The Road to Hell - eARC (79 page)

The fins sped up and knifed past her. A chunk of debris—
human
debris—floating ten feet away vanished into the black water. Howan Fai watched in wide-eyed horror. Then he shouted with all his strength.

“HELP!” The bellow raced across the black water.

Andrin shrieked as more fins appeared in the water. “
Help!
Sharks!”

Someone shouted. A man stood up in the lifeboat. A light caught them full in the eyes. The man standing in the boat was lifting something. Throwing something. Right at them. A life ring smacked down beside them. They lunged for it, grabbed hold as still more fins cut through the water. Some of those fins were far larger than others, and she sensed a mad swirl of violence all about her.

The instant they gripped the life ring, the men in the lifeboat hauled on the rope, and Andrin and Howan Fai shot forward through the water. Something big grazed her kicking legs again. Scraped it raw. Something else brushed against her and rolled pushing her hard. She screamed—

—and then something was
under
her, heaving, sending her hurtling up like an elevator. Whatever it was literally
threw
her over the lifeboat’s side, into the startled arms of one of the sailors. The man’s arms closed instinctively as her hurtling weight knocked him flat. She landed on top of him, and an instant later, Howan Fai was beside her, coughing and shaking.

Andrin sprawled across the bottom of the boat, across bits and pieces of several men, shuddering violently with cold and terror. Her leg bled where the shark had hit her the second time, but she shoved herself up on an elbow, staring back out at the water. The searchlights picked out more and more sharks teaming the strait, yet something else was out there too. Massive fins were ripped down under the waves not to emerge.

Andrin clung tight to the gunwale watching the sea battle. Something towed a corpse in Imperial Guard uniform and lifted it with surprising gentleness—once, twice, and three times until the searchers overcame their shock enough to pull it onboard.

A black and white orca’s face with a rough scar over the left eyespot examined her for a long solemn moment before twisting back towards the maddened swarm of shark fins. Whatever the Order of Bergahl’s Talent had done, the cetaceans were aware and fighting.

She heard a blur of voices as the boat rocked violently under her.

Then someone had a blanket wrapped around her. She allowed herself to be lifted again, turned and propped against a shoulder. Someone pressed a metal rim to her lips, exhorting her to sip, to swallow whatever was in the flask he held, and she gulped down fiery liquid. The whiskey tore down her throat and left her coughing and wheezing, but it warmed her up and steadied her down.

The blur of voices resolved into the sound of men weeping in wild relief. Someone was saying, over and over, “Oh, thank the Triads, Shalana’s mercy, oh, thank the Triads…” and someone else was cursing in rough tones that she slowly realized were an expression of shock and a release of stress too deep to endure. Someone else was shouting through a megaphone. “We’ve got her! We’ve found the Crown Princess! She’s alive, we’ve got her safe, she’s all right and the Crown Prince Consort is with her…”

Andrin found herself looking up into the face of the sailor she leaned against. He was just a common seaman, a rough-faced, ordinary sailor in his early forties, from the look of him, but there were tears in his eyes and on his weathered cheeks, and he held a whiskey flask.

“Need another swallow?” he asked gently.

She nodded.

He had to hold the flask to her lips, again, and she swallowed another deep gulp, shuddering as it ripped down her throat and tore into her belly. But it helped ease the painful shudders The cold of the water, the cold of physical exhaustion, the cold of deep and desperate terror had left her shaking so violently, she couldn’t even control her own arms and legs.

The sailor brushed wet hair off her face with a gesture so tender it brought tears to her own eyes. He pulled the blanket more closely around her shoulders and urged her to sip the whiskey again.

“Thank you,” she croaked out, voice little more than a hoarse rasp. “Oh, Triads, thank you so much…” She was dissolving into tears again, sobbing and shaking as the terror caught her in its teeth. Howan Fai leaned against her, wrapped in his own blanket. He held her awkwardly, made gentle hushing sounds, rocked her slightly while she clung to him and cried helplessly.

When the hysteria had finally run its course, she knew a long moment of stinging shame for having broken down in front of all these people, still working to clear the wreckage and find whoever else might have survived. But a gentle touch and the tears streaking down Howan Fai’s own face told her she was more than entitled to a little bawling. She sighed softly; then lifted her face.

The expression of the sailor still holding the bottle had twisted with anguish as he watched his crown princess and consort weep, and she gave him a tremulous smile.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “Ever so much.”

For some reason, those words and that shaky little smile caused a fresh rush of tears to well up in his eyes. “You’re welcome, Your Grand Highness,” he choked out.

She turned her head and looked around to find every man in the lifeboat watching her. She managed another smile, then turned again to Howan Fai. His blanket was slipping, his cold-numbed fingers having difficulty holding it one-handed. His jacket was gone. He must have wrenched it off on the way down, when he’d jumped overboard with her. He was still wearing the sheath he’d worn since the day of their wedding, but the knife was missing.

He must have used it to cut away her gown, she realized slowly. No wonder he’d managed to rip it off her back so quickly. Then he’d lost the knife, somewhere in the wild confusion when the ship had blown up. He cradled another whiskey flask in his hands, and his shoulders drooped in exhaustion, but his eyes shone fiercely, fixed on her. They might be huddled in the bottom of the lifeboat, shaken out of their wits, but they were still alive and still together.

The rush of love she felt for the quiet, courageous man she’d married filled her heart to bursting, and then, suddenly, there in that crowded lifeboat, a wall went down. That turbulent tide of love lifted her, reached out, opened what she realized must be the marriage bond Darcel and Alazon had described to her. But how? Howan Fai wasn’t Talented! They
couldn’t
forge a marriage bond, yet they had. They
had!
And as her emotion swept across him, through the bond they now shared, the look in his eyes shifted, gentled…and somehow blazed more fiercely than ever.

Until now, she realized, she’d only tried to love Howan Fai. She’d liked him immensely, enjoyed his company, been enthralled by his touch in the night. But not until this moment, crouched nearly naked in the bottom of a lifeboat, wrapped in a blanket and leaning against him…not until now had she truly realized how much she’d come to love the man she’d married.

“You are my heart,” she whispered fiercely, gently, deeply. “I’ll need you forever.”

A moment later, she was in his arms, shuddering against
his
shoulder. He choked out her name again and again, his heart slamming against her ear, his lips buried in her wet, tangled hair. When the shudders had finally run their course, again, he touched her face with wondering fingertips; then he kissed her lips, very gently.

“I may be your heart,” he whispered, “but you are my soul, Andrin.”

She clung to him, needing the quiet strength of him more than she’d ever needed anything in her life, and he braced himself carefully against the gunwale beside her, then pulled her down to rest against his shoulder. She leaned into him, longing to simply sit in the safe haven of his arm forever, yet she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t, for the cruel echoes of her Glimpse were still upon her. She didn’t want to face what came next—more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life, she wanted
not
to face it—but she was a Calirath, heir to the Winged Crown of Ternathia and the throne of Sharona.

She bit her lip, then faced the sailors who’d pulled them from the water.

“Does anyone know if my parents are alive?” she asked in a shaky voice. “The Grand Palace exploded just before my Prince jumped overboard with me.”

She watched shock wash across their faces. They’d been so desperately focused on the search for her, they’d forgotten about the explosion at the Grand Palace. She could all but hear the next thought reflected on their faces:
We might be guarding the Empress…

Firelight from the burning fuel revealed the shift from shock to hard, grim determination.

“Get us back to the
Striker
,” the petty officer in the prow barked. “
Move
, damn it!”

The oarsmen bent over the shafts of their oars, and they shot across the black water like a sculling boat in a regatta. Andrin had never imagined such a heavy boat could move so quickly without steam, but then the destroyer’s hull rose above them like a steel cliff, blotting out the stars. Their helmsman brought them alongside with the polished efficiency that was the Imperial Navy’s hallmark, and then the falls from the davits were being hooked on. A steam winch clanked, and the lifeboat rose smoothly, water running from its keel to the water below as it rose to deck level while Andrin clung to Howan Fai, exhausted and so deeply afraid she could hardly breathe.

When they reached the deck, the captain, himself, helped her out of the boat while Howan Fai steadied her. She clutched the blanket around her as the captain said, “Vothan be praised, Your Grand Highness! Let’s get you both someplace safe and warm.”

Someone else turned up—a grizzled Marine chief armsman, with four enlisted men at his back. There was a heavy Halanch and Welnahr revolver at the noncom’s side, all four of his men carried both revolvers and slide-action shotguns, and their faces were grim, their expressions harsh in the light of
Peregrine
’s fires. They fell in about her and Howan Fai as the captain escorted them across the swarming deck. They passed sailors who stood rigidly at attention, faces wet, but eyes shining as she passed, and she tried hard to smile at them.

They were met part way across the deck by another officer, running to meet them. He carried a surgeon’s bag, and several medical assistants were right behind him with stretchers. The moment the ship’s surgeon touched her, Andrin knew she was safe, in the hands of a master healer. A wondrous rush of warmth and strength washed through her, and then she was lifted up, carefully, and placed on one of the stretchers.

“I can walk,” she protested.

“So you can,” the surgeon nodded, sounding her pulse, “but I won’t be letting you, so just rest quietly, Your Grand Highness. We’ll have you in sick bay and feeling better in no time.”

She didn’t want to let go of Howan Fai’s hand, but the surgeon ordered him onto the other stretcher after the briefest touch on his shoulder. The stretcher bearers lifted them, and she suddenly realized they were taking her away and the captain wasn’t coming with them.

“Wait!” she cried. “Captain, I need to tell you something! Urgently!”

He was at her side in an instant, even as the surgeon sent another flood of healing energy into her, inducing drowsiness.

“We heard two men on a cabin cruiser out there,” Andrin said, gripping the captain’s hand. “While we were in the water. They’d planned this whole monstrous thing. They might still be out there. They have a Masker and”—her mouth twisted—“someone who Calls sharks.”

The captain’s face flared with sudden blazing interest.

“You
know
who did this, Your Highness? Was it agents from Arcana?”

She shook her head, wishing it were so, but Arcanans didn’t have Talents and they didn’t speak Shurkhali.

“No,” she said in a hoarse rasp. “It was the Seneschal.” Her voice went harsh with hatred. “We heard his filthy hirelings talking about it, not thirty feet away. He sent men to board the
Peregrine
in the dark to throw me over the rail to the sharks. They meant to make
certain
I was dead before the bomb went off—they probably didn’t know the yacht had so much fuel aboard and they were afraid I might have survived the explosion somehow—but I had a Glimpse just seconds before they attacked. We saw men swarm up over the rail and come running at us across the deck, right before Howan Fai threw me over the rail. My armsmen and Marines were shooting back in a gun battle as we went overboard.”

The captain turned from Andrin to Howan Fai then spoke roughly, “Your Grand Highness, you have my gratitude and deepest respect.” He saluted Howan Fai, sharply.

“Thank you, Captain. But if not for Andrin’s Glimpse, the Seneschal’s plan would have worked and I’d be dead, along with all the rest.”

Water started to stream down Andrin’s face again—the inhaled ocean water stung her eyes and nose now that she had time to notice it—but her tears more than that. Raw fury clawed at her throat.

“That evil man has to be found, has to be punished! His people blew up the yacht, killed my staff, my armsmen. And Lazima!” She remembered her personal armsman turning to face the running dark figures, the revolver spitting flame in his hand, the way he’d stepped directly between her and the threat. “Did chan Zindico—? Has Lazima chan Zindico been found? I don’t remember having time to tell him. He was right there not two steps away from us. No, no, he wasn’t in the water. One of them threw something at us in the Glimpse and he moved into it. He couldn’t have jumped, or if he had he would have already been bleeding, and the sharks—”

She froze, her throat closing in anguish for just a moment, but then something went through her—something hard, and deadly, and icy cold, and her voice went hard as flint.

“That bastard arranged
all
this. My yacht, my servants, my armsmen, and, and—The palace! I saw it burning too. Are my sisters…?” She turned to look towards the coastline where orange firelight flickered too brightly on the spot where the Tajvana Palace should have shone with festival lighting.