In Dawn and Darkness Page 11

  He met my eyes without flinching, although he paled slightly. Did he guess my thoughts?

  “Aemi—” he began.

  “Spare me your lies.”

  Valus shook his head and stalked away.

  A guard showed us to a row of sleeping chambers.

  “Are we prisoners or guests?” I asked.

  The guard bowed. “Your mother wishes to speak with you after you’ve dined.”

  A non-answer.

  I sighed angrily. No sign of Myo either.

  In my room, I gazed out the port at the sea. I couldn’t tell anything about where we were headed. Nothing but ocean above and below.

  I stepped out of my room in time to see Keli disappearing down the corridor with one of the guards. Nol stepped from his room and followed my gaze.

  “Where are they taking her?” I asked.

  “Her navigation skills are needed in the control room,” another guard answered. He nodded at the room. “You are asked to remain in your quarters.”

  “This is a Graywater ship! I am a Graywater. You cannot keep me a prisoner.”

  “I’m sorry, Lady Aemiana, but I have my orders.”

  He was unyielding. I tried to step past him, but he grabbed my shoulder and pushed me back. Nol sprang forward, and the guard slammed him into the wall and elbowed him in the face when he tried to lunge again.

  “Lady Graywater said she didn’t mind if we injured you,” he added to Nol. “I suggest you do not test your limits.”

  Nol wiped blood from his lip and scowled at the man.

  I motioned to him, and he followed me into my quarters. I shut the door in the guard’s face.

  Nol stood seething with his face toward the window that overlooked the sea. His shoulders were pulled tight, and the blue light played over the taut muscles of his face as he controlled his anger.

  “What’s the plan here?” he asked finally.

  I paced. “I don’t know. We need to talk to Myo and get word to Annah.”

  Fear simmered in my belly. What was my mother doing? Was I, yet again, just a pawn in the hands of the more powerful?

  I needed to think. I needed a plan.

  “I’ll try to get into the control room if I can,” I said. My gaze dropped to his lip, still bloody. “Are you all right?”

  He pressed his palm to the injury, testing it. “Not the first time I’ve been thrown into a wall.”

  He stepped closer and touched my face with his hand. “What about you?”

  “I’m not the one bleeding,” I said as the door opened behind us. The guard must have decided to come inside. I braced myself, summoning my Graywater courage.

  “Aemi,” a voice blurted.

  I turned, my mouth falling open.

  Tob.

  He stood uncertainly in the doorway, wearing an apron, the edge knotted in one hand. A bit of flour smudged his cheek.

  He blinked at us. Are you two about to kiss or something?”

  “Tob? What are you doing here?” I managed.

  He shrugged with one shoulder, his face pulling down in a scowl. “Your mother... she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She can be terrifying, you know. She said I had to come along as her cook.”

  “And Lyssia? Where is she?”

  “Still with your grandmother,” he said. “She has been staying by her father’s side.”

  “Has he shown any improvement?” I asked, hope rising.

  Tob shook his head. “He’s still a vegetable.”

  I winced at the blunt way of putting it.

  “Dinner is ready,” Tob added. They were going to send a servant, but... I wanted to talk to you, so I volunteered.”

  “Tob,” I said, thinking fast. “Do you know where the control room is?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Later, we dined in the expansive dining hall with windows that overlooked the sea.

  Through the door that led into the galley, I saw Tob and another cook arguing over a pot that belched steam. The other cook stabbed a finger at the bubbling contents, and Tob threw up his hands and turned away to chop fish with more force than the task called for.

  A servant brought the stew to us, but my appetite was gone, replaced by a tumult of emotions.

  “Eat,” Nol said, pushing a bowl of steaming stew in front of me.

  I picked up a utensil and stirred the amber-colored substance inside. A savory scent wafted upward.

  My mind was on my mother, on the control room, on the fact that we needed to send a message to Annah.

  Tob exited the galley and made his way toward us, carrying a bowl. He plopped down beside me and dug into the stew.

  “Mmm,” he said. “Needs a little more sting to it, but it’ll do.” He turned his head to examine my progress on the meal. He frowned, but didn’t say anything. I ate a bit, and my eyes watered.

  “I think it has plenty of sting, whatever that means,” I managed, sucking in air to cool my tongue.

  “Sea spider venom,” Tob said.

  I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. Most likely not.

  Nol bumped my knee with his, and I peered at him through the hair that fell into my eyes. Our eyes met across the table, and he nodded toward the guards arriving with Keli. Another man accompanied them, and he matched Tob’s earlier description of the captain.

  Tob was still talking about sea spiders, oblivious to our wordless exchange. “Do you think it’s too tart?” he asked. “I think if I mix in a bit of dolphin milk, maybe that will cut the tang a bit—”

  Garren joined us. He sniffed the steam coming off his bowl. “What is this disgusting creation?”

  Tob’s face was a war between pride in producing disgust in a Dron and hurt that he’d called it such. “Stew.”

  I didn’t mention the spider venom.

  Garren took a cautious bite, then shrugged and kept eating doggedly. “Needs white sauce,” he remarked.

  Tob drew back in horror. “White sauce? That would completely mask the taste.”

  Garren nodded. “Exactly.”

  “That,” Tob said, “is exactly the sort of thing a Dron would say. Classless, the whole lot of you. Completely ignorant of good food.”

  Garren grinned around a mouthful of stew. “Yet half your recipes are Dron originals.”

  “Lies—” Tob sputtered.

  A dark-haired figure appeared in the doorway of the eating room, and Tob’s words faded into the background.

  Valus.

  He scanned the tables, pausing when he caught sight of us. I could see the debate on his face, but finally, he grabbed a bowl of food and approached.

  Nol gave Valus a measuring look that was a shade between begrudging and outright hostile as Nautilus’s son took the seat on my other side. Valus pretended not to notice—as a politician’s son, something he was excellent at—as he turned to me and flashed a wide smile.

  “My lady,” he greeted me. “Enemy soldiers,” he said with a nod at Garren and Nol. “Shock cook,” he said to Tob.

  We gazed at him, Garren’s grin dropped, and he and Nol drew themselves up almost imperceptibly. Tob quieted from his diatribe about the Dron and their taste in food.

  Valus ignored our silence as he tasted the stew.

  “Ah,” he said. “It’s nice to have a little refinement for one. Your delicacies are superb.”

  Tob shifted. Compliments from the traitor were hardly compliments.

  Valus looked at me.

  “Don’t worry about your mother, Angelfish. We’re going to find your Perilous.”

  “When did you contact my mother?” I said evenly.

  He shook his head. “You’re always so quick to accuse me.”

  “I know it was you, so tell me.”

  Valus sipped at his stew. “Don’t act so indignant. You know that I do what is best for myself. And I think involving your mother is best for me.” He paused. “She has promised me indemnity.”

  “Ha,” I said. “What can my mother offer you that Annah and the senate coul
d not?”

  “Your mother is a woman of connections,” Valus responded. “Annah is a politician, and I don’t trust them. Your mother is not a politician.”

  “Worse,” I said. “She’s a Graywater. You trust a Graywater?”

  “I do,” he said, looking at me steadily.

  With that, he pushed the remainder of his stew aside and stood.

  Garren reached for Valus’s bowl while Nol and I watched Nautilus’s son walk away.

  “Needs white sauce,” Garren said to Tob, who threw up his hands and retreated to the kitchen.

  Nol spoke with barely contained fury. “We never should have involved that snake. He’s not done causing trouble. I’m sure of it.”

  “My lady,” a servant said, stopping at the edge of the table and bowing to me. “Your mother wants to speak with you.”

  ~ ~ ~

  My mother received me privately in the ship’s tiny garden sphere.

  My stomach twisted into a knot as I waited for her to speak. The memory of her in the garden weeping sprang to my mind, and I bit my lip. I had the oddest urge to confess to her that I’d seen her crying at my memorial service. I wanted to see if she’d deny it, or confess to feeling something at my loss.

  She stared out at the sea for a moment that stretched until I itched with the need to break the silence. But I had learned the power of silence, so I quelled my discomfort and waited for her to speak first.

  “Congratulations,” was all she said.

  I blinked in confusion.

  “You’ve finally acted like a true Graywater.” Was that bitterness in her tone? Resignation? “You managed to deceive the rest of us.”

  “It didn’t last long,” I muttered.

  “Longer than anyone else has in quite some time,” she said. “Of course, you have had a great deal less practice than I have in the business of being a Graywater.”

  “Where’s my sister?” I asked. It was the only thing I could think to say.

  “Your sister is staying with Annah.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “And you trust her after the way she helped me?”

  “Desperate times,” my mother said, a shadow of a smile touching her mouth.

  “How did you find me?” I said.

  “Your friend, the cook, bore the scent of my mother’s house, as did Merelus’s loyal daughter. Their connection, the thing that binds them together as unlikely friends, is you. It aroused my suspicions, and I began combing through my network of informants for clues. The Riptide was missing. I got what I could out of Dahn after he’d had too much wine at a dinner party of mine. I obtained more information from the shock cook. Then an... unexpected source contacted me, and he was most helpful.”

  Valus?

  Myo arrived, cutting off my next question. He stepped inside the miniature garden sphere and gazed around at cascades of vines and flowers, as if scanning them for hidden guards, before letting his gaze rest on my mother and me.

  “Thank you for joining us,” the Lady Graywater said, smiling, but her lips drew back with a hint of a snarl.

  “You are hijacking our mission,” he said, but he said it pleasantly.

  My mother arched a brow. “I am helping. You have my daughter, and you wear an air of confidence that suggests to me that you’ve discovered something else, but you don’t have all the pieces. If you did, you wouldn’t have accepted my help.”

  “You had weapons,” Myo countered, matching her smile with one of his own. “We didn’t accept; we acquiesced.”

  It was fascinating, this exchange. Like watching a game of Hooks being played with smiles and words instead.

  “You accepted,” she said firmly, tilting her head and studying him. “You need me. Tell me, and I can help.”

  “The fact is,” Myo said, “You don’t know anything.”

  “You don’t know what I know,” she responded.

  “Nautilus has the final pieces now,” Myo said. “We both know that, at least. If you wanted to capture someone, you should have captured him.”

  My mother’s smile tightened. She folded her hands. “We both know how impossible such a thing would be. Volcanus is like a steel trap. You only go in. You cannot come out, not without a miracle.”

  Something about the word miracle stirred my memories. I looked at my mother and then at Myo. They glared at each other, their faces hard like warriors before a fight.

  My mind spun with thoughts.

  “Ah, look,” my mother said with a glance past us. “I brought one of your friends.”

  The door behind us opened. My stomach turned over.

  Tallyn.

  He strode into the room without looking at me.

  “I believe you two have more in common than either of you will admit to me,” my mother said. She paused, letting the significance of her words and what she knew sink in. “Perhaps it is time I was brought into the circle, yes?”

  “This is ridiculous,” Myo said. “What does Aemiana’s former tutor have to do with any of this?”

  “He was also her bodyguard,” my mother added.

  “I have been concerned for Aemiana’s welfare,” Tallyn said. “Nothing more.”

  He still wouldn’t look at me.

  I felt ill. I needed somewhere to exhale. I dipped a curtsy as Tallyn would have demanded back when he was pretending to be my etiquette instructor.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “There are too many mind games at play here, and I have to see to my friends.”

  The guards were missing from the corridor outside. Had Tallyn dismissed them?

  This was my chance.

  Tallyn strode after me into the corridor of the ship, and he called after me, but I didn’t stop.

  I went all the way to the control room.

  I had a message to send.

  ~ ~ ~

  Later, I returned to my quarters in search of the others. Nol wasn’t there, but a guard intercepted me.

  “What are you doing wandering about?” he said. “Your mother—”

  “I was just with my mother,” I said sharply.

  Valus rounded the corner, also without a guard to escort him. He stopped short at the sight of us, and then turned on his heel and vanished. The guard looked torn between chastising me and going after Valus. After a moment of indecision, he gripped my arm and pulled me with him.

  “Stop,” I said, angry now. “I am not a prisoner on this ship.”

  “I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on all of you,” he said as he dragged me down the corridor toward where we’d seen Valus.

  And promptly collided with Garren and Nol and their assigned guard.

  “What’s this?” Nol said, pointing at how the guard gripped my arm. “Where are you taking her?”

  Garren cracked his fists. “I think he’s asking for a demonstration of how we fell about manhandling one of our people.”

  The guard dropped my arm and lifted his weapon.

  “If you want a fight—” he began.

  “What’s going on?”

  Tallyn’s voice.

  He stalked down the hall and stopped between Garren and the guard, who lowered his weapon and backed down. “Return to your post,” Tallyn ordered. “I’ll handle this.”

  “So you work for my mother now?” I said once the guard had left.

  Tallyn studied me, his face seeped with weariness.

  “Aemiana,” he said. “We need to speak.”

  I walked away from him, from all of them. I didn’t want to do this. Not now. Not ever.

  Tallyn followed this time. “Aemiana!”

  I turned once we were out of earshot of the others. “Why have you come here? I had you replaced as my bodyguard.”

  His jaw tightened. “Which should not have happened.”

  “My safety is no longer your concern.”

  “It’s very much my concern,” he said.

  “If you want to be angry and incredulous because I am rightly hurt and offended by your lying to me and using m
e, then go ahead.”

  Garren and Nol were waiting, watching us.

  “Aemiana,” Tallyn murmured in the tone of a tutor to his pupil, “perhaps now is not the best time for a fight.”

  His tone only ignited my fury further.

  “I trusted you,” I ground out. “I loved you like a father. And you betrayed me just like he did.”

  “Aemiana,” Tallyn repeated. “Stop.”

  I didn’t want to stop. Anger had seized me with its teeth and I was shaking. “You’re a coward who withheld the truth from me. You are like all the others. Everyone has a plan for me, a way they can use me. I thought you would keep me safe, but you only wanted me to be safe for your own purposes.” I paused, drawing breath. “You could have at least told me what I was.”

  Tallyn’s eyes were pools of regret.

  Before he could answer, an explosion rocked the ship.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I PITCHED FORWARD onto my hands and knees as the lights flickered. I shoved myself up, grabbing at the wall for stability.

  “What’s happening?”

  Tallyn braced himself as the ship shook again, his expression sharpening as he listened.

  “Those are torpedoes.”

  Together, we hurried to the control room of the ship, where my mother’s pilot and Keli were bent over the controls. Ahead, visible through the glass windows that encircled us, the lights of a hammership pierced the darkness. The ship was like a monster waiting to devour us. It was easily three times our size.

  “There’s another one above us. We came upon them out of nowhere,” Keli said when she spotted me. “They fired without warning.”

  A torpedo streaked past us. The ship shuddered as the rock to our left exploded.

  “We can’t outrun a ship that size.” The captain wiped sweat from his face with his wrist, his eyes wide.

  “How did they find us?” Tallyn demanded.

  Keli looked up from the controls. “Someone sent a signal that told them exactly where we were.”

  My mother swept into the control room, her silken tunic rustling as she stepped to the control panel. She was a pillar of cold strength as she faced the sight of Nautilus’s ship. The lights glowed along the planes of her face, illuminating her cheekbones and making shadows across her eyes. Her mouth was a ridge of unyielding tension.