Princess at Sea

  “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 forg
et 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?”

  Speechless, I blinked at her. I’d never been spoken to like that before.

  She reached out a twiglike arm and gripped my forearm, pinching the muscle. “You might be good for somethin’, though.”

  “I beg your pardon?” My face went blank in surprise. Behind her, Jeck was grinning at my expense. I scooted to the edge, unable to stop my groan of pain when my feet dangled over.

  “Oh, you are in bad shape, girlie,” she was saying. “Come up to my house. It’s just a little ways over that dune there. I have some aching liniment to rub into you. You can take a cup of tea. Meet my son. He’s a fine lad, now that he done lost his first wife.”

  Alarmed, I glanced over her shoulder at Jeck. “No, thank you,” I quickly said, seeing where this was headed. “We have to be going.”

  “Nonsense,” she babbled. “One cup of tea. Do you good to get all warm inside. And I get so lonely out here.”

  Jeck took her hand to help her down off the raft. “I think it’s a good idea,” he said, surprising me. “Perhaps we could impose upon your hospitality for a few days, even.”

  “What?” I stammered.

  “Oh, capital. Just capital!” the old woman said, clapping her wrinkled brown hands together. “We can talk, and I can show you how to make starfish cookies. The secret is in the eggs. You need to use eggs from brown hens. Not the ones with white tail feathers. They have to be all brown, you see.”

  I started to panic. He had to be jesting. “Whatever for, Captain?” I said in worry.

  “My!” the old woman exclaimed, a gnarled hand to her hat. “You’re a captain? Your ship go down? Where’s your crew? Small boat, was it? Just you and your missus?”

  “He’s not my husband,” I said. Jeck leaned forward when I made motions to get off the raft, actually giving me support when my feet hit the sand. I wobbled for a moment, finding my balance. I looked at my proposed bush, then back to him. “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “I’ll go to the capital,” he said, “and send a horse for you.”

  A flash of tension went through me in understanding. He was going to leave me behind, that’s what he was going to do. “I’m coming with you,” I said quickly.

  He pressed his lips together, hiding them behind his filthy beard and mustache. “I’ll make better time without you.”

  “I’m the one who got us here in time to do anything,” I protested, not caring what the old woman thought. “I’m not staying here.”

  The old woman squinted up at me from under her wide hat, taking my arm. “Oh, you’ll like my son,” she said. “No one catches fish like my boy. Fine, strong man. Takes care of his mother real well, he does.”

  Jeck pried her fingers off me, and when he led me a few steps away, the old woman started poking about under the raft. “You said you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your game to ensure your sister’s safety,” he said, throwing my words back into my face. “Someone needs to get there as quickly as possible. You can’t keep up.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, feeling my knees start to shake from hunger and exhaustion. “I’m not going to stay here and wait to be picked up like some kind of weak . . . silly—”

  “Princess?” he finished for me. Then his eyes went hard. “I won’t slow down for you.”

  “So don’t,” I snapped. My throat hurt, and I put a hand to it.

  Jeck glanced over my shoulder at the woman blathering to herself, her eyes on the dead things washing up. He shifted his weight from one foot to the next, raising a hand and letting it drop as if having decided something. “Tess,” he said softly, “your punta bite is healed over, but it’s getting worse.”

  My breath caught, and I stared at him. How had he known?

  “It’s making your magic unpredictable,” he continued, striking fear in me. “You shouldn’t have been able to harness the wind. No player can hold more than a slight breeze. You stirred a hurricane.”

  I said nothing, frightened he might guess I still held it in my thoughts. “It’s the residual levels,” I said softly. “They’ll fall given enough time. I’m fine.”

  Jeck’s stance went apologetic and pained. “Tess,” he said, his voice so full of pity it struck me cold. “I’m sorry. You didn’t call the wind with residual toxin, and that killing pulse yesterday was too strong for even your elevated levels. That was pure venom coursing through you. I could feel it.” His eyes squinted as he gazed into the sky, avoiding my panicked expression. “Even if I failed to wall off the venom properly and it was seeping out, there should be less. There’s not. There’s more of it. I think the venom is replenishing itself, not dissipating.”

  My breath came fast as he said aloud what I had been afraid to think. As if in a dream, I watched him turn and start back to the raft. “Jeck . . .” I took several pained steps to
catch up to him, my arms clasped about me from the chill. “Jeck, you’re wrong. It’s not replenishing itself. It’s just taking a long time to work itself out. No one’s been bit by a punta before and lived. It’s going to take time. That’s all. Just time.”

  Even I could hear the lie in my voice, and pity hung heavy in his brown eyes, watching me from under his hair. Coming to a halt beside the raft, he exhaled long and slow. “I’m sorry, Tess,” he said, watching the woman shifting through the wreckage on the beach. “Kavenlow has to know. Stay here until he comes for you. I’ll tell him. I’m the one who fixed the toxin in your tissues, whether it saved your life or not, and it’s my responsibility.”

  “No!” I exclaimed softly, fear striking to the quick of my soul. “You don’t even know for sure that’s what’s happening. You can’t tell him! He’ll make me leave the game!”

  Jeck pressed his lips together, his expression full of pity, and I hated him. Hated that I was begging. Hated that I knew he was right. Panicked, I took his arm, gripping it until my fingers hurt. “Jeck,” I said, not caring my voice had a tinge of pleading in it. “I can’t be a player if I can’t withstand even one dart. Every rival player out there will see it as an easy way to take Costenopolie, and you know it. You should have let me die on that raft if all you were going to do was take everything away from me.”

  “You already figured it out,” he said, wonder in him. “You know it’s replenishing itself, and you were going to risk your master’s game and your life just to keep playing.”

  My mouth dropped, shocked. I hadn’t even realized it myself until he said something, but he was right. I was going to try to keep this from Kavenlow. “Jeck,” I pleaded, quashing my sudden guilt. “You owe me something. You did this to me!”

  “I owe you nothing.” He roughly rocked the water casks, frowning when he realized they had both leaked and were empty. “If I hadn’t done something, you would have died.”

  “And now you’re taking away everything that makes life worth living! This game is all I have left! It’s all I’ve ever had.”