The Lost Prince (31 page)

The cell door slammed shut and the palace guards left to help fend off the coming raid. The Ralian brothers stayed behind to gloat. “I told you I’d find out your secret,” Jarret told Dean with a smile.

It wasn’t until Dean saw the look on Jarret’s privileged face that his anger settled in on something other than himself. He set his jaw and clenched his fists. “You did this.”

“Of course,” Jarret boasted. “Took a little while to get everything sorted, but I think it all came off rather well in the end. I knew exactly what to do once I heard your story. Your friend Rook was only too happy to tell it.”

“Rook,” Ronan spat. “Where is that mangy cur?”

“I can honestly say I don’t care. I’ve no further use for him. Once he told me the truth about you, I let him go so he could signal your mates.”

“You let him do that?”

“I needed him to,” Jarret said.

Dean was baffled.
“Why?”

Jarret held out his arms as if the answer were obvious. “I can’t very well expose you as a traitor without evidence of treason, can I?” He pointed to the window in Dean’s cell. “You should be thanking me. My father wanted you dead. I had a better idea.” Jarret tapped his temple. “I realized that killing you wasn’t my best option. It didn’t do anything to enhance my own reputation. By destroying you in this fashion and raising the alarm about an attack, I become the hero.” Jarret puffed up his chest proudly.

Dean looked out the tower window. “The hero.” He shook his head. “You think you’ve won?”

“Remind me, which one of us is locked in a cell? I think it’s safe to say I came out ahead.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” Ronan said.

“Spare me your threats.” Jarret waved a hand, dismissing the warning. “We’re perfectly safe from your friends here. My father has commanded island security ever since the real lost prince was taken. I know this island’s defense capabilities inside and out. We can easily repel a single pirate ship.”

“That may be, but you’re not up against a single pirate ship.”

Jarret squinted at Dean, looking for the first time as if he might not have all the answers. He said nothing.

“What are you talking about?” Jin asked.

Dean nodded toward the window in his cell. “If I were you,
I’d take another look outside. Your brother’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence that was broken by Jin grabbing a key ring off the wall and nodding to Junter. “Come on.”

“What are you doing?” asked Jarret. “Don’t go in there.”

Junter and Jin brushed past their younger brother. “They’re chained to the wall, Jarret. I think we’ll survive.”

They unlocked the door to Dean’s cell and looked out his window. A moment later, Jin leaned against the window frame to keep from falling over. “Then again, maybe we won’t.”

“What is it?” Jarret asked. “What’s out there?”

Junter stepped aside with a grunt. “See for yourself.”

Jarret hesitated, but curiosity eventually got the better of him. He inched into the cell, checking his arrogant swagger at the door. Dean stared him down the whole way, but Jarret purposely avoided his eyes en route to the window. When he saw nineteen pirate ships on the horizon, he turned as white as a ghost. Sweet victory had turned to bitter ashes in his mouth.

“Can your defenses repel that?” Dean asked. “I could have told you.… One-Eyed Jack wouldn’t come after me with just one ship. You chose the wrong friends. Me, I don’t have any.”

“You reap what you sow,” Ronan told the Ralians. “You’ve ruined everyone on this island. Not just the pair of us.”

Jarret choked on his own breath and looked away without a
word. He staggered a step and sat down in a state of shock, not unlike the one Dean was stumbling around in a few moments earlier. Junter nudged him with his toe. “What now?” he asked. Jarret didn’t answer. Junter prodded him again. “Well? You’re the smart one. You said so enough times yourself. What do we do now?”

Jarret gave no reply. He was all but catatonic.

Jin knelt and shook his brother by the shoulders. “Come on, Jarret, this was your plan. What do we do?”

“Get off me!” Jarret said, pushing Jin back. “I need to think.” He snapped out of his daze and got up onto his feet. Jarret paced the cell, running his hands through his hair and mumbling to himself. After a few quick laps around the room, he stopped and faced his brothers. “There’s only one thing we can do. Flee.”

“What?” Junter and Jin both exclaimed.

“You coward,” Ronan said, his voice dripping with disdain.

“How long until they make land?” Jarret asked, ignoring Ronan.

Jin looked out the window. “Not long enough.”

“Can we get out? On your fastest ship, can we make it?”

Jin motioned with his hand, gauging the speed of the pirate’s approach. “If we leave now … 
maybe.
We’d have to hurry.”

“What about Father?” Junter asked.

The immediate reply was silence. After a moment, Jarret shook his head. “You heard Jin. There’s no time. We have to leave now.”

“Blow me down,” Dean said. “I have known some blackhearted, lily-livered scum in my day, but you three win the pr—AHH!”

Dean was interrupted by a hard blow to the jaw, delivered by Junter. Ronan charged across the cell to help him, but his chains halted his progress halfway there. Junter drove a two-handed punch into Ronan’s left kidney, dropping him where he stood.

Jin stepped up and kicked Dean in the stomach once, then twice more for good measure. “There. A little something to remember us by. You’re lucky we don’t have time to do you worse.”

Dean looked up, wiping blood from his lip. “You’d better hope we don’t meet again.”

Jarret took the key ring from Jin and threw it out the window. “Don’t worry. We won’t.” He and his brothers disappeared down the tower stairs as the sound of cannon fire filled the air.

CHAPTER
31

I
t took a few hours for the fighting outside to die down. Dean didn’t watch the battle from his window. It was hard enough for him to stomach without taking in the action. Dean had been around long enough to know what to expect from a raid and didn’t need to look outside.

First came the sound of cannon fire coming from the island toward the ships. That attack was met in kind by One-Eyed Jack shelling the island with an unyielding cannonade. Once the pirates arrived on gigs from the boats, Dean heard a chorus of muskets and flintlock pistols ring out. That went on for some time. There was fighting in the streets and people screaming as they were pulled from their homes. The clatter of steel cutlasses and
the thunk of hatchets finding their mark was pervasive. Before the fighting was over, he knew people would use dirks, daggers, sticks, stones, and whatever else they got their hands on. Through it all, the outcome was never in doubt. Dean and Ronan spent the battle trapped in their cell, forced to listen. When silence fell at last, it was a mercy.

“I think it’s over out there,” Ronan said.

Dean nodded. “In here too.”

“It doesn’t look good for us, I’ll grant you that.” For what must have been the hundredth time, Ronan tugged on his chains to no avail. “What do you think’s gonna happen?”

Dean leaned his head back to rest against the stone wall. He was miles away. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

He didn’t elaborate.

“Well?” Ronan pressed. “What’d you come up with?”

Dean’s eyes snapped forward to look at Ronan. He took a deep breath and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “By now, One-Eyed Jack’s on his way to the orchard, if he’s not there already. There’s gold left on those trees, but not enough. Not to suit his taste. Most of it went out with the harvest, and if he’s looking to find enough treasure to fill nineteen ships, he’s going to be disappointed. I don’t have to tell you how he takes to disappointment. Odds are, he’ll take his frustrations out on us.”

“Aye.” Ronan grimaced. “He finds us here, we’re as good as dead.”

“Unless …” Dean put up an index finger. “Unless he decides he’s got bigger fish to fry. There’s a chance he’ll take what he can from the trees, rob the island for the rest, and realize he has to get out before the storm hits. If things go that way, he won’t have time to sort out the two of us.”

Ronan’s face brightened. “I like the sound of that.”

“But once he’s gone, the people of this island will have all the time in the world. They’ll want revenge, and they’ll deserve it too. When the dust from this fight settles and the blood dries up, you can bet they won’t forget about you and me.”

Ronan’s smile faded. “In which case, we’re as good as dead.”

“Exactly.”

“So what you’re saying is, it doesn’t matter what happens. We’re dead either way.”

“Pretty much.”

“Can you pick the locks on your shackles?”

“If I could reach them.” Dean’s hands were chained too far apart to get at the keyhole. “It’s no use, Ronan. We’re not getting out of here.” Dean looked at the door to their cell. The Ralians hadn’t locked it behind them when they left. It hung on its hinges, wide open, taunting Dean like a metaphor for his life. There had never been a time when he wasn’t trapped somewhere he didn’t want to be, with the way out just beyond his reach. It was always within sight, but a step too far away. From the looks of things, it always would be.

“What gives, Seaborne? You’re supposed to be the optimistic one here.”

Dean slumped further down against the wall. “Sorry, Ronan. You rubbed off on me.”

Ronan let out a weary sigh. “I think so. Gentleman Jim did too, I can tell. Whatever happens, Dean, he was right to take you on. You’re a good egg, sailor. You kept to the code.”

Dean sat up with a puzzled look. “Ronan, we failed. Everything you and I tried to keep from happening happened. People are hurting out there, and we’re next. We’re going to die here.”

“Looks that way,” Ronan agreed. “It surely does. But if it comes to that, I’ll step to the gallows with my conscience clear.” Dean looked at Ronan as though the guards had locked up his brains in some other cell. “I will!” Ronan vowed. “If I have to. It’s not an easy thing, trying to be a pirate and a good man at the same time. Gentleman Jim tried, and you saw where that got him. But even when things went bad, he never gave up walking that line. Right up to the end, he stayed true to what he thought was right. He’d have been proud of what you tried to do here. I am.”

Dean took a minute with that. “Thanks.” He didn’t have much to feel good about at the moment, but he felt good about what Ronan had just said. Maybe it was because he had never thought of himself as being true to anything.

“Does this mean we’re friends now?”

Ronan rattled his chains. “I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

Dean laughed. “Not exactly your decision.”

“I didn’t say it was. And I’ll tell you something else. I don’t much care to stay either. There has to be something we can do.”

Dean heard arguing in the hall outside. “Someone’s coming up the steps.”

He and Ronan listened quietly, wondering who was coming to get them. As the people outside got closer, their voices became clearer.

“I told you we should have started at the top and worked our way down,” the first voice argued.

“That makes a lot of sense,” the other shot back. “What if they’d been on the first floor? We’d have walked right past them and hiked up these stairs for nothing.”

“They weren’t on the first floor, were they? And we hiked up all these stairs anyway—at a snail’s pace, thanks to you!”

“So what? You move about as fast as a fish floppin’ on the beach does, anyway!”

Dean looked at Ronan. “Is that who I think it is?”

Ronan grinned. “None other. Kane! Marko! Up here!”

The bickering outside stopped abruptly. It was replaced by the sound of footsteps charging up the stairs. Moments later, the ever-sparring twins, Kane and Marko, burst through the door. “There you are!” Kane said. “Told you we should’ve started at the top,” he added, giving his brother a shove.

“All right, all right,” said Marko.

“I don’t believe this,” Ronan said. “What are you two doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Kane replied. “Would’ve been here sooner if not for him.”

“Belay that,” Marko said, punching Kane in the shoulder. “We found ’em, didn’t we?”

“Don’t touch me.” Kane punched Marko back, giving better than he got. As usual, they couldn’t go two minutes without fighting. Both brothers were determined to get in the last shot. Things escalated and within seconds they were wrestling on the ground and trading blows.

“AVAST THERE!” Ronan thundered, loud enough to grind everything to a halt. He held up his hands, still locked in irons. “Forgetting something, are you?”

“Right,” Kane said, freezing mid-punch.

“Sorry,” Marko added, getting up. “Force of habit, you know.”

“I do know! They should have called you two Kane and Abel!”

“Actually, I think that one spells his name different,” Kane said. “You see, mine starts with a
K
and his …” He trailed off when he saw the look on Ronan’s face. “You’re right. Not important.”