Princess at Sea (31 page)

Speechless, I blinked at her. I'd never been spoken to like that before.

She reached out a twiglike arm and gripped my forearm, pinching the muscle. “You might be good for somethin', though.”

“I beg your pardon?” My face went blank in surprise. Behind her, Jeck was grinning at my expense. I scooted to the edge, unable to stop my groan of pain when my feet dangled over.

“Oh, you are in bad shape, girlie,” she was saying. “Come up to my house. It's just a little ways over that dune there. I have some aching liniment to rub into you. You can take a cup of tea. Meet my son. He's a fine lad, now that he done lost his first wife.”

Alarmed, I glanced over her shoulder at Jeck. “No, thank you,” I quickly said, seeing where this was headed. “We have to be going.”

“Nonsense,” she babbled. “One cup of tea. Do you good to get all warm inside. And I get so lonely out here.”

Jeck took her hand to help her down off the raft. “I think it's a good idea,” he said, surprising me. “Perhaps we could impose upon your hospitality for a few days, even.”

“What?” I stammered.

“Oh, capital. Just capital!” the old woman said, clapping her wrinkled brown hands together. “We can talk, and I can show you how to make starfish cookies. The secret is in the eggs. You need to use eggs from brown hens. Not the ones with white tail feathers. They have to be all brown, you see.”

I started to panic. He had to be jesting. “Whatever for,
Captain
?” I said in worry.

“My!” the old woman exclaimed, a gnarled hand to her hat. “You're a captain? Your ship go down? Where's your crew? Small boat, was it? Just you and your missus?”

“He's not my husband,” I said. Jeck leaned forward when I made motions to get off the raft, actually giving me support when my feet hit the sand. I wobbled for a moment, finding my balance. I looked at my proposed bush, then back to him. “Thank you,” I murmured.

“I'll go to the capital,” he said, “and send a horse for you.”

A flash of tension went through me in understanding. He was going to leave me behind, that's what he was going to do. “I'm coming with you,” I said quickly.

He pressed his lips together, hiding them behind his filthy beard and mustache. “I'll make better time without you.”

“I'm the one who got us here in time to do anything,” I protested, not caring what the old woman thought. “I'm not staying here.”

The old woman squinted up at me from under her wide hat, taking my arm. “Oh, you'll like my son,” she said. “No one catches fish like my boy. Fine, strong man. Takes care of his mother real well, he does.”

Jeck pried her fingers off me, and when he led me a few steps away, the old woman started poking about under the raft. “You said you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your game to ensure your sister's safety,” he said, throwing my words back into my face. “Someone needs to get there as quickly as possible. You can't keep up.”

“I'm fine,” I said, feeling my knees start to shake from hunger and exhaustion. “I'm not going to stay here and wait to be picked up like some kind of weak . . . silly—”

“Princess?” he finished for me. Then his eyes went hard. “I won't slow down for you.”

“So don't,” I snapped. My throat hurt, and I put a hand to it.

Jeck glanced over my shoulder at the woman blathering to herself, her eyes on the dead things washing up. He shifted his weight from one foot to the next, raising a hand and letting it drop as if having decided something. “Tess,” he said softly, “your punta bite is healed over, but it's getting worse.”

My breath caught, and I stared at him.
How had he known?

“It's making your magic unpredictable,” he continued, striking fear in me. “You shouldn't have been able to harness the wind. No player can hold more than a slight breeze. You stirred a hurricane.”

I said nothing, frightened he might guess I still held it in my thoughts. “It's the residual levels,” I said softly. “They'll fall given enough time. I'm fine.”

Jeck's stance went apologetic and pained. “Tess,” he said, his voice so full of pity it struck me cold. “I'm sorry. You didn't call the wind with residual toxin, and that killing pulse yesterday was too strong for even your elevated levels. That was pure venom coursing through you. I could feel it.” His eyes squinted as he gazed into the sky, avoiding my panicked expression. “Even if I failed to wall off the venom properly and it was seeping out, there should be less. There's not. There's more of it. I think the venom is replenishing itself, not dissipating.”

My breath came fast as he said aloud what I had been afraid to think. As if in a dream, I watched him turn and start back to the raft. “Jeck . . .” I took several pained steps to catch up to him, my arms clasped about me from the chill. “Jeck, you're wrong. It's not replenishing itself. It's just taking a long time to work itself out. No one's been bit by a punta before and lived. It's going to take time. That's all. Just time.”

Even I could hear the lie in my voice, and pity hung heavy in his brown eyes, watching me from under his hair. Coming to a halt beside the raft, he exhaled long and slow. “I'm sorry, Tess,” he said, watching the woman shifting through the wreckage on the beach. “Kavenlow has to know. Stay here until he comes for you. I'll tell him. I'm the one who fixed the toxin in your tissues, whether it saved your life or not, and it's my responsibility.”

“No!” I exclaimed softly, fear striking to the quick of my soul. “You don't even know for sure that's what's happening. You can't tell him! He'll make me leave the game!”

Jeck pressed his lips together, his expression full of pity, and I hated him. Hated that I was begging. Hated that I knew he was right. Panicked, I took his arm, gripping it until my fingers hurt. “Jeck,” I said, not caring my voice had a tinge of pleading in it. “I can't be a player if I can't withstand even one dart. Every rival player out there will see it as an easy way to take Costenopolie, and you know it. You should have let me die on that raft if all you were going to do was take everything away from me.”

“You already figured it out,” he said, wonder in him. “You know it's replenishing itself, and you were going to risk your master's game and your life just to keep playing.”

My mouth dropped, shocked. I hadn't even realized it myself until he said something, but he was right. I was going to try to keep this from Kavenlow. “Jeck,” I pleaded, quashing my sudden guilt. “You owe me something. You did this to me!”

“I owe you nothing.” He roughly rocked the water casks, frowning when he realized they had both leaked and were empty. “If I hadn't done something, you would have died.”

“And now you're taking away everything that makes life worth living! This game is all I have left! It's all I've ever had.”

He put his hands on his hips and looked at me, his beard looking wild and unkempt. “What about Duncan?”

I felt my face go ashen, and I took a step back, remembering Duncan asking me to take his name and be with him forever. “I . . . I gave up love for the game,” I said, dying inside all over again. “I hold to that promise. Even now.”

Thoughts unknown pulled his eyes into a scowl as he turned to the old woman, poking a stick at a jellyfish that had washed up. “Ma'am,” he called out, and she looked up, smiling with her broken teeth. “Does anyone nearby have a horse?”

My shoulders eased. He wasn't going to leave without me. He wasn't going to tell Kavenlow. I could figure this out if I had some time to think.

“Horse?” she rasped, leaving the stick in the blob of flesh and hobbling our way. “No. Not enough to feed a horse. Ponies, though. Sharp Bend is north of here about a day's walk. They'd have horses. Nothing here but birds and fish, and those cursed crabs. Keep eating my bait off my lines if I don't watch 'em quick.”

North was the wrong direction, but at least we knew where we were. My eyes met Jeck's, and I felt ill. Two days of hard foot travel.

Breaking his stare at me, Jeck swung himself onto the raft, the grace starting to come back to his movement as his muscles loosened. “Can I borrow your knife, ma'am?” he asked, his hand out. She hesitated for a mistrustful instant before untying it from its red ribbon and handing it to him. He nodded his thanks, and, still not having looked her in the eye, he cut the sail down. I watched in confusion while he ripped two narrow lengths from it. My head bobbed in understanding when he used them to wrap his feet.

I tugged my dress back up over my shoulder, waiting for him to tear two more lengths for me, but instead, he tucked the knife in his waistband and began rummaging amid what was still tied to the raft. As the old woman talked about last night's storm, he made a pile in the center of the downed sail. I shifted from foot to foot, wanting to excuse myself and have a moment of privacy behind that bush, but all my pressing needs were forgotten when Jeck bundled the canvas up, turned, jumped off the raft, and walked away with it slung over his shoulder. No good-bye, no nothing. He had everything of value. All that was left was his ripped sash tied to the mast.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, taking an achy step after him. “You still have her knife!”

He didn't stop, but his neck stiffened, and his pace became stilted.

The old woman pinched my elbow, hissing in my ear, “Let him have it. It's not worth getting beat over.”

Face warming, I lurched into motion, the sticks and shells in the sand sharp on my left foot, dull on my right. My muscles protested, but I was too angry to listen. The wind snuggled in my head behind my ear swirled to life, whispering. “Give her back her knife!” I exclaimed, then wished I hadn't, as my throat felt like it was burning.
What had I done? Screamed all night?

“She said I could borrow it.” He never slowed. His broad back was hunched. He knew he was doing wrong.

“She didn't mean forever. Give it back.” I caught up with him with long, hurting strides. The old woman had turned her back on us, her posture telling me she was afraid to interfere. I grabbed his arm, and he yanked me off-balance when he pulled out of my grip.

“Don't touch me,” he said, his voice threatening as he turned.

I stared at him, surprised. “Then give her the knife back,” I said, suddenly unsure.

“No.”

Anger sifted through me. He was bigger and stronger than I was, and he was going to use it to keep her knife, the chu slinger. “It might be all she has,” I all but hissed. “Give it back.”

“Or what?”

It was so childish, I could have just screamed.
The son of a dock whore
, I thought, as he turned his back on me and walked away. A heady, hot feeling rose unbidden from my belly and swirled in my head. The wind in my thoughts tugged at the bindings I had shackled it with. It flooded me with the memory of mindless power. My anger at Jeck gave it a clear, undeniable direction. Panic shocked through me as a killing force rose unbidden to my hands.

No!
I thought, jerking my hands from Jeck before it flowed from me to him unchecked.

My hands exploded into hurt, and I gasped. I hunched into myself, clenching my hands until my nails bit my palms. The growing force came on me with the sensation of embers rolling under my skin. I stood in agony, unmoving and with my head down as I rode it out and my anger vanished in a wash of fear.

The wind in my head saw its chance to escape. It rose from a zephyr to a breeze to a storm in a heartbeat, swirling through my thoughts, heard and felt only by me.

My hands still resonating with death, I yanked the wind back, shackling it, pushing it down, making it behave. It beat at me, and I panted, forcing myself not to listen as it promised in words I didn't understand that it would teach me to fly.
God help me. I am breaking apart.

Jeck jerked to a halt and turned. “What?” he said flatly, seeing me suddenly afraid. From the annoyed look on his face, I guessed he didn't know I had not only almost killed him but had also nearly gone insane in the span of two heartbeats.

“Keep it,” I whispered, swallowing hard. It had almost gotten free. The wind had tricked me, and I'd almost killed Jeck over a stupid knife.

He glanced at me from head to foot, hoisted everything of value from the raft higher upon his shoulder, and walked away. I could tell his thoughts were already miles ahead of him at the capital. “I'm telling your master, Princess,” he said, not looking back. “You aren't safe, and he needs to face up to his mistakes.”

“Princess!” the old woman called out, looking up from tugging at the empty water barrel.

“That's just what he calls me,” I said, standing in the sun with my arms clenched about me, colder than the deepest winter. But the woman wasn't listening, now talking to the dead rays that had washed up on the beach around us.