Impossible Things (29 page)

‘She is not—’

‘Yes, she is, and you know it. She doesn’t want you in her cabin, and the last time she found herself in a cabin with some men she didn’t like we had to add up the limbs to count how many there had been. Go.’

Marcus went.

‘I don’t need you to rescue me,’ Ishtaer said, anger rising again.

Kael shut the door. He looked tired. ‘No, I know you don’t. Look, Ish, we need to talk. I understand you’ve got some stuff you need to think about’—at this she snorted, and he carried on— ‘and maybe you need a bit of space from me. But I’m here when you want to come back. If you want to come back,’ he amended hastily.

She sat down heavily on the bunk, looking up at him. The pirate king who’d laughed as he slaughtered the men of the merchant ship. The friend who’d held her in his arms when she was too frightened to speak and pulled her back from the grip of her demons. The man who’d made love to her for the first time in her life.

‘I think I can see again because I learned to trust you,’ she said. ‘I gave you everything that night. I mean I … I’ve never willingly given anyone my body, and certainly not my heart and soul too.’

The look on his face was heartbreaking. ‘I know, and what that means is … it’s incredible, Ishtaer, it’s—’

She held up her hand. ‘It’s something that was very hard for me to do. And now I need you to do something just as hard. I need you to trust me.’

‘What are you talking about? Of course I trust you!’

‘Then why won’t you listen to my advice about Samara?’

His face took on a shuttered, mulish look.

‘She will have you all killed or enslaved. Everyone on this ship and all the rest. You, and Verak and Eirenn and everyone. Imagine her glee at reducing you to the state I was in. And when she’s captured the fleet of the great Krull the Warlord, what’s to stop her sailing it to Krulland and killing everyone there? Or maybe just enslaving them. She’d starve your boys to death, she’d beat and whip them, she’d have Mags raped and—’

‘Stop,’ Kael said quietly, forcefully.

‘She won’t fight fair, Kael. We have to stop her fighting all together.’

‘Then what have I brought all these men for?’

‘Do you really think the Emperor would have let you leave without them? Look. When we arrive, you send word, as quick as you can, that you’ll agree to the exchange. That you’ll meet her on the beach, with the boy, and as soon as you see he’s safe, you’ll send me over.’

He looked doubtful. ‘You really think she’ll fall for that?’

‘We start walking at the same time, then.’

‘You’re actually going to do it? To swap yourself? To go back to her?’

Ishtaer sat down on the bunk with a sigh. ‘She doesn’t like to lose. She’ll be furious I escaped her. She …’ Ishtaer ran her hands over her face, trying to find the right words. ‘She won’t release the boy until she thinks she’s got what she wants. You do understand that, don’t you? You can’t … intimidate her. She won’t be afraid of Krull the Warlord. She’ll get a hell of a thrill out of taking me away from you.’

He sat down beside her, took her hands in his and looked at her earnestly. ‘Then we kill her. Soon as we see her. Arrow through the head. Eirenn could do it, or Benbow, he’s almost as good as a Chosen, or …’

His enthusiasm faded as he took in her expression, and he sighed. ‘And then her people would kill the boy.’

‘She’ll probably have them standing there with a knife at his throat just in case you turn on her.’

‘Ishtaer, I can’t just hand you over. I physically can’t. She’ll kill you. Slowly.’

‘That’s her intention, yes.’ She squeezed his hands gently and smiled a bit. ‘I told you to trust me. She will hurt me, as soon as she gets me. But I don’t think she’ll kill me, not just yet, not after all the trouble she’s gone to getting me. But I can heal a hurt, I’ve done it before. Listen. How well do you recall the terrain of the beach?’

He looked baffled, but said, ‘I recall it was a swiving awful place to be. Remains of ships and bleached bones.’

‘How big were the remains of ships?’ At his look of confusion, she added, ‘Big enough to conceal an archer? High enough for him to have line of sight to Samara’s head?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What are you planning?’

‘Arrow in the head. Just as you said. But only after you’ve got the boy.’

‘And after she’s got you? Her people will kill you.’

Ishtaer shook her head. ‘I don’t think they will. They won’t have been ordered to kill me straight away. They’ll have relaxed. They’ll be waiting for orders. Remember how everyone in that court lived and died at her command? They won’t know what to do. And that’s when you need to be fast. Overwhelm them. If there are mercenaries they’ll know whose side they want to be on. A dead woman won’t pay them.’

She held her breath and watched his face as he considered the scenario.

‘She’ll still hurt you,’ he said.

‘And I’ll recover. Do you have a better idea?’

Kael let out a long breath, and Ishtaer did too. ‘No. We’ll … we’ve got three weeks. We need to work out the kinks, plan for contingencies. And I’m not saying we might not use a better plan if someone thinks of one. We do have most of the finest strategists in the Empire sailing with us, you know.’

‘Are any of them experts on murderous slave owners?’

He squeezed her hands again. ‘No.’ He looked at her for a long while, his eyes softening, and then he moved forward and she knew he was going to kiss her.

She drew back. ‘No. I—I can’t. Not now. Not while I’ve got Samara in my head.’

Kael grimaced. ‘Fair enough. But, Ishtaer, when this is over …?’

She looked at him, not as the pirate king or as her friend but as the man who’d made her melt with pleasure, and her blood ran a little hotter.

‘When this is over,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’

Kael sighed and stood up. ‘Maybe is better than never,’ he said, and smiled, and Ishtaer smiled back.

After three weeks the coast of the New Lands loomed, waves breaking over the coral reef that had broken so many of the ships in Samara’s bay. The
Grey Ghost
steered around it, moving north, heading for the next bay to shelter for one last night before the confrontation.

Kael rowed a small boat ashore. It contained the messenger with Kael’s offer, and it contained the three best archers the fleet had to offer. For three weeks they’d been firing from ship to ship, moving targets over extreme distances, until Kael was satisfied they could hit a jumping flea from half a mile away.

‘Remember the plan,’ Kael said to Eirenn, Benbow, and a Draxan Chosen named Ismail. ‘Only once we have the boy, and she’s already hurt Ishtaer.’

‘Surely the point is to stop her hurting Ishtaer?’ Eirenn said for the hundredth time since the idea had been explained.

‘Surely the point is that her attention needs to be focused on Ishtaer and that you need to do what I tell you. Go. Good luck.’

He rowed back to the ship, climbed aboard while the boat was hauled up behind him, and went to his cabin before going in search of Ishtaer.

He found her on the main deck, staring out at the bleak shore.

‘I never thought I’d see this sight again,’ she said with a sigh, and turned to face him.

‘It’s still not too late to back out,’ Kael said, and she gave a tight smile.

‘Do you want me to share with you my vision of what happens if I don’t go ahead with this?’ she said.

Kael shuddered. ‘No. No, I really don’t.’
Your child will die to save you.
‘Look, I wanted to give you something, and don’t argue about taking it, not … not now. Just take it.’

She frowned, but accepted the cloth-wrapped bundle he handed her.

‘It’s what Aquilinia was picking up for me. From the forge in Utgangen. Your armour isn’t ready yet but it might be by the time we get home.’

She held the sword flat across both hands, stared down at the hilt with its patterns of crystals. It was good work, he knew. The smith in Utgangen had been making swords for Kael for years.

‘Every Warrior should have a sword with crystals in the hilt,’ he said, and she looked up at him.

‘I’m not a Warrior. I still never graduated, remember?’

Kael laughed. ‘Who cares about graduation? You’ve been training with Krull the Warlord, you could beat any of those kids from the Academy with your hands behind your back.’

‘Or even attached to a chain?’ Ishtaer said, smiling faintly. She flexed the hand she’d mangled on the trireme, which bore only the faintest of marks as a reminder. ‘This is beautiful, Kael. Thank you. But you know I won’t be able to wear it tomorrow? She’ll not let me go armed. I doubt I’ll even get away with a mail shirt.’

He nodded, and reached inside his jerkin for a second parcel, smaller and achingly familiar.

‘Which is why I want you to take this. Wear it. She can’t take it off you, you know that. And don’t attach any significance to it,’ he babbled, ‘you can throw it back at me after tomorrow, but I can’t let you do this without some crystals.’

She looked at the necklace for a long moment, the crystals twinkling in the fading sunlight. Kael could hardly bear it.

When she held it out to him he wanted to cry. Then she said, ‘Help me put it on?’ and relief surged through him.

She turned around so he could clasp the necklace at her nape, and then she turned back and put her arms around him and kissed him.

Kael was too astonished to do anything but kiss her back, hold her slim, strong body in his arms and sink into her embrace.

And when her lips left his and she looked up, blue eyes uncertain and trusting, he said, ‘I love you,’ without knowing he was going to.

Her fingers stroked his hair. The corner of her lip twitched in what was almost a smile. But her eyes were full of fear, and her body trembled in his arms. ‘After tonight,’ she said, and seemed to run out of words. ‘I don’t know what will happen.’

‘After tonight,’ Kael told her, ‘I’ll still love you. Seas could rise and empires could fall and I’d still love you.’

‘It may well happen,’ she said on a gulp, and he realised she was near to tears. When he opened his mouth to tell her again that she could still back out, she said, ‘No, don’t say it. I have to do this. I have to.’ She pressed her lips to his, then said, ‘Kael, will you do something for me?’

‘Anything,’ said Kael, who would have brought her the moon if she’d asked for it.

‘Will you come to my cabin and make love to me?’

Desire nearly overwhelmed him. Kael had never swooned in his life but he thought he was in real danger of it there on the deck.

‘Good gods, Ish, don’t say something like that without warning.’

She smiled tentatively. ‘I’ve never made love with a man whose face I can see,’ she said. ‘And I want my last memory of a ship’s cabin to be a good one.’

‘As good as I can make it,’ Kael promised, and scooped her up into his arms.

‘Kael!’

‘When all this is over,’ he told her, carrying her down the companionway past Verak, who just laughed at them, ‘I’m going to ask you to marry me.’

Her eyes were huge in her face. ‘And when you do, I’ll say yes,’ she said, and Kael grinned and carried her to her cabin.

In the morning she left him sleeping, committing every part of the sight to memory. His dark hair on her pale pillow. The stubble shadowing his jaw. The formidable muscles of his torso where the blanket was flung back.

Then Ishtaer crept out of her cabin to be sick, as she had every morning that week, and prayed that Kael would forgive her for what she was going to do.

The Emperor’s nephew was three years old, and his name was Otho. He appeared at sunset, cradled in Samara’s arms in a litter heaped with pillows.

Ishtaer stood beside Kael on the godsforsaken beach, flanked by Verak and the rest of the Chosen Warriors who’d come with them. Behind them stood Kael’s horde and the massed ranks of the Imperial Army. Banners snapped in the freezing wind.

Samara had, as Ishtaer predicted, hired mercenaries. Ranks of them poured forth over the dunes, men with no uniform and no apparent discipline. Men who did, nonetheless, make their living killing people.

Kael glanced at the woman he’d spent most of the night making love to, standing straight and tall beside him. Her chin was up, her shoulders were straight, and she could not have looked more different to the cowering slave she’d been the last time they were on this beach.

‘Kael,’ she said as the silk-draped litter drew closer.

‘Ishtaer.’

‘Whatever happens here today, remember I love you. Always remember that.’

His heart swelled. He wanted desperately to stop her going ahead with this terrible plan, and knew he never could.

‘I will remember,’ he said. ‘Always.’

She nodded, her jaw tight, her gaze never moving from the litter.

‘And, Kael?’

‘Yes, Ishtaer?’

‘Don’t let that bitch off this beach alive.’

‘I don’t intend to.’

The litter was set down a hundred yards away. Kael pointedly did not look around at the bleached timbers of a hull sticking up from the sands, or the rock formations off to his right, or any of the other places his archers could be hidden. He focused instead on the man stumbling forward across the sand, lumbering blindly towards them.

He heard someone draw in a sharp breath at the same time he realised why the man stumbled. It wasn’t just because he was terribly thin and had clearly been beaten. His eyes had been gouged out, leaving awful empty sockets in his face.

Then Verak said, ‘My gods. I remember him.’

Kael peered closer, tried to see past the dreadful disfigurement, and his eyes widened. This had been the guard he and Verak had intercepted all that time ago, taking Ishtaer back to die in the cells. He’d disobeyed Samara’s order. He’d lied.

And clearly she’d found out about it.

‘My lady says send the girl,’ he said, mumbling through a mouthful of broken teeth.

‘The boy first,’ Kael said.

The guard looked around in something like confusion. Clearly, this wasn’t part of his script.

The litter was set down a hundred yards away. Samara unfolded herself from it, standing on the sand with her dress blowing in the wind. Kael felt his hand curl into a fist. She wore the red silk dress she’d sent Ishtaer to him in all that time ago.

She turned and said something to the nearest mercenary. He gave an order, and a dozen men suddenly had arrows pointing at the litter where Otho sat, looking confused and upset.

‘She’ll kill him if I don’t go,’ Ishtaer said.

‘She might kill him anyway. Ishtaer—’

Her hand touched his. ‘I’m going. I’m sorry, Kael.’

And she began walking.

He watched her walk straight and tall across the sand. The cold wind blew her fine dark hair about her face and rippled the mail shirt she wore. The weak sunlight glinted off the crystals at her neck.

Kael watched her walk away from him, and his heart broke into pieces.

You look old
, Ishtaer thought, staring straight ahead at Samara. She’d always thought her mistress was young and beautiful, but that was pretty much because Samara had told her so.
Even when I could see I was blind!

Halfway there she stopped, and called, ‘Send the boy. I won’t move until he’s passed me.’

Samara gestured to her mercenaries, and to Ishtaer’s horror one of them came forward with a torch to light the archers’ arrows.

‘Turn back and they’ll fire,’ Samara said.

‘I understand.’
I understand you’d burn a child to death to get what you want
.

‘Strip,’ Samara said, her eyes glinting.

‘I’m unarmed.’

‘Strip.’

‘Send the boy. Then I’ll do what you want.’

Samara’s lip curled, but she nodded. The men at the corners of the litter picked it up and began walking. Ishtaer’s heart pounded faster and harder as they approached. It could still all go wrong. She could still just set the litter on fire for the hell of it.

When they’d gone twenty yards, she took off her mail shirt.

At thirty, she unfastened her jerkin and let it drop.

At forty, her boots came off, and then her breeches.

The cold wind whipped straight through her shirt, but she barely felt the chill.

‘All of it,’ Samara said.

The litter was a few yards away now. Ishtaer could see the wide-eyed fear of the small boy sitting amongst the cushions, his face streaked with tears.

From somewhere, she found a smile for him. ‘It will be all right. These men will take you home where you’ll be safe.’

‘Back to Mama?’ the boy asked, and Ishtaer nodded.

‘Back to Mama. Just be brave a little longer, Otho.’

As the litter passed her, Otho started crying again. Ishtaer forced herself not to look.

She unbuckled her leather vest and pulled it over her head. Standing before Samara’s leering mercenaries, her courtiers and her guards and her slaves, men who had violated her over and again, she stood in her undergarments and refused to show fear.

‘All of it,’ Samara said, painted lips curving in a cruel smile.

Behind Ishtaer, not one of Kael’s men made a sound.

Ishtaer unlaced her shirt. Then her linen drawers. They dropped to the pile of clothes at her side.

She stood naked but for the necklace of crystals, and raised her chin in defiance.

‘Now come here,’ Samara said, and Ishtaer wondered if Otho had reached Kael yet. She began walking, slowly.

The mercenaries whistled and catcalled her.

‘What is she paying you to watch naked women walking by?’ Ishtaer asked.

‘Call this a bonus!’ one yelled back.

‘Do you see the man back there in red and black? He gets to see this whenever he wants. Do you know why? He’s Krull the Warlord. He’d pay you an awful lot more than Samara and you wouldn’t have to threaten small children.’

‘What if we like threatening small children?’ called one, who had no teeth.

‘Then he’ll use your skin for a cloak,’ Ishtaer said, walking ever closer to Samara and seeing the rage and madness in her eyes.

‘Is that really Krull the Warlord?’ piped up one youngish man.

‘It is. And he’s always looking out for new men to join the Horde. The Emperor pays him silly money for a job like this.’

They were muttering now, casting glances at Samara. Some of them probably didn’t care that she starved and beat her slaves or instructed them to set fire to a small boy. But a lot looked like they’d rather be in the better-paid employ of a man whose actions were sanctioned by the Empire.

She met Samara’s furious gaze, and smiled. ‘You need to work harder at inspiring loyalty.’

‘Stay with me and you can have her,’ Samara said quickly to the men, who leered at Ishtaer.

‘The last time a man tried to touch me without my consent I broke his neck,’ Ishtaer said calmly, stopping a few feet from Samara. ‘The one after that lost his arm below the elbow. Then I slit a few throats, and it got rather hard to tell whose blood was whose after that.’

A couple of the men laughed. Ishtaer did not.

‘You never tried to find out what these marks meant,’ she said to Samara, raising her arms. The beautiful script of her Healer’s mark and the chasing blades that marked her as a Warrior. She’d finally seen the Seer’s mark on her face, and it was the prettiest of them all, delicate feathery lines framing her eye.

‘They mean you’re a witch,’ Samara spat, ‘a useless and ugly one.’

‘They mean I’m a Healer and a Warrior and a Seer,’ Ishtaer said. ‘They mean I’m a very useful person to have around. So long as you don’t starve me, beat me, rape me and blind me. Lord Krull,’ she added for the benefit of the listening men, ‘certainly finds me valuable.’

‘Still handed you over, didn’t he?’ Samara said viciously. Then her expression changed as she saw something behind Ishtaer. ‘Bastard!’

Ishtaer turned her head to look back across the beach to Kael for the first time since she’d walked away from him. He was stepping back from the litter with a torch in his hand as flames licked over the silk hangings.

He saluted them with the torch. Beside him, Verak stood with Otho in his arms.

‘Unlike you, he got the child out first,’ Ishtaer said, turning back to Samara, who slapped her suddenly, viciously. She reeled back, but kept her footing, and resettled her gaze on Samara’s face.

She let her loathing show in her eyes, and for the first time, Samara looked a little afraid.

Ishtaer raised her voice and said, ‘Walk across the sand and join Krull the Warlord. He will take whoever wants to travel to the Empire back with him.’

‘Shut up,’ Samara said, and gestured to the nearest soldier. ‘Shut her up!’

The man hesitated, so Samara grabbed his pike and swung it at Ishtaer. She stepped back, but another man, less principled, grabbed her from behind and pushed her forward.

The point of the blade slid through her flesh, smooth as butter, and Ishtaer felt the tip push out through her back a second before the pain hit her.

As she fell to her knees, she tipped her face up to see Samara’s vicious, gleeful face for the last time.

Then an arrow hit the back of Samara’s head, another the side, and a third hit her eye.

She fell to the ground, dead, just as Ishtaer fell into blackness.

‘I’m sorry.’

That was the first thing she said to him when she opened her eyes. Her hand was in his, her fingers cool and limp. Her face looked bloodless, her lips dry.

But she was alive, and she was recovering, and Kael promised to build temples to the gods who’d answered his prayers.

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, very gently. ‘What could you possibly be sorry for?’ he asked.

Ishtaer turned her head away. ‘For not telling you.’

‘But … you did tell me. You told me she’d try to hurt you. I didn’t realise it would be so bad. But Hanna here can run almost as fast as I can. She got to you before you’d lost much blood and managed to repair most of the damage.’

He saw Ishtaer’s tired blue eyes track to the young woman sitting nearby. Hanna’s smile was tense.

‘You should hire her,’ Ishtaer said.

Alarmed, Kael said, ‘Will it take you so long to recover? Hanna, you said the wound was clean and there was no major organ damage, you said—’

‘It will heal well,’ said Hanna. ‘But there was …’ her gaze flickered back to Ishtaer, eyes troubled.

‘There was what?’ Kael demanded, clutching Ishtaer’s hand.

‘The baby,’ said Ishtaer, turning her head back towards him. ‘I lost the baby.’

For a long moment he just stared, not able to take in what she’d just said. Hanna slipped quietly from the tent, her eyes averted.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ishtaer whispered. ‘I knew if I told you you wouldn’t let me go, and then Samara would kill the boy, she’d enslave you, and—’

‘You knew?’ Kael said slowly. ‘You knew you were pregnant? And you still did it?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

Kael felt rage rising up inside him, hot and hurt and all-consuming.

‘You sacrificed our child, my child, and you didn’t even consult me? How could you do it? My gods, Ishtaer, if you didn’t want a baby you know better ways of getting rid of it than that! How could you? How
could
you?’

To his horror he felt tears burning his eyes.

‘Kael, please. I did it for you. For everyone. She had to be stopped—’

‘So this was a vendetta? You just wanted revenge on Samara? You let our child die because of your revenge?’

He was on his feet, throwing her hand back on the bed. She flinched.

‘Remember what I said? No matter what, remember I love you,’ she said, her big blue eyes pleading with him.

The pain that shot through him at her words was overwhelming. Kael reacted the way he always did when he was hurt. He fought back.

‘Well, I don’t swiving love you,’ he snarled, and stormed out into the harsh sunlight.

There was Hanna, one of the Healers Ishtaer had hired herself. Did she know? Was she in on the plan?

‘Get out of my sight,’ he said, and she fled like a mouse from a tiger.

The camp spread around him for miles, rows of tents where all those extra Healers were working extra hours, caring not for men injured in a war but slaves dying of malnutrition. A corral held the mercenaries who hadn’t joined Kael’s forces. Graves were being dug for the small number of men who’d died in the short scuffle that followed Ishtaer’s sacrifice.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to cry. How could she do that? She’d met his sons, she’d seen how they were his world, she knew how hard he worked to protect them, and then she just threw away this baby as if it was nothing. How could she?

His feet took him through the camp to the shore, to the men loading boats to row out to the fleet. Verak stood pointing to bales of goods, handing out orders.

His face changed when he saw Kael.

‘What’s happened? How is she?’

‘Don’t even mention her,’ Kael snarled, so viciously his friend stepped back a little. ‘Which ships are ready to go?’

Verak blinked at him in shock, then said, ‘Uh – the
Draxan Princess
and
Love’s Folly
.’

Kael almost laughed aloud at their names. Almost.

‘Get the
Ghost
ready to go. Find a cabin for the boy. We leave on the tide. Go.’

He leapt into a boat about to push off, and didn’t look back at the shore.

Ishtaer left on the last ship, more than a week after Kael had walked out on her. Her body healed well, her heart less so. Hanna had promised not to breathe a word to anyone about it, but Ishtaer told Eirenn what had happened.

‘Bastard!’ he exclaimed, touchingly outraged on her behalf.