“But... but you let Aeshyr come and go! He’s a stone sky god too!”
“As far as I know, Aeshyr has no mate to make him mortal. And as he made his trade bargains with a previous Honoured Eye, long before my time, I had very little say in the matter. We have come to rely on him to shield our city. Shield it from the likes of your mate.”
“I already told you, he’s changed!” I knew it was pointless to reiterate that point, but I couldn’t stop myself. This all felt so unfair. Yes, Skalla had done damage, before my time and even during it. But shouldn’t he have at least been given a chance to prove himself worthy of trust?
But then again, why would we want to prove ourselves to someone like this?
“So then you’re just going to kill me. An innocent person.”
I almost told him I was pregnant then, hoping to make him feel guilty enough that it would change his mind, but at the last second I decided not to. I didn’t know if it could be used against me somehow. And besides, the next person I was going to tell about the baby was Skalla.
“I am not going to kill you,” he reminded me.
“No, just relying on somebody else to hold the blade,” I spat. “I’m sure the Mother would be proud to see that her Honoured Eye has become a fucking despot.”
He made no response to that, perhaps no longer interested in trying to justify his fucked-up logic to me. And that was just fine, because I was done hearing it. I stared mutely out at the passing landscape, startling when I recognized an abandoned house up on a hill. Suddenly wanting to weep, I wondered if my boots were still there, abandoned among the dust and the ghosts.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but it felt like maybe an hour or two at fairly high speeds before another building came flickering into view. It was massive – palatial – all high wooden beams and open pavilion rooms, perched above the river and nestled in shivering grass. Despite the late hour, light spilled out of it. So did raucous Bohnebregg voices.
A boat came instantly towards us from the darkened shore, as if someone had been anticipating our arrival, or maybe some scouts from the property had seen us. Something whistled through the air, and I yelped in shock as a heavy metal hook landed in our boat, its chain pulling tight as it snagged on the side. The sound of something grinding across the water echoed, and I became aware of our boat being forcibly pulled towards the other. Koltar killed the power and let it happen.
Maybe I should try jumping now...
We’d been heading towards the building, and the water wasn’t as deep here. I could probably swim to shore...
But then what? I’d just be pursued by the other boat and maybe even killed all the faster. And now I knew it wouldn’t just end my life, and the new one inside it. It would kill Skalla, too. Skalla would be back soon – he had to be. I just had to get him enough time.
“I spoke with Prince Joleb this morning,” Koltar said to the two massive Bohnebregg warriors manning the other boat as ours got near.
I know that name. Jolakaia’s brother!
“Here is the creature I promised him,” Koltar continued.
Creature?! What the hell had Koltar told them about me? That I was some kind of exotic hog they could roast over a fire?
Koltar gestured towards me, as if showing off the merchandise, and in that moment it was as if everything in my vision had pulled inward into a single point. There it was. The stun weapon he’d used on Zev and Jolakaia, tucked into the inside of his robe. Like an angry cat, I leaped for it, surprising him just long enough to snatch it and aim it directly at his chest. Swearing, I pressed my fingers uselessly along its length, searching for some kind of trigger or on-switch.
I was too slow. A clawed hand seized on the side of our small boat, dragging it over the last bit of the way until the two boats collided, rocking each other violently in the water. I lost my balance, stomach flipping, and probably would have fallen if that same hand hadn’t lifted from the side of the boat and grabbed my wrist in a powerful grip.
“What is this?” hissed the Bohnebregg male who’d grabbed me, staring down at the metal tube. He squeezed me hard enough to bruise, and I cried out, dropping the tube involuntarily. He caught it with his other hand.
“Merely a torch to light our way,” Koltar said smoothly, though I thought I could sense some nervousness beneath his polished demeanour.
“Doesn’t look like a torch,” the male said.
His companion grunted in agreement. “Looks like a weapon. But not like any design I’m familiar with.”
The first one’s finger must have found the hidden notch or button, because suddenly the end began to glow.
“Ah, look, Bracka,” he said, grinning dangerously. “Shall we test it?”
My mouth went dry.
It doesn’t kill. It doesn’t kill...
Well, it didn’t kill broad-boned, scaly, Bohnebregg people. Who knew what the hell it could do to a squishy, soft-skinned, pregnant human?
But it wasn’t me the warrior aimed the tube at.
It was Koltar.
“This was not the agreement,” Koltar said sternly, as if he could use his authority to frighten these two. But these men were not his devoted Mother’s Claws. “I was to deliver the god Skallagrim’s mate and then leave.”
“Our Prince never planned to let you leave,” said the one holding the weapon. “A man seemingly from nowhere coming down the river in a boat as nice as any of ours? A man no one knows, whom none of us have ever seen before, with no allegiance and no warlord? And now, you come with a weapon unlike any I have ever encountered? No, we were always going to take you, too. It was only the promise of killing this strange creature and her god that kept us from imprisoning you when you came to us this morning.”
The weight of Koltar’s miscalculations seemed to hit him all at once. He spun and crouched, looking like he was going to dive right into the water the way I’d thought about doing so many times already. But the male holding me just laughed, the sound vibrating right down into my tender arm. Then he aimed the weapon at Koltar’s back and fired.
Koltar instantly collapsed into the bottom of the boat.
“River drown me,” swore the one who’d fired. “He dead?”
“You’d better hope not, Tarak,” said the one called Bracka. “You know Prince Joleb wanted to interrogate him. Find out which army he’s spying for.”
“But he did actually bring us...” Tarak frowned down at me, lifting my hand to inspect it with a half-fascinated, half-repulsed look. “This thing. It seems he did speak true about bringing us the foreign creature. Perhaps he is no spy.”
“Then where did he get this boat from?” Bracka said. “Do you know how much good, forged metal went into this thing? There are no nearby villages with hoards like that these days – we have conquered them all. And look at the design. It is very unusual. And his weapon! What, did he just pull that fully-formed out of the river? Prince Joleb is right to think him a spy. The only question is for whom. I know of no army with boats or weapons like this one.”
“Hmm. You speak true. So. Is he dead?”
Bracka jumped into our boat and nudged Koltar with his foot.
“Still breathing.”
Relief sighed out of me, not because I was glad Koltar was OK, but because it meant he’d told the truth about Zev and Jolakaia not being dead. They were alright back in Callabarra. And they’d be able to tell Skalla what had happened, assuming he and I both lived that long.