“They won’t hurt it,” Niven offered in a small voice. “They might make a mess of the galley, but there’s nothing on the ship for them. Is there?”
“Probably not.” The captain saw his crew all accounted for and he nodded almost imperceptibly. The stony mask dropped back into place.
“So, what do we do now?” Niven ventured.
“We wait,” Julian replied. “I dropped the anchor so she can’t drift. And those bloody bastards can’t stay out of water forever. The high tide will come in and we can take her back. Get the Deeps out of these cursed waters.”
Niven mustered the courage to ask the Captain not to leave Selena stranded on the island, but the jungle’s cacophony of buzzing insects and birdcalls went silent. The broad-leafed plants around them shivered as two dozen men and women, dressed in woven grasses and painted in mud, ringed around them. Each bore a spear, or had hollow reeds to their mouths, trained on the crew. Svoz drew his weapon but one painted man snaked an arm around Whistle’s neck and laid a dagger of carved stone to his neck. Julian held up his hand and Svoz halted.
“Poison darts,” Julian muttered, and Niven followed his gaze to the men with reeds in their mouths. “Svoz might take down one or two, but the others will kill us.”
“That is certain,” said a quiet, feminine voice. The painted natives parted to let the woman pass, the same woman in white who had slipped away from Svoz earlier. Niven gasped in horror at the sight of her face.
She’s not wearing goggles…
The woman smiled softly. “You will be coming with us.”
Insects whirred, chirped. They droned in the thick air or sawed their legs in unseen hollows until the noise was a cacophony. Some swooped across their path, flashing poisonous hues of yellow, black and purple. Dark green plant life surrounded them on all sides, as if they walked through a living cave. Bursts of color—some flowers with petals as wide as a man—lined the path or hung over them like parasols. The heat enshrouded them. Selena could feel the tingles of it on her skin and the air was thick and hard to breath. Ilior moved with vigor, pushing aside the dense flora when he could, slicing a path with his long sword when he couldn’t. The humid, jungle climate was akin to that of his homeland.
This is the closest he will get to it, she thought. No wonder he seems almost happy.
The cold draft in her chest silenced her unsettled thoughts where her own admonishments could not. She was close. She could sense it.
Ilior paused and snuffed the air. “Do you know where we are going?”
Selena glanced up to mark the sun in the sky and to get her bearings, but the canopy of forest made the midday seem as twilight.
“No,” she admitted. “But I do not fear becoming lost. The Bazira…she knows I am here. We will find each other.”
When night fell, they made camp in a natural clearing just large enough for one of them to lie down while the other kept the watch. Ilior argued to take first watch but Selena knew he was weary of hacking a path through the jungle for them. In the deep dark his shape was no more than an outline, his shoulders slumped and his voice thick with fatigue.
“I will take first watch,” Selena said in a tone that brooked no argument.
For once he didn’t protest. He sat down and endeavored to curl his large form into a position of comfort. Within moments, his breathing was even but Selena did not kid herself that he slept deeply. He was as he had been in the war: her soldier and this was their new battle. He would wake at the slightest whisper of his name and be ready to fight in an instant.
Selena sat on the damp ground and drew her knees to her chest. She tried to be watchful but the jungle had become the night and the night the jungle; a great beast of darkness that had leafy hands to brush across her skin, and snake-like vines that curled at her feet. The beast’s breath was the susurrations of the countless insects, and Selena fought the urge to build a fire or weave light to drive the darkness back. But fire was too dangerous in this thick foliage and the light would only draw more insects to her. She was already beset by flying pests that blundered into her cheeks, or those that purposefully sought out her warm blood.
Nothing I can do about a slithering snake or poisonous spider, she thought and shivered.
The blackness seemed to thicken. Instead of Selena’s eyes adjusting to the dark, she grew blinder. Shadows and dim outlines were all she could make of her Ilior and the forest around them. She drew her sword and laid it across her knees. A frog croaked. The cacophony of insects was steady. For that she was glad, as any approaching danger would silence the night creatures’ buzzing song. Or so she hoped.
Selena grew weary. The dark implored her to close her eyes. She blinked and shifted and tried to stay alert. She thought of the Bazira she had come here to kill and what it would be like to face her, to draw her sword against her or weave light and end her. Perhaps without provocation.
Or perhaps the dark priestess would view Selena as an enemy and strike first.
She is waiting for me. To kill me, no doubt. She is Bazira and I am Aluren. How can there be any end between us but death?
The thought was darkly comforting but not by much. It did not assuage the pang in her heart that told her she was no better than a hired assassin.
The oppressive heat of Isle Saliz couldn’t null the chill of her wound, but she was as close to comfortable as she was like to get, and she slipped into a half-sleep. Her thoughts broke apart and made no sense. A sea scorpion snapped at her heels and then burst into flames. Svoz’s cudgel broke the ship and the water poured in. Julian….Julian had sea-glass eyes, green and gray and hard… and his lips…snarling at her, then smiling, leaning in to kiss her…
Selena felt a tingle of warmth on her cheek, like a soft wind. But no breeze stirred the jungle air. She sat, unmoving, waiting to feel the little breath again or to know it came from her sleepy imagination.
It came again.
Selena cupped her hand and spoke the sacred word, Luxari. There was very little light to draw from. The blackness grew deeper around them as a small ball of light bloomed in her palm.
Selena saw black; black pits where eyes should have been in a pale face framed by black that was hair cut short. A face, inches from hers, peering at her sightlessly, guilelessly, head cocked to the side, breathing a gentle breath over Selena’s skin.
All this Selena perceived in the heartbeat before a scream tore from her throat. She jumped to her feet, her heart hammering inside her chest, her fingers curling around the handle of her sword. She snuffed her light in her panic, plunging them back into darkness. Beside her, Ilior was a flurry of scraping steel. Selena quickly conjured a new ball of light. The eyeless face was gone.
“What was it?” Ilior was calm but wary.
“A…a Haru,” Selena said breathlessly, willing her racing heart to calm itself. “Yes, a Haru. I believe so.”