The Duelist 11, page 5
“Alex!” he said when he noticed us, and he pushed out from between the crowd of the others to stand before Shay and me.
I realized then that he actually hadn’t seen us since we’d returned from the caves, because the raccoon Captain stopped dead once he noticed Shay’s wings.
“Mistress!” he yelped. “You-- you have wings!”
“I do,” Shay said with a laugh. “The Heart of Aventoll worked its miracles on me.”
“As you worked yours on it,” the Captain replied, and he took one of Shay’s hands between both of his own. His rings sparkled in the soft light that Shay emitted now. If I squinted, and it was dark, she glowed slightly. “You look even more radiant than before.”
“Thank you,” the phoenix-woman replied, and she flushed under the praise, which made me grin. Even after all this time, a compliment made her flush, but I hoped she knew she absolutely deserved those compliments.
“I’m glad your mission was successful, but I wish I had similarly good news to offer you,” Nemis then said. “Someone must have followed us to the Island. I don’t know what they’re planning, but--”
“We know who the ship belongs to, Captain,” I interrupted the raccoon-man. “Teivel Tas. He was a member of the Asher Council.”
“A member of the Asher Council?” the Captain echoed, and he grimaced before he paused. “Wait… he ‘was’ a member?”
“I killed him in a Duel,” I said. “What was his, is now mine. Including his seat on the Council, and that ship.”
“This all feels vaguely familiar,” Sha-Kane remarked slightly dryly as he looked over at Horus, and I knew the two bird-men were remembering when we’d boarded the Night Reaper, which I’d rechristened the Midnight. I’d won the ship in a Duel against Luhrmann, and Sha-Kane had taken advantage of being away from the rest of the Crew to tell me he was Shay and Horus’ real father-- although Horus and Shay didn’t know about that bit yet.
“We should board the ship,” Horus said. “To see if Teivel brought any backup. I doubt he brought treasure, though.”
I didn’t care about treasure. I already had more money than I knew what to do with. But I definitely cared about whether Teivel had some actually-competent backup who could mow through my Crew.
“Horus, Bodin, Sha-Kane, we’ll check out the ship,” I said. I had a feeling it would be sensible to bring Ashers, just in case the other people on Teivel’s ship were Ashers. “The rest of you, stay here. If anyone tries to get in--”
“The Captain and I are more than capable of handling a few errant pirates,” Zoie said in a firm voice, and the gleam in her eyes was dangerous.
“Damn right.” I grinned at her.
The cat-woman grinned back as Bodin, Horus, and Sha-Kane all grabbed their weapons.
“Come back soon, my love,” Anwaar said to the falcon-man, and she held his face in her hands to kiss him.
“Soon,” Nova echoed as she looked at me.
“You only just got back,” Amaya agreed.
“We won’t be long,” I promised them. “We just need to check this out. But we can’t just leave that ship there, unsearched. What if you’re right, Maya, and they’re planning an ambush?”
The oryx-woman nodded, and Nova nodded, too, but she did it while pouting slightly. I kissed each of them on the forehead, then did the same to Zoie and Shay, and my troupe of Ashers headed out onto the beach.
The sand was still warm underfoot, even though the sun had fully set by now, and it was nighttime. There was only the barest chill in the air, so it couldn’t have been dark for long.
“That way,” Bodin said at once, and I remembered raccoons could see as well in the dark as cats could. He led us over the beach in a small procession, only about a mile or so, and then we came to Teivel’s ship.
“Sun Shimmer,” Horus read off the hull. “And she’s all yours now, Chief.”
“Oh, goody, I needed another boat,” I snorted. I’d never super loved boats-- or at least, I’d never loved the idea of being on water for days or weeks at a time. The Manta was fine, because it flew, and it flew smoothly, especially thanks to the expert piloting of Nemis, but honestly I was just waiting for when we could travel back to Ithaca and I could keep my feet on solid ground for longer than a few days.
As far as that went, I kind of missed the Heartcave.
“I could take it off your hands if you don’t want it,” Horus drawled, and I saw his grin in the light of the Moon. “Provided it’s not full of people who murder us all, obviously.”
“Ever the optimist,” I groaned, and we walked around until we found the ladder Teivel must have used to disembark several days ago.
The metal rungs were still warm from spending all day in the sunlight, and when I climbed up onto the top deck of the ship, I wasn’t surprised to see it was deserted, but that didn’t mean it was actually deserted. The crew could have been hiding, or they could have been genuinely asleep.
“Am I the only one who thinks this is too quiet?” Bodin asked in a hush when he pulled himself up onto the deck.
“No,” Horus, Sha-Kane, and I replied in unison. We all drew our blades and stood in a circle, ready for any sudden attacks, but several minutes went by, and still nothing happened.
“Something isn’t right,” I said, and the others mumbled in agreement. It was more than the lack of noise, though. Something about this ship didn’t look right. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Let’s check below deck.”
We carefully descended into the hull of the ship, but despite the creaking of the planks under our feet, we heard no disturbances. Instead, once we got below the top deck, there was a faint clunking that sounded strangely mechanical.
“It’s coming from this direction,” Bodin said, and he led us down the narrow corridor to what, geographically, must have been the heart of the vessel.
The clunking noises got a little louder, but there was no other sign of life. Had Teivel’s crew abandoned the ship? That couldn’t be right. We would have seen them if they had. There was nowhere for them to go on this Island, it wasn’t like Leen or Nata.
We then entered a room similar to the captain’s cabin on the Manta ship, except it was below deck, so the outside wasn’t visible. It was unmistakably a place where the ship was steered from, though, which baffled me. I hadn’t seen any periscopes, or anything else that could compensate for this room being windowless.
“This ship is…” Bodin began, but he trailed off and frowned deeply.
“Is what?” I asked.
“Weird,” the raccoon-man said, and I had to agree. “I mean, I’m not as familiar with boats as my cousin is, but even I can see it’s… different. I have no idea how you’d go about steering this thing. And it seems… I don’t know. Familiar?”
“It almost looks like the machinery Archus Doler built for the Manta,” Horus agreed. “And that strange contraption the cleric was building on Eng.”
“It looks a lot like that, actually,” I said with a nod, even as I frowned thoughtfully. “Seriously, this is uncanny. Do you think this ship was designed by the cleric, too?”
“I can’t say, but this is definitely more mechanical than I would expect of something designed to go on water,” Bodin said, and when he kicked something lightly with his foot, it gave off a metallic clang. “It almost looks like… like it could sail itself.”
“Shit,” I muttered, and the others all turned to look at me. “Bodin, you’re exactly right. When we were on the top deck, I didn’t see any steering wheel or anything. This thing must be steered differently.”
“Wait, you mean this thing runs on some kind of… power source?” Horus asked. “Like the Manta?”
“Maybe not exactly like the Manta, but certainly on a kind of engine,” I agreed. “This is a pretty small vessel, all things considered. I bet Teivel could have sailed this thing all by himself. There might not be anyone else aboard at all.”
“What in Mercedes…?” Horus muttered, and he stared at me with wide eyes. “A… a ship that doesn’t need a crew?”
“Don’t tell my cousin about this, he’ll be incensed,” Bodin remarked, and we all let out a laugh.
It felt good to laugh after the tension of walking through this eerily empty ship.
“So… Teivel came here by himself?” Horus asked.
“It would make sense, if the Council wanted to keep their agenda as quiet as possible,” Sha-Kane said. “And if Teivel had somehow managed to build an autonomous ship, he would be the perfect candidate.”
“Wait, Teivel built this?” I asked, and the osprey-man shrugged.
“I can’t say for sure, but it would make sense to send the person who built this contraption, seeing as they could then fix it if it broke down. The Tas family have been called ‘Tinker Tas’ for generations, although not to their faces, but they have always been fascinated with curious inventions.”
The idea that the entitled, arrogant bastard who’d killed the memory woman could have the patience to build something like this was mind-boggling, but I supposed everyone had their talents.
“I’d be impressed if he hadn’t been such an insufferable shitdick,” I admitted, and I raised my hand to inspect the ceiling of the metal cabin-- the engine room-- but before my fingers made contact with the metal, there was a loud ‘crash’ in the distance.
“What in Darkhells was that?” Horus demanded as he whirled around.
“I don’t know, but let’s go find out,” I said, and the four of us all drew our weapons and charged out of the engine room.
The hallway was still as dark as ever, but my eyes had adjusted to the poor light, and I caught a glimpse of a dark shape out of the corner of my eye as we exited.
“There!” I cried out, and I pointed.
Sha-Kane, Horus, and Bodin ran after me as I began to try and chase the shape down. It couldn’t have been Tas, because his body was down at the bottom of the Heartcave, with the body of the memory woman.
Whoever the running figure was, they heard my cry, because they began to run even harder. They scrambled up the stairs back to the top deck, and by the time I was standing on the top deck, too, I was only able to catch the barest glimpse as they jumped off the side of the ship and scaled down the ladder, onto the beach.
“The forest,” Horus said from behind me. “They’re heading for the forest.”
“The Heartcave, maybe?” I asked, and the falcon-man shrugged as best he could while trying to scale down the ladder as fast as possible.
Horus and I tore off after the figure while Bodin and Sha-Kane descended the ladder.
“Hey!” I called out. “Hey! We just want to talk!”
“Do we?” Horus asked me in a voice that would have been quieter if he wasn’t breathing so hard from sprinting beside me.
“We do,” I confirmed. “Just because they’re on Teivel’s ship doesn’t mean they’re in cahoots with him. Plus, we can’t get information from them if they think us catching up to them means they get killed.”
The figure was insanely fast, because even at my and Horus’ top speed, they were putting more distance between us. They were running at a diagonal, halfway between the Manta on the shore and the tree line at the edge of the beach. I knew there was only one way I was going to catch up to them, so I reached for the edge of my mind, for that familiar sensation of my time-trance ability. It had mostly eluded me back in the cave, but I was more used to the Island’s magic now, and Shay had healed the Heart.
Come on, come on.
I just needed a little. Just a little slowing, so I could catch up to them.
It happened like a balloon being inflated-- the slow build of pressure, then all of a sudden it popped, and I was rocketing forward while the figure slowed down to almost stillness. I didn’t quite manage to check my speed, and I barreled into them and knocked them flat into the sand under me.
“Hey, hey, hey!” I cried out when time readjusted, and I realized the figure was thrashing around underneath me. They were wearing a dark, hooded cloak, and when I’d collided into them, they’d gotten all tangled up, and I couldn’t even see their face. I suspected it was a bit too large for them. “Knock it off! I’m not gonna hurt you! We just want to know why you were on that ship!”
The figure wouldn’t stop thrashing, so I grabbed handfuls of the cloak’s thick material and pinned them so they couldn’t move. Then I reached up and pulled back their hood.
“We just want to--” I started, but the rest of the sentence died on my lips when I saw who was underneath the hood.
A Lakuna woman.
Chapter 4
“No!” the Lakuna woman screamed, but I almost didn’t register her cries, because I was too shocked at the sight of her.
She looked a lot like Nova, with the same straight, navy-blue hair and green skin, but her eyes were a dark teal color, and she was notably older. She looked around the age Nova’s mother would have been by now, like someone of Sha-Kane’s generation rather than Horus and Shay’s.
“No!” she cried out again, and she tried to claw at me with her flailing arms, but I caught onto her wrists so easily it was almost sad. “I won’t go back! I won’t serve him! You can’t make me! Let me go! Let me go!”
This Lakuna woman had a much better command of the Aventollian language than Nova did, which was curious. I knew, obviously, that Nova’s childhood had been very far from typical, but I’d still kind of expected the Lakuna children to not be able to speak so well. Sha-Kane had explained how their own tongue was extremely complex and different from the common language, but this woman yelled at me in Aventollian with a very natural fluency.
Or maybe she’d just learned from whoever had been holding her prisoner that speaking in Lakuna would get her nowhere.
“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” I told the Lakuna woman in as soothing a tone as I could manage while still holding onto her wrists so she didn’t claw my eyes out. “I’m not going to hurt you, none of us here are going to hurt you.”
“Let me go!” the Lakuna woman shrieked. “I won’t go back! I won’t serve him! I won’t help him any longer!”
“Who?” I asked. “Teivel Tas?”
“No!” she shouted, and she resumed thrashing to try and break free of my hold. In her fury, she’d partially transformed into the fish-like creature that Nova sometimes turned into. This woman seemed to be trying to either scare or overpower me with her fish form, but it wasn’t going to faze me, not until I was sure she was alright.
“No one is going to force you to go anywhere or do anything,” I told her. “We just want answers, okay? Teivel can’t hurt you. He’s dead.”
“No! I--” The Lakuna woman stopped dead and stared at me, and her face melted back into the green-skinned-woman form. “D-Dead? Tas is dead?”
“He is,” I answered firmly. “I killed him myself.”
At that, the woman’s eyes darted down to the Duelist stone hanging around my neck, and her eyes widened in horrible recognition before she went absolutely ballistic again
“No! I won’t serve you!” she shouted, and she tried to break free of my hold again, but to no avail. “I won’t! You can’t make me!”
“Calm down!” I cried out, even though I knew that yelling ‘calm down’ at someone had never actually made them calm down. “We’re not going to hurt you! None of us are going to hurt you!”
“You can’t fool me, nightmare man!” she snarled, and she tried to kick at me, but I still had the oversized cloak she was wearing pinned under my knees, and her foot just got tangled in the thick cloth. “I will never be fooled again! I won’t go back!”
Nightmare man? What on earth-- or, rather, what on Aventoll-- was this woman talking about?
“I’m not trying to fool you!” I told the Lakuna woman desperately, and by now Bodin, Horus, and Sha-Kane were beginning to catch up to me.
From their perspectives, I’d suddenly obtained superhuman speed in order to catch this woman, because they’d been outside the ‘time-bubble’ I’d created around myself.
“Alex, are you alright?” Horus asked as he approached me with the other two men. “Who did you-- by Mercedes!”
The falcon-man’s swear was echoed by Bodin and Sha-Kane as all three of them noticed just who I’d caught and trapped. The Lakuna woman stared up at them all with a mixture of apprehension and disgust before she began to thrash again.
“No! No! No!” she cried. “Let me go! I won’t go back!”
Her face had taken on the monster look again, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t fully transform. If she did fully change to her fish form, she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, because she was too far from the water’s edge to swim, and she still needed legs if she wanted to escape.
“I thought the Lakuna children were all but totally extinct from Aventoll,” Sha-Kane said in a soft voice as he stared at the woman. “Incredible.”
“It would be more incredible if she stopped panicking,” I grunted with a little irritation. “You speak some Lakuna, right? Tell her we mean no harm!”
Maybe she would believe it if we said it in her own language.
Sha-Kane frowned for a moment as he thought about it. I had no idea when he’d last spoken Lakuna, but it must have been a long time because it was several seconds before he crouched down on his knees next to me and the green-skinned thrashing woman and spoke in a melodious voice that, to me, just sounded like random syllables.
There was a distinct lilt to them, though, and I could tell there was fluency even though I couldn’t understand a word. It was not dissimilar to the shrieks Nova sometimes let out when she was scared or angry, and my heart suddenly contracted as I realized the only part of her mother’s language that she knew were screams of pain, or pleas for help and mercy.
Not for the first time, I wished I could kill Krev Alda all over again.
The Lakuna woman in front of me, however, paused when Sha-Kane spoke to her, and she said something that, again, I had no hope of understanding, but the cadence suggested it was a question.
