Pirate Princess (3 page)

She glared at me. “Watch it. I can still use magic and turn you into a toad.”

“Like you threatened that poor horse when I first arrived here,” I teased.

“I should have turned that rotten horse into a toad,” she muttered.

I laughed and linked arms with her as we walked back to the castle.

Chapter Two

The day dawned overcast and cold. After dressing in a white long sleeved shirt with a black corset over it, tan breeches and a black coat with black bear fur around the collar, I went to the stables to get my horse, Duke. It had taken me a while to learn how to ride and once I was able to ride alone, Jared had given me Duke for my birthday. The gelding was well over sixteen hands high, thick, and a palomino with a mane and tail the same color as my own hair. He was a gentle horse who didn’t spook over anything. Jared said he had seen him walk right up to a bear without a trace of fear. He explained that he was a type of draft horse, normally used for pulling carts, but some were also used as war horses. He was perfect for me. I climbed into the saddle and clucked my tongue to signal him to move forward. He trotted forward, his long strides eating up the distance from the castle to the docks. I enjoyed the short ride, smelling the crops as we passed them, watching birds flying overhead and the wind blowing my hair back. People waved to me from their fields, used to seeing me going down this road once a month, and I waved back with a smile. I was royalty after all and the royalty here interacted with the people, no matter their stature. It was definitely pleasing to be part of a royal group who didn’t act pretentious just because of their bloodline or because of who they were married to. It was a nice break for me too since I had been forced to have guards for several years, but recently I had been able to get out without taking some with me.

A few guards waved to me, but none stopped me. I stopped at the market, dismounted and lead Duke behind me as I perused the stalls for anything I might want to buy. Esmeralda and Jared had been very generous with the allowance I was given and I had been able to save a lot since I didn’t need or want for much. I purchased a small bracelet with a satin pouch and then made my way to the bar near the docks. I tethered Duke to the building next to the bar, put on my mask and used a spell to change the color of my hair. Once my appearance was safely altered, I walked around to the back of the bar and knocked on the door three times. I had to wear a mask so that if one of them saw me in public they wouldn’t ruin my double identity. I had no idea what Jared and Esmeralda would do if they found out that I was really Captain Rocco’s daughter, but I didn’t want to find out. Dad had had the mask made for me so that I could keep my face secret from the pirates and had it delivered to me a month after I had arrived in the Kingdom of Crilan. It had taken the pirate he had sent two days to find a moment where I was alone for a brief second in the market to give it to me. I had barely been able to hide it before Griffin looked at me to see what I was doing and thankfully I had played it off. The mask felt like lace, but somehow maintained its shape and from far away looked like it was solid white, but when you looked at it close up you could see the swirling lacey designs all across it. It had taken me a full month to learn how to change my hair color, but it was a very handy spell.

The door swung open and a middle aged man with a thick scar running down the right side of his face looked down at me. I turned, pulled the top of my shirt down and showed him my tattoo despite the fact that he saw me each month and I was the only one with this mask it was still protocol. He opened the door all the way, and stepped back so that I could enter. I walked in, held my head up high, and acted like I was the baddest, most ruthless person in existence. I learned that for these type of people you made it farther if you acted like you were incredibly tough, even if you weren’t. It helped a lot that I had Captain Rocco’s mark on me and most pirates feared him. I walked down the stairs and found the room full of rough looking men as usual and a few scantily clad women who poured their drinks and flirted shamelessly with them.

“Who’s sailing tomorrow?” I asked them in my loudest and most stern voice, cutting through their chatter.

“Hey, who let the child in?” one of them asked angrily.

I came here once a month and there were always new people who had to give me crap. I turned and showed them my tattoo. “Now, who’s going out tomorrow?” I asked, raising my voice as I turned back around to face them. The room quieted until the only sound was the man playing on the piano in the back corner.

A thin man with glasses stood up from his seat at one of the low tables where they played card games for money. “I’m heading out to the islands tonight,” he said.

I walked down and set my envelope in his hand, it had my personal seal and ensured that if anyone opened it, my father would know. “Deliver this to Captain Rocco. If you can’t make it to him, find someone who can.”

“To Captain Rocco?” he asked nervously.

“He’s expecting it and you better not even think about opening that letter. If it is open he will be the one to deal with you,” I said quietly to him in my best threatening tone with relaxed posture to show I wasn’t scared of him.

He nodded his head and put the envelope in his bag. “I’ll be sure to get it to him as soon as possible.”

“Be sure that you do.” I turned and started up the stairs again.

“How did a young girl like that get Captain Rocco’s mark? I heard he refused to take on women?” someone asked as I walked away.

“Rumor is that she proved so brave as a child that he took her on and she served with him for years, until she suddenly decided to leave piracy behind,” someone answered.

“I heard she was involved in the Mackely Massacre and killed over twenty men herself,” someone else added.

“I heard that she wears that mask because she was horribly disfigured after battling with Captain Rocco himself and that he was so impressed with her fighting ability he granted her full admission to his pirate crew. She sailed on his ship with him for years,” a man said with a quivering voice.

I hesitated at the top of the stairs, turned to face the room which had gone silent again and then hurried out of the building and back to Duke. He was dozing with one back hoof cocked in relaxation. I was glad that more rumors were spreading since it meant that fewer men would be likely to try anything with me when I came to give my reports to be delivered. I took the mask off, hid it in my bag, and went back to the castle with my blonde hair shining brightly in the sun again.

Esmeralda stood on the steps in a pair of breeches and a plain shirt with her hands on her hips as I approached. Uh oh. I couldn’t think of anything I had done to be in trouble, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t done something or not done something. I trotted up to her with a smile on my face. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Where have you been?” she asked angrily. “I searched all over the castle grounds for you.”

I pulled out the pouch with the bracelet I had purchased and tossed it to her. “I wanted to get you something for all that you’ve done for me,” I told her. It was true. I was very thankful for everything she had done for me.

She opened the pouch and looked at the silver bracelet etched with leaves and amethysts placed to look like flower buds. Her face softened and she said, “Thank you, Tilia. Next time could you just let us know where you are going?”

I nodded my head. “Okay. Sorry to have worried you. I’m going to take Duke to the stables and then I will come inside.”

“Hurry, we waited to eat until you could get here,” she informed me with a smile.

I nodded and squeezed my legs around Duke to get him to walk. He headed towards the stable and I dismounted, taking his saddle off and putting him inside his stall. One of the stable boys would take him out to a pasture later in the day so he could roam with the herd of other horses and be able to stretch his long legs instead of sitting in a small stall all day. I jogged into the castle, hid my bag with my mask under a loose board in my floor and then jogged to the dining room.

The dining room was on the first floor of the castle, closest to the main doors with a lower ceiling painted to look like the sky with clouds, and one very heavy and thick rectangle dining table that had six chairs around it. When I walked in I found Jared and Esmeralda whispering to each other, but they stopped as soon as I walked towards them.

Griffin, the Chief of the King’s Steel and spymaster, sat across from them and arched an eyebrow when I entered. “Off on another suspicious trip early in the morning?” he asked me. He was an older man with grey and black hair and always wore his military breeches, boots, and then a simple shirt, which was grey today. He was notorious for his viciousness in battle and only Jared surpassed him in fighting prowess. He was in charge of the King’s Steel and advised Jared on all military matters.

“It wasn’t a suspicious trip,” I told him defensively, “I wanted to surprise my aunt with a present.”

“One of the guards reported that you were seen riding all the way to the docks,” Griffin said and sat back to watch me. He was incredibly intuitive and could read body language better than anyone. How had he received a report so quickly from the guards at the docks? I had just returned!

I stayed relaxed as I continued to hold his gaze and said, “The women who sell items down there have very nice jewelry and they don’t overcharge me when I come. Some of the merchants in the main part of the city will charge me double because they know that I’m royalty. I would rather spend my money with people who don’t try to rip me off. I wasn’t in any danger and besides, there were guards nearby so if I needed help they could have come to my aid quickly. Not that I would need their aid if I was in a fight.”

He smirked and looked at Jared. “She’s full of fire. I thought it might change as she aged and lived here longer, but it’s still there.”

Griffin stood up from his chair, pulled out my chair and waved me forward. I sat as he scooted my chair in and said, “Thank you.” As defensive as I got with him, he was still like an uncle to me.

Jared had been watching the entire exchange and finally addressed me. “I’ve made a decision,” he said, “regarding your magic training.”

I held still as I waited for his decision and only moved my eyes as I glanced from Jared to Esmeralda. What could it be? Was he angry that I wasn’t progressing? Esmeralda had said not to worry. Maybe she had just said that to pacify me.

“I’m going to assign you a tutor,” he said finally.

I groaned and slumped forward in my seat. “Jared, I’m not slacking off. I am really trying. I practice often. I practice every night.”

He smiled. “I know that you are trying and I am not accusing you of putting your magic learning off or slacking on it, but I think you might benefit from a tutor who can focus on you individually instead of being in a classroom where their attention is divided. It’s not a punishment.”

“Could have fooled me,” I muttered under my breath and folded my arms across my chest.

Esmeralda smiled, but then hid her face behind her glass as she took a drink.

“Who is going to torture, I mean tutor me?” I asked grumpily.

“I am,” a deep voice said from behind me.

I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. I had seen him every day since I arrived and no matter how many times I was around him, I couldn’t stop the strange feeling in my stomach whenever I was near him. He was the only person I knew of that had silver hair and yet it made him no less handsome. Those words were the first he had ever spoken to me despite my daily meals with him for the past six years. Faxon was the other Arch Mage, the strongest mage next to Esmeralda, and a Seer. A Seer could look at someone’s aura to see how much magic they had and see straight into their soul, or at least that’s what people said. I hadn’t asked about it because I didn’t really want to know what he could See.

Jared nodded his head, oblivious to my nervousness. “Faxon will be tutoring you. I feel that he is the most capable to help you.”

I didn’t really want to know how much magic I had. I didn’t want to know how
little
I had. “I’m sure Faxon has much more important matters to attend to than tutoring me,” I said through a cotton filled mouth, or what felt like one anyways. “Surely the Arch Mage has things to do aside from tutoring a Journeyman.”

Faxon sat down in the chair across from me and smiled at me, his perfectly shaped lips arching perfectly. “I’m glad to help you, Tilia and besides with the current peace in our country I have a bit more time on my hands.”

“He’s been pestering me all month,” Esmeralda said, “He keeps trying to use me for experiments.”

“So you thought it would be a good idea to unleash his boredom on me?” I asked her incredulously. “Your young, sweet, innocent niece?”

Griffin started coughing, but it sounded suspiciously close to a laugh. Jared arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. Esmeralda leaned forward and whispered, “You’re young and you can handle it.”

I leaned back in my chair and glared at her. “You always act like you’re old when it suits you, but then as soon as a battle or something happens you convince Jared that you are as spry as a teenager. You can’t have it both ways.”

She sat back, took her folded napkin from the table, shook it out, and then placed it on her lap with a regal look on her face and said, “I’m the Queen, I can have it any way I want.”

“Well now that that is settled, when do you want to start?” Faxon asked me.

I put my hands on the table, pretended to open a book, ran my finger from left to right as though reading, and said, “Hmm, I’m sorry, but my schedule is full until I turn eighteen.” I acted like I was shutting the book and said, “I fear I’ll never be able to make time for a tutor.” I sighed dramatically and Griffin started coughing again.

“If you make time for Faxon to tutor you I will start sparring with you and training you,” Jared offered.

My jaw dropped open and it took me a few seconds to talk. “Truly? You’re not just saying that to make me attend lessons with Faxon and then you’ll be too busy?” I asked. He was a very busy man after all. Running a kingdom was a lot of work.