I’m in Svoz’s realm, for failing to fulfill the blood oath. Sebastian’s ears rang and his neck screamed in hot agony, but then the smoke from the first bottle’s explosion dissipated enough to reveal he wasn’t dead. He was on fire. His long black coat had protected his face from the blast but he was sure his hair would go up like Boris’s had on Isle Nanokar. Niven appeared. The adherent smothered the flames with his Aluren garb and prayed for healing.
Sebastian felt the glow soothe his skin and the shock of the pain released him enough to get his bearings. Those miserable shit-eating bastards had dragged Selena from the house. He tore away from Niven as more windows shattered and glass bottles rolled at his feet.
Keep them safe, she’d said.
“Through the kitchens!” he told the others, then left them to either obey or die. He’d done his part.
He raced across the hall, hurdling the dead. Sebastian stopped long enough to grab Gareth’s flintlock and that of another dead pirate beside him, and then more explosions lit up the keep. He threw himself into the stony inner bailey as the feasting hall became an inferno of orange flame and sizzling oil.
Sebastian rolled and came up on his feet. Men loped out the darkness with flaming glass bottles in hand. Sebastian took aim with his newly acquired pistols and pulled the triggers. There had been six men in all, then there were four.
The survivors hurled their missiles at the keep, shattering windows as Sebastian dropped the smoking pistols and replaced them with scimitars. He cut down the pirate nearest him, slicing the man at neck and belly. The other three men turned tail and ran, following the group that headed into the jungle. Sebastian gripped his blades tighter and gave chase.
The jungle sought to take back the stone-and-mortar keep; foliage crept out of the denser forest a few hundred spans from the outer bailey wall, and reclaimed the land a few paces after that. Sebastian plunged in. Dark shapes loped in front of him and shouts of men rang out and were immediately swallowed by the thick air and thicker plant life blotted the sky above and the ground below. He fought to keep the men in sight lest the jungle swallow him whole. Vines curled around his boots to trip him and he had to hack and slice at wide-leafed plants that barred his way.
When the jungle finally thinned, the sky showed the first hints of dawn in the sky ahead of him. Sebastian inhaled the greatest of scents: ocean air. A hundred more steps and the forest broke to a narrow beach of pale sand. On the Harrowing Sea, a huge frigate sat at anchor less than a half league out, like a floating black castle draped in linen. Her three masts were heavy with square sails, her gunwales loaded with cannon. On the northeastern curve of the beach, black-clad Bazira climbed into skiffs while the pirates who served them strained to shove them off. Sebastian recognized his own olive skin and dark hair among the pirates and guessed they weren’t pirates at all. Bazira recruits. Bazira fodder. He spat and ran harder.
A glint of pale hair was visible in one of the dinghies for a brief moment and then obscured again. Selena. A red haze erased his thoughts and he started down the beach when a huge shape loped past him, flashing steel. Ilior stormed the men at the skiffs and loosed a roar as strong as the crashing surf but that ended in a choking gasp. Three Bazira adherents ringed around him. Lances of ice bolted from their open palms that left white patches on his gray skin, and drove him to his knees.
Intent on their prey, the Bazira didn’t see Sebastian until it was far too late. They died quickly, his blades puncturing lungs and severing spines. From a departing skiff, another adherent barked orders for the Farendii pirates to stop him. Soon Sebastian found himself fending off six or seven cutlasses at once. He spun and ducked and danced. His scimitars arced through the air in twin paths, or split apart to bite and cut in a masterful sequence that required his next adversaries to trip over the dead to get to him. Flintlocks fired. Several kicked up little bursts of sand as they hit the beach. One hit the shooter’s own man. One grazed Sebastian’s thigh, though he hardly felt it. He moved too fast to think but in the periphery of his awareness he knew that the dinghy that held Selena had shoved off and would soon be too deep to reach.
The last man fell and corpses ringed Sebastian. Men he might have sailed with or drank with or fished with, had war not torn his life apart, lay dead at his hand. Gasping like a bellows, he turned to the shore. All dinghies had shoved off. The boat that held Selena—and Accora too, the old woman slumped against the younger—was fifteen spans out now. Ilior remained crouched on the sand, unmoving, his skin a patchwork of white and gray.
“Get up or she’s lost,” Sebastian snarled, and lunged into the surf.
He took four strides through knee-high water when a magnificent pain flared behind his eyes. Purple and yellow stars burst in his vision and hot blood gushed down the back of his skull. The strength in his legs seemed to drain out with his blood and he fell to his knees. His scimitars disappeared beneath the boiling surf as a rough hand gripped his hair from behind, forcing him to stand. The pain in his head was like a thousand bottles of hot oil bursting at once. His attacker spun him around and Sebastian watched with a dull fascination as the man brought up his cudgel for the killing blow.
“That’s enough out of you,” said the man voice in his ear and in the heartbeat before the Farendii smashed his head open, Sebastian marveled how the night’s perfection could be so utterly destroyed in a handful of minutes.
“Krystak!”
The man arched his back, a grimace of pain contorting his features. Ice rimed the man’s open mouth. The cudgel splashed and then the man did, falling face down into the surf.
Sebastian felt like doing the same.
“Sebastian Vaas,” said a woman’s voice, cool and amused. “I’ve missed you.”
The world was spinning madly but Sebastian saw a slender form, a curved silver blade, and red hair that glowed like dying embers. The woman stood beside him but at a careful distance.
“Jude Gracus,” she said. “We met on Isle Kabak.”
“I know who you are,” Sebastian muttered dully. He swayed on his feet. The boats were escaping; small shadows gliding toward the larger Bazira frigate. Only one skiff remained ashore, manned by six men, all Bazira.
“My lord, the Vicar, was right,” Jude said. “The weakness in you…I can smell it like the blood you bleed for Selena Koren. It was her head you were supposed to give me. Instead, you nearly lost yours.” She made a tsking sound with her teeth. “Not the stuff of ballads, Bloody Bastian.
His knees wanted to buckle and he let them. The water came up to his waist, swirling darkly about him.