Finding Destiny (40 page)

“
Enough,
Jukol. Go tell the crew I’ll be out in a few moments.”

Grumbling under his breath, the bo’sun left.

“For ‘all’ I have done?” Ellett asked mildly, unfastening the straps that attached the breastplate to her pauldrons next.

“You
did
cost us a ship filled with rare timber and spices,” Mita reminded him, slipping sideways out of her upper armor. Lifting a knee to one of the lower railings bracing the legs of her desk, she unbuckled her greaves and knee cops, and lifted her chin toward an armor rack bolted to the wall dividing her cabin from the rest of the ship. “You can hang that over there.”

“The advantages I can bring to your future far outweigh the loss of a single prize in the present,” Ellett reminded her, before carrying her upper gear to the wooden rods waiting for it. Re-fastening one shoulder strap to secure it in place, he turned back in time to accept the leggings. Once they were secured as well, he turned back to the redheaded captain. “Are the rest of your crew going to dislike me as much as your bo’sun Jukol apparently does?”

She shrugged, re-buckling her belt and its daggers around her hips. “Until they think they can trust you? Probably.”

“Can I trust them to leave me alone in my sleep?” Ellett asked her next. “I can fend them off without injuring anyone if I’m awake, but if they attack me in my sleep ... well, I can’t guarantee their safety if they try. Do you think I’d be safe if I slept in the crow’s nest?”

She eyed him thoughtfully. Finally, Mita nodded. “I’ll have Jukol bring you a hammock. You can set it up in the corner by the door, there. Normally I’d have a cabin girl in that spot, but I don’t take younglings when I know we’re going to ... you know.”

“Defend your people aggressively?” Ellett finished for her. “Mind if I follow you and watch how you strengthen the rigging? I’m sure you know far more ship-based spells than I do.”

Mita laughed at that. “A land-bound man like you? I’m surprised you even have sea legs with
your
background.”

“I wouldn’t, if I hadn’t just sailed around the entire sea four whole times, and then some,” Ellett grumbled. “You
could
have shown up a bit earlier, you know. I was growing rather bored.”

“You
could
have loaded a more worthwhile cargo, before now—a cargo you still owe us, in recompense for the plundering of the
Island Maid
,” she retorted. “And I’ll give you a whole lot more to worry about than being
bored
if your people don’t stop bothering ours!”

“The
Island Maid
?” Ellett asked, following her out to the middeck. “When did this happen, and where?”

“It happened last week, and it happened just south of the Keket border—you may think you’re so clever, attacking us so far from Aurulan waters, and using plain white sails instead of all those colorful ones, but you
forgot
to repaint the water-line something other than Aurulan purple,” she accused, facing him. It forced her to squint into the rain, but she ignored it. “Or maybe not
you,
personally, if you’ve been on board the
Parrot’s Ride
long enough to circle the sea four or more times. But it’s been either an Aurulan merchanter with the bright-colored sails or an Aurulan warship trying to disguise itself without them. Sails can be swapped and different uniforms donned, but everyone knows that Aurulan warships are painted purple below the water-line, and the last two ships have been purple!”

Ellett caught her elbow when she turned away again. He was conscious of the crewmen, many of them clad in oiled,
eta
-like rain jackets, nearby, straining to hear their argument. “I swear to you that there were
no
warships unaccounted for in the last five months, never mind last week. If anything, the more I hear about this ‘Lord Stelled’ and these purported warship attacks, the more inclined I am to believe they’re an elaborate ruse. Hulls
can
be enchanted to
look
purple—or even repainted if need be, and then covered with an illusion whenever they need to look normal in port.
We
have no reason, as a nation, to pick a fight with you!”

“Ha!” she retorted. “You’ve always looked down on us!”

“Milady Mita, we
didn’t care enough
about Jetta to pick a fight with you,” Ellett argued. “First of all, the Aurulan nation is wealthy in its own right. We don’t
need
to steal from others—look to the south-lands for that, since they’re resource-poor compared to us. Second, the whole kingdom’s been wrapped up in the news that the Seer King’s bride had finally been foreseen, and then in waiting for her to arrive, which she has. Now that they’ve wed, the whole kingdom is waiting breathlessly for her to produce the next potential heir.

“Or rather, I should say the
government
is waiting, as well as the average citizen,” he allowed, glancing around as some of the other crew moved closer, skepticism warring with interest in their expressions. “If this is the work of any Aurulan, then it is a private group under the direction of some madman—I would suspect your false ‘Lord Stelled’ of masterminding it, if no one else.

“The first rule of battle is, what is the enemy’s motivation for attacking? And the first rule of politics is, what does anyone stand to gain by a particular action? Jetta Freeport and the Jenodan Isles have no
value
to my people, therefore, no motivation ... and our government has nothing to gain by attacking your merchanting ships. Nothing could be gained but war, and war isn’t on our list of things to do this decade,” he told her, wincing as the wind shifted direction a little. It wasn’t enough to need the sails adjusted, but it did drive some of those cold droplets of rain into his ear. “Randomly picking off Aurulan ships simply because you
suspect
Aurulan attacks makes as little sense as Aurulans picking off random Jettan ships.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly as if we could
talk
with you about it, since you
didn’t care enough
to open
real
diplomatic relations with us,” Mita retorted.

“Well, you and I are talking
now
, aren’t we?” Mindful of the storm, he released her arm. “We have, what, five days of sailing to get to the freeport? That should be plenty of time to go over every attack you know about, and see if there’s a pattern. And I can mirror-scry my own contacts in the Aurulan navy, and get every scrap of information I can about any domestic ships with port manifests that match the attacks, or those of foreign ships which could pass closely enough to masquerade as an Aurulan vessel.”

“Four days, if these winds stay steady—and if the
rigging
is going to hold, I have to get to work.” Turning, she strode away. Then she stopped, turned, and swept her hand toward the foredeck, giving him a pointed look. “... Well? You
said
you wanted to learn more about nautical spells. Move it, sailor!”

“Aye, Captain.” Glad this was just a mildly windy rainfall and not a true storm, Ellett followed her carefully across the bobbing, sloping deck. He wiped the water from his face and muttered a warming charm as he did so, but he followed.

FOUR

The sharp jolt woke him from his sleep. Ellett didn’t have time to process it, however, for it was immediately followed by the hard crack of his skull hitting something immovably solid, and the bruising thump of the rest of him following suit. An expletive escaped him, and he curled up protectively onto his side, arms sheltering his aching head from the rocking of the hard surface under his body.

Light bloomed as the door to the inner cabin flung open, dazzling his eyes.

“What’s going on in here?—Ellett? What are you doing on the deck?” Clad in a white, loosely gathered shirt that contrasted with her suntanned limbs, Mita crossed to his side.

Half blinded by the bright white light of the small globe in her hand, Ellett winced and blinked. He started to say something, but she crouched right next to his head ... giving him a second dazzling shock, this time from what he saw, thanks to the way her hem had shifted position.
By the Eyes of Ruul ... she’s not wearing any undergarments!

Her hand touched his face, tilting his head away from that stunning view. She pried back his eyelids while he struggled with that second—if much more pleasant—blow, and held the miniature light-globe up to his face. “Well ... you don’t
look
like you’re heavily concussed ... but you’re not exactly responding.
Ellett,
are you all right?”

Her crisp, hard demand broke through some of his daze. In a flash of insight, he realized this was an opportunity not to be missed.
Injuries garner sympathies, after all.
Affecting more of a stunned demeanor than he felt, he wittily responded, “... Uh?”

Not that it gained him much in the way of immediate sympathy. With a disgusted sigh, she rose and padded away, taking that lovely, inadvertent view with her. The light bobbled behind him, casting her shadow in a weird dance across the rest of the cabin. “Well. It seems my bo’sun picked out the oldest, most dry-rotted hammock he could find for you. I’m sure you were too much of a land-man to know what to look for, and I didn’t check it myself.”

She returned to his side, crouching behind his back. As much as he wanted to roll over and see if the view were the same, he didn’t dare. Her fingers probed gently at the back of his head, making him hiss in pain when they encountered the very real bruise.

“Well, I don’t think your skull is cracked ... but you’re definitely out of it. Come on, wake up!” She tapped him on the shoulder. Ellett obligingly rolled onto his back and blinked up at her, not quite focusing on her face. “You fell on your head, Captain. It’s knocked some of the sense out of you. Come on, respond.”

Mita brought the light near his eyes. Lifting his arm to ward off the too-white glow, Ellett groaned. “Owww ... what ... what happened?”

“Your hammock broke. Come on, sit up, so I can see how bad it is—but if you cast up, you’re holystoning the whole deck in here.”

With her help, he managed to curl upright. Nausea did well up inside of him at the shift in position, but thankfully not enough to make his stomach protest violently. “Ugh ... Gods ... I just want to lie down again.”

She brought the light close to his eyes, prying them open a second time when he winced away. “Nope, you’re not concussed. I can see your pupils dilating. But you’re shocked from the blow, I’m sure. Sleeping on a hard deck won’t do you any good, and I wouldn’t trust any other hammock the crew might find in the middle of the night. Particularly with how they feel about you.”

Ha, sympathy
is
working
. Ellett carefully kept his expression vague. He blinked and focused on her face. “It’s ... okay. I don’t want to ... to put you to any trouble. I can sleep on the ground. Done it before ...”

“And have you getting sick from all the rolling, and cast up all over my cabin?” She snorted and traced a rune on his forehead. “You need a stable, unmoving bed. If I can’t trust a hammock, it’ll have to be my own bed.”

Maybe a little
too
well,
he thought, realizing that he hadn’t exactly thought through to
what
kind of sympathy she might give him, or where it might lead. “No ... I’ll be all right. I don’t want to put you out of your bed.”

She snorted again and hooked her arm under his, hauling him to his feet with surprising strength. Ellett allowed her to drape his arm over her shoulders and guide him toward the door to her cabin. “Trust me, that bed is big enough for a small orgy. More important, it’s spell-stabilized. Just because you don’t
look
concussed doesn’t mean you automatically aren’t. My healing spells are more geared toward rope burns and battle wounds, but I do know I need to keep an eye on you for the next few hours ... and I don’t think I can trust the ship’s healer.”

“Why not?” Ellett asked, wincing as she bumped him into the doorframe in the effort to get the panel open and the two of them through. He could have helped her, but he was enjoying the feel of her linen-clad body snug against his. A pity that he was wearing sleeping trousers; his chest might have been bare, and most of her legs, but their flesh only touched in a scant few places.

“Because he’s the bo’sun’s brother, and they think too much alike to trust him with you right now. Into the bed with you,” she added, lowering him to the broad, wood-framed mattress taking up the back of the small cabin. Its covers were rumpled from her hasty exit, and she quickly shoved them out of his way. “Completely into the bed with you, so I can turn on the stabilization spell. It’s odd, but the only time I ever get seasick is when I’m lying down. So I spent a week mastering the spells necessary to craft a stabilization warding, since I love everything else about sailing.”

Easing his legs up, Ellett sank back into the feather-stuffed pillows. Then winced from his bruises and rolled onto his side. He could tell exactly where she slept when he did that, for she had left a warm spot down the middle of the mattress.
Middle ... which means she isn’t used to sharing a bed with anyone. Or has fallen out of the habit. Like me.