The Blood Curse (2 page)

Silence. She was surrounded by silence.

Her hands and feet tingled, came alive. Her hearing sharpened. She heard the coo of a pigeon, faint. A distant voice. The clatter of wagon wheels, barely audible.
I’m ashore. Where?

Roubos. It had to be the kingdom of Roubos.

The iron weight of manacles was absent from ankle and wrist. Britta had a brief flash of memory: the frantic scramble out the cabin window, the echo of her scream as the assassins hauled her back inside, the manacle being fastened around her ankle—cold, hard—the short chain bolted into the floor.

She’d pulled the bolt out, tugging day after day as the ship sailed across the vast Gulf of Hallas, had almost managed a second escape—or attempted suicide, or whatever one wished to call it. The second manacle had gone on, then, fastened tightly around her wrist. Punishment, not precaution. No precaution had been necessary; a Fithian had sat in her cabin every minute of the voyage after that, even when she used the chamberpot. Escape had become impossible, as had death. All she’d been able to do was wait. Wait until the ship berthed, wait until the men took her ashore—and then scream for help with all the air in her lungs. But they’d drugged her with All-Mother’s Breath and taken that away from her, too.

What would passersby have done? Come to her aid? Turned away in fear?

The lingering effects of the All-Mother’s Breath dissipated. Britta was aware of the rise and fall of her chest, the beating of her heart, the warm weight of a blanket over her. It was time to act.
If I’m alone, I try to escape. If escape is impossible, I kill myself.

She held that thought firmly in her mind, let it become a solid intention, hard-edged and definite, and opened her eyes.

A Fithian assassin sat less than an arm’s length away.

Britta felt rage and relief in equal measure. Rage because escape was impossible; relief because death was, too. No matter how many times she examined her choices and came to the same conclusion—that she must die rather than be used against Harkeld—she shrank from killing herself.

She stared at the assassin. He was maybe ten years older than her, in his late twenties, with curling brown hair and blue eyes. Curly, she called him in her head. He looked like a father, an uncle, a man who should have young children riding on his shoulders—until one saw the hard watchfulness of his eyes, the lack of expression on his face, the stillness in the way he sat.

A killer, this man.

He’d probably known the instant she woke. The Fithians were as observant as her armsman Karel had been, and even more dangerous.

Britta gazed at Curly as if he was a piece of furniture, trying not to let him see her emotions—rage, fear—and took in the room. Small, with a bare wooden floor. The door was closed, the window open a crack. Daylight.

She deliberately closed her eyes again. Eventually she would have to rise and use the chamberpot, while the assassin sat expressionlessly, but she would put that moment off as long as she could.

She went through her list. It was either that or allow despair to overwhelm her. She’d done this so often on board the ship that it came in a familiar sequence.

One. We saved the boys
. Her little half-brothers were in Lundegaard, beyond Jaegar’s reach. They would grow up loved and protected by their grandfather, King Magnas.

Two. Yasma is free. She will never be a bondservant again
. That was her final memory from Lundegaard: Yasma slamming shut the bedroom door, bolting it, keeping the boys safe from the assassins.

Three. Karel is free
. Karel, without whom she and Yasma and the boys would never have escaped Jaegar’s palace. Karel, who was as impassive and watchful as the assassins, and almost as deadly.

Karel, who hadn’t returned in time to save her from the Fithians.

Which is a blessing, because they would have killed him. And how could I have borne that?

She saw Karel’s face for a moment behind her closed eyelids. The stern, hawk-like features, the eyes so dark they were almost black, the brown skin. Memory dressed him in a scarlet tunic and golden breastplate, but Karel was free now, as free as Yasma, and no longer wore an armsman’s uniform.

Four. Harkeld is alive and guarded by witches
. That was the item that gave her the most hope. Her half-brother Harkeld was still alive, he was destroying Ivek’s curse, and he had witches to help him. Witches who could throw bolts of fire and change into lions and kill Fithian assassins.

Britta hugged that thought to herself. The assassin sitting soundlessly alongside her bed wasn’t invincible. Witches could kill him. Would kill him.
Had
to kill him. Because Harkeld had to survive. He had to destroy the curse—or everyone in the Seven Kingdoms would die.

And she could not allow herself to be used as bait to catch him.

Escape or die. Those were her two choices. And now that she was on land again, a thousand leagues closer to Harkeld than she’d been before, it was imperative that she do one or the other.

CHAPTER THREE

T
HEY CAME FOR
her at dawn. Britta was led down a long, dark corridor and out into a courtyard of hard-packed dirt. Gray light lit the sky. The air was mild and damp.

A high wooden fence enclosed the yard. Britta saw a pigeon house in one corner and stables at the back. Horses waited in the middle of the courtyard, some saddled for riders, two harnessed to a covered cart. Men stood silently—five of the assassins who’d abducted her, six counting the man who held her wrists behind her back and pushed her into the courtyard—and a stranger, an old man with skin like leather and gray hair and a scarred mouth.

The old man was an assassin. One glance at him told her that. He watched her approach. There was no compassion in him, no empathy or kindness or humanity. His gaze was cold, hard, flat. He would kill her as casually as he’d swat a fly.

The hands gripping her wrists tightened. Britta halted obediently. Her gaze flicked to the horses, to the high fence. The sky was lightening. She heard birdsong. A wagon clattered past.
If I scream now, will anyone come to my rescue?
Best to wait until they were out on the street. Somewhere busy, where passersby might come to her aid, or even better, city guardsmen.

The old assassin spoke to the man who led her abductors. Short sentences, no wasted words. His voice was too low to overhear. He gestured with one hand, and she saw that it was wooden, fingers permanently curved, thumb sticking out stiffly. The rest of the assassins stood silent, waiting. They didn’t speak much, Fithians. Their quietness made them even more frightening. The only human thing about them was the temperature of their skin. Britta was aware of the warmth of the hands gripping her wrists. It seemed wrong, a violation of nature. Fithian blood should be cold.

The old man stopped speaking. The leader of the assassins gave a curt nod. Leader, she called him in her head. He had a broad, flat-cheeked face and pale gray eyes.

Leader reached beneath his cloak and took something from a pouch. He stood half-turned from her. Britta saw his hands were busy, but not what he did. He turned and came towards her. Alarm spiked in her chest. It was suddenly difficult to breathe.

She’d made Leader bleed aboard ship, kicked his nose so hard that blood ran from it. Memory of that moment brought a little flash of triumph. Britta clung to it tightly, trying to smother her fear.

Leader halted so close that she could almost smell him. Pride kept her from cringing. She lifted her chin and met his eyes.
I made you bleed
.

The grip on her wrists tightened.

Britta couldn’t control a flinch as Leader reached for her. She jerked her head away, but hard fingers grasped her jaw and hauled her head around. She saw what Leader held in his other hand: a cloth.

Britta opened her mouth to scream.

The cloth pressed against her nose and mouth. She inhaled the smell of vanilla. All-Mother’s Breath.

Britta had time for a second’s rage before plummeting into blackness.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE SHIP SLID
into the harbor of Droznic-Drobil. Karel stood tensely at the railing, the captain’s spyglass to his eye. The harbor was busy, but nothing like the harbor they’d sailed from. The bustle was an everyday bustle. The panic hadn’t reached here. No chaos of refugees overflowed the wharves.

“There!” Prince Tomas cried, pointing. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Karel jerked the spyglass to the left. A sloop, low and fast, built for speed. The Fithian ship? His heartbeat sped up. He scanned the vessel. The sails were furled, the deck empty. “Could be,” he said, and he sent a prayer to the All-Mother:
Let it be, please
.

The minutes it took to find a mooring at the wharf seemed interminable. Karel tried not to let his impatience show. King Magnas had placed leadership of this mission in his hands, and he would prove the king’s trust had not been misplaced.

“Tomas and I will speak with the harbormaster,” he told the armsmen. Ten royal armsmen—the king’s best fighters—at his command. “Stay aboard. If that’s not the Fithian sloop, we sail immediately.” There were other, smaller ports on Roubos’s south coast that the assassins could have headed for, but—All-Mother willing—this was the port, that was the sloop, and Princess Brigitta was here.

The mooring ropes were made fast. The gangplank slapped down. Karel strode down to the wharf, Prince Tomas at his heels.

T
HE HARBORMASTER WAS
a thin, harassed man, but one of King Magnas’s gold coins bought them his full attention. “Sloop?” The man flicked back a page in his register, running a finger down the scrawled entries. “Arrived yesterday mornin’. Early.”

“From?”

The man peered at his handwriting. “Horst.”

“How many passengers?” Karel asked, conscious of Prince Tomas standing tensely at his side.

“Uh...” The harbormaster squeezed his eyes shut. “Mebbe... half a dozen.”

“What did they look like? Merchants? Soldiers? Refugees?”

“Soldiers,” the man said, without hesitation, opening his eyes.

“Uniforms?”

“No. Just...” He shrugged. “The way they moved.”

“Was there a young woman with them? With golden hair?”

The harbormaster shook his head. “Not so’s I saw.”

“No one came ashore but men?” Was it the wrong sloop, the wrong harbor?

“They carried some’un ashore, wrapped in a cloak. A child, I thought, sleeping.”

“A child?” Excitement surged in Karel’s blood. “How big?”

The man thought for a moment, then held out his arms. “So big.”

Karel exchanged a glance with the prince.
Could be her.

“Did they say where they were going?”

The harbormaster shook his head, and glanced at the gold coin Karel held.

“Did anyone meet them?”

Another headshake.

“What direction did they go in?”

The harbormaster pointed. “Up yon street.”

“On foot?”

A nod. “They knew where they was headed.”

“Their accents...” Prince Tomas said. “Were they from Roubos?”

The harbormaster shook his head again. “They was foreign.”

“You must meet a lot of people, hear a lot of accents.” The prince smiled, the scar creasing his cheek. “Where are we from?”

“You’re from Lun’gaard,” the harbormaster said, without hesitation. “And he’s from Esfaban. Least, his face is. His voice is Osgaard.”

Karel blinked, disconcerted by the man’s acuity. He exchanged another glance with Prince Tomas. “Where do you think the sloop’s passengers were from?”

“Not from the Seven Kingdoms.”

“The Allied Kingdoms? The Dominion?”

“One or t’other,” the harbormaster said. “Not from the Seven, at any rate.”

“Has the sloop ever berthed here before?”

“I seen it a few times.”

Karel turned the coin over in his fingers. The harbormaster’s eyes followed the movement. “Could they have been Fithians?”

The man’s gaze jerked from the coin. His face paled. “Fithians? I don’ know what they sound like, and I don’ never want to know!”