“Oh, gods, no!” He lifted her in his arms, brushing her hair away, his hand trembling, his heart breaking. His sob turned into a gasp of astonishment as he beheld her beautiful face, and her eyes fluttered open, then blinked.
“Emil?” Her voice was faint, a bare, hoarse whisper, but it grasped his heart from the depths of despair and sent it leaping into his throat.
“Thank the gods, you’re alive!” He heard cries from behind him, and felt the others rushing to his side, but he paid them no attention. Emil drew her close, and felt her hands clutch him weakly. “Bring water! Quickly!”
A marine pressed a bottle into his hand and he put it to her lips. She took a swallow, and another, then pushed the bottle away and took a deep breath.
“I’m all right, Emil,” she said, her voice stronger already. “Just weak.”
“It’s a wonder she’s alive at all!” Joslan said, his tone somewhat gentler.
“There was water in the pool. It kept me alive.” Camilla smiled up at Emil, her hand clasping his with surprising strength. “And I knew you’d come.”
He kissed her, right in front of the admiral, the marines and the blushing lieutenant. Then he lifted her in his arms, and with a beaming Tim beside him, carried her up out of Hydra’s lair and back into the light.
Chapter 29
No Release
“I can’t believe you let him live,” Camilla said. She clutched the blanket to her breast and looked at Emil as if he were a stranger, stunned with the news that he’d had Parek under the point of his blade and had not killed him.
Parek’s face had been haunting her dreams for days, along with vivid memories of cannibals dragging her friends away through a pall of smoke, their blood darkening the flagstones of the pier. She treasured Emil’s comfort when she woke crying or screaming in the night, but right now, she was having difficulty not thinking him a fool.
“We couldn’t simply murder him, Camilla,” Emil said, his brow furrowed. He took her hand and squeezed it, then cast a meaningful glance toward Tim, who sat on the other side of the bed. “It wouldn’t have been right. It would make us no better than him.”
He did it for Tim
, she realized, and she knew instantly that he was right. She struggled to hide her frustration. She recalled Parek’s brutality, the pain he inflicted, the smug smile on his face at her feigned pleasure, and felt nauseous. Then she remembered the cold satisfaction of driving a dagger into Bloodwind’s heart, seeing the surprise in his eyes, feeling him die.
To the hells with “right
.” She didn’t care about right anymore, she wanted Parek dead.
“Afta’ what he done, I’d a killed de basta’d,” Paska said, nipping a bite of biscuit from the untouched tray of food beside Camilla. “Start on dat food, Miss Camilla. You gotta eat.”
Camilla reluctantly picked up her knife and fork. She knew she should feel better—clean sheets, food and drink, her friends’ smiling faces at her bedside—but she didn’t. She still felt strange, as if she itched all over but couldn’t scratch. She speared a piece of sausage and nibbled. The meat tasted foul, as if it had been boiled in saltwater. She chewed and swallowed with distaste. Despite her enforced starvation, she had eaten sparingly; not for lack of appetite, but because the food tasted odd. She wondered if the water she drank in the cavern might have been tainted, though it had tasted sweet…so sweet.
“Yeah, I coulda killed him,” Paska repeated. “Might not bring oua frien’s back, but it’d make me feel betta’.”
“Do you think they’re all dead?” Emil asked hesitantly. “The ones the cannibals took prisoner, I mean.”
“Prob’ly not,” Tipos said, his tone flat and hard. “At least, not yet. Tim here said dey took maybe two dozen, and it’s not been but twelve days. Dey won’t kill ‘em all so soon. Kill ‘em all at once, how you store de meat?” Paska swatted him and inclined her head toward Camilla, who was forcing down a second bite of sausage. Tipos had the grace to look abashed.
“Can’t we help them?” Camilla asked.
“The admiral has refused,” Norris said, the muscles of his jaw bunching. “His orders are to secure Plume Island and deal with Cynthia. He is determined not to be diverted from that, even if it means sitting here for weeks until Cynthia returns.”
“Aye,” Tipos agreed, clenching his fists at his side. “He’s got de men here ta do it, but he won’t.”
“But if we do nothing…”
“I agree with him on one point; attacking the cannibals on their own island would be costly.” Norris rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “He said he would lose more people than were taken.”
“He would if he’s an idiot,” Paska said, as grim as Tipos. “He won’t even let us take
Flothrindel
to get back to Vulture Islan’ and get help. Said he di’n’t trust us.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Camilla said, putting her fork down and trying a sip of tea. It tasted sour, but she drank it, knowing she needed the fluids. “It’s not his boat, after all. It belongs to Ghelfan.”
“He confiscated it,” Tipos said. “It’s chained to de dock, locked up tight.”
“Confiscated!” Paska gave a snort of derision. “That’s Imperial Navy speak fer ‘stole it’.”
“Just like he’ll confiscate Mistress Flaxal’s ships when she comes back, I’ll wager,” Tipos added.
“Can he do that?” Camilla asked, looking to Emil for an answer. “Is that even legal?”
“The situation is complicated,” Emil said, refusing to meet her gaze. “The emperor sees Cynthia as a threat, and the admiral is under orders to deal with that threat. I think the losses of the
Clairissa
and
Fire Drake
have the admiral running scared. He is erring on the side of caution, and the result is a heavy hand. He refuses to believe that the loss of the ships was not Cynthia’s doing, and won’t accept my word that her intentions are benign.”
“Perhaps I should talk to the admiral,” Camilla suggested. She put aside her knife and fork.
“It certainly couldn’t hurt, my dear,” Emil said. He smiled at her with such fondness that her heart swelled. The memory of his kind face had been the only thing that kept her going in the darkness of the cavern. “Your persuasive talents certainly won me over.”
She blushed as he kissed her, and Tipos, Paska and Tim burst into irrepressible snickers. She smiled, and it felt good. Honest. Something from her heart. She gripped his hand and squeezed it, willing its solidity to carry her through this. She had been many things in her life: a slave, a pirate’s woman, a lover and a captive. Now it was time for her to become something new.
She just wished she knew exactly what that was.
≈
“It’s time, Cyn,” Feldrin said as he entered the cabin wearing his blue captain’s coat. He had trimmed his beard, and someone had even managed to make him sit long enough to tolerate a haircut.
Cynthia stood and adjusted her dress, the only one she had aboard. It was sea-blue and matched his coat nicely. She stepped gratefully into his ready embrace. The solidity of him, steady as a mountain, gave her strength, and she would need all her strength.
“I’m ready,” she said, easing from his arms and lifting the baby from the bed. He was sleeping; fed, burped and changed, he was warm and content. As with her, food and rest had done wonders; he was pink and happy and gaining weight daily. Holding him in her arms, knowing what today would bring, she felt a wave of crushing guilt. Once again, Feldrin’s huge hands on her shoulders steadied her.
“Come on, lass.” He turned her to the door and followed her out of the cabin and up the companionway to the deck.
Chula stood ramrod straight at the door of the cuddy cabin, also in a blue dress jacket, his dark features grim as stone, his eyes gazing over her head. Beside him Horace swayed easily on his feet with the gentle motion of the deck; he offered her a smile and his hand, and she accepted both gratefully to step over the high hatch coaming onto the crowded deck. Mouse fluttered down from the rigging and settled on her shoulder, solemn and silent.
Every man, woman and child—the two cabin boys were barely into their second decade—stood at rigid attention upon the deck of
Orin’s Pride
, and she felt the weight of their gazes. She knew them all, had lived with them on Plume Isle, watched them work in her shipyard, tend their gardens, fish in the lagoons, bear their children and see to her every need with a devotion that bordered upon worship. That devotion, she knew, was what brought them all on this voyage and had sent so many to their deaths. Though their eyes were gentle, some tearful, she felt their devotion like a condemnation.
With Chula and Horace flanking them, Feldrin guided her to the taffrail. When they turned to face forward, the deck was a sea of faces. Cynthia held her own face in stern repose, resisting the urge to look away; she made herself meet those eyes, endure their stares. They deserved it. Feldrin’s hand clasped hers, and she gripped it like a lifeline in a gale. He had agreed to speak, taking her burden onto his broad shoulders once again.
“We’re assembled here to honor our dead,” he began, his voice pitched to reach every ear, “by whose sacrifice our son was saved. When we asked you all, our friends, fer help in this, we didn’t know that so many would pay so dearly. Had we known, we likely wouldn’t have asked, but had they known the price they would pay, I’d venture a guess that they, and you, would still have come. So, we honor their decision, and their sacrifice, and we thank them, and all of you, from the bottom of our hearts fer the gift you have given us.”
Feldrin turned to Horace. “We will now read the names of those who have left us, and those among us who knew them best will speak of their deeds in life.”
Horace read the first name: Quinta, a young woman Cynthia remembered for her flashing smile and the thin scar on her nose. Her friend, Trepa, stepped forward and gave an account of how Quinta had helped him build his first dugout, and how they had paddled it together around the lagoon.
And so it went, name by name, deed by deed, and each one Cynthia remembered in life. Each name brought new pain to her heart, and when they reached the last name, Kloetesh Ghelfan, she stepped forward with tears coursing down her cheeks.
“Kloetesh was a rare friend of mine,” she said. The words scraped her throat raw with emotion, and she had to stop for a moment before she could continue. “Without his kindness and his guidance, I would never have built my first ships, and would never have become a seamage. Feldrin and I honor him by naming our son, Kloe, after him.”
Murmurs of approval swept across the deck of
Orin’s Pride
, but before another could speak, Cynthia raised a hand and continued.
“And I would like to add one more name to the list, though she was not one of us until the end. Kelpie, mer Priestess of Odea, who saved my life three times. The first time was when I plunged into the ocean, sure of my death, and emerged a seamage. The second was the day Bloodwind died, when his demon sorceress attacked both Mouse and me; again, she healed me of a mortal injury. The third time was two days ago, when she saved not only my life, but every life on board this ship.” She remembered her conversation with Tailwalker that morning, and added, “She taught me that love, for good or ill, is the strongest force in the world.”
“So let us honor them,” Feldrin said, his clear, strong voice booming out over the mass of tear-streaked faces. “Let us never forget that they gave their lives out of love, for us, and for our son, Kloe.”
Chula stepped forward then and, to Cynthia’s surprise, he began to sing in a low, melodious tone, in words of his own language. The others picked it up immediately, their voices as one, calling on Odea to take the honored dead into herself, into her limitless and never-ending sea, where all things are renewed.
Orin’s Pride
sailed on, the wind that Cynthia called from Odea’s breath filling her sails and carrying the song of the natives out over the sea. Cynthia gazed into the blue depths. The sea had given her so much, and had taken so much away. Occasionally, she glimpsed the shining scales of the two mer who rode their wake, and wondered about what kind of relationship might be salvaged with them. But right now, she didn’t care. She had the man she loved beside her and their child in her arms, and they were sailing home.
≈
“Don’t give ‘em the satisfaction!” Dura shouted, straining against the bindings of her cage as the screams of pain and terror faded to sobs, then silence. Only the droning chant of the cannibals’ ritual continued. It would end, she knew, when their meal concluded.
Nineteen left
, she thought, looking down the line of tiny cages.
One of us dies every second day as sure as clockwork
.
“They’re going to kill us all one by one, aren’t they, Dura?” someone said in dwarvish. The woman in the next cage looked at Dura with tear-filled eyes. Her name was Pica, and Dura had taught her the dwarvish language.
“Aye, that’s what they’re plannin’, lass.” Dura had abandoned any hope of rescue days before; all she hoped for now was a quick and painless death, though she refused to admit it to anyone. In her soul, she knew they were doomed, but refusing to say it aloud was enough to keep her dwarvish defiance firmly in place. “But Mistress Flaxal should be back from her jaunt in a few days, so mayhap some of us’ll survive.”
“You don’t believe that, Dura,” Pica said. She had been doing joinery for Dura for more than a year, and was a fair hand with a coping saw. She would make a fine carpenter’s mate in any shipyard in the realm. If she lived long enough. “You’re just saying it to keep our hopes up.”
“Aye, that could be, lass, but the gods themselves take lessons from dwarves when it comes to stubbornness, so I’ll jist keep me cards close to me vest ‘till the reaper comes callin’, if you understand me thinkin’.”
Pica shook her head and said, “I’m sorry, Dura, but I don’t understand that thinking at all.” She shifted in her cage, and pulled something from a fold of her tattered loincloth. “Odea will receive us all when this is over and done. It is not dying, but the
manner
of my death that concerns me.”
“Whassat ye got there, lass?” Dura squinted and caught the glint of glossy black stone in Pica’s hand. “A bit of shale rock?”
“Obsidian,” Pica answered in a bare whisper, her dark eyes flicking sidelong to make sure none of their captors were close enough to hear. “It’s sharp, but I don’t know if I have the courage to use it.”
“Then buck up there, lass! Come nightfall, use it to cut the bindings on yer cage, and hightail it outa here!”
“I thought of that, but then I thought about what they’d do if I was caught, and I
would
be caught, Dura.” Pica turned her dark eyes back to Dura and her face fell. The defeat in Pica’s expression made Dura ache in sympathy. “That’s not what I was thinking of using it for.”