Kjell promised to intercede with King Tiras and convinced the men charged with going to Willa to remain with the group going to Caarn. There was strength in numbers, and too much was unknown. Faced with the reality of the expedition, staying together seemed the best option, and the travelers—minus the men they’d lost and the supplies and horses that had gone down with the ship—prepared for another journey. Wagons were unloaded and reassembled; enough horses remained to pull the wagons and the remaining gear, but the travelers would be walking to Caarn. All of them. The group was solemn, their outlook diminished, and their anxiety increased.
“It will take two days to travel inland to the valley of Caarn. But we aren’t going to have to climb cliffs and drag these wagons through the grass and trees,” Padrig encouraged. “There is a fine road, laid with stones. There are roads connecting every corner of Dendar. Caarn is at the apex with roots and branches spanning into the countries of Willa and Porta. The king, and his father before him, and his father before that, commissioned the roads, connecting the people to their king and his kingdom. Everything in Dendar is beautiful,” he boasted.
The silence wasn’t beautiful. It was eerie. Signs of the Volgar—strewn nests, the rare feather, and picked bones—were evident but old. No fresh remains, bird droppings, or stench littered the corners or clung to the air. A human skull, still attached to its long backbone like a macabre club, lay on the main thoroughfare. Someone had stayed behind in Dendar Bay, unwilling to run, and had met his death in the street he’d refused to abandon. A little farther down, the remains of several birdmen were piled, and Kjell hoped the skull they’d seen belonged to their slayer.
They split into groups and perused deserted alleys and peeked into abandoned cottages. A tavern with neatly stacked goblets and corked bottles coated in dust lured them with her grimy bounty. The sailors helped themselves—the guard too—yet celebration seemed wrong, and they walked, traipsing through the quiet harbor town sipping spirits and growing more morose as they searched.
Bags of grain, suspended from beams in the stable to keep them from the rats, remained untouched and unused. Volgar birdmen didn’t eat grain. Kjell and Jerick lowered the bags and fed the horses, loading what remained in the reassembled wagons to bring to Caarn. Kjell left coin in an empty sack and nailed it to the wall, just in case the owner ever came back and found his grain gone, his livery gutted of supplies.
“They intended to come back. It is easy to see. They’ve left almost everything behind. They intended to come back,” Sasha insisted. “The day I left, this village was teeming with people. There was fear, but there was also excitement, adventure.”
“Were these people Spinners too?” Kjell asked.
“Many of them . . . yes,” she replied.
“Where did they go? The ones who didn’t leave?”
“Everyone was going to Caarn. The king—Aren,” Sasha stumbled on the name, and Kjell sensed her discomfort, as if she betrayed the king with every word. “Aren wanted everyone together, just as you are urging us to do now.”
“But they haven’t come back. Surely . . . they would have come back, eventually,” he said.
“Yes. Unless they felt safer remaining. Unless . . . there is still danger.”
“But it isn’t that far. The wine, the grain, the homes with furnishings and belongings. Someone would have come back.” Kjell stopped. Sasha knew all these things and didn’t need the burden of his observations. He didn’t ask her what would happen if Caarn was as empty as the Bay of Dendar.
They reunited back at the docks, arms laden with discoveries. Half of the travelers from Jeru had lost everything they owned when the ship had gone down. No one was using the clothing left behind or the blankets on the beds, but Kjell hoped they wouldn’t arrive in Caarn and have a shopkeeper recognize his boots.
“Chickens,” Isak gloated, holding the headless, plucked birds by their curled feet. “And Jedah has more. They were just running wild. Volgar will eat chickens. If there were Volgar here, there wouldn’t be chickens. It’s a good sign, right Captain?”
Kjell nodded slowly.
“Yes. A good sign, and an even better meal. The inn has a galley as big as a castle kitchen. Start a fire, Isak, and get the cook to help you. We’ll eat there tonight, and we’ll eat well. We’ll leave for Caarn in the morning.”
They found oil and tightly sealed barrels of flour in the inn’s stores and carried pails of heated water to the iron tubs of the well-appointed chambers. They ate like kings, filling their bellies with another man’s bread, washing themselves with another man’s soap, but that night, no one remained on shore except a few guards in the stables with the horses. Although beds and rooms were plentiful, the travelers chose to sleep on the ship, stretched out on the deck in nervous reverence of a bay that felt more like a burial ground.
Sasha slept in the quarters she’d occupied for much of the journey, and Kjell guarded her door, stretched out in the narrow corridor on a pallet that barely fit in the space. Jerick would relieve him halfway through the night so he could get some sleep, but he wouldn’t grow complacent simply because they’d made it to Dendar. He dreamed of the squid, his lance protruding from its soft underside, sinking into the depths and, at the last moment, changing into Ariel of Firi with dead eyes and lifeless limbs. But he couldn’t be sure, and he couldn’t make himself believe the threat was truly gone.
An hour after the ship grew quiet and the lapping of the water started to make him drowsy, Sasha’s door opened and she stepped out, gently closing it behind her. He sat up as she sat down, facing him, drawing her knees to her chest, the only option in the constricted passage. Her nightgown was an ivory silk and modest in every way, but her toes peeked out beneath the hem, and his stomach clenched with longing. He stroked the soft skin of one dainty foot before he forced himself to withdraw his hand.
“When we reach Caarn, you cannot sleep outside my door,” she said gently. Her hair smelled of roses, but violet darkened the hollows beneath her eyes, and he knew he was not the only one who worried.
“Everyone on this ship knows I’m in love with you,” he answered. “They all heard the bans read in Jeru City, they all know what was between us and what was snatched away. Do you not see their pitying looks and their curious gazes? They all know. I would stay away to protect your honor. But I can’t do that. I can’t do that and protect you.”
“I know. But it is one thing to unknowingly betray, it is another to willfully betray,” Sasha said.
“Yes. It is,” he agreed. “When we reach Caarn, you must tell King Aren everything. He can’t be the only one who doesn’t know.”
“I will tell him,” she whispered brokenly. “I betray him by loving you, and I betray you by returning to him.”
“You owe me nothing. There is no betrayal if there is no treachery. I know why I am here, and it is not to challenge the king,” he said.
“My conscience demands that I acknowledge you. My duty demands that I deny you,” Sasha said. “That feels like betrayal. Of myself. Of you. Of King Aren. And I don’t know how to rectify it.”