Shadow Road Page 6

  "You speak Altyran with a cultured accent and you have the hands and face of a rich woman, but you also speak Illyrian and you're dressed as an Edonian day laborer," he growled. "Who are you?"

  My eyes watered. "Why does it matter?" I asked, my voice scratching out of my parched throat.

  He lifted an eyebrow, and a rakish grin curled one corner of his mouth. "You're in no position to be asking questions." He released my hair. "Now. What's your name?"

  I shot a bitter glare at him, jutted my chin and pinched my lips tight.

  His grin widened to include a set of perfect teeth. "All I want is your name. One little name, and nobody gets hurt." When I didn't say anything, he crossed his arms over his chest, quirked that eyebrow a little higher, and 'tsk'ed his tongue. "That's not very wise. I'm Bloody NaVarre. I might make your friends out there walk the plank if you don't give me what I want."

  The silence stretched taught. Then he jerked a nod. "Right. Shark stew it is."

  He had taken three steps toward the door when I coughed out a broken, "Wait!"

  Slowly, he came back around, an insufferably victorious smirk on his pretty face.

  I swallowed. I had read the Dailies. Bloody NaVarre wasn't known for taking prisoners and had slaughtered people over less than a name. Still, I didn't exactly have a choice. We were all cold, starving, and exhausted, and this pirate had food and shelter. "Brenorra Warring," I croaked, looking away again, angry at myself.

  "Do you have any proof?"

  That struck me as an odd question, but I was too tired to think about it. Reluctantly, I unbuttoned Father's coat and pulled the satchel around so I could open it.

  NaVarre straightened slightly.

  I lifted the flap that covered the main section of the bag and was about to start searching for my identity papers when NaVarre said, bluntly, "Give it to me."

  I went still, my throat painfully hot. "It belonged to my father," I rasped.

  NaVarre sighed, then reached out and unclipped the satchel strap in one neat move, yanking it away from me as easily as if I were a small child.

  Dizzy and defeated, I stood there while he strode to a map cabinet on the far wall.

  "Why are you doing this?"

  That made him chuckle. "What, you don't appreciate my hospitality?"

  I closed my eyes, swaying on my feet as he opened doors and drawers. "Not particularly, no."

  NaVarre fell silent. Then he came toward me again. Fast. He was coming fast. I opened my eyes in time to see him rounding the map table, Father's satchel under one elbow. He didn't slow down. He took hold of my left arm with his free hand, then dragged me across the room to another door. This one opened into a large, opulently furnished personal quarters – obviously his own – with a broad gallery of windows that offered an unfettered view aft of the ship.

  He marched me inside and shut the door behind us, then gave me a shove into a leather armchair in front of a huge hammered-copper desk while he continued straight to a compact sideboard. He selected a bottle of liquor from a cabinet, poured a generous shot into a tumbler, turned around, and proceeded to empty Father's satchel unceremoniously onto the desk blotter. My father's tobacco pouch, his pipe, his pen box, those were set aside. Our traveling papers were of fleeting interest. He studied them, then studied me, an unreadable expression crossing his face. Then he kept hunting.

  A few seconds later he found the interior pocket.

  "Ah." He pulled out my father's business binder and flipped the cover up as if he were opening a present, grinning wide. "What have we here?" He scanned first one paper, then another, his brows drawing into a studious frown. As if he were searching for something important. Something he had already known would be there.

  Wide eyed, I stared at him. Things began popping into place like mechanized puzzle pieces, gears meshing and moving, the world as I knew it shifting wildly. If Bloody NaVarre, of all people, was hunting for something in my father's satchel, something in particular in a hidden folder, then whatever was in that satchel had to mean something. If it meant something, then it wasn't just a random collection of odds and ends. Which meant the fire, the mad race to the Colonies, the Galvania... Everything... Was probably because of those papers.

  "This is the only bag your father had with him?" NaVarre asked, slowly putting all the documents back into their binder, his face carefully impassive as he placed the binder on his desk.

  His question interrupted my mental epiphany, and it took me a moment too long to answer. "It's the only one that survived the Galvania." I licked my lips. My heart pounding so hard it hurt. "Why?"

  NaVarre glanced at me, then picked up his tumbler and came around to the front of his desk, where he perched his lean backside against the edge, crossed his arms casually over his chest, and assumed a very easy, almost friendly manner. "What was your destination?" he asked.

  I blinked at him. "Why?"

  "Where were you and your father headed?" he rephrased, swirling his drink before calmly taking a sip.

  I blinked again, bile souring in my stomach. He was acting as if we were acquaintances standing in a parlor somewhere. He even looked the part, somehow, like a devilishly handsome country gentleman who had recently come in from his morning ride, with his dark hair all wind-tossed and wavy, and a well-developed shadow of beard darkening his jaw... Betha would have swooned and fallen flat at his feet.

  This was no parlor, and there was much more to this game than mere pleasantries. There was something big going on, but it was impossible to tell what part NaVarre played in it. It was also impossible to think of a decent lie on the spot, especially with that threat of Laffa going overboard hanging there like a noose. "The Adropedes."

  "What was in the Adropedes?" NaVarre prodded.

  "Why do you need to know?" I asked, more firmly this time.

  He hesitated mid-sip, then lowered his glass and smiled. His smile was a little too broad, though – more shark, less recklessly handsome gentry. "Let's call it... mild curiosity."

  I narrowed my eyes, studying him. There was nothing mild about NaVarre's curiosity, which begged the question, why did a notorious pirate need to know where my father was going? I wasn't going to say anything more. He was going to have to dig the answers out of me. Lying might not be my strong suit, but I could balk with the best of them.

  NaVarre's brow furrowed as he watched the play of emotions apparently racing across my face. Then he opened his mouth, prepared to say something.

  I never found out what.

  The ceiling opened to the left of the door, and the First Mate shouted down at us, "Sir! The Stryka! She's gainin' on us!"

  "What!" NaVarre whipped around to glare up through the hatchway that apparently connected his personal quarters to the aft deck.

  "Arramy's gainin' on us, sir," the First Mate repeated as NaVarre burst into a string of colorful Illyrian expletives on his way up the access ladder.

  Eavesdropping wasn't hard. They weren't being quiet, and I was sitting under the still-open hatchway.

  "Glass!" NaVarre growled, and then a few seconds later he swore again. "How is this possible?"

  "I don't know sir. I've ne'er seen anythin' like it. The Ang's full sheets t'the wind, all engines givin' all she's got," the First Mate said, his voice strained. "We shoulda pulled well ahead o' that beast by now." NaVarre must have handed the spyglass back to the First Mate, because there was a pause. Then, "That mad bastard! He stripped 'er down ta nothin'. No armor on 'er at all! What's e' thinkin'?"

  "Look at the guns."

  There was another pause. Then the First Mate swore.

  "Ring to battle stations," NaVarre ordered, and another man shouted, "Aye, sir!" just before a bell began clanging.

  Instantly, the whole ship erupted into activity like an agitated beehive; men running on the deck, their words rapid and sharp as they rushed to obey orders; the heavy thud of the Angpixen's long top guns dropping and locking into their cradles; the softer metal-on-wood bom-bom-bom of th
e forty pounders as the powder monkeys dropped them by threes into the shot racks.

  "On my mark, bring her about two points to starboard!" NaVarre yelled, his voice coming from a distance. "Large shot, full charge!" he demanded, "And get that to'sail open!" Then he shouted, "Mark!" and the ship tilted to the right as the pilot brought her around to a new bearing.

  Whoever this Captain Arramy was, NaVarre felt the need to turn tail and run fast.

  A spark of hope dared to spring up in my chest. We might just get out of this after all.

  And, thankfully, I was alone. No one was guarding me. The satchel was sitting there where Bloody NaVarre had left it, surrounded by my father's things, with the binder resting neatly on top of it.

  I bit my lip, an idea taking shape.

  An idea that was quite possibly insane.

  An idea that might not even work... But, if it did, it might be worth it in the end.

  Depending on what the end turned out to be.

  11. Bait and Switch

  15th of Uirra, Continued

  For four hours, I sat in NaVarre's cabin, wondering what in all blue blazes was going on.

  I didn't get any answers from NaVarre. There was a tense moment when he came thundering down the ladder and I scuttled over to the far end of the cabin, but he only snatched a sextant and a map off his desk and went climbing back up through the hatch.

  The only other person who came in was the ship's cook. The first time, he brought in a big bowl of that bisran, with steamed rice and a glass of coconut cream.

  As soon as the door shut behind him, I snatched the bowl from the side table. I had never tasted anything that delicious in my life, and the spoon couldn't get it into my mouth fast enough. I just ate it standing up, shoveling it into my mouth with my fingers like some sort of mountain-bred heathen, barely chewing the first few bites. Then I slowed down and made myself actually taste it, picking out the nuanced flavors of roasted carrot and fig, the smoldering heat of arcara chilies, and the delicate, tangy pop of pinsauri berries. It was blazing hot, but it was heaven.

  A little while after my embarrassment with the bisran, the cook brought in a tray of dainty little creamed-cheese pastries, and an urn of spicy Praidani. I stared at that tray for a good half hour. The individual edges of the pastries were crimped with a flourish design, as if they had been made by a highly ranked baker in Arritagne, and there was an insulated copper mug with a lid to keep the tea warm. Even the tray was beautiful, inlaid with mother of pearl flowers and what looked very much like actual rubies.

  Only that morning, I had been half-starved and freezing cold, and now I was on a pirate ship, warm, dry, well fed, with a tray of absurdly pretty after-dinner pastries in front of me. I had to pinch myself to make sure it wasn't some weird dream.

  The tray was real. The pastries were real. The Praidani was real.

  Half an hour later I felt sick, partly because of all the pastries, but also because I was still in that cabin. My father's binder clearly meant something to NaVarre, but that didn't explain why he didn't just take the thing and send me down to the hold with the rest of the survivors. Something else was going on. It didn't help that my brain had already made a list of all the horrible things a pirate might do to a young woman trapped in his personal quarters. The longer I was stuck there, the jumpier I got.

  I needn't have worried. NaVarre never came back. I heard him up on the aft deck, ordering his crew around, but for all those four hours he remained above decks. From the sound of things, he was too busy keeping the Angpixen running as fast as she could ahead of the wind, because the Stryka – miraculously, I gathered – was keeping pace behind her.

  At first, I thought NaVarre was fleeing like a coward, but in fact he was forcing Arramy to chase him until the sun began going down. Then he ordered the Angpixen about and brought her to a dead halt in the water.

  It was a cunning move. Half an hour later, when the Stryka's sails came into plain view, the Angpixen was lying in wait, rendered nearly invisible to the approaching warship by the blaze of an open-ocean sunset.

  NaVarre gave no courtesy warning. He simply shouted, "Fire!" and all thirty of the Ang's portside long guns roared in quick succession, coughing out flashes of bright light and the stench of expended powder.

  I inched forward, craning to see through the deck railing from my perch on the hatchway ladder, my stomach twisting as a hailstorm of heavy shot flew in awful, deadly arcs toward that far-off, oncoming ship. NaVarre shouted again, and the second gun crew instantly set off another volley before the first round had even struck home.

  Sixty 40-pound rounds of hot lead and exploding shells peppered the Stryka in a distant rumble. A moment later, those pristine sails and all hope of rescue disappeared beneath a roiling blanket of black smoke.

  I smothered a sob in my hands.

  It was over. Nothing could have survived that.

  NaVarre brought the spyglass to his eye again, his face stony as he peered at a scene half a mile away. Below us, the gun crews began reloading the portside cannons with grape shot, moving calmly and efficiently as the rest of the men gathered amidships, every last one of them armed to the teeth, ready to fight.

  Squinting in thought, NaVarre lowered the spyglass. Then he said something to his First Mate, who barked an order to come to port. The loftmen scrambled about in the rigging, taking in sail as the pilot brought the ship around, tacking windward under the power of the Angpixen's engines.

  No one noticed that I was there, lurking in the hatchway. The pilot was watching the sails and the sea, the First Mate was watching the men, and NaVarre had gone back to staring through his spyglass... so I eased up to the top rung of the ladder, craning to get a better look through the ship's rails. I held my breath, waiting for what felt like forever, my heart in my throat as the smoke drifted and thinned in the breeze, giving hints and glimpses of what lay beneath it. Then, all at once, the haze parted completely, and there it was.

  I bit back a gasp.

  The Stryka's main mast had been blown to kindling near the deck and lay entirely in the water, sails billowing sluggishly in the waves. The rigging was still intact, and the overboard weight was dragging the Stryka severely to one side. She was still afloat, but floundering, her shrouds on fire, great chunks missing from her unarmored sides, her engines motionless.

  When we were about three hundred yards off, the First Mate called in a rough whisper, "Ready t'board 'er! Keep it slylike!" and the men sprang into action, moving to the starboard rail as the Angpixen made one last change in direction, coming alongside the Stryka in a languid swoop.

  There was an almost gentle bump as the grappling team brought the hulls together, and then the pirates were leaping over the railing and swinging across from the yardarms. Unlike their conquest of the lifeboats, there were no bone-chilling shrieks or blood-thirsty screams this time. There was only the 'swish' of rope and the faint slap of bare feet on wood as the men began searching the warship, their movements furtive and predatory.

  "Something isn't right," NaVarre muttered. Then he handed the First Mate the spyglass. "It's too quiet. I'm going over."

  The First Mate didn't seem particularly surprised but judging from the shake of his head and the set of his chin, he didn't approve, either. His brows lowered as NaVarre drew those long, curving swords from the scabbards slung across his back and went vaulting over the railing, following his men.

  "Like a dratted cat, pokin' 'is nose in an' gettin' his self killed," the First Mate grumbled in Illyrian, watching NaVarre leave. Then he told the helmsman to "keep 'er steady," and went stumping down the stairs to the quarterdeck, still fretting, "Too dratted 'mportant ta be gaddin' about, but does 'e mind old Finch? Nooo..."

  I held perfectly still, listening hard as Finch's voice faded.

  It did seem odd. Everything really was eerily silent.

  Whatever NaVarre's men were up to, they had stopped making any discernible noise. All I could hear were the sounds of the sea:
water lapping against the stern, the breeze ruffling the sails above us. A little farther away, the slow, repetitive clanking of a loose tackle block striking something metal, and the groan of wood under stress... a muffled, meaty thud down on the main deck...

  I frowned.

  The helmsman had turned in the direction of the Angpixen's foremast and opened his mouth as if to shout some sort of warning to the First Mate, but no cry came. Instead he pitched over backwards, a short-handled throwing knife jutting from his throat.

  I stared at him, my involuntary scream coming up my sea-raw throat as a soundless little breath.

  The silence was broken by Finch's hoarse shout from amidships, "NaVarre, get out of there! It's a tra—”

  The First Mate's words ended abruptly, followed by a muffled curse in Altyran. Then a tall, rangy man came charging up the steps to the aft deck, where he grabbed the wheel, arresting the Ang's rudder.

  This man didn't appear to be a pirate. In fact, he looked more like a Coalition Naval officer who had taken off his jacket and hat and gone for a dip in the ocean: soaked white shirt; pants that would have been dark blue if they weren't dripping wet; shiny black boots. It was the cut of his hair that did it, though. His severe military close-crop was so out of place aboard the Angpixen that I finally realized what was happening.

  Arramy wasn't on the Stryka. He was on the Ang, stealing it right out from under Bloody NaVarre's nose.

  The captain didn't pay me much attention other than to give me a startled double-take before looking at something aloft. A sailor was scurrying quickly up the rigging to the foreyard. He joined another sailor in letting out the large sails that NaVarre had ordered taken in. Then they had the fore mainsail free and were working their way up the fore mast.

  NaVarre began screaming at his men, but it was already too late. Sails were unfurling on the Ang's main mast too. Then the trysail went swinging magically to port, snagging the wind. The Angpixen responded instantly, obedient as ever, leaping away from the Stryka even as several of the pirates came clambering back over the rail to retake their ship.