Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) (9 page)

The children squinted against the sun. Some even closed their eyes completely, hanging on to others for guidance, as if until now they had been kept in a dark place.

I could not see them past a point, but they did not reappear on the dock. The scarfed man must have been able to negotiate passage with our captain, despite One-Tooth Tum’s protests that he did not take on passengers.

“A beggar lord,” Batumar said and closed the porthole. “They come to the slave markets to replace the little beggars that they lose to abuse or disease.”

I hoped we would not be forced to spend much time with the beggar lord during our journey. I thought it likely that the children had been maimed by the slavers on the man’s orders to make them better beggars. My heart shivered inside my chest. I hated the man already.

Chapter Seven

(Hardstorm’s Fury)

As we left Rabeen, I rested while my body rapidly healed. Batumar brought in a bucket of seawater so we could wash and he could shave with his dagger.

Night had fallen when the captain sent word with Pek that we should go on deck as we would be entering the hardstorms early morning. I left our cabin with Batumar, walking on my own two feet. The thought that this would be our last chance for fresh air, for standing under the open sky for a while, drew me forward.

Our last chance forever if the ship sinks
, a little voice whispered in my head, but I shooed that voice away. I would not let fear rule my heart.

We walked down the passageway, and I could see in the moonlight that came down through the open hatch that the tiger cage was now lashed to heavy iron rings in the walls in the open area that led toward the captain’s cabin. The tiger roared and swiped at the sailors passing by. But her ears perked up and she sniffed toward me when she saw me coming.

I was happy to see her well, but a sailor kicked one of the four carrying poles of the cage just to rattle the animal. He spat at the tiger. Other men scowled at the beast too, with hate and fear.

“For the captain, the tiger is a source of gold,” Batumar said next to me. “For his men, she is a threat. If the storm tosses the cage around and breaks it, the tiger will kill every one of them. In the close quarters of the ship, no man could stand against her.”

I watched the men a moment longer. They went about their tasks with a dour determination. The loud joking and fighting of the previous day had disappeared. It seemed the thought of sailing into the hardstorms at dawn filled even the most grizzled pirates with dread.

I nodded toward the tiger. “On the island, what did the men mean when they said she is a Selorm battle tiger? Where is her lord warrior?”

Batumar shrugged. “The Selorm had come to our aid centuries before, not just at the last siege. I heard tales told of it. When a Selorm lord dies, his tiger fights to the death. But if the battle ends before that is accomplished, the tiger goes off, becomes wild again. She might be the offspring of such tigers.”

I thought about that as we went up on deck and moved to a spot where we would be sheltered from the wind. The full moon glazed the ship in silver glow, making it look as if we had just sailed out of a myth.

On other ships I had seen, the deck had been filled with merchandise, bales, and barrels. On the
Doomed
, nothing was stored abovedecks. Our red sails were patched many times over. Much of the rigging appeared new, as if a recent trip had torn most of the ropes. I stepped on deep gouges in the planks we stood on. The whole ship looked like a warrior who had barely escaped with his life from a brutal battle.

And the men looked no better. As if they were once the beggar children of Rabeen, now grown, nearly all of them had some visible injury: battered faces, limps, lost teeth, lost eyes, even lost ears.

They inspected the ship with grim looks, and worked on the rigging and the sails. Some prayed to their gods. I saw one tossing a handful of dead rats into the sea, muttering something after them. I wasn’t sure if he had been cleaning up below or giving an offering.

Batumar and I stopped in the aft, out of the way, looking slightly deformed, the both of us. Our food stores were tied to our bodies, some under my tunic, the rest under Batumar’s doublet, with the reasoning that if the rats came in the night to rob us again, at least we would wake and could fight them off this time.

He pulled me to him and enfolded me in his cloak so only my face was showing. “Are you warm enough?”

“I am.” I leaned against his hard chest and soaked in the heat that radiated off his body. I watched the ship and the men around me like some baby bird from her nest.

Batumar rested his chin on the top of my head. “Are you truly well enough to be up and standing?”

“I am fine well.” The way we stood just then, I thought I could handle anything.

I thought how far we had already come in our plan. We were nearly at the hardstorms’ edge. In but a few days, we’d be through the worst. Then we would reach Ishaf and could begin gathering a mercenary army.

For the first time, instead of the hundred ways we could fail, at last I could see our victory. Even the dark god of the mountain had let us go without taking what he willed, and I swore never again to return to his mountain temple.

Angry shouts pulled me from my thoughts. I turned toward the foot of the mainmast, where two pirates quarreled, then came to sudden, vicious blows. Nobody paid them any attention, and the fight ended when one broke the other’s nose.

I moved forward, but Batumar held me back. “You are not strong enough.”

And I leaned back against him after a moment. The broken nose
could
heal on its own. Most every man on deck had suffered such before, judging by their faces. They seemed to carry their scars as badges of honor. And indeed, even though they all knew I was a healer, the injured man never even looked my way but shuffled off to work.

As I stood there in the warmth and safety of Batumar’s arms, the little beggars popped up from below one by one, the beggar lord close behind them. At least he did not keep them tied up. Their fair hair was matted, sticking out every which way. They were scrawny from first to last, their faces pallid, scratching as if they shared their sackcloth garments with fleas.

The five boys and four girls huddled together wherever they went. The youngest, a girl, might have seen six summers, the oldest, a boy, no more than ten. I looked at their injuries and could not bear to think that their deformities had been caused on purpose.

The beggar lord watched them closely. He was as tall as Batumar but leaner, somewhere between myself and Batumar in age. He wore all black, from his boots to his quilted doublet and his cloak. His head was still wrapped in his headdress. His hair, what I could see of it, was the color of a camel. His eyes were the gray-blue of the turbulent sea.

He looked toward us.

I turned away.

When I turned back, he was sitting on the deck with his face into the wind and the children all gathered around him.

Batumar said pensively next to my ear, “Every beggar lord I have ever seen was old and fat. Maybe he is a merchant, making delivery.”

“Why risk a pirate ship?”

“The same reason we do. It is the only ship that will cross. He might have come through the Gate before the war, gone around the islands, trading. Maybe he lost everything he had in the war, invested whatever he had left in these little beggars. And now he has to get them home, whatever way he can.”

The children sat quietly around the man. They barely moved, as if too scared to even breathe. They did not look around like their master. They kept their gazes down. They did not talk to each other or even squirm as other children would have.

The youngest of the girls coughed a deep, tortured cough. I could feel the pain in her lungs through that scraping, gurgling sound.

I moved forward, but Batumar’s iron arms would not allow me to step away from him.

The pain I had taken upon me on Rabeen was lessening. I could have borne the pain of this little girl’s chest and her fever. Once we went belowdecks, I would have no need to move from our cabin for days. But I knew Batumar would not hear any of that, so I said, “At least some herbs.”

And he nodded.

I had a small tin flask hanging from my side, half-filled with water. I parted Batumar’s cloak around me, then my own, and checked the bundles hanging from my belt, selected the right herbs—feverfew, sour birt, and sweet, fragrant bambler—added the right amount to the water, then stuck the flask under my clothes, against my skin, between my breasts. Then I drew the cloaks back around me again and let the herbs infuse into the water that was warmed by my body.

We stayed on deck until the wind grew bitter cold. The waves churned under the ship, stronger and stronger. When the merchant gathered his little beggars to go below, we followed. We might as well try to catch some sleep, for I suspected there would not be much sleep in our future.

I pulled the flask from my clothes and approached the beggar lord in the passageway below. Batumar stayed close by my side.

“For the little one.” I held out my offering. “I am a healer.”

I spoke in the merchant tongue used throughout most of the world, a simple dialect with words borrowed from near every language.

The man responded the same way, with a thick accent. “What is it?”

“Herb water.”

Behind him, the children gathered around the tiger cage. The tiger watched them as if mesmerized. They were about the same size as the goats the pirates had stocked for the tiger for the journey. I could scarcely look away for fear that one of the children would step too close to the cage.

But even when a boy did, the tiger simply watched, cocking her head, pricking her ears.

Pirates moved around us, performing their tasks. The schooner held about seventy of them, from what I had seen so far. Rarely did one pass the tiger without at least spitting toward her. One man cursed the animal. The other one cursed the captain, then looked around quickly and ducked his head.

“Thank you, mistress.” The merchant took the flask with a sharp nod, then clicked his tongue at the children, who left the tiger and hurried down the passageway behind their master.

Their cabin was past ours, all the way in the aft. I heard the faint bleating of a goat from that direction. I suspected the pirates had put as much distance between the tiger and her food as possible, so the goats’ smell would not overmuch tease her.

Batumar and I retired to our cabin, climbed the pile of potatoes, ate a quick dinner, then slept through the first half of the night. The other half, we clung together as the ship pitched worse and worse.

By the time morning dawned, the ship rolled so hard we could not go up on deck. When we emptied our bucket out the window, twice as much water splashed in as what we threw out, wetting the potato sacks.

We crawled to a dry spot and bundled up together. Neither of us ate, although the rats had not taken any of our food overnight.

My stomach rolled with the ship. Since barely any light filtered through the thick glass of the porthole, I lit one of our tallow candles.

“Watch that we do not set the cabin on fire.” Batumar sounded tired.

“I shall not let go of the candle,” I promised and moved the light toward him.

His face had a greenish tinge. His lips thinned. Agony sat behind his eyes.

“What is it?” I asked in full alarm.

He tried for a smile and failed. “I was not made for water.”

I blinked. He was shipsick. Some people could not bear the movement of the sea; their bodies rebelled. And, of course, of all sea passages, crossing through the hardstorms was the worst. The toughest sailors dared not even to attempt it, only pirates who did not care for their lives.

“Why?” I asked, stunned and worried. Why would he take a journey such as this upon himself? Oh, I knew the answer. He would have done anything to save his people. So then I asked, “What hurts?”

He did manage a rueful smile this time. “If you could only remove my brain and stomach, my lady, it would be a merciful service.” And then he grabbed the bucket and heaved up his sparse dinner.

I took his flask, warmed water in it over the light of the candle, and made an herb tea I used to settle the stomachs of expecting women. I did not tell him that. He was too proud a warrior to drink women’s tea. Although, maybe not too proud right at that moment.

He drank and sighed. “You should not have come, but I cannot regret having you here with me.”

The ship pitched even harder.

I cleaned up the vomit, letting in as little sea spray while doing it as possible, then blew out the candle and curled against him in the darkness.

Pirates shouted outside our door, running down the hallway. I could hear heavy footfalls on the deck above us as well. Time passed, the ship rocking so hard, every moment could have been our last, timber giving to water, then a cold, deep grave.

The tiger roared.

I sent my spirit song to her.

She roared nevertheless.

Then the weather turned worse.

Wind howled outside; rain and waves lashed against the side of the ship. The schooner lifted up and up, high into the air, then came down with a bone-rattling crash.

The sacks of potatoes shifted in our cabin. We rolled with them.

Batumar groaned. I only heard it in the din because my ear was so near his lips.

“Are you well, my lord?”

“Never heard anyone die from being shipsick.” He pushed out the words with effort. “I wager I shall live.”

Maybe we would, maybe we would not. Being shipsick was turning out to be the least of our worries. With every passing moment, I was becoming more and more certain that the ship would sink. No shipwright could make a ship tough enough to withstand these waves’ battering.

I had been in a siege not long ago, but this was worse than the battering ram at the gate. Unlike a human enemy, the relentless and brutal waves never tired.