20

Ash

“I don’t f’qad’n know,” I say again. My voice is shrill in my ears. “If I did, I would tell you.” Heat burns behind my eyes.

They’ve trapped me at the galley table. Not that I want to escape, but I do need a moment to think. It would be nice to stop shaking, too.

“You must remember, Ash.” Piper is urgent.

I try again, if for nothing else than to make them leave me alone. “We were talking about Lilian’s new baby and then…” I skip the part where my inner voice shouted a warning. It was like the side of a mountain erupted in my skull. Unfortunately, the shock paralyzed me.

“Opposite to the desired effect,” my inner voice says.

I see that now, but tell me, where in demon stuggs have you been?

“I…can’t say. Inside, I know, but when I try to speak it, I can’t say.”

I know that feeling of late.

“Go on, Ash.” Piper draws my attention back to her. “You were talking about Lilian?”

“I couldn’t believe my eyes.” I swallow hard. “Rowten drew his sword and…”

“Let her be.” Kaylin attempts to end the interrogation. “She doesn’t know the assailant’s mind anymore than we do.”

“She must know something. Otherwise, how are we to make sense of this?” Samsen’s voice is stern, too, and I realize they are scared. For me and for themselves. “Was it something you mentioned? You offended him gravely? Threatened his family?”

“Pardon?” They don’t really think I would do something like that, do they?

“Maybe it’s better than the alternatives.” My inner voice is calm. Soothing to me in so many ways.

Don’t disappear like that. Ever again. Promise?

My inner voice gives a mental shrug. “It was out of my control.”

Marcus joins us from topside. “Threaten his family? You can’t be serious,” he says. “Ash doesn’t go around threatening people.”

At least he is sticking up for me. Hey, wait. What alternatives are you talking about?

My inner voice drops to a whisper. “Rowten could have been instructed to kill you.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and relive the seconds before the hero of my childhood was nailed to the deck by Kaylin’s sword. An image pops in front of my eyes. “A look came over his face.”

“What kind of look?” Piper asks.

“I don’t know...” I wring my hands. “Resolved? Then he said he was sorry and started to chant.” I find Kaylin’s blood-spattered face and pretend I’m speaking only to him. “I asked what he was sorry for, but when he raised the sword, I knew.”

“What did you know, Ash?” Samsen prompts.

My eyes stay on Kaylin’s. “That he was going to kill me.”

It’s not completely true. My inner voice knew an instant before me. I was in disbelief, frozen to the spot. I screamed, yes, but was barely able to duck. “If Kaylin hadn’t been watching from above…” My head falls into my hands, and I scrub my face as if that will wake me up from this horrid dream, or at least, erase the last fifteen minutes of it.

I lift my eyes back to Kaylin. “How did you know? You were so far above.”

“I heard you,” Kaylin answers. And then, in my mind alone, “I finally heard you.”

My lips part. The rest of the room disappears.

Finally, finally, it’s just the both of us. Like it used to be. Alone together in the crowded world. I take a soft, shaky breath. “Kaylin? You heard me?”

“Aye, lass. I did.” His smile is full of secret treasures.

My heart beats double-time as it suddenly becomes too big for my chest. I’m light-headed, so much so, I think I will float up to the rafters. Kaylin’s back. I have him back! The words tumble between us so fast they spill out with our excitement. “I’ve been trying, but—”

“—been trying, too, since docking in Baiseen.”

I turn to my inner voice, ready to jump up and down. Kaylin hears me!

“So it appears,” my inner voice says with great patience. “But do you really want him to know your every giddy thought?”

My face heats and I remember to be selective, but the excitement takes over again.

“I have so much to tell you,” we both say to each other at the same time. Despite everything going on around us, it evokes a bubble of laughter from my lips as I watch his eyes dance.

Then I feel the others staring at us. How long have we been conversing in silence?

Marcus clears his throat. “You say you heard her?” He directs his question to Kaylin.

Kaylin nods, his eyes still on me.

My lips twitch, turning up in a smile until my inner voice brings me back to the night’s terrifying events.

“They will want to know about the chant.”

Do you remember it?

“You don’t?”

“This would be a whole other discussion if Kaylin had been wrong,” Samsen says, frowning at Kaylin.

“As it would be if I hadn’t acted when I did.”

No one argues with that, and we sit in silence until the sound of the crew on the deck, and the slow breaths of Tyche asleep in her hammock, become loud in my ears. Belair hands me a warm mug and I clutch it in both hands. “I still can’t imagine why Rowten would try to kill me.”

“A madness must have taken him?” Piper suggests. “It can happen, with some illnesses.”

“He seemed in good health to me,” Marcus says.

“Could Tann’s influence have infiltrated the royal guard?” Belair asks.

No one wants to answer that, but we all know it might be possible. Red-robes have inexplicable powers. “Still, why target me?”

“Maybe it was Atikis from the headlands, directing from afar,” Samsen says.

“Any of these possibilities put us in more danger than we realized,” Kaylin says when no one else speaks. “You said he started to chant. Do you remember what it was? It might—”

“We have enemies,” Marcus cuts him off. “But it still doesn’t explain why Ash was singled out. Why would he try to assassinate my non-savant recorder?”

I turn to him and narrow my eyes. “Truly, why?”

“No offense,” Marcus adds quickly.

“Of course not.” I say it so he knows it is offensive whether I take it that way or not, to me and all non-savants of Amassia. He makes it sound like an affliction. And it’s not the first time. But I guess, in the wider scheme of things, the question needs answering. Why the non-savant recorder? Why me?

“The chant?” A rush of energy tingles through me as Kaylin’s voice fills my mind.

“You think it’s important?”

“I do.”

“The chant…” I try to fill my lungs with a deep breath but only manage a few quick gulps. “I think it was the Warriors’ Decree.”

There are gasps around me as I speak the words.

“Aye, lass. That is why I killed him before he could touch you. I heard that, too.”

“Are you sure?” Piper whispers. “The Warriors’ Decree is only evoked—”

“When embarking on a rampage,” Samsen finished for her.

I focus again on Kaylin and begin the chant. “Sing, my blade—”

“Stop!” Marcus’s face is white. “Don’t repeat it.” He turns to the others. “It was the Warriors’ Decree.”

“Still doesn’t explain why.” Piper frowns.

“It could only make sense if he was planning on killing us all and I was the first. A gift, really. Didn’t have to watch you lot die.” I try to smile but it’s more a grimace.

“Kill us all, and then what?” Belair asks. “The ship’s captain would have him in chains, even if he claimed the whistle bone.”

“Maybe he was going to slay himself at the end. If it was a compulsion, consequences wouldn’t matter.” Marcus shakes his head.

“Was it as simple as him wanting the whistle bone?” Belair looks unconvinced. “Is a ship waiting for a signal to collect it?”

“I’m not the keeper of the bones,” I say. “Rowten knew that.”

“Peace be his path.” My inner voice says the words I cannot yet form. Or will not.

Marcus stands. “We can’t know his mind, but we must be careful. Palrio has more enemies than guessed, and as long as we are traveling the realms collecting whistle bones, we’re targets, too.” He holds everyone’s eyes. “All of us are.”

I exhale the breath I’d been holding in.

“Come,” Piper says. “Sleep.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“I’ll watch over you.” Kaylin’s voice is soft in my mind.

“I’m not sure that’s going to make me want to sleep.” My face warms with the inner thought.

“Drink this,” Piper says, lifting the cup to me.

I drain the contents and already my lids are heavier. Piper leads me to my hammock and tucks me as Kaylin steps back to the wall.

“You aren’t seriously going to stand guard while I sleep,” I ask when Piper is gone.

“Aye, lass. Be sure that I am.”