The Black Queen (Book 6) (39 page)

Bridge stepped onto the rail when the Nyeian sailor put a hand on his chest, holding him back. Instead, another Nyeian stripped, tossed his ruffled sailing clothes against the deck, and dove, completely naked, into the sea.

By this time, Lyndred and Ace had come to the railing to see what happened. His daughter stepped beside him, watching. Ace was behind her, looking uncomfortable now that he realized Bridge was there.

“Who is that?” Lyndred asked Ace.

“I don’t know. I don’t recognize her.”

Until that moment, Bridge hadn’t even noticed that the Gull Rider was female. He was more concerned with the way that her bird’s body listed, the way the tail feathers were starting to go under. The Nyeian sailor swam with broad, easy strokes, covering the distance quickly.

When he reached the Gull Rider, he picked her out of the water, and stared at her for a moment. Bridge could almost see the thought running through the man’s head:
Now what do I do with it
? Then, as if in answer, he rolled on his back, placed the Gull Rider on his chest, and swam toward the ship.

His backstroke was powerful, and fortunately the sea was calm. No waves took him, and nothing knocked the Gull Rider off him. When he reached the side of the ship, another Nyeian met him. Bridge hadn’t even seen that Nyeian climb down the rope ladder. The second Nyeian grabbed the Gull Rider, and carried her up to the deck.

“Get a Healer,” Bridge said to Ace, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that sooner. He had probably thought that the Gull Rider was going to drown in full view of all of them. Ace didn’t have to wait for a second instruction. He hurried below decks.

The rescuer grabbed the rope ladder, flung his long wet hair out of his face, and began to climb up. Bridge wanted to pull his daughter back, but he had the sneaking suspicion she had already seen a naked Nyeian male before.

The Nyeian carrying the Gull Rider made it to the deck. Bridge met him, and took the Rider from him.

She was tinier than most Gull Riders, but her form was compact, built for speed. He could feel her heart beating in her avian breast. The gull’s head was limp, eyes open and unseeing. He wondered if the bird form could die, and the Fey form still live.

He didn’t know.

The Rider herself was tiny as well. Her naked torso was sun- and wind-burned, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Her features were etched sharply against her skin. He had seen other Bird Riders look like this—decades ago, in the middle of the Nye campaign. His grandfather and his father both used Bird Riders as messengers in that campaign, sometimes demanding that the Riders perform miraculous feats in order to get a message somewhere on time.

He carried her as if a false movement would break her. There was shade near the stairs. He brought her there.

Lyndred was peering at the form in his hands. “Who is she?”

“I don’t recognize her,” he said, but that didn’t mean anything. He didn’t know every Bird Rider.

But he knew all the ones he had brought on this trip.

She had come from somewhere else, and it didn’t seem as if she had come from the same direction they had. His heart was beating rapidly. If she came from anywhere else, it had to be Blue Isle.

Why would Arianna send a Bird Rider at a killing pace back to Galinas? She had never done so before.

Ace came up beside him, and crouched. “I have a Healer,” he said. He bent over the Gull Rider, and frowned.

“Who is she?” Lyndred asked again.

He shook his head. “I’ve never seen her before.” He brushed the hair off her tiny forehead. “But she nearly flew herself to death.”

“She missed her landing,” Bridge said. “She was trying for the deck.”

“With the last of her strength, I’ll wager,” Ace said. “I’m not sure how she could fly like this. Look.” He delicately touched part of her wing. “Most of her feathers are gone. That doesn’t happen to real gulls. Only to Riders who push themselves too hard.”

The Healer had finally come above decks. She was an elderly woman with a compassionate face. Her name was Kir, and she had accompanied Bridge everywhere. He trusted her more than he trusted members of his family.

She bent down as well. “By the Powers, this child is in terrible shape.”

“Child?” Bridge asked.

Kir nodded as she moved the Rider’s arms, checked beneath her wings, adjusted her gull’s head. “I don’t think she’s much older than Lyndred, and certainly not trained for this sort of thing.”

Bridge frowned. “So you think she’s on an urgent mission too?”

Kir lifted the bird head slightly, revealing a pouch. “She’s a long way from anywhere. If we hadn’t been here, I don’t know what would have happened to her.”

“She probably saw us from far away,” Ace said. “And let her guard down. That was enough to interrupt her flight.”

“She’s still lucky.” Kir picked her up. “I’m taking her below decks.” Then she raised her head and looked at Bridge. “You might have to spare one of your own Bird Riders.”

“I’d already thought of that,” he said. “Let me know when she wakes.”

“We’ll wake her shortly,” Kir said. “It’s our duty to find out how urgent her mission is, as well.”

Bridge nodded. Kir carried the Gull Rider below decks. Ace started to follow but Lyndred held him back.

“No,” Bridge said. “Let him go.”

Lyndred flashed him an angry look, but let go of Ace’s arm. Ace followed Kir down the stairs, disappearing into the darkness.

Lyndred crossed her arms. “You were spying on us.”

“You were hard to miss.”

“And now you’re going to give me that ‘he’s not good enough for you’ lecture.”

Actually Bridge was, but her words stopped him. “No,” he lied. “I wanted to ask you something.”

He put his arm around her and lead her away from the stairs. They walked to a more secluded section of railing. There were no ropes here, only the wooden sides and the rail above.

The ship created a white wake in the blue-green-gray sea. The spray was warm, the breeze still gentle. Kir was right. The Gull Rider had been lucky. Lucky to land here, lucky to find them, lucky that the sea was warm.

He pulled his daughter close. Perhaps he was the problem. Perhaps his coolness toward her had made her seek out other men.

“Daddy?” she asked, sounding younger than usual. “Will that Rider be all right?”

“I hope so,” he said.

“I wonder who sent her.”

“Me, too.” He leaned his head against his daughter’s. Once upon a time, he could rest his cheek on the top of her head, but no longer. There was even a possibility that she would grow taller than he. Some Fey hit the last of their growth in their twenties.

She slipped her arm around him. He didn’t want to lose the moment, but he knew he had to, knew they had to talk.

“Lyndred,” he said softly. “You said, when you wanted to marry that Nyeian, that you did so because you wanted to prevent your Visions. Is that what’s happening with Ace?”

“No!” She let go of him as if his touch burned her. “Of course not.”

“Lyndred, I don’t mean to question your emotions. If you feel something for him, fine. I just want to know what you’re thinking.”

She glanced at Bridge, then looked away. He remembered that movement from her babyhood. It was a way of checking his mood before doing something, trying to make sure that he wouldn’t yell. He suspected the motivations were more sophisticated now, but not much. She was still Lyndred, after all.

“I like him,” she said.

“I know that,” he replied, and then stopped himself from adding,
You liked the Nyeian too
.

“It’s harmless,” she said.

“Is it?” he asked. “You said that on Blue Isle there’s a blond man who will give you a child you do not want. Did you mean that you will bear his child? Or did you mean an actual child, someone else’s child, that he will give you custody of?”

She bit her lower lip. “It’ll be my child,” she said sadly.

“Is that what you’re trying to prevent?”

She gripped the railing with both hands. The spray touched her face like a thousand tiny tears. He wanted to put his hand on her shoulder, but he knew better than to touch her now.

“It’ll break my heart, Daddy,” she said.

The tone of her voice almost broke his. It sounded as if the event had already happened, as if it had damaged her in some way, even now, months, maybe years, before the event.

He took a step closer to her, still not touching her, even though he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her like he used to do when she was a little girl. When did a man stop wanting to protect his children from harm? It seemed as if his own father had found that point. Bridge wasn’t sure he ever would.

“Have you ever thought,” he asked slowly, “that perhaps it breaks your heart because you already love someone else? That by trying to prevent this Vision, you may actually create it?”

She whirled so fast he had to take a step backwards. The beaded water had run down her face and stained her Nyeian-style tunic. “Do you think that could happen?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Visions are tricky things. They can be deceptive. They can lure you to the place that you’re trying to prevent just as easily as they can guide you toward that prevention.”

“Why?”

Always, his Lyndred needed a reason. She had from the moment she could speak. Fortunately, he had an answer to this one, even though the answer was not his own.

“A Shaman once told me that the Powers send us Visions, but the Mysteries control the Visions. And the Mysteries are still tied to this world. So sometimes, the Mysteries only give us part of the Vision, to influence the outcome as best they can.”

“Do you believe that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It’s the best explanation I’ve ever heard. I’ve always wondered why Visions come in pieces, why we can’t See the whole thing.”

She turned back toward the sea. Her hands gripped the railing so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. “Have you ever Seen your own death?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “They say one of the earliest Visions is of death, but a lot of times we don’t recognize it. You think you’ve Seen my death.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re convinced it’ll happen while we’re on Blue Isle.”

“Yes.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Lyndred, you cannot go through life being afraid of what may come. You have to live now.”

She bowed her head. “I don’t want anything to change. I didn’t want to leave Nye. I didn’t want to come here. I don’t want any of those Visions to come true.”

“Some will,” he said. “And some won’t. You know that’s the way of things. Sometimes you can change them just by acknowledging them.”

She sighed, then rested her cheek on his hand. Her skin was warm, and damp from the spray. “What if I love Ace?”

“Do you?” Bridge asked, hoping she would say no.

“I don’t know.”

“Then wait until you do know, and talk to me.”

“Would you approve of my match with a Gull Rider?”

He sighed, and gave her the answer he had to give. “We’re Fey, not Nyeians. I don’t have to approve your match, at least not within our own people. Outside of our people, I do, and maybe even the Black Queen does, because it might represent the wrong kind of alliance. So you could marry a Red Cap if you wanted, and I wouldn’t say a word.”

She lifted her head, wrinkling her nose in a delicate expression of disgust. “A Red Cap? Daddy! Yuck!”

He grinned, and so did she.

“You know,” she said, “you would probably forbid me from marrying a Red Cap.”

“Probably,” he said. “But a Red Cap is Fey. You would still be able to do what you wanted.”

She giggled. “Imagine me with someone who has no magick and dirty fingernails.”

“Well,” Bridge said, “there was this Nyeian…”

She made herself look serious. “His fingernails were clean.”

“But he had no magick.”

“Not the kind you’re referring to,” she said and paused for a long moment. “But there was a certain—charm—to his poetry.”

Bridge laughed, and as he did so, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned. One of the Domestics stood behind him. “You’re wanted below decks,” she said.

He nodded, feeling serious. He squeezed Lyndred’s waist and let go of her, following the Domestic down the stairs to the area that he had assigned them. The corridors were narrow down here, and the Fey lamps swayed with the movement of the ship. He heard footsteps behind him, and realized that Lyndred had come too.

The Domestics had made the largest quarters on this deck into a sickroom. They had had the usual cases, a bit of seasickness, some reaction to bad meat, a few injuries among the Nyeian crew. But nothing like this.

Bridge let himself be led into the sickroom. The room was actually a bit smaller than his own compartment, but the Domestics had managed to add several short bunks and a few hammocks into the space. The bunks were attached to the floor by some method he couldn’t see, and the hammocks swung like the Fey lamps. The Gull Rider lay on the bed built into the wall. She was on the pillow, looking small and lost among all the blankets and folds. She still hadn’t reverted to her Fey form.