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  Aubrey wasn’t small, but she seemed very small in that company. She was dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing when he’d last seen her. So maybe she hadn’t cashed in yet.

  When they reached the bottom of the steepest climb, the mage looked straight up at where Breon lay hidden. His magemark rekindled like a flame against his skin. Now that she was closer, he could see that her silver hair had two broad streaks in it—one gold, the other blue.

  “He’s up there,” the mage murmured to Aubrey. “Call him down.”

  “Breon!” Aubrey called, looking in his general direction and waving her hand. “Hey, Breon! It’s Aubrey. Come down here. I’ve brought help.”

  Breon said nothing. Maybe the mage suspected he was up there, but he wasn’t going to open his mouth and leave no doubt.

  “I was crazy worried when you was in prison,” Aubrey said. “I couldn’t figure out a way to get you out. And here you got out on your own. I can’t wait to hear how you done it.”

  Breon said nothing.

  “I thought you said the boy was a friend of yours,” the mage hissed.

  “He is,” Aubrey said. “You sure he’s up there?”

  “He’s up there,” the mage said flatly. Pulling Aubrey closer, she murmured something in her ear, then pushed her toward the foot of the trail.

  “Bree!” Aubrey said, looking paler than before. “You’re probably wondering who my friends are. This is Celestine, and she’s an actual empress! She’s from . . . from wherever it is you come from. She says she can fill you in on your family, all the things you don’t know. Won’t that be fine?” She extended her hands toward Breon, as if she might catch him if he jumped.

  Breon wrapped his arms around his knees. As he did so, he felt something lumpy in his pocket. When he pulled it out, he saw that it was the flute Hal had given him. He weighed it in his hands.

  Down below, Celestine chose out four of her mage-ish pirates. “I want you to go up and get him. Remember what I said—I don’t want the boy harmed in any way. Anything happens to him, you’ll regret the day you were born.”

  Her concern should have been reassuring, even heartwarming, maybe, but it wasn’t. She’s like the weather on the Indio, Breon thought. Fair to stormy in the blink of an eye.

  Now he heard the warriors toiling up the trail toward him. When he peered over the edge, he could see them. Already they were nearly halfway up, but they’d reached a difficult overhang. As he watched, one of them detached a grappling hook from his belt and side-armed it, aiming just above the spot where Breon was hiding. It clanged against the rock, then caught, and held, the rope dangling down, out of sight. Moments later, the rope went taut. They were climbing.

  Right. Pirates carry grappling hooks, don’t they? Just his luck. Reaching up behind him, he pried at it. But it was wedged in so tightly, he couldn’t move it.

  But there was another option.

  You’re not a violent person, he told himself.

  You’re a lover, not a hater.

  Then again, you’ve always loved the flute.

  Breon reached up again, gripped the grappling hook, and listened for music.

  A grappling hook is usually not a beloved object, so it didn’t come as clearly as he would have liked. Still, he caught a thread of it.

  Raising the flute to his lips, Breon began to play a lively tune, a jig of sorts. The warriors climbing toward him froze for a moment. Then the warrior in the lead—the owner of the grappling hook—began to smile. He straightened, stood upright, and began to dance, faster and faster. The warriors behind him backed up, trying to get out of the way, but he slammed into them. They fell, arms pinwheeling, hit the rocks once, twice, then landed on the sand.

  Their dancing colleague followed them off the edge. When he landed, he just lay there, his arms and legs twitching to the cadence of the tune.

  Three were obviously dead. The fourth was seemingly alive, but broken.

  Down below, all of the warriors were moving, shuffling their feet a little. Even Aubrey, still wearing her panic-stricken expression. Only Celestine didn’t join in. She just gazed up at Breon like he was a fat, juicy apple, high on the tree, that she couldn’t reach.

  With the last warrior down, Breon stopped playing. Then, to his horror, the surviving warrior began dragging himself to the foot of the cliff. Despite his shattered limbs, he was still trying to reach him.

  Celestine pulled Aubrey closer, and ran a line of flame down Aubrey’s arm.

  Aubrey screamed and screamed and beat her arm against her side, but the flame didn’t go out.

  Breon stopped playing and put his hands over his ears, trying to block the sound. But he couldn’t. And he couldn’t help remembering what it had been like when his own arm had been burned during the interrogation.

  “Come down here, boy, or I’ll burn your young friend to a cinder, bit by bit,” Celestine snarled. “It will take a long time.”

  “You promised,” Aubrey sobbed. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt us.”

  “I promised that I would not hurt him,” Celestine said. “But I never made any promises about you.” She looked up at Breon. “Since you seem to love dancing so much, let’s see if your girl is any good at it.”

  Now she directed flame at Aubrey’s feet. Aubrey tried to run, but the flame found her, and she tried to stamp it out, but it just kept burning. So she plunged into the water, but it didn’t seem to do any good.

  Breon could stand it no longer. Maybe Aubrey had betrayed him, but she didn’t deserve this.

  “Stop it!” he cried, standing at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the mage. “Stop hurting her!”

  “He speaks,” Celestine said, with grim satisfaction. “If you want me to stop hurting her, then come down here.”

  “All right,” he said, stuffing the flute back into his pocket. “All right. Just . . . give me a minute.”

  So Breon descended the way he’d come up, only much faster, slipping and sliding in his hurry so that more than once he almost tumbled head over heels.

  Finally, he made it to the beach. Aubrey was writhing on the sand, half in and half out of the water. He hurried over to her, cradling her head, brushing the sand from her cheek.

  “I’m sorry, Bree,” she said, breathless with pain. “I never meant to be a bad person, but it just happened.”

  “Never mind,” he said, trying to soothe her. He kept thinking about the fire in the dungeon at Chalk Cliffs and wondering if he could have been responsible.

  Finally, he looked up at Celestine. “I’m here,” he growled. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Now heal her.”

  Celestine shook her head, feigning regret. “I’m sorry, boy. There was a time I could have helped you. I no longer have that gift.”

  “Can’t you at least do something about the pain?” Breon’s voice quivered.

  She shook her head. “Your girl betrayed you, boy. You don’t owe her a thing.” When Breon didn’t respond, she extended a knife toward him, hilt first. “You can finish her if you like.”

  Breon stood there, staring at the knife in the mage’s hand through a red haze of fury and tears. As if in a dream, he heard a noise, a kind of snap. The air around Celestine shimmered and hardened. Something smacked into it, bounced off, and fell at his feet.

  It was an arrow.

  That broke Breon out of his reverie. He lunged forward, grabbed the hilt of the knife, and did his best to plunge it into the empress’s chest. But the knife slammed into the same barrier, and it flew from Breon’s hand.

  Then two more of Celestine’s warriors had him by the arms, dragging him back from her. Two more thwacks, and Breon’s captors staggered, staring down at the arrows sticking out of their chests. But they didn’t loosen their grip any, even as their blood dripped onto the sand.

  Looking past Celestine, Breon could see Aubrey moving, dragging herself out of the water and across the sand toward the empress. He could see that she had something in her fist, a sharp she
ll, maybe.

  But Celestine was focused elsewhere.

  “What do we have here?” she said, shading her eyes and staring in the direction the arrows had come from. “A hero?”

  “Leave them alone!” somebody shouted from the top of a nearby cliff. “Let them go.”

  “Or, perhaps, a heroine,” Celestine amended.

  It was Her Highness.

  “Get out of here!” Breon shouted. “Go! Don’t be stupid.”

  “Maybe she can’t help herself, boy.” Celestine laughed. “You are, after all, a charmer. Is this some kind of love triangle?” She turned to look at Aubrey, who was halfway between the water and her target. “You know,” the empress said, “I hate love triangles.” Gripping her amulet and raising her hand, she immersed Aubrey in flame.

  Breon tried to rip free from his captors, but they held him fast, even though they should have been dead on the ground.

  Aubrey came to her feet, staggered forward one step, two. She stumbled back as Her Highness’s next arrow found its mark, and then Aubrey went down, still burning but now beyond Celestine’s reach.

  Breon heard three more thwacks in quick succession. Another arrow clattered against Celestine’s barrier. Two more found their marks among her soldiers.

  “Bravo,” Celestine said, as if delighted. “I could use more archers like you in my army. How would you like to join my bloodsworn guard?”

  “Get back in your boat and leave,” Her Highness said, her voice shaking with rage.

  “I have every intention of doing that,” Celestine said. “But not without the boy. I’ve gone to a tremendous amount of trouble to find him. But, no worries. You can come with us.”

  With that, she sent a bolt of flame smashing into the cliff just under the princess’s position. Stone shattered and the cliff came down, ending in a pile of rubble at the bottom.

  Breon looked from the spot on the cliff where the princess had been to the rockfall at the bottom. He saw nothing moving. It seemed impossible that anyone could have survived that.

  “It’s so much easier,” Celestine said to nobody in particular, “when you don’t have to take them alive.” She nodded to the pirates pinioning Breon’s arms. “Let’s get the boy aboard before any more heroes show up.”

  47

  THE WATER IS WIDE

  Halston Matelon half-scrambled, half-fell the last twenty feet from the cliff to the beach. Even as he rolled to his feet, he knew he was too late, but that didn’t stop him from charging across the sand to the water’s edge and splashing a few yards into the waves.

  It was no use. Two hundred yards of gunmetal water separated Hal from the jolly boat, a gulf that grew as the oarsmen strained and pulled. The boat was already halfway to the ship that waited at the mouth of the inlet.

  Hal resisted the urge to shake his fist at the fleeing pirates.

  Talbot skidded to a stop beside him, spitting out a series of oaths. Shading her eyes, she glared after the boat, which by now was pulling alongside the bigger ship. “Is that them? Do you think they’re aboard?”

  Hal shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m guessing they’re either aboard or dead, so maybe we should hope for the former. Is there any chance they’ll be intercepted by your navy before they leave the shore waters?”

  Hope kindled momentarily in Talbot’s eyes, then was as quickly extinguished. “I’d say it was unlikely. We just don’t have that many ships, especially this far north of Chalk Cliffs. We have to focus on keeping our eastern ports open and protecting our roads and cities.” She released a shaky breath. “This is my fault. It was my idea, to escape by boat. Lyss is scared to death of the water. I should have listened to her.”

  Hal was only half-listening. He wished he had Lyss’s glass so he could get a better look. It looked like they were lifting somebody from the jolly boat up onto the deck. Somebody who was either dead or unconscious. They winched the boat aboard, too, and hastily raised anchor.

  They ran the sails up the masts. At first the sails flapped, spilling air, but as the ship turned, they inflated, and she put on speed.

  There was nothing remotely magical about Hal, but instinct told him Alyssa Gray Wolf was aboard that ship and quickly moving out of reach.

  Hal couldn’t watch anymore, so he turned back toward the beach. Bodies littered the sand, all bristling with arrows. From the way they were dressed, Hal guessed they’d come off the ship.

  Talbot pulled one of the arrows free and examined it. “Lyss got some shots in, anyway. These arrows are clan-made, and I know it wasn’t the busker.” She looked up and down the beach. “I count five down.”

  “Six,” Hal said. A charred body lay on the sand at the water’s edge, with an arrow centering its chest. Though most of the body had been consumed, it was still smoldering.

  Hal squatted next to it, pressing his sleeve over his nose against the stink of burning flesh. From the remains of the clothing, he guessed it was a girl, someone dressed differently from the other bodies on the beach. But not in Highlander spattercloth.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, this one was done by magery,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “I’ve seen bodies burned like this on the battlefield.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Talbot muttered. “Pirates using magery?”

  Hal crossed the sand to where several house-sized chunks of rock littered the bottom of the cliff. He could see that it was a new fall—the edges were raw, unvarnished by wind and rain. Head-sized chunks were scattered all the way to the water’s edge.

  Next to the base of the cliff, he saw two bodies, half-buried in the debris. Again, warriors from the ship, maybe killed in the fall.

  “Careful,” Talbot called. “It might be unstable.”

  “It looks like there was an explosion or something. Or more magery.” Methodically, he began to root through the rubble, guarding his heart against what he might find. Up against the cliff face, in a spot where two huge boulders stood propped against each other, the sand was spotted with blood. Not a lot of blood, but—

  Something glittered from a crevice, nearly at eye level. Hal pulled the object out. It was a pendant, a gold locket, in fact, engraved with a rose. He turned to find Talbot right behind him.

  “Do you recognize this?” he asked her.

  Talbot licked her cracked lips and nodded. “It belonged—belongs to Lyss.”

  “Was she wearing it?”

  Talbot nodded. “I’ve never seen her without it, except for when—yes, she was wearing it.”

  Hal looked up the cliff, then out to where the bodies littered the beach. He swore softly.

  “What? What is it?” Talbot snapped.

  “I’m thinking Captain Gray was shooting from up here somewhere, and there was an explosion—or a bolt of magic—and she fell.”

  With that, Talbot began digging through the rubble like a madwoman, until her hands were battered and bleeding. Soon she was leaving her own blood smeared on the rocks. Hal joined in. Side by side, they rolled rocks away.

  There wasn’t all that much rubble on the beach, and it soon became clear to Hal that Lyss’s body wasn’t buried under it. Relief flooded through him.

  “Talbot,” he said gently.

  Talbot looked up from her digging, her face tear-streaked. “What?”

  “She’s not here.” He paused, and when she just glared at him, he added, “Do you want to hear my theory?”

  Grudgingly, she nodded.

  “I think Gray was injured in the fall,” he said. “But she was conscious, because she tucked her locket in the niche in the rocks for us to find. She knew that you would know it was hers, and that it meant that she was alive.”

  From the look on Talbot’s face, she liked his theory very much.

  “Now let’s see what else we can find,” he said. They divided up the beach and walked it methodically.

  “What I don’t get,” Talbot said, “is how they tracked us here. It’s like they had our scent or something. And why bother w
ith us with the city in their grip? There’s plenty to plunder there.”

  “Could the busker have been in league with the pirates? Maybe he was the one that tipped them off. Maybe they attacked the keep in an effort to rescue him, and this was the pre-arranged meeting place. That would explain why they were so bent on tracking us down.”

  “No!” Talbot said, and Hal was surprised by her vehemence.

  “I know you had him under lock and key, but isn’t it possible that he got word out somehow to—?”

  “No.” Clearly, Talbot was having none of that.

  “Maybe they were after the busker,” she said. “But he didn’t want to be found.” She slid a look at Hal. “Do you want to hear my theory?”

  “All right.”

  “I spent a fortnight with the busker. He’s a liar, and a charmer, and too fond of the leaf for his own good. I’ve seen him scared, and I’ve seen him shoveling scummer.”

  She paused, and Hal said, “So?”

  “So when he saw that ship coming, he was terrified. I’d stake my life on it. When he told us to get out of the boat, he was trying to save the rest of us. And he would have, except Lyss wouldn’t jump.”

  “You could be right, I suppose . . . ,” Hal began, but Talbot stopped in her tracks and gripped Hal’s arm. “Look at that,” she said, pointing down at the sand.

  Hal circled around so that he could view the sand from the same angle.

  The top line looked like a lover’s inscription.

  AG + BdT

  And, underneath, an arrow pointing toward the sea.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Hal said irritably.

  Talbot was practically beaming as she traced the letters with her forefinger. “Alyssa Gray plus Breon d’Tarvos. It means they’ve been taken captive. It means they’re still alive. Now all we have to do is figure out how to get them back.”