Princess at Sea (30 page)

I put my left temple against the mast and waited, suffering occasional jabs of pain on my tender wrist when he tugged the ropes too hard. My eyes drifted over the chaos of the beach. The waves were still high, rolling in white and gold with the stored strength of my wind. It was just past low tide, but one would never know it from the storm surge pushing against the beach.

Broken branches and foam made a thick line as the tide slowly crept in. Farther down the beach trees still stood, their branches stripped of their spring leaves. But where we had landed, the trees had been reduced to shattered stumps.

“Did I really do all this?” I said softly. My throat hurt, and I didn't dare raise my voice.

Jeck didn't answer, his breath coming in a relieved sound. “Got one,” he said, and I felt an inch more room between us. Then it was gone as he pressed closer to get a better reach on the knots that remained. He smelled like ocean and leather, not entirely unpleasant.

“Why did you fasten them so tight?” I complained, not liking that he had been tied to me all night, and liking even less that I didn't remember any of it but snatches.

“You were trying to kill me.”

Shocked, my breath caught and held.

He grunted, and my back went cold when a second knot loosened, and he leaned away.

“With my magic?” I asked, aghast. “I . . . I'm sorry. I don't remember that.”

“No. You didn't use your magic. You were very sly about it.” He seemed to be in a much better mood now that he was making some progress, and an almost jovial tone had crept into his voice. “Mostly trying to push me off when I wasn't looking. I tied you to the mast when you kept trying to climb it. But when you began inciting the rays to capsize the boat, I tied myself behind you.”

The muscles of his arms still about me hesitated, then flexed as he renewed his work. Water plinked from the cuffs of his Misdev coat. “By then, the water was coming over the raft fairly regularly, and my voice seemed to be the only thing keeping you halfway to what was real and what wasn't.”

My gaze went unfocused. Someone had been singing, low and soft. I remembered hating it, wanting to forget everything so I could hear the wind speak in tongues long lost, but the voice wouldn't let me. Jeck had kept me sane. “I don't remember that,” I lied, thinking it would do neither of us any good if he knew I remembered.

“I didn't think you would,” he muttered.

He shifted back farther when another knot came loose. The motion tugged the cord about my salt- and sash-chaffed wrists, and I yelped. It hurt my throat, and I held my breath lest I start coughing. Jeck's fingers of his left hand came into view. Part of his sash still bound his wrists, but he had more room to work. His fingers were red and swollen, the nails torn almost to the quick. My gaze lifted to the bush I had been eying. As soon as I was free, I was heading to it and not looking back.

“I'm sorry,” I said suddenly, thinking he must not think me much of a player if he had to tie me to a mast to keep from killing myself.

“For what?” Another knot came free, and he pulled his arm from around me, groaning.

“For trying to hurt you,” I said softly.

“It wasn't you.” His voice was soft and preoccupied as his breath brushed my ear. He pressed against me to reach the knots holding his right arm to the mast. His beard brushed my cheek, and I forced myself not to move lest he think it bothered me. “And like I said, it was nothing I couldn't counter easily. You weren't really trying.” He chuckled, surprising me. “You were very much like the wind: fickle, capricious . . . sneaky.”

A frown came over me, and I pulled away from the touch of his beard. “Sounds like you enjoyed it,” I said sarcastically.

“Maybe I did.”

That, I didn't like at all. The entire night was slipping from me like a dream to leave only a feeling of deep loss. I knew what it stemmed from. The melancholy emotion worsened when the wind gusted, bringing my head up and my pulse hammering. It had been mine, and I had lost it. Jeck had made me let it go. I knew it would have driven me insane—and I was grateful to him—but the loss remained.

“Finally.” He sighed when the last knot holding him came free. Groaning, he rose to his knees and moved around to the front of the mast. His shadow fell over me, making him into a black silhouette. He looked exhausted as he sat cross-legged before me in his sodden uniform, the sun rising behind him and his hair and beard still wet from the surf that had thrown us thirty feet past the high-tide mark.

“Why does my throat hurt?” I asked, hoping he might fill in the widening gaps.

“You were shouting a lot.

I said nothing, half-embarrassed, half-frightened. “Was it bad?”

His lips pressed together, his beard and mustache all but hiding them. “Could've been.” His attention flicked to the broken mast, and I studied his face, seeing both his strength of self and his concern for me in the depth of his eyes. I looked away when he turned back to me, feeling cold from more than the loss of his body heat and his shadow now on me. He was a master player, and I was an apprentice. God help me, I must look so stupid. “Thank you,” I said.

“Stop saying that.”

I looked up as his shadow shifted. “Why?” I asked bitterly, as he worked on the knots tied with his silk sash. “Can't I thank you for saving my life? Or are you so uncomfortable that you might have emotions that you can't accept—that you might have done something for someone that wasn't required for your fool game?”

His face taking on a dark cast, Jeck glanced pensively at me from under his lowered brow. “I didn't save your life out of any misplaced feeling of emotion. If you had died, the wind would have, too. And we were making good time.”

My breath came in a huff. “So,” I said, miffed. “You kept me alive solely because of the game?”

“Yes.” It was short and emotionless, and looking at him picking the knots free with his swollen fingers, I almost believed him. But remembering his hidden grief for having killed a woman he loved wouldn't let me believe him completely.

“Then I guess you should be thanking me.”

He said nothing, his head bowed to show me the top of it. His wavy hair was plastered to him with sweat and seawater. I must look awful. Knowing I was pushing my luck, I said, “You didn't have to convince me to release the wind. You could have let me stay lost.”

“Then I would have been tied to a lunatic all morning,” he said flatly.

That bothered me. I licked my cracked lips as the memory of the wind filled me once more. I'd never call it again. It was too easy to get lost. That I had even managed to call it this once had been a miracle. I never would have tried it if my sister's and Duncan's lives hadn't been in danger. “You're wrong, you know,” I said suddenly.

“About what?”

He didn't look up, and I hesitated before saying, “That love makes you weak.”

The faint pressure of his fingers on my numb hands paused, then resumed.

“I never would have tried calling the wind if I hadn't cared for my sister so much.”

“Love didn't make you strong,” he said, tugging so hard I bit my lip to keep from crying out. “It made you stupid.”

A sharp pain broke through my determination to stay silent. “Stupid!” I yelped, and he flicked a glance at me. A long tail of black silk was in his hand, and I found I could scoot back an inch. “It wasn't stupid to call the wind. It got us here in time to do something.”

“It was stupid,” he repeated, his eyes pinched when he took a stick and tried to wedge it into a knot. “But that doesn't mean I won't capitalize upon it.”

He dropped the twig and stood. “I'll be right back,” he said, carefully sliding off the raft. His feet hit the sand and, moving as if pained, he headed for the nearby bushes.

“I'm not free yet!” I exclaimed, my eyes wide and my throat hurting.

“I said I'll be right back!” he shouted. Hobbling from stiff muscles, he made his slow way over the wreckage and out of sight. I glanced at my proposed bush, hoping he would hurry.

Grimacing, I tugged at my bindings. There was enough slack that the circulation was starting to return, and it hurt. My legs ached from holding one position too long, and my bare shoulder was starting to turn pink. “Get to the capital before Kavenlow acts on bad information,” I whispered. “Pay the pirates to get them back, and when I'm sure they're safe, crush the chu slingers so no one will dare to try it again.”

It sounded like a good plan to me. No more impossible than say, chaining the wind.

Closing my eyes, I leaned my head up against the mast—remembering. The faint brush of wind on my cheek lanced into a sudden, unexpected stab of longing. It hadn't been so bad when Jeck had been here—his quiet presence distracted me. But now, the wind called unhindered, whispering in the trees still standing at the end of the cove.

A cold feeling shook me as something deep inside me heard it and set to humming. A wave of expectation, a feeling that was not mine, rose inside me, surging in expectation in response to the wind in the broken trees.

My eyes flashed open, and my heart pounded. It wasn't gone. The wind remained inside me. It heard the wind in the trees and woke, swirling in my thoughts and demanding release. Fear bubbled up. I threw my head up to the sky, eyes wide. The whisper in me rose and swirled, inciting the wind in the trees to do the same.

No!
I thought, clamping down on the heady rush of wild feeling that wasn't my own. Terrified, I smothered the rush of power even as the tingle of venom scoured through me.
I loosed it! I let it go! Why is it still here?
But the wind trapped in my soul tugged and pulled, whispering for me to free it, to let it go, to let it carry me to the heights of heaven and the depths of hell.

I sat and panted, struggling to contain it. The breeze tugged my hair, swirling it with a new force. The whisper in my head cried out to join it, but I shackled it with new bindings of rational thought and denial. I tensed against the ropes still binding me to the mast.
This will not happen. I won't let it!

Jeck's low, murmuring voice cut through my confusion, and the wind's voice in my thoughts jumped as if frightened. The breeze pushing on me died; the chaos in my thoughts faltered. I looked up, panicked at what had happened. Heart fast and stiff, I listened to the wind in the trees forget the whisper in my head, lose interest, and flit away.

Jeck's voice rose and fell. Shaken, I sat straighter when another voice joined his. It was high and carried an uncomfortable rasp to it. He had found someone.

His seawater-matted hair showed above the stripped branches and tall bracken, moving slowly as he listened. Turning a corner with an almost comical slowness, he appeared with a bent-over old woman. Jeck carried a woven basket with bits of cloth and flotsam in it. I guessed she had been salvaging the storm beach.

Her time-grayed dress billowed in the wind, cut high above her spindly ankles. Strips of cloth and ropes were tied to her waist, making it look as if she were wearing nothing but rags though there was a skirt under them all. She was barefoot, her toes as brown as her heavily creased cheeks. A straw hat with a wide brim was atop her gray hair. It was arranged in one long braid that went clear down to her waist. She had a tight grip on Jeck's arm as she talked, never looking up from the sand just before her slowly moving feet. Her fingers were gnarled and strong, and in all honesty, it didn't look like she needed the help despite her apparent age.

As if feeling my attention on her, she looked up. Her eyes were so blue, I could see them from where I sat. The wrinkles on her face fell into deep crevices as she smiled. “Oh, there she is!” she called out, her voice high but strong. “Tied to the mast, were ya? Caught out in it, eh? I don't wonder. It came up without even a twinge from my knees. That hasn't happened in twenty-eight years.”

She cackled, and Jeck winced, meeting my eyes briefly as he was dragged along beside her since she had yet to relinquish her grip on him.

“Hello!” I called out, trying to move. “Do you have a knife, ma'am?”

She laughed again, ending with, “I do, sweetness. Water tighten your knots?”

I said nothing, smiling as she lurched to the raft. “Always have a knife with me,” she said, showing bad teeth and fumbling about on her person amid the rags and ropes. More nimble than her looks would credit her, she levered herself up onto the tilting raft and slid closer. She smelled like cooking clams, and she called out in success when her fingers found a tattered red ribbon with a knife tied to it hanging from her hips. Gumming her teeth, she refused Jeck's soft offer of help and cut his silk sash from me herself. It parted with a quickness that spoke of a very sharp knife or very strong muscles. I would be willing to wager it was a little of both.

“Oh, thank you,” I moaned, when a painful ache rose through my arms and I bent them for the first time in hours. Blinking in hurt, I scooted away from the mast. I made a motion to get up, changing my mind when my legs refused to work quite yet. So I sat and rubbed my arms between picking at the knots still about my wrists.

“You're welcome, sweetness.” The old woman beamed from the shade of her wide-brimmed hat. “I've been tied to more than one mast in my day.” She laughed. “That's how I caught my husband, bless his soul.”

Embarrassed, I flexed my hands. “It was so I wouldn't wash over,” I said in explanation, and Jeck set her basket on the raft and took a step back.

“Of course it was.” She gave me an appraising look. “Not much to you, is there?”