“Now, shoo.” Jarabax waved her away.
Hanna stomped across the boards but Selena stopped her. She filled a cloth napkin with bread, fruit, and had her wait while she cut a generous slice of pheasant. Hanna glanced at the bounty, hesitating. Then she tore it from Selena’s hands, and shot Jarabax a parting sneer.
“That napkin was silk,” the pirate lamented.
Selena glared. “You have enough on this table to feed that girl for a month.”
“That’s not the point. I don’t run a charitable organization. If it gets out that I’m getting soft, well…” He speared a piece of mango with a dagger, ate it. “I’ve got enough competition as it is.”
Selena tore off a small hunk of bread. “You’ll forgive my lack of sympathy.”
The pirate snickered. “Yes, I’d be shocked if you sympathized with the plight of a lowly pirate such as me.” Then his laughter died and he turned his blade to her with narrow eyes. “Then again, I’ve heard things about you. Maybe you’re not as pure as you look. Tainted, even.”
Selena set down her bread. “What do you want?”
“Now, now,” Jarabax said. “Let us not be rude. After all, I brought you here because I want to help.”
“You have a ship for me and a crew to man it?” Selena sipped from a mug of water. She knew the answer before the pirate laughed at her again. Anger colored her cheeks as she waited for Jarabax’s mirth to subside.
“I haven’t a ship to spare,” he said. “And I’ve heard you’ve had no luck with some of the other captains. I’m not surprised. Uago is entirely peopled with scoundrels and lowlifes.”
“And what does that make you?”
“Their king,” Jarabax said brightly and then pouted. “Or one of them. As I said, I have competition.”
He poured two glasses of wine as the sun broke through the eastern window. Selena shook her head at the proffered glass. The pirate shrugged. “More for me.” He sipped delicately and then dabbed his mustaches again. “But they are fools to deny you. They don’t know who you are. But I do.”
Selena fought the urge to cover her wound, as if it were visible. “Do you?”
Jarabax held his wine glass up to the new morning light, appreciating the crimson hues. “You are the reason the war ended. You are the Aluren who can rouse the very oceans. If the ignorant scum around here knew what you were capable of, well…this island is filthy and debased but, to us poor lowlifes, it’s all we’ve got. It has not escaped me that you might use your ability to wipe this ugly slate clean, so to speak. Hence my generous hospitality.” He gestured at the feast between them.
Selena pushed her small plate of food away, her appetite swallowed by the memory of a crashing wave and the screams of the dying. She took a steadying breath. “Get to the point of this meeting, if you have one.”
Jarabax’s lazy smile widened. “My point is, I know what happened on Isle Calinda. And what happened after, despite your Temple’s best attempts to keep that little bit of history a secret.” He sat back in his chair. “I wager they consider it a black mark on their shiny reputation, eh?”
Selena’s chair scraped as she rose. “Thank you for the bread.”
“Leaving already?” Jarabax made a tsk tsk sound. “You are unworldly to become so offended by the likes of me: a liar and a scoundrel. I know about your wound,” Jarabax added quickly when she continued to the door, “because Skye told me.”
Selena turned. “Skye…?”
Jarabax took up the second wine glass, his lazy smile returned. “Forgive me for toying with you, but I can’t resist. You, who appear so pristine and good, and yet who could burn my ship to ashes with a word.” He smiled slyly. “Or drown it to the Deeps.” He set the glass down with a clink. “The truth is, I admire you, Selena Koren. Power such as yours is worthy of admiration, so when Skye appeared to me two years ago and charged me with a task on your behalf, I agreed with relish.”
Selena stepped slowly back toward the table. “Skye was here?”
“Aye, she was. Moreover, she knew you would be passing through here and that you would need help. How she knew…well, that’s just Skye for you.” He stabbed another slice of bright orange fruit, sucked it off his dagger’s blade.
Selena sank back into her chair. “What did she say?”
Jarabax shrugged. “This and that. That and this. We spoke of many things. I enjoyed her company immensely and was ever so sad to see her go.” He heaved a sigh. “Anyway, the purpose of her visit was to leave you a gift and instructions that when you passed through Uago, I should seek you out and give it to you.”
“Skye left me a gift? Hanna said it was from you.”
“Do I look like a man who shares secrets with street urchins? Hanna knows nothing but what I tell her.”
“What is it?”
Jarabax glanced out the window. The morning had broken fully; the sky in the window outside was pure blue without a cloud to mar it. “Another dawn, another day. He grows restless waiting for you.”
“He?”
Jarabax looked her up and down, at her pure blue Aluren overtunic and the delicate silver stitching. His laugh was loud and hearty. “Oh, sweet Paladin, you’re going to love this.”
A Gift
Choppy water tossed the small skiff. Two pirates rowed and a third grizzled sea dog kept beside the pirate boss. The older pirate said nothing but regarded Ilior through flinty eyes and sat with a cutlass resting across his knees. They made their way through the ship graveyard to the shattered coast that made up Isle Uago’s northern shore. Salty ocean water had eaten away at the stony walls, leaving a grotto of warrens and caverns in the stone. Rough, porous rocks the color of old blood jutted up from the crashing tides like sentries to bar passage to the caverns. The water churned, and more than once Jarabax’s men had to push off these rocks with their oars. Ilior helped when the water was particularly rough, shoving the little boat away from outcroppings that threatened to tear holes in the hull. Through it all, Jarabax sat in the prow, relaxed and calm, watching Selena from beneath lowered lids. A dozing cat evinced more energy, and when the skiff scraped against some submerged obstacle, he only smiled.
The sun rose in a sky of cloudless blue, but all fell into shadow when the little boat entered the mouth of a large overhang of rock. They ran aground in a dark cavern. Selena stepped out of the boat; rocky silt crunched beneath her boots.
“He’s in there,” Jarabax said, with a lazy nod at the cavern as the rest of the crew climbed out of the boat. It was pitch black; a hole in the stone. Selena touched her own wound absently, as the clank of metal against rock echoed out of cavern.
“He’s chained?” Selena turned to Jarabax. “Need I remind you that slavery has been outlawed in all realms and isles for two hundred years? Punishable by death?”
“Svoz is not a slave. Not…quite.”
“Not quite?”
“I can say nothing more to assure you.” Jarabax offered a wide smile. “Once you meet him, you’ll understand.”