The Reaver Read online

  But his own struggling wasn’t futile, or at least not yet. Finally, his thumb and forefinger pinched the end of the knife hilt—really, just the portion of the needle blade that lacked sharp edges—and slid it forth.

  He reversed the blade and sawed at the loops of thick, coarse rope constraining his wrists. With the knife in such an awkward attitude, it was impossible to bring any strength to bear. He had to rely on persistence and the keenness of the blade, and they seemed unlikely to get the job done before Naraxes and the other pirates came for him.

  But eventually, one strand parted, then another, and then the remaining ones felt looser. Anton set down the knife and struggled to pull his wrists apart. That loosened the coils a little more, and he managed to drag his right hand out of them.

  A moment later, his hands stung as though he’d stuck them into a nest of hornets. Teeth gritted, he rubbed them together to restore the circulation as quickly as possible, then picked up the knife and cut his feet free.

  “That’s got it,” he whispered, “I’m loose. Speak up and show me where you are.” He’d lost track of the boy’s precise location while he was squirming and writhing around.

  “Here,” answered Stedd.

  Anton crawled to him, and, working by touch, cut him free. The boy hissed as he too suffered the pain of returning circulation.

  “That will pass in a moment,” Anton said, “and then we need to go.”

  “Where?” Stedd asked.

  “The only place there is to go. Up on deck.”

  The boy hesitated. “Aren’t the pirates up there?”

  “A couple, certainly, but most of them are in their berths asleep.” Or at least Anton hoped so.

  “But not all?”

  “This is our one chance to get off the ship, and it’s death for you to stay. Do you understand that?”

  Stedd took a long, audible breath. “Yes. And the Morninglord will look out for us.”

  “I’m looking out for us. Follow my lead and we have a chance. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Anton still had his bearings and thus experienced no difficulty guiding his charge to the ladder. “Wait here until I signal for you to come up,” he whispered. “Then do it quietly.”

  Anton then climbed high enough to crack the hatch open and peek out. Nobody waited on the other side to shout an alarm or jab a spear in his face, so he scuttled on out into the cold, clattering rain, crouched down behind the main mast and the shrouds supporting it, and took a better look around.

  He’d inferred from the absolute blackness in the hold that night had fallen, and it wasn’t all that much brighter in the open air. The ever-present cloud cover blocked moon- and starlight even more thoroughly than it did sunshine. Still, he could make out enough to decide that his optimistic assumptions had been correct. Except for a helmsman on the quarterdeck and the lookout in the fighting top halfway up the foremast, the weary and decimated pirates were resting below deck.

  For a heartbeat, he wondered if it might be possible to catch them all by surprise and somehow coerce them into putting him back in command. Then he snorted at his own foolishness and turned his thoughts to the practical question of how to escape the ship.

  He had no way of determining the caravel’s precise position but assumed it had traveled too far for him and Stedd to swim ashore. Even in the unlikely event that he could make it, a child never would. They’d fare better in one of the ship’s boats, but he could see no way to launch one without somebody noticing. Unless, that was, no one on deck was in a state to notice anything.

  Head bowed and shoulders hunched, he shuffled astern and climbed the companionway to the quarterdeck. When he did, he saw that the current helmsman was One-Ear Grim, a stooped, grizzled fellow whose nickname was something of an exaggeration. He’d lost only the top half of his left ear when someone bit it off in a tavern brawl.

  Likely tired of standing alone in the rainy night, One-Ear Grim gave the newcomer a sour look. Then his eyes snapped open wide as he registered who’d joined him at his post. He sucked in a breath and snatched for the cutlass hanging under his cloak.

  Anton rushed the other pirate and thrust the narrow-bladed knife into his throat. One-Ear Grim stiffened with his warning cry unvoiced and his weapon only halfway clear of the scabbard. Anton stabbed him twice more, and then the helmsman’s legs buckled and dumped him on the deck.

  Anton peered down the length of the caravel. As best he could judge, the lookout was still gazing out over the bow, not back at the stern, and hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

  Anton appropriated One-Ear Grim’s mantle, cutlass, dirk, coins, and baubles and manhandled the dead man’s body over the rail. Then, still trying to look like he was in no hurry, he returned to the hatch, lifted it, and beckoned.

  Stedd swallowed and gave a jerky nod. Despite the powerful magic he’d worked earlier, at the moment he looked like a scared little boy, not anyone’s idea of the agent of a deity. But he climbed the ladder without needing to be coaxed.

  Anton pulled the child close and wrapped one wing of his stolen cloak around him to conceal him. “Now we go astern.”

  “What?” Stedd asked.

  “Up into the back of the ship.”

  The jolly boat hung from davits. Anton discarded the tarp that covered it, helped Stedd clamber in, and swung himself in after him. He then untied a pair of knots and let out the lines they’d secured. It was ordinarily a two-man job, but he managed to lower the small craft without simply dropping it into the sea.

  Impelled by the moaning wind, the dark mass of the Iron Jest quickly receded from the jolly boat. Stedd watched it for a moment, then gave Anton a grin. “We did it!”

  “Not yet,” Anton replied. He lifted an oar from the bottom of the boat and set it in a rowlock. “Now comes the hard part. I row, and when the boat starts to fill up with rain, you bail.”

  As the night wore on, Anton discovered exactly how hard the hard part was. His back, shoulders, and arms ached. His hands blistered, and then the blisters broke. But, breath rasping, teeth gritted, he kept hauling on the sweeps, and when a trace of dawn filtered through the clouds on the eastern horizon, the light revealed a stretch of shoreline.

  He smiled. But his satisfaction gave way to dismay when he saw that Stedd had set his bailing bucket back in the bottom of the boat and was staring at the eastern sky, whispering.

  Anton was no priest, but like most people, he understood that folk with a connection to a supernatural power renewed their abilities through prayer and meditation. Judging from appearances, Stedd was doing that now.

  If not for the boy’s magic, Anton would still be lying broken and bound in the belly of his former ship, but that didn’t mean it would be wise to allow Stedd further access to his talents. A prisoner who lacked the ability to cast spells was apt to prove less troublesome than one who could.

  Yet it was also true that since fleeing the caravel, Stedd had seemed increasingly at ease in Anton’s presence. Perhaps it was because a frightened child needed someone to trust, despite excellent reasons to the contrary. At any rate, if Stedd failed to grasp that his fundamental circumstances hadn’t changed, perhaps it would behoove his sole remaining captor to keep him confused as long as possible. That too might make him easier to manage.

  If that was the tack Anton intended to take, he needed an excuse for interrupting Stedd’s prayers. He thought for a moment then barked, “Keep bailing!”

  Startled, the boy jerked around to face him. “I’m supposed to pray at sunrise. And you take little rests every once in a while.”

  “I forgot you’re a landlubber. Otherwise, you’d realize the boat’s sprung a leak. We need one last long, hard push or we’ll sink before we make it ashore.”

  Stedd looked down at his feet. Fortunately, with the rain constantly replacing the water he scooped out, it certainly looked as if the clinker-built hull might be leaking, and with a resolute scowl, he grabbed the pail again.

  S
tifling a grin, Anton took a fresh hold on the oars.

  Not long after dawn gave way to morning, the jolly boat ran aground several paces away from a strip of mud and weeds, and the two fugitives waded the rest of the way ashore. Anton was poised to grab the boy if he tried to run, but there was no need. Stedd just looked around with a dazed expression that suggested he couldn’t believe they’d actually reached land. Or that he was too exhausted to think or do anything more at all.

  If it was the latter, Anton could sympathize, but he mustn’t allow himself to slip into a similar condition. He scanned the gray, heaving sea and then the desolate shore with its windblown grasses and scrub pines slumped and dripping beneath the weight of the rain. To his relief, no threats were in sight. Not yet.

  “Rest,” he said. “On the ground, if you like, although if you’re like me, those benches gave you your fill of sitting. Just don’t fall asleep. In a little while, we need to look for food and shelter.”

  Stedd peered back, and Anton was struck again by how blue the captive’s eyes were even on another dismal day. “Good,” said the boy at length, “I’m hungry. But then what?”

  “You mean, what am I going to do with you?”

  “Well … yes.”

  “You know I’m a pirate,” Anton said, “and I meant to collect the bounty on your head. But I give you my word, that was before you saved my life.”

  Stedd smiled. “The Morninglord told me to.”

  “So I could help you escape, I imagine. Anyway, you and I are comrades now—shipmates, thanks to our noble vessel beached yonder in the surf—and shipmates don’t betray one another.”

  As soon as the words left Anton’s mouth, he remembered that Stedd had only recently witnessed multiple demonstrations to the contrary. But likely punchy with fatigue, the boy gave every indication of taking the ludicrous statement seriously.

  “Then will you go on helping me?” Stedd asked. “Can you help me go where I need to?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Sapra.”

  Inwardly, Anton winced. As a notorious reaver, he had nooses and worse awaiting him all around the Sea of Fallen Stars, and seldom did he permit the threat of them to deter him from plying his trade. But for the most part, he steered clear of his homeland; folk there recalled him with a special hatred.

  Fortunately, he had no actual reason to take Stedd all the way to Sapra or anyplace else in Turmish. But he might as well say he would. Because then the boy would willingly accompany him on a trek east.

  East made sense because Teziir lay in the opposite direction, and the city-state’s patrols would still be on the lookout for sea raiders. Besides, if Anton failed to procure a ship or sailboat capable of reaching Pirate Isle before he came to Westgate, he could surely find one there. Westgate was a major port, and like any outlaw worthy of the name, he had contacts among its thieves’ guilds and criminal fraternities.

  “Yes,” he lied, “I’ll take you to Sapra. After all that’s happened, I owe it to you.”

  Umara tapped on a hatch carved with a scene of a Thayan fleet vanquishing an anonymous enemy armada. She wondered how long ago the naval victory had happened or if, in fact, it had ever truly happened at all. As she and Evendur Highcastle had discussed, Thay, for all its might, had never been much of a naval power, and its history was less than replete with glorious triumphs at sea.

  “Come in, my friend,” Kymas called.

  She did and immediately had to detour around a folding screen positioned to block out every trace of sunshine. Even the sad, wan excuse for daylight currently sifting down amid the rain could sear a vampire’s skin like flame.

  Someone had secured the storm covers so the portholes couldn’t admit any light, either, and only the greenish glow of cool magical fire illuminated the cabin, but that sufficed to reveal the clutter. Kymas hadn’t required the displaced captain to remove his possessions before bringing in his own. A rack of staves stood shoved up against a suit of half plate on a stand like the bars of a torture cell; a spindly, jointed figure resembling an unstrung marionette made of black and scarlet metal sprawled across the lid of a sea chest; and volumes of arcane lore were jammed into the little bookshelf alongside rutters and a manual of naval regulations.

  Tall, slender, and so pale that the viridian light turned him green as well, Kymas sat gazing at the end of his arm. There was no hand sticking out of the voluminous crimson sleeve of his robe, just wisps of vapor.

  Umara had watched her master practice the trick a hundred times but still didn’t see the point. What use would it ever be for Kymas to turn a portion of his body to mist while keeping the rest solid? Perhaps it was simply a pastime for idle moments.

  He smiled at Umara, and the fog congealed into long, tattooed fingers and a thumb. “Have we left the harbor?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Umara said, “and the captain says no other ship followed us.” From what she understood, it wasn’t unknown for the marauders of Pirate Isle to cheerfully conduct business with outsiders who risked dropping anchor there, then attack them when they sought to depart.

  “I doubted anyone would,” the vampire replied, “given that we’re supposedly carrying Captain Highcastle’s answer to our lord and master. Still, it’s helpful to be sure. It frees us to focus on the business at hand.”

  “We’ll need to focus,” Umara said.

  Kymas arched an eyebrow, or rather, the smooth bit of alabaster skin where an eyebrow would be if, at some point during his mortal life, a barber hadn’t permanently removed it. “That sounded grim. I trust you aren’t having second thoughts about the plan that your own audacity made possible. Because I agree it’s a better bet than trying to abduct the Chosen of Umberlee.”

  “That doesn’t mean it will be easy. The church of Umberlee is already hunting for this Stedd Whitehorn. So are scores of pirates and, I’m sure, other knaves who hope to sell him to Evendur. Somehow, we need to find the boy ahead of all of them.”

  “And so we will. Watch and learn.”

  The undead mage snapped his fingers, and, clinking, the faceless black-and-red metal construct reared up from the lid of the sea chest. It then leaped to the top of a small table and proceeded to clear it, jumping to the floor with one item, setting it down, then springing back up for another.

  Meanwhile, Kymas extricated a rutter from the bookshelf. He flipped through the first several pages, then put the book down on the table open to a chart showing the Inner Sea in its entirety.

  “Now,” he said, drawing a silver lancet from one of the many pockets in his ornately embroidered wizard’s robe, “I need just a drop or two of mortal essence.”

  Inwardly, Umara flinched, but only inwardly. She gave him her left hand, and he pricked the tip of her middle finger. Nearly black in the greenish light, a bead of blood welled out.

  Inhaling deeply—smelling the dollop of liquid life he’d just released from Umara’s veins—Kymas stared at the bead long enough to give his lieutenant a pang of apprehension. Finally, however, he moved her hand over the open book and squeezed her finger below the tiny puncture. Drops of blood pattered down onto the map, and then he let her go.

  Pinching with the thumb and forefinger of her other hand, Umara applied pressure to stanch the bleeding. All right, she told herself, it’s over, and you’re fine. Now do what he told you: watch and learn.

  Kymas fixed his steel-gray eyes on the rutter and placed his hands just in front of and to either side of his face. It was a posture that always reminded Umara of a draft horse wearing blinders, but it was actually called the Window, and it was used for spying out that which was hidden.

  Kymas then growled and hissed an incantation in the tongue of Thanatos, the Belly of Death, the layer of the Abyss where Orcus, Prince of the Undead, held sway. Now that liches, ghosts, and their ilk controlled the councils of the Red Wizards, the language had come into fashion for many sorts of magic, and Umara had perforce mastered it even though simply listening to it made her lightheaded
and queasy.

  It had an effect on Kymas, too. His upper canines lengthened, and his eyes became chatoyant, flashing in the emerald light like mirrors.

  As his recitation continued, he invoked Orcus and the demon prince’s vassals Glyphimbor, Sleepless, and Doresain the Ghoul King. He called on Kiaransalee and Velsharoon as well, extinct powers whose names nonetheless still exerted pressure on the fabric of All. Meanwhile, the sprinkled spatters of blood crawled toward one another like slugs.

  As their paths converged, they fused together into a single writhing blob, which ultimately reared up in the form of a tiny humpbacked imp with stunted wings. The miniscule demon cast this way and that like a hound trying to pick up a scent, then scuttled across the map to the western stretch of the southern shore. There, it pointed repeatedly, jabbing with a clawed finger.

  Kymas smiled. “The Black Lord is smiling on us. It won’t take too long to reach that stretch of coast.”

  The blood imp looked up at its captor and gave a little cry like the cheep of a chick. There were no words in it, but no experienced mage would have needed them to understand what the creature wanted. It had done its summoner’s bidding and now wished to return to the underworld.

  “Later,” Kymas told it, “when I have the child in my hands.”

  The captive spirit howled—which still sounded more like cheeping than anything else—and shook its fist. The vampire put an abrupt end to its tantrum by flipping the rutter shut and squashing it inside.

  “Even spirits as lowly as this one will test you,” Kymas said. “Never tolerate their impudence. Or defiance from any underling, come to think of it.”

  “Thank you for giving me the benefit of your wisdom,” Umara said. “I’ll tell the captain where we need to go.”

  “In a moment,” the vampire replied. “First, I need your help with something else.” He held out his hand, and her heart started thumping because it was clear what he wanted.