Princess at Sea (24 page)

My panicked gaze shot to the hatch. Two pirates stood before it, swords bared, but not fighting. They were belowdecks. The pirates had taken the lower deck!

I tried to stand, failing. Frustration scoured my veins, and I gave a mighty heave at my ropes. Pain raced up my arms and into my skull. I fell back to my knees, almost crying. I could do nothing. Jeck couldn't hear me.

“Jeck!” I cried again. The venom rose as fear and frustration made my heart pound.

Venom,
I thought suddenly. If Jeck couldn't hear me, perhaps I could tell him in his thoughts. Fear for my sister brought my head up. My breath caught. I was balancing on the edge of unconsciousness already. If I tried to use my magic, I might pass out entirely or flood my body with so much toxin that I died. Searching my feelings, I decided I didn't care.

Frightened, I shut my eyes, trying to ignore the sounds of clattering canvas and the screams of men. I took three breaths, willing the venom into play. A feeling of disconnection made my head spin. I had to find Jeck's thoughts. I had to warn him they were below.

Vertigo came out of the darkness like a wave, smothering me. I gasped for air, unable to get enough. My hands cramped into a painful twist, and my head pounded as though someone were hammering on it. Tremors took me, the ropes binding me the only thing keeping me upright. I sent my thoughts out, searching for emotions not mine, wondering how I would find and separate Jeck from the swirling mass of fear and determination around me.

Mirror-bright thoughts of manta rays intruded, shocking me. I pushed them away, sensing their wonder and excitement at the new, curious things that had been sinking slowly and leading them here.

Panic took hold; I'd never find Jeck. I sank deeper into my search, hearing my breath go raspy and irregular as the venom started to affect my involuntary muscles. Suddenly, I fell into a frightening emptiness. I found myself willing myself not to think. There was no emotion for me but to finish a task I no longer knew the reason for. My muscles felt weary and heavy. They had begun to tremble, and I spared a thought that I must be getting old if I was feeling tremors after only this small exertion.

Faint in my thoughts was the barest whisper that something was wrong. This couldn't be right! But like a soap bubble bursting, it came to me.

I had found Jeck, his body weary and his mind shut down to all but one purpose. Our thoughts were mingling. He was feeling my body shaking under the overdose of toxin, and I was experiencing the empty emotion he coated himself with when he killed.

Jeck!
I thought.
They've gained the lower decks! They're belowdecks!

A new pain ripped through me. I gasped as my eyes flashed open. For an instant, I was on the deck of the
Sandpiper
, staring at my bright blood splattering the face of the frightened man before me.
She was in my head
, I thought, the notion not mine but Jeck's.
The chancellor's apprentice was in my head!

Get out!
I heard him demand. A fearsome cry of determination rumbled up from inside me, bursting out as Jeck shouted aloud. The two of us together sent his sword into the man before us with a strength born from his fear at what I had done.

Nausea bubbled up through me when I watched through Jeck the man's eyes bulge in a silent scream. He fell to his knees, his hands clutching Jeck's sword protruding from him. Then he fell to the deck, blood flowing as he tried to get away, his motions quickly losing strength as he drowned in his own blood.

Panting to keep from vomiting, I tore myself from Jeck's thoughts, finding myself kneeling and tied to the mast. Now I knew why Jeck emptied his mind when he fought. To watch himself do that would drive any man insane.

“Cease fighting!” I heard Alex cry out, his voice harsh in fear. “God save you, stop!”

Kneeling with my arms twisted behind me, I brought my head up. Tears blurred my vision. The shouting diminished to leave only the harsh clattering of the unattended sails. I tossed my head to see past my dripping curls, and my rasping breath grew steady. Tears slipped down my face unremarked upon. I had failed.

Contessa was on deck, a pirate's hairy arm about her neck and a short dagger digging into her side. Fear struck me like a slap. I'd seen a knife at my mother's neck once when Alex's brother had taken my kingdom through blood instead of marriage. And she had died in my arms, thinking he was bluffing.

Contessa was frightened, but her lips were pursed in that same defiance I had seen upon my mother before a soldier had slit her throat. Alex's sword was already in another's possession. His eyes were on Contessa, and his face was riven with failure. But it wasn't his failure, it was mine.

“Drop your sword, Captain!” Captain Rylan shouted from his wheel, his hands on his hips and his hat shading his face from the morning sun. “Your boat is aground and your prince and his queen are mine!”

“Do it,” I whispered, knowing he couldn't hear me. “Jeck, drop your sword.” The memory of my mother's death swirled up, choking me.

Jeck stood alone, surrounded by the carnage he had made, his stance wire-tight and unwilling to bend. One long tear in his uniform showed where a sword had reached him when my thoughts had distracted him. Past it, a shallow cut slowly oozed. The crewmen of the
Sandpiper
had already surrendered their weapons and were kneeling on the deck by the railing. Jeck was the only one left.

Never taking his eyes from Captain Rylan, Jeck tossed his sword into the air and caught it by the blade. His jaw clenched to make cords of muscle in his neck, he handed it to the man closest to him.

A cheer rose from the pirates. Contessa was pushed to the railing. A plank had been extended between the two vessels, and she was carried across, frightened and clutching at the man who held her. Alex was next, allowed to walk it with a sword pressing into his shoulder.

Contessa's eyes found me when her feet touched the deck. Her defiance washed away in panic. White-faced, they pushed her belowdecks right after Alex.

The surrendered crewmen were led across one by one. My spirits grew lower and tears closed my throat as Captain Borlett was dragged onto the pirates' ship, slung between two of his battered crew members. Blood seeped from him, making an ominous trail from his thigh to his foot.
Why?
I thought as I leaned forward into the ropes, uncaring that they burned into me.
What had it all been for?
It would have been better had Jeck never tried to free us.

My gaze went to him, now kneeling in the sun. His hands were bound behind him, and the surrounding men had nicked pieces of his skin to make his blood run. Jeck took it without comment, not recognizing the pain but for a steady tightening of the muscles in his shoulders. I felt sick. I had tried to make things better but only made them worse.

“What about him?” one of the men called, pointing his blood-smeared dagger at Jeck.

“Leave him,” Mr. Smitty said. “A man like him won't leave his sovereign to become pirate. More likely he'd lie to remain free, then try to help his prince.” He lifted his chin and ran a hand across it. “Isn't that right, Captain?” he called out.

Jeck raised his eyes from the horizon. “Yes, sir,” he said softly, his resonant voice carrying over the slapping waves and thumping canvas. The captured Costenopolie soldiers were silent in their shame and fear.

“But bring me his boots afore you set the boat afire,” Mr. Smitty said. Then he paused, turning to Captain Rylan. “That is, if you don't mind?”

The graying man snickered and moved his feet to make his belled boots ring. “Take the spoils of the battle, Mr. Smitty. I'm after the wealth of the war. And that tin of ointment he has in his things.”

Mr. Smitty grinned. It was the first time I had seen such an expression on the short, dour man, and it didn't make him look anymore pleasant. “Get me his boots!” he demanded, and I watched, helpless, as they pushed Jeck down, cuffing him to stillness and taking his boots. His bare feet looked white in the sun, and odd, as he still wore his leather gloves.

The ship's boy scampered under the deck while Jeck clenched his jaw in frustration. A laughing cheer came from the pirates when the boy levered himself back onto the deck wearing Jeck's second coat. The black-and-gold fabric fell all the way to the planking, almost tripping him. Grinning wildly, the boy held up Jeck's stock of toxin in one hand, the player's second sword in the other. He scrambled back aboard the pirates' ship, running to Captain Rylan and getting his hair tousled fondly as the man tucked the tin into a wide pocket.

The last of my will to live turned to ash as they coated the decks and sails with oil. They were going to burn my boat—my beautiful, beautiful boat—with Jeck aboard it. My head slumped, and my hair swung to hide my vision. I couldn't bear to watch.

“The whore!” an excited voice called out, and I looked up. “Put her with him!”

My pulse swung back into full play, making my blood pound in my head and bound wrists. I scanned the deck, finding Duncan white-faced and standing with a paralyzed stillness. He looked from me to Captain Rylan, his mouth open but nothing coming out.

“Burn the whore!” the call went up and down the deck. “Her soul can't find us if it's been turned to smoke. Burn her!”

I held my breath as Duncan strode across the deck to the captain. The man in his faded clothes of past wealth pushed him away in disgust. “It's for your own good, boy,” I heard over the calls to leave me on the deck of my burning boat. “She'll bring you down. Shut up, or I'll make you drop the torch.”

Duncan persisted, his back to me as he gestured wildly. Captain Rylan scowled at Mr. Smitty, and the dour man barked an order. Two crewmen pulled Duncan from the captain and yanked him belowdecks.

“Tess!” I heard him shout as he disappeared. “Tess! I didn't mean this to happen. God help you. I didn't mean for this to happen!”

I clenched my jaw and tried to keep the air moving in and out of my lungs. I didn't protest when rough hands cut my bonds and pulled me to a stand. The pain in my arms and knees meant nothing. I hung in their grip when the pain of returning circulation brought a moan from me. Everything had been taken from me. I had lost. I had lost everything. And now I was going to lose my life.

The pirates were a slurry of color and noise. Faces came and went. Insults were layered upon me, each bending my head closer to the earth though I heard none of them. I went where they pushed me, numb and uncaring.

I felt the rocking of the ship cease and realized I was on the plank connecting the two. Self-preservation brought my head up. The smell of oil caught at my throat. A sheet of tossed oil slapped into me, and I stumbled, the sudden, shocking weight of it pulling me to the slippery deck of the
Sandpiper.

Sprawled on the planking, I was suddenly aware I was covered in oil and my dress was all but falling off me. The pirates lined the railing, shouting and gesturing. My eyes fixed upon the one with the torch. He was waiting for the order, an ugly grin on him as he threatened to drop it early.

I scrambled up, and Mr. Smitty gave the call for the lines to be struck. I stumbled, my balance chancy with my hands bound behind me though the boat was still aground and unmoving. My legs were starting to work again, my knees protesting and aching.

“Here,” Jeck said from behind me, and I spun. “Let me get your hands free.”

My heart pounded as he took a knife gained from one of the downed men and sawed through my bonds. They fell away, and I swung at him.

“You chull!” I exclaimed as the watching men roared when Jeck easily caught my wrist. “How could you just leave me like that!”

I twisted, and Jeck pulled me closer until I was unmoving against his chest. “I never lied to you,” he said, voice low and what looked like guilt in his eyes. “You made a bad assumption.”

He was right, and realizing that the only way even to have a chance at surviving would be to work together, I stopped fighting him. He felt it and let go. I fell back several steps, not knowing what would happen next.

“Captain Jeck!” came Captain Rylan's merry voice, and both our heads turned. He was atop the wheel deck with his hands on his hips and his hat shifted jauntily. “Don't worry about the whore's temper,” the man said with a smirk. “The last man she went after like that, she rolled around in the sand with.”

Jeck's breath came in a questioning sound, and the watching men hollered. One made kissing noises, hips gyrating suggestively, and I warmed. “Did you and your cheat—” Jeck started, his usually stoic face full of shock. If I didn't know better, I would think it bothered him.

“I had to find some reason to be on an abandoned beach with you sailing away,” I snapped.

A whoosh of sound brought me spinning around. Heat slammed into me, warmer than the sun. The deck was on fire. My gaze went to the pirate ship. The torch was gone. It was on my deck. We were on fire.
God save me. I'm covered in oil.

“Fill sails!” I heard Mr. Smitty shout. “All able men line up! I want a head count.”

I stood blinking stupidly. They had set my boat on fire and were sailing away.

“Wake up, princess!” Jeck shouted, snapping me out of my stupor.

Tension slammed into me, and I reached for something to beat out the flames.

“No!” Jeck shouted, pressing a coil of rope into my hands. “She's going up. We can't stop her, and even if we could, it takes four men to raise a sail. Throw anything we can use overboard. And be careful!” he added, as I hunched into a fit of coughing when the black smoke took us. “You're covered in oil.”