The Pirate of Fathoms Deep (16 page)

"He did try to stop Blood of the Fallen and the Hands of Death, whatever that is worth," Lace said with a sigh. "The boy deserves to be punished, I'll grant you that, but I don't see what is being accomplished by letting him be thrown about by your out-of-control commander."

Sarrica snorted and leaned against the arm of the sofa Allen and the others sat on, folding his arms across his chest. "If you think Lesto is out of control, you're an even greater a fool than I thought. I keep Lesto as my right hand because he's smart, shrewd, and actually far more patient than me. I made him my High Commander because he is one hundred percent Arseni, and if that does not frighten you, then your foolishness grows and grows. Tell us what we need to know, or contact your dogs and call them off, or I will send every Treya Mencee head in the empire home in a crate and toss the bodies in the sea."

Lesto squeezed tighter, until Peter wheezed and begged in a thready whisper. "What is the Star of Menceera?"

"A holy relic," Lace said, looking between Lesto and Peter with a look of helpless frustration. "It's cared for and protected by Prince Ravelle. Peter's mother, my friend, has long been Ravelle's paramour. It's rumored he is the actual father of her children, but he's never acknowledged or denied it. Peter said the Star was stolen by Lord Bestowen, or rather, men Bestowen sent to take it. I don't know why yet. But if Ravelle sent out the Hands of Death, then he doesn't want the rest of his family to know it's missing. I'm not exaggerating when I say Her Majesty will kill him and anyone else she suspects of being even passingly involved in the matter. Ravelle is desperate. If Peter's brother sent Blood of the Fallen, then he's party to the mess, or more likely, afraid his family will be blamed no matter what. That relic is important. It's proof the queen and high priestess are fit to rule. If it's discovered missing, the country will devolve into another civil war. The last time the Star went missing, the royal families were wiped out, and the current rulers took the throne largely because they gained possession of the Star."

Sarrica had stood while he talked and strode to the door as he finished. Yanking it open, he barked out, "I want an update on where the fuck Bestowen is, and I want it in five minutes." He slammed the door shut and returned to them. The office had been vacated as some point, so quickly the secretaries hadn't even had a chance to put away all the valuable documents and reports they'd been working on. "Where would the Fallen hole up with a hostage?"

Someone knocked on the door, and Sarrica snarled for them to enter. His head secretary, Myra, stepped into the room, held out a note with one trembling hand. Sarrica started toward him, but with a snarled warning, Lesto threw Peter aside and went to get the note himself. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Myra said. "It was delivered by a boy. He's here, but I doubt he's of use. He's not even ten, if I had to guess. But the note…"

Lesto took it, squeezed Myra's arm in reassurance, and dismissed him. The note was succinct, and all the more chilling for it.
Bring the Star of Menceera or he dies.
The words were followed by a string of coordinates that, if Lesto read them correctly, would put the mercenaries in the ruins north of the palace, right smack between the palace and the Cartha Mountains.

He handed the note off to Sarrica, who read it aloud, save the coordinates.

Allen pursed his lips. "Did it ever once occur to anyone that if we had been contacted, we could have resolved the matter peacefully? That all of this is going to be reported to Her Majesty and all their attempts to keep matters a secret and stay alive were for naught?"

"That's why we tried to keep anyone from figuring out it was Treya Mencee involved," Peter said. "The Fallen went to fetch Bestowen when they thought the other men I'd hired had failed. I did try to keep matters quiet, but the halfwits I hired to bring Bestowen to the Fallen kidnapped the wrong fucking man. Then the Fallen realized it was Commander Lesto they'd actually kidnapped and felt they had no choice but to kill him if there was to be any chance of avoiding a war. Then Commander Lesto killed them and got away…"

"After which there was little point in keeping secrets. They were all going to come out anyway, so now they are simply completing the mission," Allen finished. "I guess they grew tired of trying to grab Bestowen themselves and are forcing us to do it. Sloppy, and the fallout will be ten times worse than it ever would have been if everyone had simply been honest in the first place. Does no one ever look at the whole picture?"

Lace sighed. "I know it doesn't seem like it, but Peter has done everything he can to stop it and minimize the damage, save tell me. That he should have done, and I would have come to you, since I have sense enough to ask for help when a matter has spun out of control." He shot Peter a look that made the man drop his gaze, face twisting with shame. "I am sorry, Your Majesties, High Commander. I should have known, no matter what pains were taken to ensure I didn't. I meant it when I said we had no desire to jeopardize our standing with you. When the Queen hears about all of this, she won't be happy, and a good many people will die."

Sarrica sighed. "That's a mess to be sorted later. Why did Bestowen steal the star? We know for certain he is the responsible party?"

"Yes," Peter said. "He's responsible for arranging the theft. As to why, I don't know; my brother never said."

"That does not sound like Lord Bestowen," Allen said. "He's a merchant, not a politician or thief."

"Everyone has a price," Sarrica replied with a shrug. "Or a secret they don't want getting out. I hope it was worth it, especially if anything else happens to Shemal, because I'm not going to do anything to stop whatever Lesto does with him."

Lesto bent and grabbed Peter's throat again, squeezed hard enough to make breathing impossible. "You had better hope Shemal is alive, or you will learn the hard way that your Blood of the Fallen and the Hands of Death know nothing about being ruthless. I will teach you exactly what it means when we say that the only way to stop an Arseni is to bury us fathoms deep." He let go, left Peter heaving and gasping, and rose. "You will stay here," he said, jabbing a finger at Sarrica and Allen before turning to Rene. "Summon Jader and the Dragons."

"Both of you come home," Sarrica said.

"Try not to lose the other eye," Rene added.

Lesto cast them a parting look of warning then swept from the room in a jangle of armor and sword belt. Once he was in the hallway, he bellowed at the top of his lungs, "Fathoms Deep! All to me!"

Shemal's head felt like it had back when he'd been eighteen and exactly as stupid as all people were at that age. He'd just joined his second ship, the first having suffered capture by the Demergo Navy fourteen months into his time aboard. The crew had dared him to drink an entire bottle of Bentan fire whiskey. His head had felt split in half for six days straight, and his stomach hadn't kept down more than gruel for the better part of two weeks.

The crew hadn't stopped laughing for three
months
, but it was still one of the best ships he'd ever sailed on.

Being held captive by gleeful mother fuckers in red leather was a good deal less amusing than a two-week hangover, and he'd
really
hated that hangover.

He tried to shake and wipe away the blood dripping into his right eye, but it was hard to manage when his arms were stretched out and chained to the wall. In the basement of some abandoned building. He assumed it was abandoned, anyway, from the rats and decay and smell of rot.

Shemal knew this play, or at least the raunchier version of it they put on at the kinds of establishments he could afford. He'd been drunk that time as well. The play had ended with a lot of fighting and a paladin wearing remarkably impractical armor swooping in last minute to save her robber lover followed by a half hour victory celebration that had garnered a lot of approval from the drunk, horny audience.

He had really liked that play, but he wasn't stupid enough to think it had anything to do with reality. No one was going to come save him and especially not in such dramatic fashion. Not when, from what little he'd heard and understood, their intention was to trade him for Lord Bestowen. Nobody prioritized an aimless, penniless pirate over a wealthy, powerful noble who served a purpose.

Especially given he'd just broken Lord Tecilia's arm, and apparently had been doing nothing but dragging Lesto down since his arrival.

Shemal tried again to wipe away the blood in his eye, but to no avail. He was lucky the cut on his forehead wasn't worse, but he wasn't feeling terribly grateful right then.

He looked across the basement at the five men sitting around on various broken chairs and old barrels, having some tense conversation that he only caught snatches of. Like any sailor who did it long enough, he knew just enough of several languages to order food, sex, and understand when someone yelled that the authorities were coming. Whatever they were arguing about, it had to do with someone important—a noble or royal, maybe both.

The only light came from a flickering lantern, and there was nothing to ward off the steadily worsening chill.

Mother Ocean, Lesto must be furious with him. Assaulting a noble, running away exactly like he'd promised he wouldn't, and then letting himself get kidnapped—and he hadn't prevented Lord Tara from being hurt in the process. Hopefully, Tara would be all right. He'd looked a little beaten up, but nothing severe. Making certain he got away safe was probably the only thing Shemal had managed to do right.

His eyes stung, a twisting ache stabbing at his chest as he pictured Lesto's face when he found out everything Shemal had done. He'd trusted Shemal, given him so much, and Shemal had stupidly started to believe that maybe something as ridiculous as a pirate loving a duke could actually be possible.

But he had no worthwhile skills when he wasn't on a ship or dealing with stupid goats. He owned nothing but a modest inheritance back home that amounted to a shack and a fishing boat that he'd let his favorite cousin permanently borrow. He could barely read and write. He couldn't provide heirs, which everyone loved to tell him like he was too stupid to know he lacked the necessary parts. Pretending for a moment that Lesto would even want to marry him, if Lesto was adamant about having a blood heir, they would have to get a dame. But the idea made Shemal feel sick and lonely. One of the reasons he'd left home was because he'd just never connected with Islander traditions of poly and open relationships. He wanted one lover who was all his, and most of his family and community had never really understood that.

Not that it mattered when he and Lesto were never going to reach that point together. Shemal's presence was making people doubt Lesto, reconsider contracts, business relationships, court ties… Everyone was thinking less of Lesto because of Shemal, and they were pulling away from him as quickly as possible. If Shemal had done that much damage in just a few days, how much longer would he have lasted? But that didn't really matter either since he'd ruined any chance of holding on to his relationship with Lesto by breaking the arm of that smug, pompous little brat.

And there was no point in worrying about any of it, because he probably wasn't going to be alive come morning.

Why him? That was the part that confounded Shemal the most. He was a pirate who was only involved in the matter by chance—wild, highly improbable chance. He was involved because the two biggest halfwits in the empire had botched a kidnapping and taken Lesto to the one person in all of Gearth who would rather die than ever see him come to harm.

A man who probably hated him now.

Shemal pinched his eyes shut, tried to cling to the happy memories of Lesto. It wasn't fair that one person could affect him so strongly. Two encounters, one violent, one passionate, shouldn't have been enough to carve the man so deeply into his mind.

And if he had thought that was bad, there were no words to describe the havoc Lesto had wreaked in the month and a half that had passed since Lesto had been dropped on his doorstep.

The sound of approaching footsteps drew Shemal from his unhappy thoughts; he opened his eyes and stared at the man who crouched in front of him. The man's mouth curled in a derisive little sneer that Shemal knew all too well, though he didn't understand a word the man said. Dredging up a sneer of his own, he said,
"I don't speak your dirty dog language except to ask how to get the fuck out of your shit country."

Sneer dropping from his face, the man stood and made to kick him—only to stop when one of the other men barked at him. Shifting to stilted informal Harken, the man said, "With you, I don't see point of the fuss."

"I don't understand why you think pissing off the High Commander and his best friend the High King is a good idea. I thought people preferred to avoid their countries going to war."

Red Leather shrugged. "At the all costs, is my order."

That one took a moment to untangle. "I don't think 'going to war' and 'certain death' are prices I'd be willing to pay." On the other hand, he'd faced exactly that for cargo that proved to be not even half as good as promised. The tattoos mostly hid it, but his body was a legacy of scars acquired fighting for brandy, sugar, spices, and other valuable cargo. He'd seen capture more times than he cared to count and had always survived by luck and the mercy of Mother Ocean.

And the faith of one compelling, breathtaking man who probably never wanted to see him again.

Crouching again, the man prodded at one of his stretched out legs. "You special, why? All this for crime committer?"

"Criminal," Shemal said. "
Pirate, actually.
You'd have to ask Lesto. He's the one who said I'm special. I'm just an Islander with a criminal past."

The man grunted and stood, wandered back over to the others. From the way they kept glancing at him, and the occasional uttering of the word
pirate
, it was clear what they were discussing, but Shemal couldn't begin to guess why.