Princess at Sea (17 page)

“I'd guess two weeks of unaided healing,” he said calmly. Taking his hat off, he threw it into the scrub. “This is useless,” he said. “With both of us aware and interacting, there's nothing left I can trust but that you and I end up on a horse together. I can't even pull any emotions from it anymore.”

“Well, isn't that a shame,” I mocked, still stinging from him having yanked my dress off my shoulder. “The big strong captain unable to steal anything from
my
prophetic dream.”

Irritation creased his otherwise smooth brow. “I don't know why I care,” he said. “Just shut up and hold still.”

Breath catching, I shied away as he forced Jy's reins into my grip and reached for my shoulder. He stopped at my warning look and exhaled loudly. “I'm not going to hurt you,” he said. “Pressure bandages aren't enough to survive a punta bite. If I don't do something, you'll be dead in two days. Or would you rather be dead than let me help you?”

A wash of fear pushed out my anger. Kavenlow had told me surviving a punta bite was impossible. Perhaps between Jeck's ability to heal and Duncan's pressure bandage, I could manage it. I didn't want to die. And the memory of the agony waiting for me when I woke up burned out much of my pride. If Jeck wanted to kill me, all he would have to do was nothing. I would have to trust that he would help.

Eyes fixed to his, I nodded, terribly unsure.

With a grunt of what sounded like surprise, Jeck gently placed his sun-browned hands to either side of my bare shoulder. I stiffened, feeling his masculine strength as he pressed until the soft throb turned to pain. My breath came in, shaking, and he eased up, his eye twitching.

Under me, Jy plodded forward, the thumps of his hooves jarring. Jeck exhaled, his gaze going vacant, as if slipping deeper within himself in intense thought. I tensed as he relaxed, hoping I might be able to steal from him the knowledge of how he healed with his hands since he wouldn't teach me, preferring to keep that particular carrot possibly to entice me from Kavenlow at some future date.

As my pulse hammered in expectation, a warm tingle replaced the ache of the bite. My shoulders slumped, and my eyelids drooped. Like warm water, it pulsed in a slow rhythm through me, and I wasn't surprised to find my breathing had matched Jeck's. It was like . . . being wrapped in a fire-warmed blanket, and I ignored the tiny thought of possible betrayal and just let it happen. It was comforting, and I needed comfort—even if it was a lie.

“My God,” he whispered, and my eyes flew open, the peace he had instilled flicking to nothing. Fear slid through me when I caught a sliver of panic in his expression before he steeled it back to nothing. “There's so much,” he added, his brown eyes unable to hide his shock.

I forced myself to be still under his hands, though a faint itch demanded I move. “Venom?” I guessed. Warmth was still coming from his hands, and I was reluctant to move. I could feel it spreading through me, touching on my scratched arm before dissolving into a general feeling of well-being.

“Even your residual levels are dangerously high,” he answered, his voice slurred slightly. “I can't take it from you, but by speeding up the healing, I can wall it off in the tissues so it won't kill you. It's going to act like your thief's bandage. I'm sorry, but it's the best I can do.”

His eyes met mine. Like a fog lifting from the harbor, his gaze cleared. His hands dropped from my shoulder. Still, my body tingled from his touch. Under it was the promise of the coming return of pain, but for now, it was gone.

“Thank you,” I whispered, somehow even more frightened.
Why had he done it?
Kavenlow couldn't fault him for my dying from a punta bite. He was free and clear, and my death would further Jeck's game considerably since Kavenlow would be forced to divide his attention between the game and bringing up a new apprentice.

Jeck wouldn't look at me, taking the reins back from my slack fingers. “That you survived this long is a miracle,” he muttered. I didn't think he had heard me, so deep in thought was he. “I don't know what that much venom is going to do to you.”

“You saved my life,” I breathed, my eyes going blurry as I refused to cry. “Thank you,” I repeated, determined that he acknowledge my gratitude. My shoulder felt cold with his palms' absence, and I reached to touch it. The tingling was slipping into memory, leaving a faint, dull ache. It was the reality of my hurt shoulder slipping into our dream.

Seeming startled, Jeck met my eyes and looked away. “Don't thank me until you've talked to your teacher,” he said cryptically.

I had slid back into him, and he was very close. My hand dropped, and I went frightened at his suddenly closed posture. “What is it?” I demanded. “What did you see?”

Jeck shook Jy's reins, but the horse never shifted his pace. “Your residual levels are too high,” he said softly. “You can't play the game anymore.”

My eyes widened. The breath in me turned to ash, and I found I couldn't breathe. The residual levels of toxin in a player rose slowly with time and repeated use of venom. Those same levels fell even slower when a player avoided using the toxin at all. It was the residual toxin that a player drew upon to perform magic unless he or she dosed up on venom to give his or her skills a temporary boost, as Jeck had done to join me in my dream.

But if my residual levels were too high, forced into an elevated state by the punta bite, then I was just as vulnerable to a rival player's dart as a commoner. One dart could kill me. I couldn't . . . Kavenlow wouldn't let me play the game.

The reality of my situation hit me like a sudden rain, drenching, to leave me shaking in a frightened anger. That's why he had done it. He had saved my life, but in the doing, made me useless for the game. “You did this on purpose!” I shouted. “Is that why you helped me? You knew I couldn't play the game if my residual levels were too high!”

“Don't blame this on me,” Jeck said, red-faced and stiff as he yelled back at me in a voice barely above a whisper. “I'm not the one who threw you into a pit with a punta. I just saved your life, princess. That your residual levels are elevated is not my problem.”

I could feel the heat of anger coming from him, but that paled in importance as I sat on Jy watching my life fall apart even as I regained it. If I couldn't play the game, what was left to me?
Kavenlow,
I thought, my heart clenching. I couldn't be his apprentice if I couldn't handle toxin.

Fear took me then, real and debilitating. He would have to abandon me. He needed someone to succeed him in his game, and if one dart would kill me, I was worth less than nothing. All the pain and sacrifices would mean nothing. Jeck might as well have let me die.

I swallowed hard, not wanting him to know how scared I was. “Residual levels drop,” I whispered, knowing my eyes were panic-stricken when I met Jeck's, and he jerked his attention away. And by the tightening of his lips, I knew the more experienced player thought they'd never drop soon enough for me ever to take up the game again.

“Of course they do,” he said, but he wouldn't bring his gaze to me. “It will just take time. What I didn't trap in your healing tissues has already started to work itself out, but your teacher will need to evaluate your new level of residual toxin very carefully.”

How am I going to tell Kavenlow?
“How long do you think it will take?” I said, gaze blurring on the passing vegetation, bright with the morning sun.

Jeck was silent, the jostling of the horse shifting me back into him. “Several years, I'd guess,” he lied. I could hear it in his voice, feel it in his emotions I was picking up whether I wanted to or not.

“A year or two,” I breathed, knowing a decade or two was more likely. God save me, I was going to lose everything I'd worked my life for.

My breathing went ragged, and I gritted my teeth, refusing to cry. He was wrong. There was no way to survive a punta bite, so I must have gotten less venom than he said. My levels would drop sooner than he thought. Slowly I straightened, taking a deep breath and looking ahead down the sun-dappled path. Jeck took in my new posture and sighed heavily.

“How long is this dream going to last?” I said, cursing the quaver that remained in my voice.
He isn't that much older than I. How can he know how much venom I had?

“I don't know.” He shook Jy's reins as the animal tried to snag a quick bite of thin grass by the edge of the path.

The memory of feeling his arms securely about me, comforting but not binding, rose high, and I cursed myself for wanting to feel them again. I recognized the desire for what it was—a desperate reach for something safe when my world was falling apart. Duncan would have held me the same way, had I let him.
But Duncan isn't here,
my thoughts prompted.

I shivered, refusing to slip back into his warmth. Jy plodded forward into the darkening forest, and Jeck didn't put his hands back about me.

It was going to be a long night until I woke up.

“You just put down what I said,” Captain Rylan demanded,
stirring me from my restless, pained sleep. I left unconsciousness reluctantly. It was my only escape from the throbbing agony my right arm had become. I couldn't feel my shoulder, but my uninjured arm and my entire right side were pulsating waves of fire. Jeck had hastened my healing, and I couldn't imagine what it would feel like if he hadn't.
I am alive.

“If I scribe what you say, he won't believe it's me,” Contessa snapped. “Your syntax is that of a gutter worm.”

“You sorry little wench,” he growled. I heard a jingle of bells followed by a feminine gasp. I would have sat up if I could have moved. I wasn't even sure if what I was hearing was another dream or my nightmarish reality.

“Go ahead,” Contessa said belligerently, and I managed to crack an eyelid. Squinting, I saw a rumpled blanket, and beyond that, the sand bright with sun. By the sound of it, Contessa was behind me somewhere, and I could clearly imagine the fire in her eyes and the clench of her jaw that reminded me so much of our mother. “Hit me,” she threatened, “and you won't get your letter until tomorrow after I stop crying.”

It was obvious her temper had put her far beyond tears, but her threat was real enough. She had already proven she could fall into hysterics—whether real or contrived—and stay there for hours. For the first time, I appreciated how her fishwife temperament gave her strength.
Alex,
I thought,
must be getting better.

I shifted my head, enduring the slivers of pain in my neck to gain an inch-high view of the compound. I was lying in the open, a wool blanket over me and the dappled sun making shifting patterns on the shadow-cold sand. It was late afternoon I'd guess, and the seabirds were quiet. To roll over and see Contessa was beyond me. I hadn't known it was possible to hurt this badly and still be alive. At least when Kavenlow had been building my resistance to the toxin, I'd only suffered pinpricks, not a mauling.

Captain Rylan made a rude grunt. I heard the rustle of silk, and I imagined he had let go of her and moved away. “You just write that I want a wagon of coin and spice. And free passage for it and my man to outside the city. I don't care how you say it. Anything happens to my man, and I'll send your heads back to your Chancellor and Admiral.”

My stomach was a hollow ache of hunger and my lips were cracked. There was a shallow bowl of water nearby, and the faint movement of tiny flies about the rim attracted me. Several were floating on the surface, their wings acting like little sails as they struggled to break from the water. Apparently surviving the punta had granted me a measure of respect. The pirates wouldn't let me die of dehydration.

My tongue scraped the inside of my mouth. I wanted that water, flies and all. My good arm was pinned between me and the sand. To shift onto my stomach was too much to ask.

Holding my breath against the expected pain, I tentatively tried to move the fingers of my right hand. The dull throbs of pain burst into shimmering sparkles—and they shifted. I couldn't feel my fingers against the rough wool, but tears of relief pricked my eyes; my arm wasn't paralyzed. Slowly I let my held breath out, the hurt clenching my stomach until I felt nauseous.

I wanted to reach up and touch my shoulder, but now even the slight movement of my breathing made things worse. Dull throbs ran down my arm and side.
I am alive,
I thought. I had been bitten by a punta and survived. Through Duncan's pressure bandage to wall off the poison and Jeck doing the same by speeding my healing, I lived. My residual toxin levels would eventually drop, and Kavenlow wouldn't abandon me in the time between then and now.