Wince bowed slightly, but Tollan stood his ground. “Hello, Mother,” he said, meeting her gaze as she cleaned the sailor’s blood from her blade.
“Hello, Tollan,” she said. “Wincel.” She nodded. “Come. I’ll have breakfast prepared.” She didn’t wait to see if they followed. She sheathed her long, curved blade and walked, swaying gently as if she were still at sea, toward the waterfront. Her black-and-silver hair hung past her waist in a mass of braids. It was held back from her face by a pale-yellow turban. She wore loose-fitting breeches and a long coat that came down over her hips. She was barefoot and had several hoops dangling from her ears. The collar of her shirt was open, exposing sun-freckled flesh and a jagged scar along her collarbone, which was accentuated by the leather cord that held a wooden talisman.
Tollan sighed. “What, no bells, Mother? I thought all pirates wore bells in their hair.”
She stopped walking. “Only idiots wear bells, son. You never know when you’ll need to sneak up on someone, and when you do, there’s rarely time for a haircut.” She arched an eyebrow at him.
Seeing the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her head, he was stunned to find that he couldn’t hate her. A piece of him understood why she had run away.
“I was sorry to hear about Jamis’s death,” he said. For most of his life, he couldn’t help but hate the pirate lover who had stolen his mother away from him on the Heart’s Desire, but the view he had from a burning, mage-ensorcelled Yigris had softened his opinion of her and of the pirate, Jamis Heliata.
She smiled, then turned and began to walk once more. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss him. But there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t missed you and your brother, too.”
Guilt twisted his insides. Elam had assured him that they were maneuvering all the pieces of their plan into place to save Iven, but Tollan still felt helpless. The Ain would not help until Gemma awoke or died, and Tollan did not even want to think about the chaos that would ensue if she did not recover.
Pushing futile thoughts aside, he followed his mother into the waiting dinghy, manned by two greasy-haired sailors who bobbed reverently when they saw her. They were rowed toward the Heart’s Desire, the ship that so many of his nightmares had ridden on. As they approached, he saw what a beauty she was—gleaming wood and scarlet sails, her single mast tall and straight. His mother’s eyes were full of pride.
Aboard the ship, Wince made his excuses. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said, standing firmly outside the door to Isbit’s cabin. “I’ll just stand watch.”
Tollan smirked. “Very brave of you, Master Quintella.”
Wince shrugged. “You want me to fight brigands or bastards, I can do that, but your mother …” He trailed off. “That is a set of skills I lack.”
Tollan entered the room alone. His mother was seated at a small table. She was pouring wine from a skin into wooden cups. He sat down in the chair opposite her and took a sip. “I expected golden goblets and the finest Balkland vintage,” he said.
“You’ve come from Above, Tollan. The tales of pirate riches are, I’m afraid, sorely exaggerated. Our funds are most often procured by selling necessities we’ve stolen to the Shadow Guild, which supplies them to the Under. My greatest spoils are medicines, grain and cured meats.”
He grunted. “So you’re a humanitarian, then?”
She laughed, clear and honest. “Not exactly. We sail because there is no place else we want to be, and we make a living by stealing from those who can afford to lose some. I know who is willing to pay for what I’ve taken, and I know when to move on to safer waters. But I don’t do anything for free, and I’ve almost never done anything without the assurance of payment.”
“Almost?” he said, taking another sip of wine.
Isbit sighed, lounging back in her chair. “Almost.” Then she leaned toward him, her eyes flinty. “Tell me—where do you stand in this conflict, son? Are you still king? Do you support the Under? Where do your allegiances lie?”
Tollan swallowed hard. “I … I am not really the king. The mage women marked me, but it was a corrupt mark. It would have killed me if Wince and Gemma hadn’t destroyed it.” He couldn’t look at her face. “I … I don’t think I ever even wanted to be king.”
She chuckled, hard and bitter. “I cannot say I blame you. It always seemed like a shitty job for someone like you.”
“Why?” he asked, afraid of her answer. Afraid of her.
“I only wondered if you would be willing to help me gather my bounty. On the night Gemma Antos proclaimed herself Queen of Under, Riquin Hawkbeard fled Guildhall with the intent of a mutiny. As soon as he heard that the King of Above had died and Melnora was on her deathbed, he decided to use the unrest to his advantage. He sent out a hundred birds, calling in every available ship with promises of glory and the favor of the future King of Under.”
Tollan’s eyes grew wide.
“I have no love for the system in Yigris,” she said. “It leaves good people without basic resources, and it keeps the pompous elite blissfully ignorant in their glittering manors. It made me a prisoner in my own home, a pawn whose only purpose was to breed, like one of Abram’s prize mares. The women of Above are treated like …” She trailed off. They both knew what the lives of the women in Above were like.
“I’m not going to lie. I’ve become an ambitious, brutal woman. I saw in this the possibility that I might be able to take back what should have been mine. I was risking my ship, my crew and myself on a chance—but I thought it was a chance worth taking.”
Tollan watched her. Her glittering gaze stayed firmly fixed on his face. “Do you plan to overthrow Gemma, then? Help Riquin, or take her seat for yourself?” he asked.
She shook her head, a wicked smile on her lips. “No, son,” she said calmly. “I have no interest in Under. I intend to remake my place as the Queen of Above.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THIEVES’ ROW
Dreams returned slowly to Gemma, as if she had swum up for air from the depths of the Hadriak for days before catching the first glimpse of the sun’s rays.
They were laughing. Elam had just told a funny story, and she was doubled over with laughter. He slipped out of his shirt and hung it over the back of a chair in their room. He had his own room down the hall, but he never slept in it. They’d taken to keeping their weapons there, spread out on the bed like it was a shop in Merchant Row.
She undressed and pulled on a shift, not bothering to turn away from him. She had never trusted anyone like that.
Then Devery pressed himself against her, and she felt his desire through the thin shift … but wait, that was wrong. She wouldn’t make love with Devery for several more years, long after the night when Elam had been asked to slap his patron’s ass with a dead fish.
She blinked, confused, the memories all jumbled together …
She was a little girl. Her mother lay huddled on her cot, wheezing. They didn’t have money for medicine. Her mother’s skin was the color of mud after the rain. One side of her face drooped.
She shook her head as tears sprang to her eyes. That wasn’t her mother—it was Melnora. A trail of spittle leaked down from the queen’s mouth, and Gemma wiped it away.
But it wasn’t saliva … it was blood on Fin’s chin as he coughed blood and tried to speak. Devery leaned over him, eyes wide and black, slitting Fin open.
Gemma screamed, and Devery looked at her. He was crying, but when he held his hands out to her, they were covered in blood.