World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (29 page)

The tiniest glimmer of fear sparked in his eyes before he retreated behind bravado. “You won’t kill me.”

“You’re right. I won’t. But you’ll wish for that before I’m done.” It was scary how easy it was to draw on the darkness inside, the Originator part of me. Or had it always been there, stuffed down deep and unacknowledged? “Did you know that time doesn’t move here? I could keep you here for centuries. You could lie there with your skin flayed from your body and live for eons.”

“Please, I don’t know anything important. Kenda comes over and I sleep with her, compliment her if she’s grumpy, and she pays me good. Real good. That’s it. I don’t love her. She don’t love me. It’s sex.” He thrust his pelvis into the air. “Sex,” he said again, as if I didn’t know what that was.

“Where is my daughter?”

“I don’t kno—ow!” I’d slapped him this time. Tears came to his eyes. Part of me was ashamed of myself. A very small part.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You hit me.”

I ignored him as he babbled on about not knowing anything, said Kenda didn’t talk to him, not about things like that. I pulled open a drawer labeled, “Sharp things,” and lifted a hacksaw free of the neatly arranged implements. The blade shone with a recent polishing, its serrated edge sharp enough to cut me when I tested it with a fingertip.

‘Damn, Ty, way to be even creepier than usual,’ I thought.

There was a time and place for surgical sterility. Harrison would have found comfort in it, something Tytan had known inherently. It was why the room we’d dragged him to had been filthy.

This guy. “Your name is Jax, right?” I said, interrupting his blather, turning to let him see the hacksaw in my left hand.

“No, no please. I don’t know anything.”

I passed the saw to Krosh, with an apology. “There’s no way I’d make it through the guy’s bone using my left hand.”

He nodded. “Arm or leg?”

I studied the guy thoughtfully, considering, feeling his fear ramp up and his adrenaline kick in. “Leg. Might as well go big. Maybe he won’t make us work too hard for what we need to know. Maybe he won’t end up without any arms or legs, reliant on his mistress for his every need.” I focused on his face this time, his nostrils flared, his eyes wide, his pupils contracted. “She’ll take care of you, yeah?”

I could see the answer all over his face. Kenda wasn’t the type of person to take care of anyone but herself. It scared me that Bethy had been in such company for so long.

Of course, here was her mother, torturing a man for information. But I would never hurt her. Kenda had no such qualms.

“Let’s take a toe. I know I said leg, but I’d hate to maim the guy permanently if a toe will make him talk.”

Krosh set the saw against the base of Jax’s toe and that was all it took. “She said she sold her! There was a slaver docked at Bayladdy and Kendra sold her on the condition they’d take her with them when they sailed after the next tides. They love Wydling kids in skytowns, you know.”

Shaking with rage, I wasn’t able to speak. Krosh asked the next question. “What do you know about the capture of an older man? A witch?”

Jax was twitching like a druggie, nervous as all get out, straining his neck to see what Krosh was doing with the saw. “I don’t know about an old dude. Your friend, Arsinua? She’s in the fighting pits. Kenda said I could do what I wanted with the money, so I was thinking we’d go on vacatio—” the man’s voice rose three octaves as Krosh pushed the saw forward, slicing neatly through flesh and bone. Another pull back, blood gouting onto the table and the floor. Another push forward and the toe fell to the table.

“Why?” the man screamed. “I told you everything. Why?” His keening made my head hurt and I dropped a protection bubble around him, muffling the man’s cries.

I was shaking and Krosh laid the saw down and gathered me into his arms. My words were muffled against his chest. “That bitch sold her.”

“We’ll find her.”

Tears fell, tears I didn’t want to shed. I fought not to shove away from Krosh and take up the saw myself. The bastard was planning a vacation using money from the sale of my Bethany. A missing toe was a slap on the wrist.

When I’d gathered my wits about me, what was left of them, anyway, I took a picture of Jax and his bloody toe stump. I put the toe into a baggy and Krosh and I hooked to Bayladdy, leaving Jax behind to scream.

***

Signs everywhere declared it was only a day until high tide. I hadn’t realized it came in so frequently and said so to Krosh.

“It doesn’t. Perhaps the taking of the Omphalos has changed that too.”

It made it more important than ever for us to find Bethy. I wanted to catch the bastards before they sailed, if they hadn’t already.

“I don’t know where to start,” I said, frustrated with the crowds. Walking through them was slow going and we pressed up into a shop doorway to make our plans.

“Let’s talk with the dock master first, see which ships are scheduled to debark. If that fails, I suggest we talk to Zephyrinia.”

It was a good a plan as any, so we threaded our way through the crowd to the gleaming metal office set up on stilts by the water. The stairs rang as we climbed them, their gleaming steel glinting with noonday sun.

A bored young man sat at the information desk up front, and he laughed when he heard our question. “There won’t be no ships going nowhere until the tide rolls out. It would be suicide. Come afternoon, all the ships have to be battened down and docked in the metal bays above.” He jabbed his hand out the window and up.

More metal gleamed over our heads, lodestones attached to the bottoms of each bay to keep them afloat. “What would happen to a ship if it got caught in the tide?”

He whistled and down dropped his hand to slap into his other palm. “Blam. Nothing good. The tide eats through the wood and the bags. If the crew don’t fall out the bottom, the bags lose air. Ain’t nothing good come from that tide, but that I get a day or two off work.”

“Do you have a list of ships that will be disembarking after the tide?”

“Uh, yeah. But I ain’t going to show you. You a harbor master? A Council member? I don’t think so.”

“I’m a lady who’s going to drag you out of your box and beat your ass if you don’t show me.”

He scoffed.

I grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands, shoved power into my arms, and yanked him halfway across the counter. When we were nose to nose I said, “Change your mind?”

His eyes bulged and he clawed at my hands. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed his fear-spit. “I got it right here. You got to let me go if you want me to get it.”

“Reach for it, because if I let you go, it’ll be out here where I can bloody your nose.”

“Fine, fine.” He strained, his face turned red, and he thought about giving up. I saw it in his eyes. Whatever he saw in mine convinced him to try harder. He slapped the paper on the counter and I let him go as Krosh picked it up.

“See? That wasn’t so damn hard, was it?”

“I’m calling the Council.”

“Go ahead. The name’s Devany. The Anforsa knows me well. Who do you think fixed the Omphalos and then had it stolen?”

He paled as fast as he had reddened earlier. He backed into the far wall, knocking books off the shelf behind him. “Get out of here, all right?”

We ignored him, bent head to head as we studied the paper. “There are eight ships with departure dates the hour after the tide recedes.” Krosh ran his finger down the list, tapping each ship name with his finger. “Can you hook based on the names on this?”

I shook my head. “I have to have some kind of visual.” I put my hand to my forehead to shade my eyes. “We could hook down the pier, check the names and do it that way. I’ll take time, but still better than walking.”

“Let’s go.” He took my hand and we hooked into the middle of the crowd, ignoring the exclamations of surprise at our sudden appearance.

“There’s the
Bird of Paradise,”
I said. “Will they let us aboard, do you think?”

“We won’t let them say no.” We hooked to the gangplank next to the
Bird
and Krosh walked across to the ship. A slender man with silver hair intercepted him. Krosh explained what we were doing and then stood aside. I opened my Magic Eye and caught a glimpse of Bethany’s life line farther to our left, not on the ship we stood on.

“Thank you.”

“I hope ya find her,” the man said, nodding to me.

“Thanks.” Krosh and I hooked to the pier again, then I checked the magic. Rinse and repeat, until a glimmer of blue curled through the side of an airship called the
Sunset Marauder
. A thick protection bubble flickered around the burnt hull. “She’s in there.” It was the ship I’d seen before, its magic still a dark stain in the air. Panic rose in me. “And if I get close, they will know I’m here.”

“The time for stealth is over. Let’s get her out.”

I hooked us alongside the ship—

—as it pulled away from the dock. “No!” I shouted. I picked a spot on the deck and attempted to hook there. We bounced off, thrown bodily out of the hook to sprawl on the pier. I tried again and we were tossed among the boots and sandals of the passing crowds.

The sailors on the
Marauder
were in action, tossing ropes, unfurling sails. Sails? “They’re leaving! They can’t. Oh god, they’ll kill her.” I lunged forward, intent on throwing myself at them until I broke through. Only Kroshtuka catching my arm stopped me. We’d been so close, to be denied again, broke me. I collapsed into Krosh’s arms and sobbed. He held me, moving me out of the press of foot traffic, though I didn’t notice.

A low voice murmured, the words noise to me until I heard, “The captain of the
Marauder
is a bastard, but he’s a damned fine sky captain.” Brown scuffed boots with soft soles swam into view, then the buckles and bands wrapped around the calves. Brown pants next, shiny with wear, and black-patched knees with frayed seams. A battered sheath at her hip, and pouches of hard leather and soft hung from her belt. The gleam of a metal barrel, its tip darkened with use, glinted from under the cracked leather at her waist. Her white shirt was tucked into a high waistband and open low at the neck

Zephyrinia.

“They’ve sailed,” I said, my voice hoarse.

“If anyone can beat the tides, it’s Kieran,” she said, her tone sympathetic.

“They have a
rashn,
” Mal said and Zeph squinted up at the empty sky where the
Marauder
had once been docked.

“If they do, he’ll make it.” She stared at me, hard. “They will make it.”

“Can we go after them now?”

She shook her head and my stomach sank to my shoes. “We don’t have a
rashn,
and the
Lady Free
is battened down. We wouldn’t get her ready in time.” She touched my arm. “I’m so sorry. But I can tell you that no matter how fast they go, my ship can catch them. And I’m more than happy to try as soon as the tides roll out again.”

I didn’t answer, couldn’t without sounding like an asshole. Krosh did for me, accepting her offer of help.

“There’s one thing you should know,” she said, her voice low. It wasn’t good, whatever it was. She continued. “I’ve heard rumors that the crew, or at least a few of the sailors of the
Marauder
have been infected.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“We’ll meet you here at sunrise in two days’ time.”

We agreed and watched the captain and her man disappear into the crowds.

“She’ll be okay,” Krosh said.

I couldn’t answer, too shattered with fear for my child to speak.

He guided me forward, his arm the only thing keeping me upright. “Let’s find a place to stay on the wharf. They have good protections down here.”

I didn’t care where we stayed. Somewhere out there, my daughter was on a ship that might end up a wreck on the sea floor.

TWENTY-THREE

The inn we found was sketchy, but there were rooms available and the locals had praised it to the sky. Our accommodations were two floors below in, “Metal-clad rooms designed to block the tides,” according to the young woman who showed us the way.

I curled up on the bed as Krosh dealt with the details. My mind was numb, my brain unable to wrap itself around anything in a coherent way. Adrift in my misery, I could only feel grateful when he lay down with me on the bed and let me cry.

I wasn’t this person. I didn’t collapse into puddles of despair, yet here I was wallowing and I couldn’t stop. It physically hurt to think of Bethany in danger and I began to worry I might have a heart attack the way my chest ached with every heartbeat. This was boring. It was awful and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about any of it.

“She will be okay,” Krosh said into my hair.

“But what if she’s not? How will I live with that?”