Grunt grunted, and pointed with his bloody club to the where the girl sat near the table, legs drawn up to her blood-splattered chin. She hugged herself, mangled noises erupting now and then from behind her closed mouth. She wore sailor’s gloves and above them, her wrists were bruised with Pate’s fingerprints. Her gaze swept along the cask house, to what was left of Pate’s face; to her attacker whose neck bones bulged obscenely; to the first man who had tried to ambush Sebastian from the shadows. He was still alive, wheezing and burbling blood out of his mouth.
The girl’s petrified stare found Sebastian and she cowered when he stood over her. Without a word, he swooped down and picked her up, cradling her small form with ease. She loosed a muffled squeal but did not struggle.
“Selena,” Sebastian said hoarsely.
Grunt nodded and started to lead them out of the cask house, but Sebastian stopped and loomed over the dying man, staring down at him for a moment. Then he adjusted his hold on the girl, withdrew his pistol, and aimed between the eyes. The man’s head flopped from side to side, and blood burst from his mouth as he tried to speak. He held up a bloody hand, as if he could ward off what was coming, his eyes begging for his life.
Sebastian cocked the hammer on his flintlock. “No.”
The report ripped through the cask house, and the girl uttered another muffled scream behind closed lips as the man’s head gave a jerk and then was still. The girl began to sob.
Outside, Grunt showed Sebastian another man lying face down on the ground. Blood pooled around him, black in the dimness. Grunt pointed at him and made the signs for “lookout” and “ambush.” He then lifted his club, dark with blood with sentry’s blood.
“Good.” Sebastian jerked his chin. “Go.”
They returned to the White Sail and Sebastian climbed the stairs after Grunt. The young woman in his arms buried her face against his chest and whimpered. She smelled of salt and sweat, and a strange, sweet-smelling oil that he couldn’t place. Every sound she made came from the back of her throat, as if she were gagging.
But that’s all they took, he thought as Grunt pounded on the Paladin’s door. They got her tongue but nothing else, the bastards. Nothing else.
Ilior opened the door, his sword in hand. “What is this?”
“Wake Selena,” Sebastian said. “Now.”
The door opened wider and Selena was there, in a sleeping dress and a robe. Her hair was down, flowing over the left side of her chest. Sebastian stared, filling his eyes with her beauty to replace the image of Pate’s mangled, bloody face.
Shock arrested Selena momentarily as she took in Sebastian and the woman, but then she hurried them inside.
The rage Sebastian had known in the cask house was dying, and his fatigue overwhelmed him. He dropped to his knees but Ilior was there to take the girl. The fire in the hearth was roaring with a makeshift bed before it. Ilior didn’t sleep, it seemed, but kept the fire fed for Selena. The girl screamed behind her teeth as the Vai’Ensai took her in his huge, scaled arms, but Selena soothed her. Ilior set her before the fire on his pallet.
“Gods, what happened?” Selena asked, stroking the girl’s cropped orange hair that looked as if it had been cut with a dull blade.
“She was attacked,” Sebastian muttered. “I killed them. They cut out her tongue.”
Ilior rumbled a foul oath and Selena gasped. Sebastian heard her tell Ilior to fill the basin with water and bring a cloth. The girl whimpered her guttural whimper and Sebastian hauled himself to standing.
“Where are you going?” Selena demanded and he ignored her. She whispered words of comfort to the girl, and then rushed to the door, blocking him. “Are you all right? You’re covered in blood.”
“It’s not mine.”
“You’re hurt. Let me…”
Sebastian waved her off. “We leave at dawn.”
“It’s dawn now.”
“Then tend to her and meet me at the docks.”
“But your hands. Let me heal you.”
Sebastian pulled away from as she reached for his bruised and swollen knuckles. “One hour,” he said. “Then we sail.”
He pushed past her, Grunt in tow.
“Pack your things. Tell the other crew,” Sebastian said when they were down the hall away from Selena’s room.
Grunt nodded, though his eyes were dark with concern. “Cook? Helm?” he whispered.
“Fuck them.”
Grunt started to go, then reached out and patted Sebastian’s cheek. The assassin’s hand shot up, gripped the old man’s wrist, and squeezed. Grunt didn’t struggle. Sebastian closed his eyes for a moment and then released him.
“Go.”
Grunt obeyed his captain in silence.
Selena closed the door after Julian and Grunt had gone, and turned back to her patient. The girl was, on closer inspection, not a girl but a woman not yet thirty years old. Her small stature and boyish clothes and hair made her seem younger. She sat hunched by the fire, knees pulled up to her chin, gloved hands covered her mouth and she stared at the flames with eyes wide with remembered terror.
Ilior had set down a bowl of water and a clean cloth. Selena knelt beside the woman. Gently, she pulled her hands from her mouth and wiped the blood from her chin.
“Please,” Selena said. “I don’t think I can heal you unless you…show me your wound.”
The woman regarded her with dark blue eyes fringed with black lashes. The firelight caught her orange hair so that it looked aflame itself. She motioned with one gloved hand, miming holding a quill and scribbling.
“You can write?”
The woman nodded.
“But you must be in pain,” Selena said. “Please, let me heal you first.”
This was met with a silent stare.
Selena nodded to the desk and Ilior retrieved quill, ink and piece of parchment. He handed them to the woman who took them from the Vai’Ensai, watching him warily.
“What is your name?” Selena asked.
Quill scribbled on paper.
Cathryn. Cat.
“Very well, Cat. What happened?”
Her hand trembled as she wrote. Bad men. Bad crew. Tried to hide but they found out.
“You’re safe now,” Ilior said, but Cat didn’t appear much comforted.
“Let me see your wound,” Selena said. “I can ease the pain, at least.”
The woman shook her head. Her quill scratched. I am ugly. Uglier now. Tears filled her eyes but she swiped at them with a gloved hand.
Selena thought of her own hideous wound. “You’re not ugly, but…I understand.”
She moved closer to Cat and filled her palm with water from her ampulla, then cupped her hand under the woman’s jaw. With her other hand, she found the moon in the sky and murmured, “Illuria.” The orange glow—as orange as the woman’s hair—emanated along her jaw and throat. Cat slumped with relief and looked at Selena with eyes full of gratitude.
Selena smiled. “Are you hurt elsewhere?” She indicated the gloves. “Your hands?”
Cat shook her head again. Sailor. Pull rigging. Ugly hands too. She wrote faster, quill flying. Then she took the paper and pressed it into Selena’s hands, imploring.
Take me with you.
Merkind’s Wrath
On the dock, snow fluttered about like the white petals of a moth-wing tree. The rising sun was a dull white orb glowing behind a slate-gray sky, and the seas were just as dull. If this late summer morning was as white and cold as winter, Selena wondered, what must deep winter on Isle Nanokar be like?