fuss at his collar, but
Thelred grabbed his wrist and gave him a stern look. “You’re right — I
shouldn’t get all wrinkly.”