Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (50 page)

Unless the Warders found the secret to the poison, the Fey had to find another way out of the situation. If only they had brought more Doppelgängers. One could be assigned to take on the person of a sailor the Islanders had hidden, and navigate a ship out of the treacherous bay. But Rugar had used the Doppelgängers traditionally, in battle and out, to gain information about the enemy. Now three were dead, and the two he had sent into the Tabernacle would probably die as well.

She stepped off the porch into the swirling mist. Over the past year she had grown accustomed to losing her feet in the murky edges of Shadowlands. She no longer blinked to clear the misty grayness from her eyes. The world looked right with blurred edges. She was afraid that if she stepped back into the real world, its brightness would blind her.

Her father was probably back in the cabin by now. She walked quickly past the buildings still under construction, past the arguing craftsmen. The pounding was something else she had got used to. She paused in front of the Warders’ cabin. Smoke plumed out of the chimney. In the early days of Shadowlands, the Fey had not allowed fires. This was before they had learned that the walls were somehow porous, and that the air in Shadowlands remained as clear as the air outside it.

Still, the fire intrigued her because the temperature was comfortable. Her father had seen to that. They were doing something. A shiver ran down her back. Something with the prisoners? She hoped not. She wanted to see them before the Warders began their experiments.

But she was supposed to see her father first. She walked past the Warders’ cabin to her own. The cabin her father had built for them had been the meeting place at first, and that was his excuse for its size. But he had made it the meeting place so that he wouldn’t have to justify a larger cabin to the others. He had said that people would envy them if they thought the cabin had been built for privilege, but would understand if it existed for utility.

Sometimes she felt his justifications were silly ways to avoid confrontation over rank that should have been inevitable in their position.

If she didn’t return to Nye, her grandfather would make one of her brothers Black King. He had already thought of that possibility. It was the reason he never let more than two members of the same family fight in the same battle. He protected his heirs. And he had precedent. His own father had picked a second son to succeed him when it appeared that the first son had died in a raid. Fortunately for Rugad, his brother had returned almost a decade after the father’s death. The claim did not hold.

She wished she had known more about her grandfather’s opposition before she’d left. She wished she had listened more closely to the arguments she had overheard, instead of concentrating on the oddity of her first Vision.

But she had had a Vision about Nicholas, the King’s son. She had been meant to come to Blue Isle.

Or had it been a warning?

She would never know.

Finally she reached her own cabin. Just outside, she stopped. Two guards stood at the door. Burden was one, a scowl across his slender face. He must have tangled with her father again. The other, Amar, stood with his legs apart and arms crossed. His muscles bulged. She had always liked Amar, even though he was of her father’s generation and had never shown any sign of magickal ability. He had been a solid Infantryman and a loyal guard to her entire family.

She nodded at them as she approached. “Is my father all right?”

“He is taking matters into his own hands again,” Burden said.

Burden’s attitude grated on her father. It was beginning to bother her as well. “How unusual,” she said, “for the leader of this party, and the Black King’s son.”

Burden flushed. Amar tried to hide a smile. Jewel noted it, feeling her own eyes sparkle, but she didn’t let the mirth move to the rest of her face. She passed them both and went inside.

The room seemed small and dark without a fire. Her father sat on the table, one foot on a chair, the other dangling. Only his eyes moved when she came in, tracking her progress from the door to his side.

“You were supposed to be here,” he said.

“I couldn’t just sit.”

“You were supposed to sit and think.”

She shrugged, unwilling to fight. “Sitting and thinking doesn’t work for me, although I did come up with a few things.”

“Save them.” He pushed the chair away and jumped off the table. “I have some prisoners for you to meet.”

Her heartbeat accelerated, and she caught her breath. He hadn’t wanted her to see them until the Warders were done. “Why did you bring them here?”

“Because Caseo explained his experiments, and I decided he could waste the poison before he destroyed possibly valuable lives.” Her father’s tone was flat, but Jewel heard the anger underneath.

“You said the prisoners were his.”

“And they will be,” Rugar said. “When I am done with them.”

“Have you already questioned them?”

“I have, and so have a few others. They’re not answering anything.”

“And so you want me to try? I have no experience with this.”

“You have more experience with Islanders than most of us here. You’re one of the few who has had a prolonged discussion with them.”

Jewel’s mouth had gone dry. She had, but the context had been different. “What about Solanda?”

“She’s not back yet. And we have no Doppelgängers here.”

“I haven’t been among the Islanders in a year. Surely Burden or some of the others—”

“They know how to kill the Islanders. If I need help with that, I have an entire campful who will have creative suggestions.” Her father’s flat tone was gone. His frustration was clear. She was finally understanding what he faced.

The military crew sometimes forgot that the enemy was more than a fighting force, more than creatures to be bested or killed. Since Rugar had isolated the Fey, he had never bothered to get to know the enemy. So Rugar was going to have to rely on Jewel’s very meager experience.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“The extra room,” he said. “I wanted to talk with you alone first.”

She nodded. The prisoners couldn’t really escape anyway. The guards were more for show. They would be trapped in the Shadowlands, unable to get out. But if they got their hands on the poison, they would be able to do a lot of damage.

She went down the hall, tucking the loose strands of hair into her braid and tugging on her leather vest. Her exhaustion had lifted at the thought of seeing the prisoners. She half hoped Nicholas would be among them. She had wanted to see him again, to talk with him, so that she could better understand what had happened between them that day. By all rights they should have slaughtered each other. Instead they had toyed with each other as if they were childhood sweethearts.

Her cheeks flushed at the memory. No man, not even her dear friend Burden, had brought such an instant response. She knew what her grandfather would say if she was to tell him of the event.
Go with the magick, girl.
It was his phrase and, he said, the secret to his long life as Black King.

Go
with the magick.

She flung open the door. All three prisoners were sitting. Their wrists and ankles were bound, and another rope bound them to chairs. The ropes looked loose, so the Warders must have placed an additional binding on the three. They were looking down, but none of them had that magnificent blond hair she remembered of Nicholas.

“It is rude to snub someone who has just entered a room,” she said in Nye. Her Islander was still poor, even though she now had some of the basics.

The man farthest to her left raised his head. He wasn’t as old as her father, but he wasn’t young either. His long face had crow’s-feet near the eyes, and a sensitive mouth. The squareness of his features startled her. Islanders were like Fey made without whimsy. “It is also rude to tie your guests to their chairs.”

She smiled. Perhaps all Islander men were verbally aggressive. “Point taken,” she said. “But you are not a guest.”

The center man bit his lower lip and stared at her. He was little more than a boy, with a boy’s leanness and lack of grace. His pale skin had acne scars, and his eyes, deep and blue, were wide with fear.

“I couldn’t have got here on my own,” the first man said. “Your friends brought me. Where I come from, that makes me a guest.”

Jewel nodded. “Where I come from, that makes you a prisoner.”

“Wh-what plan you to do us?” the boy asked. The boy’s Nye was poor. He had clearly never been off the Isle.

The third man shushed him. As he turned to the boy, the third man’s profile revealed a hawkish nose and thin lips.

“I’ll give the orders here,” Jewel said.

The third man glanced at her as if seeing her for the first time. He was older than the others, his eyes as narrow as the rest of him. He didn’t like her. She could feel the hatred come off him in waves.

“That’s because you ain’t tied up, bitch,” he said. His Nye seemed as poor as the boy’s, but it was clearly an affectation. He had a stronger mastery of the colloquialisms than any other Islander she had heard of.

“Oh,” she said, keeping her tone light, “I suspect I would give the orders whether I was tied up or not. In Shadowlands the Fey dominate.”

“But not on the Isle,” the third man said.

“Not yet,” she said agreeably, and closed the door.

The third man said something to the others in Islander. She caught the words “alone” and “us” combined with what she believed was another curse specifically designed for women.

“You will speak Nye or you will never speak again,” she said.

The color fled from the boy’s face. “Sorry, missus,” he said, “but Nye—a—no is—for me.”

“You do just fine.” She smiled at him and kept her voice gentle. He would be easy to break.

The third man spoke to the boy in Islander. She heard him use the word “play.” He understood, then, that she was toying with them. She pulled her knife off her belt, walked over to him, and grabbed him by his hair. It was coarse and greasy and smelled of sweat and dirt. It hadn’t been washed in days. She pulled his head back and placed the knife against his grime-encrusted cheek.

“I told you that you will speak in Nye or never speak again,” she said. “Would you like me to cut out your tongue from the inside of your mouth or through your throat?”

“Lady! Please!” the boy cried.

The first man snapped something at the boy. The curtness and the directness in his tone made it sound like a name.

“I am speaking to you, old man,” she said.

“You expect me to apologize to you, bitch?” he asked, his voice hoarse from the pressure of her knife.

“What I said was that you are to speak Nye. I don’t care if you apologize to me or not. My ego isn’t fragile, but I prefer you to speak in a language I understand. If you can’t follow that direction, you won’t speak at all. Is that clear?”

“When you make threats,” the man said, “you should follow through on them.”

“You’re right,” she said. She took the knife away from his neck. It left a small cut. She wiped the blood off on his shirt and shoved the knife back into the hilt. “Excuse me for a moment.”

She opened the door, called her father in Fey, and asked him to send Burden into the room. She heard him yell for Burden, then heard Burden’s affirmative response. She left the door open, then turned to face the prisoners. The third man watched her, chin up, blood dribbling down his neck. The first man looked more relaxed, and the boy’s eyes were wet.

When Burden came in, he closed the door.