Cat rolled her eyes. “It means we’re going to be slow and clumsy, and the Bazira vessel has a fantastic head start.”
Ilior stopped his work letting out the foresail. “But we can still catch them, yes?” he asked. The crew scurried behind him, readying the ship for sail. Ori helped with as much facility as if she had her sight.
Cat chewed her lip. “It’s not so easy as that. We have half of Saliz’s coast to sail around just to get on their same wind. If they’re on the same wind and not vanished. Otherwise…”
“There is no ‘otherwise’,” Ilior said. “We follow them and we catch up.”
“Aye, I’m as eager as you,” Cat said, “but I’m telling you what we face. Best to know where they were headed and stay far astern of them, out of their sights.” She glanced around. “Any ideas?”
“To Bacchus,” Niven said. “Gareth said he worked for Bacchus.”
“But which island?” Cat asked. “The old witch was supposed to tell Selena—”
Ori slipped up between them. She had appeared to them in the jungle as they passed through on their way to the Black Storm like a ghost. Without her to guide them, they would’ve lost valuable time trying to make it to the southern shore where the Storm was anchored. But once aboard, she remained aloof. Niven had almost forgotten she was there.
She turned her sightless gaze to the horizon, as if she could see the horizon. “I know where Bacchus is.”
Escape and Capture
She leaned in to him and gently laid her lips to his cheek, kissing him softly. When she started to pull away, he held her hands tightly. Their eyes met and for a second, she was inexplicably terrified.
“No, don’t be scared,” he whispered and then kissed her hard. His mouth was warm on hers; she could feel the heat. For the first time in a decade, she could feel it. She melted against him.
A flash of steel in the lower periphery of her vision, and then a sharp, glassy pain as his blade slipped under her ribs. He held her as she slid to the floor, cradling her all the way down. His breath was hot against her cheek, and she could feel that too.
“Selena…”
His hand holding the blade twisted, came free, and then plunged in again and again…
Selena woke from her doze with a start. The ship had lulled her into a shallow sleep but her bonds sent slivers of pain down her arms and shoulders. She was on her knees, her hands tied behind her to some post or beam. The dream made her gasp through her nose as the gag was still tied tightly around her mouth. It tasted foul and dry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had water.
She raised her head slowly, wincing at the stiffness in her neck. The hold was dim with only slants of light finding their way in between the planks of the deckhead. He was across from her, watching her. He wasn’t gagged and when he moved to speak, she shook her head at him.
The time for him to speak to her was long past.
Selena squeezed her eyes shut to the pain that gripped her heart in a merciless vise. She looked instead to Accora. The old woman had spent most of their voyage—nearly two days, Selena guessed—staring vacantly at nothing. Lost. But now she was working her jaw side to side, over and over. The gag had loosened and that had given the old woman new fire. Selena’s own bonds were tight and unrelenting. She dozed again.
She dreamt of another kiss. It was exquisite in every way and then Julian’s hands closed around her throat and began to squeeze….
She woke with a start, her chest hitching. Julian’s face was a mask of anguish as he watched her.
His name is not Julian. She looked away.
The sunlight that found its way into the hold was grayish and dull now, and she imagined a sky of clouds. The air smelled thick, as of rain, but Selena couldn’t be sure. The hold was full of foodstuffs that scented the air: sacks of dried beans, barley, cured pork. After the first day, her stomach had complained for smelling what she could not eat, but now her thirst commanded attention. Only twice had Jude Gracus come down to allow them to relieve themselves, but never to offer food and only enough water to drink to keep them alive. She taunted Selena. The Bazira woman caressed Julian’s face that was ashen gray and ran her fingers over the burnt skin of his neck as if he weren’t injured. All the while calling him ‘Sebastian’ with a triumphant pleasure, as if she had created him herself.
My name is Sebastian Vaas. I was hired by the Bazira to kill you.
Selena hadn’t believed it. Julian’s pledge to serve her and die for her had been too real, too full of desperate sincerity. Their lovemaking had been too perfect; his eyes had regarded her with a depth of feeling that was impossible to counterfeit. Or so she’d thought.
They hadn’t gagged Julian. When Jude was gone, he was free to tell her that it was all a lie. But he did not. Selena had stared at him, beseeching with her eyes, waiting for him to recant. His answer was in his silence, and did not look away or bow his head in shame. He met her stupefied gaze unflinching, as if her horror were a punishment to be borne. And when he’d had enough, he whispered only, “I never could. Never.”
Selena was glad for her gag then. His name is Sebastian. Your Julian is gone, she thought. Then, I must not weep or I will never stop.
Accora was making muffled grunting sounds. Selena turned her head in time to see the old woman had finally worked the gag down to her chin. She inhaled several times and then smiled in tired triumph. She worked her hands back and forth behind her, muttering the Bazira sacred word to freeze the ropes that bound her.
“You must not despair,” she told Selena. “I thought we were done but no…These Bazira, they are stupid with arrogance. They underestimate us. We will—Don’t look at him!” she hissed when Selena’s gaze drifted to Sebastian. “Waste not one more thought on that betrayer.”
Not betrayer, Selena thought. Trickster. Trickster and Supplicant, both, just as An-Lan said. She was right about all of it. And who shall be the Sacrifice? She offered a silent prayer to the god that Ilior remain safe on Isle Saliz. But was her god listening anymore? Shaizan, the Ho Sun god told her the truth. The Shining face was silent.
“He is what I knew he was,” Accora was saying, “a danger.”
“And what are you?” Sebastian asked. He sounded weak. “You set Selena on Bacchus as much as the Alliance did. And for what? What do you get when she fights him?”
Accora ignored him but whispered her sacred word again, and worried her wrists behind her back. “Healing,” she told Selena. “You stormed away from me like a child throwing a tantrum, and so never learned the final lesson. It’s your healing. It is what stands between you and Bacchus’s deadly visions.”
The woman’s urgent, hopeful tone sounded ridiculous in Selena’s ears. She felt helpless, her prayers silenced, her sword stolen, and her hope and love stripped away until she was left raw and broken. The Shining face had forsaken her. It was as plain as the hole in her chest.