For the first hour of Quint’s drills, we fell all over ourselves, bashing each other with the shields and, as Cai had predicted, tripping over each others’ feet. There was a lot of swearing—and a lot of laughing—and then, gradually, we started to move from testudo to hollow square to staggered formation and back again with a degree of precision. By the time we finished the drills, all of us were sore and sweating and congratulating each other on our newfound defensive prowess.
Cai dubbed us “Legio Achillea,” and Quint stood in our midst with his hands on his hips, looking extravagantly pleased with himself—especially when Elka affectionately punched his shoulder as she went past on her way to stow her shield.
The distraction had transformed the mood of the ship. Most of us seemed to have even forgotten we were sailing out on the open sea without a stitch of land in sight. It felt more like we were gliding along on a pleasure barge crossing a placid lake. The lightness hadn’t touched all corners of the ship, though. Arviragus had disappeared belowdecks—to nurse his seasickness with a draught, Leander said, but I suspected it had been a bit too painful a reminder of his own defeat by those same maneuvers. Aeddan brooded silently from his perch in the stern of the boat, watching everything through his hawk eyes and scowling. And as the girls dispersed, I glanced over my shoulder to see Charon standing in the bow, arms crossed over his chest and a faraway, pensive look shadowing his handsome face.
I gave Cai’s arm a squeeze and crossed the deck to talk to the slave master.
Charon nodded at me in greeting, his dark eyes never leaving the horizon in front of us. I leaned on my elbows beside him and gazed in that direction. At first, I thought it was my imagination, but as I looked, I saw a thin, dark smudge in the farthest distance that began, ever so slightly, to thicken as we sailed toward it.
“You’re thinking about what we might find when we reach the end of this journey,” I said quietly. “Aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?” he countered.
“You mean, am I wondering whether we’ll find my sister alive or dead?” I looked at him sideways and lifted a shoulder. “I am. Then again, I’ve spent most of my life thinking Sorcha was dead.”
Charon nodded, staring out over the water. “The thought of having only just found her to lose her again must be unbearable,” he murmured.
I suspected he was speaking more of himself than of me. I turned back to gaze at the growing shape on the horizon. “I do not think the Morrigan would be so cruel,” I said.
“Your fearsome war goddess.” He regarded me from under an arched brow. “She who—as I’ve been led to understand—bathes in the blood of her enemies and feasts on their eyes after the battle’s done? She would not be so cruel?”
I smiled at him. “She led me to Sorcha once; she’ll do so again.”
“And what if we, weak unworthy humans that we are, are too late when we do finally find her?” he asked.
“We won’t be,” I said, feeling the smile fade from my lips. “But even if we’re too late for rescue, we’ll still be right on time for revenge.”
XI
THE SEA RUSHED to meet the rugged contours of the wild Corsican coast as if it had been too long away from the kiss of land. To the north and west of us, the water was the color of the blue-green faience collars Cleopatra wore around her neck, the waves sparkling and laced with delicate nets of pearly foam. Schools of silver fish darted and danced in the shadows cast by the galley prow as we sailed in the lee of majestic cliffs. In the far distance, I could just make out the profile of another island—Sardinia, I’d been told it was called—that lay to the south of us.
We sailed between the two islands, following the Corsican shoreline, and eventually rounded a towering promontory that raced away to the east, swooping low to become a gleaming beach circling a deep, sheltered bay surrounded by forest-cloaked hills rising back toward craggy mountains.
Cai looked at Quintus. “Is this the place?”
Quint nodded. He looked over his shoulder at where Charon stood up on the captain’s deck and pointed to a spot on the shore. The slave master gave the order, and the sailors steered the ship in that direction.
“Do you think they’ll have sentries posted?” Elka asked Quint.
He shook his head. “No. No one comes here.”
“Because of the Amazons?”
“Their reputation has been enough to guard this place and keep it safe since before I was born,” he said. “There are those who say it is a cursed place.”
I saw Charon wince and glance over his shoulder at the ship’s captain, who’d been listening to the conversation. Charon took Quint by the shoulder and turned him away from the man. “I’d counsel you against using that kind of language around the crew, friend. Sailors are a superstitious lot.”
Charon had already told us that his men would not go ashore with us when we dropped anchor. They were slavers and sailors, not fighters, and no amount of money—even if I’d had any to speak of—would convince them otherwise. But I worried in that moment that they would leave us to our business once we were gone and sail back to the mainland without us. I said as much to Charon.
He shook his head. “I’ll stay behind. You’ll have a ship standing by to return to, Princess,” he said. “I promise.”
“And I’ll stay behind to make sure he keeps that promise,” said Aeddan, joining the conversation.
Charon cocked his head and regarded Aeddan. “You don’t trust me?”
“You’re a career thief.” Aeddan shrugged. “A scoundrel. The leader of career thieves and scoundrels. I trust you as much as I would any in your trade.”
I groaned inwardly, but Charon just smiled. He turned to me. “And you, Fallon, do you trust me? Him?”
“I trust that you’ll be here when I get back,” I said. “Whether Aeddan is or not, well . . . surprise me.”
“I’ll happily take wagers on whether we come back to find him floating faceup or facedown,” Elka said dryly.
Aeddan turned a flat stare on her—which she returned in kind—but that was the extent of his response, for which I was thankful. I’d resigned myself to the fact that he seemed determined to make himself “useful” on our quest and there was nothing that would dissuade him, short of one of us throwing him overboard. Maybe Elka had the right idea with her suggested wager. My dream of Aeddan’s duplicity, of him trying to convince Cai to lie . . . to make me leave . . . swam up from the depths of my mind, writhing like a sea serpent, and made me wonder, again, just exactly what Aeddan’s motives were. And whether or not I really could trust him.
Or Cai . . .
No. Aeddan was the only one I questioned. Even as I owed him my escape from Tartarus. I bit my tongue, frowning, and went to check my gear.
At Quint’s direction, Charon’s men anchored the galley in a northern curve of the bay and launched the ship’s single skiff over the side to ferry me and Cai and the others to shore. The little craft could only hold two at a time plus a rower, so it would take a while, and I was a seething ball of impatience. So much so, in fact, that my nerves must have frayed to the breaking point without my really realizing it. Because it was only moments after the skiff turned around and headed back out to where the ship was anchored, leaving me and Cai alone, when I turned to him.
“I . . .” My mind told me to stop. To let it go.