Diamond Bonds (29 page)

Turk recognizes their change in demeanor.  “H-Hey now!  I’ll give you two full run of the ship, and I’ll see if I can find you faster transport once we’re home.”  As Di starts to sniffle uncontrollably, Turk quickly moves toward the door.  “I uhh… I gotta go do something.”  He makes his exit with great haste.

Curling her knees to her chest, Di chokes back the tears as she buries her face into arms.  “I thought I was finally going home, but now I’m…”

Jem is surprised it’s taken this long for the journey to emotionally break the small girl sitting next to her.  As the sniffling turns to sobbing, Jem places her arm around Di’s shoulders, taking care to maneuver the cuff chains in front of her face.

“And Era!  He’s gone, Jem!”  Di looks at her with red, teary eyes.  “He’s gone for good, isn’t he?”

Jem can’t argue the point despite her best attempt to do so.  As the ship rocks them back and forth, she wonders if there is any chance Era escaped the wrath of that captain.  In that moment, it strikes her that she could possibly never see him again, and the thought brings tears to her eyes.

*              *              *

The crew works frantically to replace the rune installed at the base of the ship’s aft.  “How much longer?” Marin barks at Giarva as he oversees the implementation.

The soldier whirls around and salutes.  “Ma’am!  We should be ready in about twenty more minutes!”

Marin looks up at the mainsail, her eyes narrowed.  “They’re undoubtedly headed for Allerian waters.  We’ll catch up to them before they make it past the boundary.”  Turning to survey the deck, she asks, “How many did we get?”

Giarva pulls a crumpled paper from his pocket.  “Eight dead, ten in the brig,” he reads. “Probably about half their crew.”

“And our losses?”

Giarva hesitates before reporting, “They killed seven of ours, ma’am.  Another seven have serious injuries.”

Marin’s clenches her fists and glares at her second-in-command.  “We outnumbered them,
ambushed
them, and we only claimed FOUR MORE?”  Slamming her fist into the rail, she turns and marches briskly away.  “Lieutenant, I’m headed to the hold, and I’m not to be disturbed.  When I return, I want the rune ready to go.”

“Yes, ma’am!”  Giarva salutes and returns to his work, knowing full well what it means when his captain is not to be disturbed.

Chapter 16

Era collapses against one of the many crates in the hold, exhausted from his fruitless search.  Scared to raise his voice, he had hoped to quickly find Fire, but the poor lighting has made it impossible to find his ally.  He wonders in disbelief if she really slept through the commotion as a flurry of voices continue to loudly echo from above. 

He becomes dizzy as he considers the situation.  He reaffirms to himself that he could have done nothing to get Jem and Di back once they were on the pirates’ ship, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling guilty for diving into the stairwell, essentially abandoning them.  Finding the lower deck void of soldiers, he had raced to a porthole just in time to watch the pirate vessel accelerate away.  Though desperate to find Fire, he recognizes she won’t have an answer for how to get them back.

Era clumsily gets to his feet, his hands still shackled, this time deciding to call out for his companion.  “Fire!” he calls, keeping his voice just above a whisper.  “Fire, where
are
you!?”

The loud stomping of boots interrupts his search, and Era’s heart skips a beat as he dives behind a crate.  He peers around the edge of the box to see Marin storming into the hold.  Rattled, he presses his back against the crate and holds still to prevent his shackles from clinking.  He carefully pulls his pouch of sand open and dips his fingers into it.

Marin approaches the crates with a canteen in hand.  As she pours it out, she catches and molds the water into a long whip.  Her breath now trembling, she flings the canteen aside, takes aim at a crate, and looses the whip with a scream of frustration.  Unleashing her pent-up rage, she cracks the crates over and over again, reducing several of them to splintered rubble.  Marin’s rage takes her around the room, and she inevitably comes to Era’s hiding place.  Oblivious to his presence, she strikes it with the same explosive force, and Era finds himself with little choice but to dive behind a different crate.

The movement doesn’t escape the captain’s notice.  “Who’s there!?” she calls out, getting nothing back in response.  She watches the boxes and cracks her whip for effect.  “Come out!”

Era grips his weapon, his palms growing sweaty as he waits in frozen silence.

Marin growls with anger and unleashes a barrage of strikes against crates at random to draw out the intruder.  Eventually, she creates enough havoc that Era is forced to dive out from his hiding spot to avoid taking a blow.  Fully revealed, he jumps to his feet just in time to have Marin snap her whip around his blade, and she tugs at it as he grips it with both handcuffed hands.

“The spy!?” Marin exclaims in surprise.  “Ah, so you were left behind by your friends!”  She yanks back with her water whip, ripping the sword from his hands.  Sand scatters around the hold as the blade loses its form, leaving Era defenseless.  “An earth shaper,” Marin realizes as she cracks her whip.  She snaps her whip at Era, who brings his arms up to shield himself, and the whip wraps itself tightly around one of his wrists.

Marin grins devilishly as she pulls her whip tight.  “This is going to feel better than tearing up a bunch of crates!”  Yanking back, she musters enough strength to force Era to stumble toward her, both defenseless and off-balance as he struggles to stay on his feet.  Marin slams Era in the gut, shoving him backward before using her whip to twist and fling him into a crate.  Her victim rolls over, gripping his side tightly.

“This is what justice feels like!” she taunts as she slams him into another crate, and then another, and then another. Though Era does his best to brace himself before each collision, he’s powerless to do anything to reduce the impact.

Marin brings him to a rest, and her watery whip snakes up his body and around his neck.  She wills the liquid to pull him up to his knees, and then to his toes.  He tugs on the line, gasping for air as the amusement disappears from Marin’s face.  “I’ve had my fun.  Now you’re going to tell me who you are and how you’re related to Turk.”

“I’m… I’m telling you, we’re… not…”

“Lies!  You were with an Allerian!  That makes you-!”

Marin’s rant is cut off as a figure appears next to Era and promptly chops her hand through the whip.  Her weapon snapped in two, the naval captain falls backward from momentum, and Era hits the floor as the other half of the whip loses form and splashes around him.

Relief washes over Era’s face as he chokes and coughs.  “About time, Fire!”

Fire looks completely dazed.  The handkerchief she normally wears over her head is around her neck, and her short hair is plastered to one side of her face.  She shakes her head to wake up and looks down at Era with a slur in her voice.  “You idiot!  I told you to stay out of trouble, and
this
is what I find when I wake up?”

“You’ve been
sleeping?
”

“Yes!  And that’s what
you
should be doing as well!”  Groggily, she points at Era’s opponent and asks, “Who is this person?  Why are you in a fight with her?”

“Fire?” Marin repeats as she stands, her whip now half as long as it was before.  “As in, Fire the
assassin?
”

Fire studies her in alarm.  “You’ve heard of me?”

“You’re a menace to the crown.  You assassinated the mayor of Trebulin.  He was a strong ally of the Valvoran navy.”

Her eyes narrow to slits.  “How do you know about that?”

“The military knows everything about villains like you,” Marin utters with disgust.  “I’ve read your profile.  I am Captain Marin of the Valvoran Naval Forces.”

Fire glares down at Era.  “You picked a fight with a
naval captain?
  Are you insane!?”

Before Era can defend himself, Marin interrupts the conversation with a crack of her whip.  “I despise scum like you!  I’m going to break you like I broke your idiot friend.”

“He may be an idiot, but he’s
not
my friend,” Fire retorts.

“I don’t think that was her point,” Era comments.

Marin snags the canteen from the floor and pours the rest of its contents over her shortened weapon, allowing it to absorb the extra water before cracking it against the floor.  “I don’t know how you snapped my whip, but it won’t happen again!”

Fire’s lips curl smugly at the taunt.  She withdraws her dagger and crouches low as Marin spins her whip around in front of her.  In the dim light of the hold, Fire notices the end of the whip grow slightly in size, taking the form of a mace.  She backs off as Marin makes her approach, spinning the mace vertically from side to side as she pushes Fire backward toward the row of crates.

Era finds that every bone in his body aches from getting thrown around.  Angry at himself for getting caught by the captain’s techniques, he tries desperately to will himself to his feet so he can help his ally, but the best he can do is roll in anguish.

Her back against the wall, Fire runs out of space to retreat, and Marin pushes her advantage hard.  Her mace is now twirling at an incredible speed, alternating back and forth between her right and left sides.

“Making me do
this
, huh?”  Fire is the only one who can hear her own muttering as she swiftly thrusts her blade into the rotating weapon.  As the whip enwraps her blade, Fire slams her fist into the taut rope.  Water sprays everywhere as the bolstered weapon again snaps, and Marin scrambles to form what little water she has left into a small sword.  They meet blades, but Fire’s dagger shatters Marin’s weapon with ease.

Fire slashes her dagger across Marin’s side, but the desperate captain catches it with a water rope, gripped tightly by both hands.  This time, her shaping holds true and she twists the blade from Fire’s hand, only to receive a forceful jab to her abdomen.  As she bends over in reflex, Fire’s knee meets her forehead, knocking her out.

Era is in awe.  “Fire, that was amazing!  And to think I’ve beaten you
twice!
”

“You
haven’t
beaten me!” Fire barks as she marches over to her injured companion.  Squatting, she gets in his face and glares at him.  “But if you want to back that up, I’m game for fighting right now.”  Era frantically shakes his head.  “Thought so,” she sneers.

“Either way, there’s a lot that makes sense all of a sudden.”  She gives him a quizzical look, and he points out over the floor.  Alarmed, Fire finds tiny ice crystals littering the battlefield, each fragment shimmering in the light of the flickering lanterns.  “You’re an ice elementalist!” Era exclaims.  “No wonder you can snap water weapons like twigs, and that even explains how you shattered that monster’s arms in the caverns at Ugorzi.  Right?”  She spins back to Era, who grins and asks, “What, did I figure out your secret?  Jem’s going to go nuts when she finds out you two have something in common.  And to think you’ve been calling her ‘Ice Queen’ this whole time!”

Fire grabs the collar of his shirt.  “You will tell
no one
about this.  Do you understand?”

Era is delighted.  “Sure, sure.”

“I’m serious, Idiot!”  Giving him a shove, Fire jabs her thumb at Marin.  “That woman had a file on me.  If she had known what I can do, she would never have engaged me like that.  Secrets like this can mean life or death in my line of work.”

Era is taken aback by the gravity of Fire’s request.  “Erm… yeah, I guess you’re right about that.”

She looks back at Era with cold eyes.  “So are you going to keep my secret, or do I need to silence you?”

Era wants to laugh, but he finds himself alarmed at the sincerity in Fire’s gaze.  He swallows hard, realizing he’s in no position to negotiate.  “F-Fine, I’ll keep your secret.”  He leans back, careful not to move too much.  “But wow, Di would love to see you in action knowing you’re an elementalist.  Chopping water ropes with your bare hands?  She’d flip out!”

Fire nods.  “It’s not that I’m strong enough to snap an elemental weapon.  Water shapers can’t shape ice, so I just froze through the whip at the moment of contact.  That’s the whole trick.”  She turns and walks over to Marin, unsheathing her dagger.

“W-Wait, Fire,” Era calls out, “what are you doing?”

“Just look away, Era.  This will only take a moment.”  She kneels behind Marin and pulls her head back, positioning her dagger across the front of the captain’s neck.

“I will
NOT!
” Era screams as he scrambles to his feet and runs straight for Fire.  However, his injured legs give out halfway there, and Fire drops Marin just before Era crashes into her.

Fire glares at him in annoyance.  “Now is
not
the time for this!”

“You’re not killing her, Fire!”

Fire crosses her arms.  “You’re so against killing… but just what did you expect by hiring an assassin?”

“Yeah, I hired you.  And since I’m paying you, I expect you’ll follow
my
rules.”

She scowls and points at her fallen opponent.  “That woman is a
naval captain!
  She’s going to report us!  Leaving her alive will cause us problems down the road.”

Era doesn’t back down.  “That’s not a reason to kill her.”

“What is
with
you?” Fire shouts as she stamps her foot.  “Do you have
any
idea what kind of trouble you’re in?  Do you think you and the ice queen are going to drop the princess off and just go back to your happy old lives?  You’re in so far over your head, and you don’t even realize it!”

“That doesn’t mean I have the right to take her life.  Even if it makes my life easier… Even if it ends up saving my own life!”  Before Fire can object, Era adds, “My father taught me a lot in my life-”

“Great. More brilliant advice from the loser dad.”

The comment strikes a nerve.  “Hey, I know he taught me a lot of unconventional things, but he also instilled in me that, no matter what I take from others, I never have the right to take a life.”  Scratching his head, he admits, “I don’t know why, but that one stuck with me.”

Fire doesn’t back down.  “You think anyone else you fight feels the same way?  If you respect the lives of your enemies, it’s going to get you killed.”

Meeting Fire with firm resolution, he says, “That doesn’t make it right, and you never know… maybe killing them will come back to haunt you some day.”

“Not killing your enemies will come back to haunt you
immediately
,” Fire insists.  “You’re naïve if you think that anything good can come from showing your enemies mercy.”

“Well,” Era suggests, “if I thought like you do, you’d be dead right now.  So that logic saved your life, right?”

The simple revelation takes Fire aback, and she points her dagger at him, a wild look in her eye.  “Era, you let me kill her, or I’m going to-”

“How many enemies have you killed, Fire?  And has it made your life easy?” her companion asks with concern.  “If I’d done that… If I’d let you die in the woods that night…”   Shaking it off, he offers a content gaze.  “I’m glad I didn’t.”

Fire’s heart skips a beat before sinking deep into her gut, and she averts her eyes.  She wants desperately to kick Era away and finish the job.  Allowing the captain to report back to the military will make it impossible to deny their suspicions about her.  And yet, looking back at Era, she finds her heart pounding.