Dangerous Games
Niven raced through the jungle with the crew of the Black Storm, leaping over stands of greenery and ducking under boughs of moss-covered trees. The dawn had come but the interior of the rain forest was still dark. Shapes loomed out at him, and while the insect cacophony went quiet at their passage, he could hear the squawking calls of birds heralding the morning, and—much closer—slithering, hissing noises that sent his skin to crawling. He gripped his borrowed sword tighter, sometimes using it to hack awkwardly at a leafy obstacle. His heart hammered in his chest, but he told himself it was from the mad run. Isle Saliz’s heat was intense within the jungle; sweat poured off his brow and trickled down his back, under his linen shirt. He felt naked without his Aluren overtunic but was glad it wasn’t there to snag on branches or stifle him further.
But if I have to fight, I wouldn’t mind a full suit of armor, heat or no heat.
The other crewmen ran with him in a loose group, some ranging ahead, some fanning to the side. Niven hoped one of them—Grunt perhaps—knew where they were going. But even to his untrained eye, he saw the signs of passage from others: bent and broken plant stalks, muddy footprints, and freshly cut wounds on plants or branches.
He ran on, harder, endeavoring not to cut himself with the curved Bazira sword in his hand. But shame burned his face as much as the heat of the jungle as a small voice told him he ran because if he stopped the jungle would eat him alive. Going on was the only option.
No! This time I will not fail her. I won’t.
“This way!” Grunt, from somewhere ahead. Niven still couldn’t believe the man could speak but there was no time to ponder the why of it. He did as the old sea dog—who was as spry and fleet as Whistle—had commanded.
Niven could hear ocean crashing on shore, like some distant mirage, and ran harder. Something seemed to jump up and bite him on the back of the thigh. Needle-sharp pain flared, and he nearly fell. But whatever had bit him—and he wasn’t about to turn around and look—couldn’t hold on, and his leg was released. The pain faded to a mild annoyance and he breathed a grateful prayer to the Shining face. Ahead, the jungle ended, and beyond that, there was the sea.
Dawn had come, brightly here in the open air, and Niven saw a Bazira ship, like a bruise on the horizon, sailing away. No…
The beach was littered with the dead. Niven counted ten bodies: three Bazira and seven pirates—Farendii by their olive coloring and dark hair—leaking blood into the gritty sand. Cat sat off by herself, her elbows resting on her knees, her dark blue eyes on the retreating Bazira ship. One hand still wore a glove but the other was bare, and in the light of day, Niven saw her hand wasn’t burned or iced, but stained orange. The same shade of orange as her hair.
But it was the sight of Ilior, crouched near the shore, and made the adherent’s heart plummet. He dropped his sword and ran to the Vai’Ensai.
“They have her,” Ilior rasped. “They have her…. We have to…must…”
Ilior’s body was a patchwork of white, but surprisingly that didn’t bother Niven. He was strong enough to heal every wound; he knew that now. But the pall of illness that hung over and around Ilior bothered Niven very much. Ilior’s eyes were rimmed yellow and his gray skin looked dry, despite the humidity.
He forced a comforting smile on his face, the same he used during his years of healing in the Forgotten Isles. A smile meant to say, “It’s not that bad,” when in truth his stomach churned at the gruesomeness of his patient’s wound.
He’s sick, and I can’t heal whatever he’s got.
He laid his hands on a particularly wide patch of white on Ilior’s shoulder. It was as cold as the ice that had created it. Niven said the sacred word. He held the healing, felt it swell within his heart like hope or happiness, and then channeled it into the Vai’Ensai. Every one of the icy patches faded from Ilior’s skin. The illness remained, just as Niven knew it would.
Ilior nodded in thanks, and stood up. Niven noticed he leaned on his great sword to do it. The crew of the Storm gathered round. “We have to go after them.”
Grunt nodded vigorously and looked at Niven. He raised his bushy brown expectantly.
“I…I don’t know,” Niven replied. “I don’t know what to do.”
“We have to follow them,” Ilior said. “There is nothing else to do.”
“But how?” Niven asked. “We don’t have a ship…”
Grunt grunted loudly and pointed south.
“The Storm, yes,” Niven said, wondering why Grunt was keeping up the charade that he was mute. Perhaps out of habit, but Niven thought the old sea dog kept glancing at Ilior fearfully. “But we don’t have a captain. It looks as if they took Julian too.”
“His name isn’t Julian,” said a voice. A female voice. Cat sat and watched the Bazira ship. “His name is Sebastian Vaas.”
The air seemed to tighten and Niven felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“What did you say?” Ilior whispered.
Cat kept her eyes on the horizon. “He is Bloody Bastian. The Black Star of the Eastern Edge. My prey, and escaped. Again.” She shook her head with its shock of orange hair and tossed a throwing knife into the sand in disgust.
“No,” Niven said. “Paladin Koren would not journey anywhere with…that man.”
“She would,” Cat said without looking up, “if she didn’t know it was him.”
Niven stared at nothing, shocked at the revelation from Cat, shocked that Cat was the one who uttered it. “Who are you?”
Cat didn’t reply. She took off her other glove and tossed in the sand beside the knife, then ran both orange-stained hands through her cropped, orange-stained hair.
Ilior stood as still as stone, but for his wheezing breath. “What is going on here?” he asked finally, his voice dangerously low. Cat was further down the beach but the crew was near. He rounded on them, towering over the all. “What game is this?” he seethed. “What are you playing at? Tell me now!”
“Ilior,” Niven said, hearing the tremor in his voice, “they can’t speak…” He looked at Grunt. “Can they?”
Ilior was too enraged to hear Niven’s question. He took hold of Spit by the collar and the man was too frightened to do more than stare at the dragonman’s snarling visage so close to his own. “You knew. You always knew…”
Spit shook his head frantically, and Cur unsheathed his cutlass. Ilior knocked it away with his forearm as if it were a buzzing insect.
“Why was he on Uago?” the dragonman demanded of all of them. “Why did he agree to sail her to Saliz? You know, don’t you? Don’t you?”
Whistle wept silently, his face buried behind Cur’s shoulder. Grunt stepped forward and shoved Ilior away from Spit. Ilior was ill enough that he actually fell to one knee. Or perhaps it was the enormity of the situation that drained his strength. Niven’s own legs felt weak.
Sebastian Vaas. It can’t be….
“They didn’t know.”
Ilior whirled around and stared at the old man. “You…Lies upon lies,” he seethed. “The girl and now you. Who else? Who else among you has betrayed her?”
“I told you, they didn’t know.” Grunt jerked his bearded chin at the crew. “Look at them.” The men who had sailed with him for years wore identical expressions of shock. “Sorry, lads,” Grunt said. “I truly am.”
“You’re sorry,” Ilior snarled. “Since you can speak, tell me this: he was hired to kill her, wasn’t he? By the Bazira?”
Hearing the words aloud made Niven’s stomach queasy. “No,” he said. “It can’t be true.”
Grunt shook his head. “We waste time. That ship is sailing away and we know not where it goes. We can’t lose sight of it.”
Ilior strode to Grunt and gripped him by the shirt ruff.
“I should kill you now. He was hired to kill her, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?”
“Aye,” Cat told Ilior. “Sebastian Vaas was charged with killing Selena and Accora. Hired by the Bazira on Isle Kabak.”
“How do you know?” Niven asked.
“Because I’ve been hunting Vaas for three years now.” She shook her head. “And now he’s slipping through my fingers.”
“He’s not the same man they sing songs about,” Grunt said. “He hasn’t…worked in four years.”
“Until Selena,” Ilior snarled. He glared at Grunt a moment more and then released him.
“He’s still worth thousands in gold,” Cat said. She got up, brushing sand off the seat of her boy’s trousers. “We’ll take the Storm. I can captain her. If we hurry, we might be able to keep sight of the Bazira frigate. Might.”
Ilior nodded. “Let’s go.”
“I want to save them both,” Grunt told Cat, “but I can’t let you take Sebastian. He’s worth more to me than your bounty.”
“You going to try to stop us?” Ilior growled. He hefted his sword. “We will get back to the ship, and you will crew it. Under Cat.”
Niven moved close to Grunt. “We’ll lose them both if we don’t hurry,” he said quietly. “Julian…” he cleared his throat, “I mean…Sebastian can take care of himself, yes? We can sort the rest out later.”
Grunt scratched his beard. “If the wind changes, we’ll lose them for certain.”
“Yes. Good,” Niven said, though in reality not one thing about this situation was good. The crew eyed Cat with hostility, Grunt with mistrust and betrayal, and Ilior looked ready to run them all through at the slightest provocation. “Well,” he said, forcing another of smile, “let’s sail.”
Cat stomped over the decks as she barked orders and inspected the Black Storm.
“Pity we haven’t time for repairs on Huerta,” she told Niven. “The topsails we’ll manage without, but it’ll be dodgy with only one staysail.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Niven replied.
Cat rolled her eyes. “It means we’re going to be slow and clumsy, and the Bazira vessel has a fantastic head start.”
Ilior stopped his work letting out the foresail. “But we can still catch them, yes?” he asked. The crew scurried behind him, readying the ship for sail. Ori helped with as much facility as if she had her sight.
Cat chewed her lip. “It’s not so easy as that. We have half of Saliz’s coast to sail around just to get on their same wind. If they’re on the same wind and not vanished. Otherwise…”
“There is no ‘otherwise’,” Ilior said. “We follow them and we catch up.”
“Aye, I’m as eager as you,” Cat said, “but I’m telling you what we face. Best to know where they were headed and stay far astern of them, out of their sights.” She glanced around. “Any ideas?”
“To Bacchus,” Niven said. “Gareth said he worked for Bacchus.”
“But which island?” Cat asked. “The old witch was supposed to tell Selena—”
Ori slipped up between them. She had appeared to them in the jungle as they passed through on their way to the Black Storm like a ghost. Without her to guide them, they would’ve lost valuable time trying to make it to the southern shore where the Storm was anchored. But once aboard, she remained aloof. Niven had almost forgotten she was there.
She turned her sightless gaze to the horizon, as if she could see the horizon. “I know where Bacchus is.”