Fair point.
Fire flared ahead, and conversations paused at the approaching splashes. Then they were there: a low dungeon exactly like something from a nightmarish fairy tale. On and on it spanned, lit by primitive torches. Stone cells with faces of all shades, ages, and sizes pressed against the crude bars. Many wore collars similar to the one the Hell-Bards had forced on Vaness.
“Cartorrans?” Caden shouted, thrusting his own torch high.
The response was instant. Almost every person in sight thrust arms through the bars. “I’m Cartorran!” “No, I’m Cartorran!” “Cartorra!”
They were all very clearly not Cartorran, and though Safi hated the idea of leaving all these men and women enslaved to fight—to die—as sport for wagering pirates, she also wasn’t na?ve enough to think they could all be helped.
Escape. That was what mattered.
“Here, sir!” called Lev from farther down the line, and sure enough, by the time Safi caught up, Caden was speaking to a man in a Cartorran green uniform. It sounded like he was asking something about the prince, where is the prince?, but it was almost impossible to distinguish words with the slaves bellowing, splashing water, furious at being ignored.
Escape, escape. Her own escape. That was all that mattered.
Yet when Safi glanced at the Empress of Marstok, she saw something quite different glittering in Vaness’s eyes.
“Majesty.” Caden beckoned the Empress to the bars. “This is our crew. Free them, please, so we can find our ship and get out of this cursed land.”
The empress did not move, and the slaves roared on. Water sprayed against her, against Safi. They were soaked, gowns hanging heavy. No longer mustard or forest green but simply saturated darkness.
“Your Majesty,” Safi tried, approaching.
The empress speared her with a glare. “I do not trust them. They will take us both to Henrick.”
“They won’t,” Safi argued. “They spoke the truth at the inn.”
“Because there was a fire to spur them.” Her eyes gleamed like the crocodiles’ outside. “I want another reassurance, Hell-Bard. Remove your chain, and let Safi read you again. If you refuse, then I free no one.”
Caden’s shoulders wilted, almost invisible were it not for the way his torch wavered.
“I’ll do it, sir.” Zander’s hands reached for the noose at his own neck.
“No.” The word lashed out simultaneously from Caden and Vaness.
“I’ll do it,” Caden finished, at the same moment that Vaness declared, “I want the commander’s word.”
Zander winced, but took the torch when Caden offered it. Then he and Lev stepped aside, with sadness in their eyes.
Sad, sad eyes. Safi didn’t need her witchery to know that truth.
Caden slopped forward, stopping mere paces from Vaness and Safi. Then he leaned his blade against his leg and with an awkward fumble—as if he’d never done it before, as if he hadn’t just done it an hour ago—he unfastened the noose.
Vaness moved. Up snapped her arms. Out snapped the shackles. They whipped around Caden’s neck, while the blade at his leg coiled like a mangrove root. It towed him down. No one could move. No one could stop it. In half a breath, the Hell-Bard commander was bound to the ground.
Water rippled around him, and the slaves roared their approval.
Zander and Lev darted forward, but a palm from Vaness halted them both. “Stay where you are, or he dies.” She glided to Caden, as if in a ballroom, and stared down. “We sail to Azmir, Commander.”
“And … if I … refuse?” he huffed, a pained sound and with his face clenched. Clenched. Until Safi didn’t think his eyes—or lips—could compress any more tightly.
“I will leave you like this. It will kill you eventually, will it not? I have heard tales of a Hell-Bard’s doom. Like cleaving, but slow—and with your mind working the entire time. You have awareness, yet no control.”
“Please,” Lev begged. “Please don’t do this to him.”
Caden moaned. His fists balled at his sides, and though iron kept his wrists locked down, he hammered. And hammered.
This was only the beginning, though, for as Vaness knelt beside the Hell-Bard, waves shimmering outward, black began to crawl across Caden’s face.
At first Safi thought she hallucinated it, what with all the shadows around them. Then when Caden’s lips split with another groan, and black furled out from between his teeth, she knew it was all too real.
It was like the smoke from Admiral Kahina’s pipe. Except … this was magic. This was wrong. It set Safi’s skin, her witchery to shuddering. Her gut rebelled too, for this was torture. Plain and simple. Whatever that noose did, without it, the Hell-Bard was in agony.