The Pirate of Fathoms Deep (2 page)

His stupid heart refused to stop pounding. Probably wouldn't until Lesto's worthless, traitorous mind stopped replaying the delightful, filthy, forbidden things he had done with a pirate still in chains and awaiting trial. Lesto had done a lot of stupid things in his life, but fucking Shemal had definitely taken the dubious honor of number one.

He grunted as somebody knocked into him before they hit the ground with a high-pitched yelp.

"Stay down or I'll finish breaking your face, and it can't afford to get much uglier," Shemal said, speaking Harken again. "I can't believe you've kidnapped a fucking Rilien noble. Do you know what they'll do if they catch you?"

One of the men scoffed. "They ain't going to do shit to us except give us the ransom and go back where the fuck they came from. Lord Bestowen here is going to be our passage to an easy life."

"That's not how it works," Shemal said with a sneer worthy of Sarrica.

Lesto groaned. They thought he was
Lord Bestowen.
No, absolutely not. He refused to believe he'd been kidnapped because the two greatest morons on the continent saw his eyepatch and mistook him for a fat, spoiled noble who made his money on cattle. Had they missed the part where he'd been wearing his Fathoms Deep tunic and had been surrounded by Fathoms Deep soldiers?

"Get the fuck out of here," Shemal said. "Get your damned cart fixed, and if you're not back here by nightfall, don't expect him to be here in the morning. Understand me? And you'd better have my money!"

"Yeah, yeah," the second man muttered, and the two sulked off, whining to each other in Gearthish.

Once they were gone, and the noise of the cart had faded off, Shemal heaved a sigh. Lesto could feel and hear him crouch down nearby, grab hold of the blanket. "I'm sorry about this, my lord. We'll have you home—" He stopped as he threw the blanket aside.
"Corpse fuckers."
He stared at Lesto, recognition, disbelief, and anger filling his face. His eyes were still the most beautiful that Lesto had ever seen, a jeweled teal that put Fathoms Deep teal to shame. "You're still in uniform!"

Lesto blew out a short, huffy breath. "I'm aware."

"I've never seen this stupid lord they thought they kidnapped, but I'm going to guess you don't look anything like him."

"He has an eyepatch," Lesto said, "but it's on the other eye. Could you untie me?"

"Are you going to attack me?" Shemal asked, irritation sliding away as amusement took its place. "I don't need trouble from you anymore than I need it from them."

"If you keep not untying me, you're going to have a whole lot of trouble the moment I get myself free," Lesto snapped.

Shemal rolled his eyes, but rose smoothly and vanished into his cottage, reappearing almost immediately with a wicked-looking knife typically used for cutting up fish and other ocean creatures, but favored by pirates for less pleasant reasons. He cut Lesto's bindings, helped him to his feet, and slowly let go when it didn't seem like Lesto was going to fall over. "Come in and sit down."

"First, I'm taking a damned piss," Lesto snarled and stomped off to do so while Shemal laughed.

When he was done with that, Lesto headed into the cottage because as much as he would love to leave, he had no idea where he was, and he wasn't going to get very far thirsty, hungry, and exhausted from a shitty ride in a cart while drugged up on something that had left behind a nasty headache. Though that could have just been the cart. "Where in the Pantheon am I?" he asked, sitting on the rickety stool by a sad little fireplace when Shemal indicated he should.

"Gearth, which you probably knew. About two and a half days of riding from the sea, up in the foothills," Shemal said, swinging a battered kettle away from the fire and pouring boiling water into a bowl filled with some sort of rough powder. It smelled like the ass-end of a drunk cow.

Lesto glared when Shemal held it out.

Shemal lifted his eyes to the ceiling. "Drink the damn tonic, you poncy little palace boy. It'll fix your head."

"I've had about all I can take of being slipped—"

"Shut the fuck up and drink it," Shemal cut in, shoving the bowl into his hands before getting up and stomping over to the little table in the opposite corner of the room, cluttered with cooking tools and little shelves for dishes and other items.

If Lesto didn't know any better, he would think he'd hurt Shemal's feelings. But he definitely knew better. Shemal didn't care about anything but a quick fuck and bragging rights. Lesto hadn't even known his name until now, as the one he'd given to the port authorities had been the usual generic, obviously made up sort of name pirates always provided.

He grimaced at the bowl and drank the contents quickly. It was exactly as foul as it smelled, but that probably meant it wouldn't kill him. The deadly stuff always tasted sweet. Setting the bowl aside, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Thank you," he said gruffly.

Shemal shrugged, not turning away from whatever he was doing at the table.

Heaving a sigh, Lesto folded his arms across his knees and laid his head on them, tried to call up a map of Gearth in his mind and figure out where he was and where he needed to go. If they were in the foothills, then his kidnappers had likely planned to take him to the point where Gearth, Gaulden, Selemea, and Mesta all collided.

The roads there were clogged and busy, and the market was barely manageable for the poor guards assigned to work it—everybody who joined the imperial army worked the Market of Four for two years. It would be pathetically easy to get a hostage through and onward to wherever they'd planned on taking him. Which was probably to Rilen, so they could demand their damned ransom and be near to hand to accept it.
Halfwits.

His best bet was to head east into Mesta, to the imperial garrison in Brimin City. It'd be much faster than trying to get to and through the chaos of the Market of Four.

"Don't get too comfy," Shemal said gruffly. "We need to leave sooner rather than later, before those corpse fucking cretins come back with horses and whoever it is they didn't want to admit they were meeting in town."

"Meeting?" Lesto sat up straight again, groaning as his poor, abused muscles protested. Shemal held out a cup of what smelled like apple-flavored mead, and Lesto accepted it gladly, chasing the nasty tonic away with several sips. "Thank you. Who would they be meeting?"

"Whoever it was that told them to do this," Shemal said. "Those two halfwits aren't the thinking type, as you may have noticed. If they were, they'd have realized they've kidnapped High Commander Lesto Arseni of the Imperial Army of the Harken Empire, Duke of Fathoms Deep, and best friend of the High King." He made a face and drank the cup he'd been holding between tightly clenched fingers. So he wasn't quite as calm as he appeared. "How did they manage to get
you
, anyway? I punched the shit out of you once, and you barely stumbled half a step back. I put a lot of swing behind that punch."

Lesto smirked. "Sarrica hits harder than you."

Shemal rolled his eyes. "I have a weaker punch than the High King, wonderful. Anyway, we need to get out of here."

"We?"

"You think they're gonna let me live once they know I let you go? No way, I have worked way too hard and long to wind up feeding wolves now."

Lesto finished his mead. "Why aren't you helping them?"

"Because even when I was a pirate, I didn't hold with treating people like things," Shemal snapped, beautiful eyes going dark, tightening around the ages, his hands jerking. "Unlike the rest of you corp—"

"Corpse fuckers, yes," Lesto drawled.

"You don't get to make light of my anger, High Commander, not when it's your fucking military kidnapping my people to die in your stupid fucking wars."

Lesto lifted his hands. "You're right. That was not my intent, but it little matters. My apologies. For what little it's worth, that's a problem we've been trying to fix. Of late, the High Consort has been helping." He lowered his hands. "I truly am sorry."

Shemal shook his head, took their empty cups away. "Are you up to walking? That's what we're going to have to do until we can obtain some horses, and that will take a few days since we can't go into the village—and their horses are all fat, old farm animals not quite feeble enough to kill."

"I'll manage," Lesto said. Pantheon, when was the last time he'd had to trudge anywhere? He already missed being a spoiled brat. "Let's get moving."

"In a moment." Shemal vanished through a door near the table, and Lesto could hear him rustling and banging around. He reappeared after a few minutes, carrying two satchels. Between them he packed most of the foodstuffs in the cottage—some sausages, half a loaf of bread, and the better part of a small circle of cheese. A few other things, but Lesto didn't see what. Can you carry this?" he asked, holding out one of the satchels.

Lesto took it, slinging it over one shoulder and across his chest. He sorely missed having a sword at his hip. "I don't suppose you have any weapons beyond your fish knife?"

Shemal shook his head. "Wasn't allowed under the conditions of the pardon."

"When has that ever stopped any of you?" Lesto asked, casting him a look before leading the way out of the cottage.

Shrugging, Shemal turned down a small footpath that led further into the scrubby foothills. "Where would I get even a half-decent weapon out here, anyway?"

"Why
are
you out here?"

"I'm finished with my pardon, not that it's any of your business," Shemal said. "There was work here someone was willing to give to a former pirate."

Lesto frowned. That didn't make sense. The standard sentence for pardoned pirates, especially the kind caught smuggling weapons out of the country, was three years hard labor somewhere well away from the sea. There were always estates that needed more farmhands and such. There'd be nothing for Shemal to do all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.

He'd actually recommended Shemal to be shipped to Fathoms Deep, which always needed more labor. His holdings were enormous, and it took every pair of hands available to get the planting and harvesting done even remotely close to on time. Never mind everything else that went into farming. Four percent of all the wheat used by the empire came from Fathoms Deep land. The majority of the rest of his not-insubstantial income came from turning out the best mercenaries in the empire, even if Fathoms Deep itself had turned into Sarrica's private guard.

But when he'd returned from dealing with Benta, it was to hear that Shemal had refused the offer from Fathoms Deep and gone elsewhere. Combined with the way he'd vanished almost immediately after they'd fucked… Well, Lesto knew when someone had decided he was a bad idea best swiftly forgotten.

It wasn't like he could blame Shemal. No half-intelligent criminal would choose to stay in the same room as the High Commander. Very few persons at all, in fact, stayed in the same room as him for very long. Those who did generally wanted the power and forty thousand crowns a year that would come with marrying him.

"If you're done, why wouldn't you go home—?"

"That's enough with the questions," Shemal cut in. "More walking, less talking, Commander."

Lesto heaved a sigh, but he could hardly argue. Pantheon knew it took all his energy and concentration to keep moving. He was tired, hungry, sore from being stuck in that stupid cart, and more than a little banged up from the same. Undercutting all of that, draining his energy with worry and fear, was the constant fear for his men—had they been drugged, or had they been killed?

Then there was Sarrica, Rene, and the others. If they didn't already know he was missing, they would very soon, and he had no fucking way of letting them know he was all right. Damn it.

Fretting about it incessantly wouldn't help, though, so he turned his attention to his reluctant companion, who still cut a fine, distracting figure in well-fitted breeches and a slightly too-small shirt, left unlaced to accommodate his broad shoulders, showing off muscle and tattoos. He moved like every pirate Lesto had ever known: deft and quick and sure-footed, like a goat happily scaling a sheer cliff face.

He'd been even more distracting standing bare-chested, his feet in manacle, calling epithets and curses to Lesto's exhausted, frustrated guards. Lesto had known better than to get too close, he'd been a victim of rowdy, nothing-to-lose pirates on several occasions as a young soldier. He'd done it anyway, and gotten a black eye Sarrica would never let him forget.

Then he'd risked his life and livelihood to indulge a stupid impulse. Years of youthful stupidity had nothing on that single, too-brief moment of skin and heat and need. He had stupidly thought, for reasons he still couldn't explain, that everything would be different. That
Shemal
would be different.

And he'd been played for a fool, gotten exactly what he'd deserved for acting so stupid and reckless.

Lesto stumbled, didn't catch himself in time, slammed down on the rocks, and scraped open his knees and palms. Swearing, he leveraged himself to his knees and grimaced at his hands, picked out a few small bits of rock and dirt.

"Going to make it, old man?"

"Who the fuck are you calling old?" Lesto said. "You're not that much younger than me."

Shemal grinned as Lesto looked up. "Still younger, so you're still older." He extended a hand.

Ignoring it, Lesto slowly stood and brushed off his knees. "I'm going to stop going near anything to do with water and pirates. All it brings me is trouble."

The grin faded, and without any further words, Shemal turned and resumed walking. After several minutes, he said, "We should be at a reasonably safe campsite by dark, if you can walk that long. We can stop in a couple of hours to rest, but not for more than a few minutes."

"I'll be fine," Lesto snapped.

Silence fell after that, the sort of heavy, miserable silence Lesto hated, but it was better than making the mistake of lowering his guard and letting Shemal make a fool of him again.

The sooner he was home, the better.