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Ari clung to the nearest stationary object, a feat that was easier said than done when the entire ship lurched over the waves like the devil's rocking horse. Why did anyone ever travel by boat? There couldn't possibly be anything worth setting foot inside this hell vessel. If it couldn't be reached by land it wasn't meant to be reached. That's what she'd decided as the land fell away and the sea surrounded them and she found herself vomiting over the side for the second time. Then the third. Hard to admire the way the sun sparkled on the waves when she was emptying her stomach into those very same churning waves. Up and down. Back and forth. Bouncing. Bouncing. Everything was moving all the time.
Ari moaned.
From somewhere nearby Cercing chuckled, but Ari didn't have the energy to flip her off. All of her energy was already going towards choking back the rush of bile that had been her constant companion since they'd left port. Besides it was less fun to flip off people who didn't know what it meant. Cercing would only stare at her and ruin Ari's feeble sense of triumph. If only Virgil were here. He was never offended no matter what rude gesture she threw at him, but he could be counted on to understand them which was almost as good.
It was a bit of a shock to realize that she missed him for more than just the potential for banter. They'd been away from the castle only a couple days, but she was finding it a lot harder to be back in this place among people who didn't know her for who she really was. They called her Champion and they bowed and they were unfailingly polite, but they didn't know her. She was tired of standing on a pedestal. The ground was better. It had lower expectations. She'd caught herself a dozen times with the truth halfway out of her mouth.
They weren't to know. That rule was hers, not Virgil's. On the contrary, Virgil had thought it might elevate her in the people's esteem if they knew she was so very otherworldly. Not only chosen by the Great Sword, but pulled from an alternate world just to save them. It really was the stuff of legends. It made Ari feel like a carnival attraction.
So she held her tongue and didn't mention her cravings for tacos or her worry about what her roommate might be doing without her. Was someone paying Ari's share of the rent? Had it been days there or only hours? Maybe it was good that she had never gotten around to adopting a cat. Did it still count as abandonment if she was trapped in another world?
The ship rolled through another wave and Ari's head and stomach spun.
"There's isn't by chance some mystical cure for seasickness is there?" Ari asked Milaena when she came near. Of all the crew, she was one of the friendliest.
"Try to stay above deck when you can, that should help. And I'll check with the others to see if they have any help for you. I know Korda swears by his Crisha medallion. Don't suppose you've one of those?"
"It would help if I knew what that was," Ari said dryly.
Milaena made a face and immediately danger music started playing in Ari's mind. She only got looks like that when she'd said something really wrong. "You don't know Sir Crisha the seafarer? The patron of travelers and vagabonds? Everyone knows Crisha, I thought."
"Oh. That Crisha. Of course," Ari lied. "I wasn't thinking. We don't hear about him much so far inland." She pried her fingers free of the railing she'd attached herself to during the last swell. "I think I'll take a stroll. Maybe that'll help." As if to prove her wrong, her stomach gurgled loud enough to be heard over the waves.
Thankfully Milaena didn't seem to notice. She nodded in salute before heading back to whatever her post was aboard the ship. Ari had trouble keeping track of everyone. She'd never realized how many people it took to sail one ship, how many ropes and pulleys and maps and compasses. She was glad that she was only a passenger. No one expected her to do anything but stay out of the way. She was good at that.
They'd left port the day before. At the time she'd thought a horse and saddle was the worst thing that could happen to her. She'd been oh so very wrong.
And that was before she figured in the boogeyman lurking below deck. Milaena really hadn't needed to warn Ari to stay above deck. Ari was happy to watch the sun glare off the waves until everything else disappeared if it meant being far away from the Iron King.
Virgil's magic box had worked exactly as he'd said it would. They'd barely weighed anchor before the Iron King tumbled from the box and into his new home in the brig. It was quite possibly the world's worst magic trick. Pulling a rabid rabbit, or even a unicorn, out of a hat would have been so much better. At least a bunny was small. And potentially cute. Because the Iron King was shackled hand and foot and locked behind enchantment laced bars, but shockingly that didn't do much to comfort her.
Especially when he'd taken one look at her and smiled.
Even on his knees after his fall, that smile was enough to terrify her. She wasn't a child anymore, but he made her feel like she had when she'd lain in the dark listening for the sound of monsters under her bed.
Virgil had made sure the ship was bedecked in all kinds of fair wind charms and she was told they would make their destination in only two or three days but that was two or three days too many for Ari. She'd slept with Cheyna still buckled at her hip last night and had big plans to do the same again tonight and every night until she was back at the castle.
She wandered the deck of the ship, trying to simultaneously stay out of the way and look busy while ignoring her queasiness. It was working well enough until Loren found her.
"You're entirely bored, aren't you?" he asked.
The question birthed the first real smile since they set out on this voyage. "Hell yes. And also very nauseous," she added before pinching her lips shut again. Training would've been just the thing right then, but she wasn't sure how to do that and keep her rations in her stomach. Shuffling around at a snail's pace was about the best she could manage. Any speed was too much. "Come keep me company." She paused. "Unless you have something important to do."
"We're at sea. My skills here are very limited and besides, I've been neglecting my mission of ingratiating myself to you. We can't have that."
She nodded with mock seriousness. "Oh no." They fell into step, doing another slow circuit of the deck, watching the synchronized work of the crew. They scrambled about the rigging, always moving, firing off answers to one another without pause. A well oiled machine. "So what exactly does the Captain expect my friendship to buy him? I'm not used to all this intrigue. Is he expecting a fancy title out of this or a brand new hat or what?"
"More power in the castle's affairs, no doubt. A freer hand perhaps. I wasn't privy to that particular discussion."
It was funny to talk about these things as if they didn't matter. At first it had felt like a game. Ari hadn't expected to be around long enough for anyone to schmooze favors. Now she wasn't sure what to call it. The longer she stayed in this place the harder it got to remember which world was the real one, which world she was meant to be in.
She turned her face up to the sun and the not-so-gentle caress of the salty air. "If he thinks that would work he doesn't know Virgil at all. He wouldn't even look you in the eye unless he wanted to. He's not really up for coercion. Unless he's the one doing it," she added after a second.
"I don't know. His Excellency seems somewhat changed since your arrival. The Captain may not get what he wishes from you, but his strategy is a sound one in theory. And what of His Majesty? As his Champion you must hold sway with him too. You have the ear of many important people."
His tone was teasing, but Ari felt cold at the mention of Cylian. She'd managed to push her fears aside for a little while but now they were back and they had brought their friends. This plan of Virgil's had seemed foolproof when they were planning it. Now? She had an entire ocean between her and backup if something went wrong. She might still be mad at Virgil, but she didn't like not even being able to talk to him.
Before she could attempt to change the subject in a way that was neither subtle or polite, the sound of arguing interrupted for her. It might have been a welcome distraction if one of the voices hadn't been Cercing's dry ice murmur. Ari sighed and picked up her pace. Loren did the same.
She found them at the prow of the ship. The man Cercing was arguing with wore the overly embroidered livery that marked him as one of Thiele's people. Figured.
She might have turned around and gone the other direction, but they had already spotted her.
"Champion!" cried Thiele's man, one hand raised to hail her. "Please tell this... person to cease her interference and leave me to my work."
"And I tell you that you have no occupation aboard this vessel. Kindly return to your place." The unspoken words before I throw you overboard hovered in the air between them.
Sitting in a quiet corner wallowing in seasickness sounded better and better. When had she become everyone's mother?
"What is this about?" Loren barked so she didn't have to. She could have kissed him.
Immediately Thiele's man turned on Loren. His face twisted in a sneer that might have been his usual expression or a reaction to Loren's interruption.
"As I was explaining to this woman"—he waved a hand at Cercing—"I was simply inspecting the ship's protections. I'm sure His Excellence did all that he could, but I happen to be an accomplished water mage and quite frankly I have more experience in these matters. Unlike most of the castle. Surely there can be no harm in having an expert hand to oversee the protections, one that has actually seen the ocean before," he added with a leading note as he looked at Cercing.
"You've never been on a ship either?" Ari asked.
Cercing flushed and looked away. "Not as such. My master rarely travels abroad. But we have researched everything incredibly thoroughly."
"What about the others? Barnabas? Or... I don't know any of their names—the other apprentices? Virgil? Anyone?"
Cercing's stare could have drilled a hole right through her, but she still shook her head.
Ari winced. She glanced at Loren who also shrugged. Apparently they were all land animals here. The very few things that Ari knew about sea travel were from her world and probably didn't even apply here.
She turned back to Cercing. "What's the harm then? You can monitor it so he doesn't break any of your magic... things. And maybe he could actually help."
The man's smile was immediate and a little smarmier than she cared for, but Virgil had left Ari (mostly) in charge and she would rather they didn't get into too many arguments right off the bat. It was bad enough being afloat with no land in sight.
"That went well," Ari said after they'd left Cercing and the man (who finally introduced himself as Senshaw) to sort out the details of their tour of the ship's fortifications. "They're going to murder each other, aren't they?"
Loren's lack of response was less than comforting. "Is there some reason why we've taken on so many of Lord Thiele's retinue?"
"You don't like them either, I take it?"
"I would not use those exact words, no. I value my position in the Guard too highly for that. But I would perhaps suggest that this ship would sail much easier without them and not just because of their weight."
She fought the urge to snicker. She didn't disagree. The sight of their impractical livery aboard the ship stopped conversation in its tracks. A few of them had approached Ari to introduce themselves and share their wishes for her continued health and prosperity in such stilted language that she wasn't sure if they were bad at sucking up or trying to insult her. Likely a skill they perfected working under Thiele. It was a shame. She was such good friends with much of the castle Guard, a feeling she wished she could extend to Thiele's people, but that was unlikely. They made everyone uncomfortable and edgy. And it fell to her to handle it.
It was no wonder that Cylian had left so much of the running of the kingdom to Virgil. He made it all seem effortless. After only a few days, Ari wished she could follow Cylian's example. Indispensable was Virgil's middle name.
She hesitated and Loren paused beside her, halting so suddenly it was like they'd choreographed it. "Is there something the matter? Are you feeling unwell again?"
She shook her head and forced her feet to move again. Nope. Nothing was the matter. Nothing at all. Certainly not the fresh realization that she had come to rely on Virgil so much.
***
THE SLEEPING SHIP CREAKED around her, netted supplies swaying with the motion, like the steady tick of a metronome. Snores rose up in an uneven chorus. There were still guards and crew posted about, but in the dark they tended to fade into the background. No one spoke to her as she passed. They were ghosts, invisible to one another.
The hold of the ship wasn't very large, but tonight it stretched for miles. She walked and walked. Tripped over a half seen obstacle. It took ages to find her way to the brig. Or maybe it only felt that way because of what it held. Who it held.
The guards on duty were familiar faces though Ari didn't know their names. She didn't need to. Virgil had handpicked them before they set out and they did nothing except stand here, one set of faces swapping out for another at regular intervals. She didn't know where they went when they weren't on duty. For all she knew they vanished into a puff of smoke.
The two guards stepped aside to let her pass, moving like sleepwalkers, eyes forward. Maybe they weren't even people. It wouldn't have surprised her at all to find out they were some kind of construct created by Virgil. Figments of his imagination couldn't spread secrets.
"Ah, a visitor." The Iron King's voice slithered out of the darkness. The lantern hanging on a post swayed light over the floor like the crash and receding of the waves. Somehow it still never reached the back of the cell where the Iron King lay sprawled on the floor. She could just make out the mountain range of his presence, the steeple of pointed toes, slow arch of his chest as he inhaled, jagged lines of a profile. The light grazed his outstretched fingertips before retreating again. "This is a surprise." He sounded unfathomably tired.
"Is it?"
"Not especially. I knew you would come to me eventually. You always come to me whether you want to or not. But perhaps that is the way of tales such as these."
"I'm not a story. I'm a person."
"We are all stories at our core. We are the moments which have passed and those which are as yet unfinished, the consequences which drive us on, the words and the meanings of our most secret hearts. If you were not, you would not be here. You would be nothing. No one. A husk."
"Like you?"
He laughed, the sound dry enough to absorb several seas. "Oh no. I, unfortunately, contain more tales than one could ever need." The Iron King rolled to his side. The shackles at his wrists and ankles made a noise like shattering glass. It set her teeth on edge. The next time the lantern swung it caught on his cheekbones, the hollow of his eyes, the long long braid of hair that hung over his shoulder. She wondered if he braided it himself or if someone did it for him. Was that a job someone volunteered for? Was it assigned? "I might rather be empty. It seems restive. Do you not think so?"
"Whatever blows your hair back."
"I do enjoy your unusual sayings." This time his laugh held genuine pleasure. If she wasn't looking at him, Ari might have taken it for the laugh of a regular person instead of a harbinger of doom. "They remind me of my own home somehow."
Ari glanced behind her at the stiff backs of the guards. They might be listening. She realized she didn't care. "What is it like?"
His eyes met hers, pinpricks of light in the darkness. "Beautiful. And terrible. I loathe it. I suspect your home is better."
"Sometimes." It was strange speaking to him this way. Like equals. She still wasn't sure which of them was the superior or if either of them even was. He was in chains but she was lost and had been for years. Aimless. The last few weeks had given her more purpose than a decade of life before it, filling her days with things she barely cared about in an attempt to fill the cavern of longing in her chest. But she couldn't. Now each step she took brought her closer to leaving again. A less honorable person in her place might sabotage things intentionally just to have a bit more time. She'd never wanted to be less honorable as much as she did now. "I'll tell you when I get back. Or... I guess I won't be able to then." She shrugged.
"You might have been back in your own domain days ago. Without all of this..." His pause seemed to encompass the whole world. "Struggle. But I knew you would not."
"I have a job to do."
"You bore me with your nobility."
"Thank you." She grinned. "That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in days." Maybe she was getting the hang of this hero thing again. She took a step towards the bars. "I was thinking about it though, what you said. The way you said it. About Cylian getting your dagger the usual way. I thought you were just being coy before."
"Was I not?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I think someone gave it to him, someone he knew well enough to trust. Or at least not to suspect. And I think you know who."
"Is that so?"
Ari stuck out her lower lip as she considered. She'd had only the smallest suspicion before she'd begun, but the longer she spoke the more it crystallized. That was the simplest explanation. Not that she had any strong suspects. Thiele was a weasel, but she couldn't go accusing people willy nilly without proof. Who else? Virgil? But if it was him why send her on this voyage instead of sitting back and doing nothing. "You said someone came to see you."
"Did I?"
She ignored his mocking question and turned to one of the silent guards. "Did the Iron King have any visitors back at the castle? Or now since we've been aboard this ship?"
Her answer was a curt shake of the head.
"Do you really not know or are you just not answering me?" she asked. This time there was no response. "Fine then. Don't tell me."
There was a light laugh from within the cell. "Your authority unravels so quickly, does it not? Is it really so unexpected that you have enemies in your midst?"
No. It wasn't. That was the problem. How was she supposed to solve a mystery when there were so many variables? Maybe that meant there was no harm in asking the obvious question. "What are you planning? I assume you're in on this plot somehow and you're getting something out of it. What's your deal?"
The Iron King regarded her. His eyes closed in a slow blink. She had expected him to smirk and make some kind of boastful claim. Something. Anything. An attempt at unnerving her. Instead he just looked at her with tired eyes. "Do you know what it's like to live in captivity for decades? Subject to the whims of another. To have freedom in your grasp and then snatched away."
When he didn't go on she shook her head. "No."
"I can tell." He sat up and crossed his legs beneath him, palms together in his lap. "If you knew, you wouldn't ask me what I'm planning. You would already know."
"You're going to try to escape," she guessed.
He met her eyes. Nodded. It was actually a relief to have an answer.
"I can't let you. You have to cure Cylian."
"Such a dutiful Champion. Always so quick to charge in and rescue those in need." His eyes were brighter than the moon outside. "But be careful whom you rescue, Champion. Your Callarian friends are born to be your first betrayers. They're bred of liars. I speak from experience."
"The only liar I see is you."
That drew another laugh from him. It sounded like rusted metal. "I never claimed I was otherwise. Did they?"
Before she could answer he had risen, standing before her, only a few inches of metal bars and a whole lot less ancient castle enchantment between them than last time. She wasn't sure how he could be so impossibly tall and yet still fit in the cell without having to duck his head. Ari backed up.
She had no response to what he'd said. Not one that would sound convincing. And why did she need to convince him anyway? He was the one who had marched an army through Callaria all those years ago. He was the one who had haunted her dreams, her nightmares. The one had sent a construct to their camp to kill Cylian. But there was something uncomfortably like truth in what he had said.
"What did you mean, about speaking from experience?"
His hands closed around the bars, long fingers tipped in dark nails wrapped into tight fists. He squeezed until his knuckles stood out. "No," he said, already slipping backwards into the shadows. "I don't believe you've earned that answer, Champion. Not tonight."