Exile (34 page)

“Banes?” Khel asked sharply.

“Aye,” Osias said. “Some have escaped. Or been loosed.”

Prince Khel stared at Osias. “You lie.”

“Draken,” Osias said. “Give your father the sword.”

“What? But—”

“On faith, friend. Trust me.”

Draken held for a long moment. Every instinct advised against giving up Seaborn. But he trusted Osias...didn’t he?

He did. Someone had betrayed him, likely many someones. But it wasn’t Osias. It couldn’t have been Osias. He hadn’t lied to Draken. He rarely told the entire truth, but he’d never lied. And Osias had saved his life. Draken had been well prepared to die in the moment the bane had taken him, but not just because of the horrible manipulation. Osias had shown him the path back to life. The banes were real, and worse than anything his father had done, worse even than losing Lesle. He’d faced down death his entire life, but what could be worse than wanting to die?

The light of the Moons crowned the Mance’s lithe form in an amorphous silvery halo. His face seemed perfect as if sculpted by a master. Draken drew in a sharp breath. As if sculpted by a god.

“Take the damned thing. I never want to see it again.” Draken lowered his sword and tossed it to his father’s feet. It flashed in the moonlight, but the shine winked away.

Khel held it up to the moonlight. It shadowed against the bright light—a mere sword. He squinted at Draken. “What is this? What did you do to it? Where is the magic?”

Draken swallowed; he’d just lost the battle before it had begun. His hands warmed, Bruche withdrawing. Seaborn looked as gray and dead as common forged iron, as gray and dead as Draken felt in that moment.

“You wanted your sword, Lord Prince, and you have it,” Osias said. “You’ll find it quite ordinary. The magic wielded by Seaborn has a new master.”

Khel’s gaze shifted from the Mance to Draken, who didn’t like the brooding, speculative slant to his father’s eyes. But he liked his advantage. Osias had given it to him in the only way he could. Draken smiled grimly at the Mance’s malicious courtesy. Prince Khel’s lips tightened to a pale slash in his dark face.

“Geord, see to things here. The rest of you, take them to the ship,” Khel said at last. “Sohalia awaits.”

***

They all, including Aarinnaie, were bound and dragged back down the foul tunnel to a small boat. They even chained and gagged Osias to prevent him working any magic. Draken was allowed to walk with his arms bound behind his back, but his father prodded him on. Even sleeping, Seaborn held its edge and stung him more than once. Aboard his father’s ship, the Prince’s men stripped Draken of his armor despite his best efforts to fight it. His legs and arms were forced apart and he was chained belly down to rings on the shipdeck designed for the purpose.

“I wish not to harm you, my only son. But I wish to know what the gods will say. You must work the sword’s magic.”

“Take your wishes with you to Eidola,” Draken grunted, fighting the chains.

“Don’t you understand? This is our chance to take our rightful place. But we cannot do it without knowing what the gods are about. They’ll tell you, with the sword over the bay. They’ll tell you their plans. And we’ll have the power. Such knowledge could save our lives.”

“Fools all, Father. You’re mad! We’re not gods, we’re—”

“Lashes, then,” Khel said calmly. “But spread by ten oar-strokes. Give the lad time to properly appreciate each one.”

Before Bruche could chill his skin, the serpent-like whip cut through his back, and the shock of it made him grunt hard. It started like a knife wound, painless at first, only with the crack peculiar to whips. The force of the blow crushed his chest to the deck. Then it was as if someone had lit a stripe of flame across his back. He could trace every inch of it with his mind, unable to not writhe in a futile bid for escape. His assailant turned away as if bored by the entire thing.

“My lord!” Tyrolean, straining in the ropes binding him to a mast. His face creased with fury.

Draken swallowed. His friends would surely be next. He never should have come here. “I’m sorry, Ty,” he husked out.

“Gods keep you, my lord.”

“Touching, that,” Draken’s father said. He turned to the whipman. “Again.”

The whip snaked across his back. Draken grunted harder in an effort not to scream. And then the whipman stepped away to count strokes.

The intervals of silence were almost worse than the sharp bolts of pain, filled with the taut lines scraping through pulleys, water slapping against the creaking wooden hull, the slower, deeper luff of mainsheet, and horrible anticipation. Draken couldn’t help but listen for the stroke of the oars, marked only by a dull drum beat. Even Bruche’s chill couldn’t entirely mask the pain. By the fifth strike, Draken was too weak to do more than moan. By the eighth, agony consumed him, painful tension spreading from his back through every limb.

“Are you ready to cooperate, my son?”

Draken had bitten his tongue. He spat blood. “Korde take you.”

A sorrowful sigh. “So be it.”

Draken drifted, too cold from Bruche to really sleep, and the shock of pain from his torturer waking him every time he sought a moment of peace in unconsciousness. Sohalia Day dawned and Khel seemed content to let the sun do his work for him. While his father broke his fast under the shade of the sails, Draken’s head swam with thirst and exhaustion. The sea winds stung every inch of his back. He didn’t look at his friends, bound and enduring their own private agonies; he couldn’t bear to think he’d brought them to this. But he was alive, and they were, and he clung to that truth like a frayed rope hanging over the side of a cliff.

But Sohalia moons always rose early. By First Moon Draken drifted within a haze of hopelessness, only knowing he did not want to die. He failed to comprehend how that might not happen.

By the time full night had fallen and seven brilliant full moons bore silent witness to the horrors on the deck, Draken’s back was in bloody tatters. Sohalia was in full swing, and every finger on Draken’s right hand was broken. Though Bruche was able to reduce the throb to an ache, each snap of bone shuddered him back into full consciousness. He barely had the energy to cry out.

Khel himself took on the job of breaking his son after furiously berating the men who failed him. The Prince turned to cutting Draken in ways to cause agony without dangerous blood loss. He found the most alert nerves in Draken’s body; his fingertips, the thin skin over his wrists, and the flesh beneath his ribcage and on the backs of his thighs. Bruche gave up trying to chase the trail of torture. Having a knife course so close to Draken’s vitals reawakened whatever terror had faded in the past hours. Screaming ambushed him again, though by now his voice failed to produce more than hoarse, wordless cries.

“I lose patience. You must take up the sword,” Khel muttered.

Draken drew in as deep a breath as he could manage, but could only shake his head. He closed his eyes against Osias’ pleading gaze.

Khel used Seaborn, its blade so recently honed by Tyrolean, to scribe more agony down the back of Draken’s thigh. Then he knelt near Draken’s face. “My son. I don’t like seeing you like this. When you came back, I had hopes we would be close again, you and I.”

Draken didn’t have the voice to retort they’d never been close, nor that he’d had extensive training in the Black Guard, for both inflicting and surviving torture, nor even the fluid left to spit. So he simply closed his eyes. His backside stung like a thousand stinging insects had lit upon it; a cramp twisted the muscles in his left leg. Pain thrust deep and hot into his brain, the throb keeping time with the sway of the deck beneath his chest. Every cell begged for submission. What was it, to lift the sword? What could be the worst of it? Perhaps, if he took it up, he could throw himself and the godsdamned thing into the sea.

But one tiny thought nagged at him. His father wanted it done. Reason enough not to cooperate. If Khel wanted it, then it was wrong. Simple. Clean. His decision was made for him.

He stared into his father’s dark blue eyes. Draken had inherited his color, which he had long detested because every time he saw his reflection he saw his bastard father’s blood in his veins. But something flickered there, a new darkness. Before Draken could feel much curiosity, his father rose and Draken stared at his at his ankles, laden with moonwrought chains. But no kick came.

Draken groaned in agony. Look at what you’re doing, Father, he thought. How does someone come to this? Sadistic, heartless bastard...

“Bring her, then,” Khel said. “Bring Aarinnaie.”

They dragged Aarinnaie, gagged and fighting, her curls matted with sweat, within Draken’s limited view. A powerfully built Brînian sailor held her against his chest, his broad arm wrapped around her. She struggled, but she was bound and couldn’t escape.

“I shall turn her over to my men,” Khel announced, “and once they’ve finished, we’ll give what’s left of her to the errings…”

The Brînian licked Aarinnaie’s neck.

You don’t have a choice, Draken,
Bruche said.
You knew it could come to this. How many will you let them kill?

Aarinnaie, who had plagued him since the first arrow, who had defied him, taunted him. Of anyone, she knew what it was to have Khel as a father. She’d endured more years with the man than Draken, even. Khel had turned her into an assassin, had obviously abused her, and treated her as little more than a knife no longer worth sharpening. She needed Draken. It had to count for something.

Draken closed his eyes in defeat. “All right, Father.”

His many hurts kept him from wanting to move, but as soon as the chains were removed, two men dragged him to his feet. He gripped the mast with his good hand to gain his bearings. His right hand hung useless at his side. He panted and concentrated on the pain because it sharpened his senses.

Khel pointed Seaborn at the deck of the ship. “Kneel.”

Draken dropped to one knee. There was no fighting it. He had no wish to feel the lash again any more than he wished to lift the damnable sword over the seas from which it had been birthed.

“All the way down.”

Draken dropped his other knee, leaned on his good hand, and lowered his forehead to the deck of the ship. Elena’s pendant clinked against the wood. His father put Seaborn away in a scabbard at his hip and Draken heard someone pouring out liquid.

“Rise, Crown Prince of Brîn, and steadfast to me.”

Working the sword was one thing, but pledging fidelity to his father?

Fake it
, Bruche said.
For gods’ sake, make him believe. It’s our only chance. With the sword in your hand, maybe I can take him.

“Release them,” Draken choked out against the rough wood. When no answer came he lifted his head to look at his father.

Prince Khel held out a flagon of wine. “I am your King, and you will address me as such. You do as you’re bid, Prince, and I’ll consider your request.”

Could this man truly be his father? Did they share blood? Draken wanted to slap the cup away as badly as he wanted to slap the smirk from Khel’s lined face, but Bruche advised pragmatically,
Drink. You’re thirsty.

Draken rose, took the cup in his left hand, and swallowed down the warm wine. Now that he was upright, he realized the wind had picked up on the bay; gusts of sea-mist whipped at the scraps of his clothes and bit at his various hurts. His head swam with exhaustion and pain.

His father stared at him, waiting.

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” It was easier than he thought. He was too worn to cling to contempt.

Prince Khel wore Seaborn in a jewel-encrusted scabbard. When he drew it again, the sword was still as dead and gray as Draken felt. Khel started to hold it out but took it back as his attention traveled past Draken. “Ho, what’s this?”

Draken turned to look. A bright light flared on shore, and a ball of fire splashed the water fore of the ship. Draken strained to see, but he only heard a hiss of flame before something else thumped hard against the deck. A fiery ball rolled toward a pile of coiled lines, and a sailor kicked at it with his bare foot. It rolled through the rope railing and splashed into the water. Another ball of flame sailed through the mainsheet, sending a sailor in the rigging screaming into the sea. The mainsheet belched smoke and then caught as if it had been soaked in petrol.

Draken’s stiff back tightened further and he spun, regretting the action as his nerves screamed in protest, but still looking for more. He wanted to shout orders, but it wasn’t his boat, and he didn’t have a true grasp of the threat.

“From Seakeep!” a sailor cried. “The Akrasians.”

The Akrasians hold the garrison at Seakeep,
Bruche said before Draken could form a question about it.

Or it’s my troops,
Draken answered.

Prince Khel strode past Geord, barking orders to his crew. “Fools all, don’t just stand there! Light the arrows and load the crossbows.” He shoved at a stricken sailor. “Get the men below to row out. If the mainsheet isn’t down by the time I reach the mast I’ll string your balls from the highest lines!”

The sailor, a scarred Brînian with more earrings than Draken could count, scurried up the rigging to douse the flames, while another filled buckets and sent them upward via lines on a pulley. The thought of freeing his friends in this moment of confusion jerked Draken into action, but Prince Khel spun back toward him.

“No clever ideas, Draken,” he shouted, and thrust the sword at him. “Get it over the water!”

Two more balls slammed against the side of the ship and shouts of alarm rang out. “Hull breach!”

Draken scanned the Brînians on the ship, every one of them intent on duty.

You are Brînian, and you are a prince,
Bruche whispered.
They are your people, whether you claim them or not. Take up your sword and defend them.

Resentment at his rebellious counterpart flared as two more hurling balls hit the ship and new cries warning of another hull breach rose up.