One thing was certain-loneliness weighed upon her like an anvil. After four days of speaking only to Lucky, she yearned for conversation and companionship more than food. Well, the fact that the rations she'd packed with her sleeping body in the travel chest were beginning to taste like chalk wasn't helping her mood.
She'd been dream-stepping across the upper decks by starlight, looking for Japheth, when dread tingled on her neck. Not knowing from whence it came, she descended to check on her body, only to find the inquisitive sailor had returned. He was hunched over her travel chest once more, this time inserting a pry bar under the travel chest's lid. With him was another sailor, a dark-haired woman with a terrible scar.
Anusha dashed forward and instinctively reached to grab the man's arm. Unlike all her recent practice with inert objects, her attempt to interact with a living creature failed. Her hand slipped right off the interloper.
Desperate, she reached for the man with both hands, thinking to grab the too curious investigator by his collar and haul him backward. Instead, her hands "slid" into his back, and she'd touched something slick and warm that had pulsed thub-dub, thub-dub, thub-dub…
The man screamed with a throaty, awful tone, fell backward onto the floor, and began convulsing.
The scarred woman looked at Anusha's image in the polished shield and screamed, "Ghost! A ghost is killing Dorian!"
Anusha took another moment to gaze at her own terrifying image in the polished shield. A ghostlike image stared back, a burning silhouette in a girlish dress. If she didn't know better, she'd scream seeing herself too. Especially if one of Anusha's companions lay insensate upon the floor.
But Anusha was not a ghost, nor did she mean anyone harm. Normally, Anusha couldn't even bring herself to hurt spiders scuttling around the corners of her suite. Her grazing contact with the sailor's… insides… was an accident. He didn't deserve what she'd done to him, whatever that was.
Or did he?
The truth was, both the screaming woman and the convulsing man were pirates, not sailors. She'd overheard both Japheth and Behroun say it, and other evidence she'd found on the ship the last few days confirmed it.
The man and woman had probably done a lot of terrible things. Perhaps they deserved a little pain, if not something more drastic, in return. Perhaps she should reach up and quiet the woman too, before she drew a response. It wouldn't do to draw more people down here, wondering why one travel chest didn't show up on the hold manifest.
But she couldn't bring herself to follow through.
Besides, already voices echoed from the decks above, yelling questions. The ship was alerted that something strange was in the hold. Nothing she could do now would change that; she would only make things worse by attacking the woman.
A chill of foreboding touched the back of her neck. If her sleeping body was discovered, they'd forcefully wake her. Then what? Would they tie her behind the ship to drag through the cold, shark-filled water until she drowned or died of cold? Did pirates really do that? Yes, of course they did.
Anusha moved until she stood just a few feet from the polished shields. With the new angle, she could no longer see the screaming woman's distorted image in any of the shields; hopefully, neither could the woman see her. Just to be safe, Anusha reached out and struck all three shields to the floor. They clattered loudly, and the pirate screamed the louder.
Bobbing shapes, visible around the edges of the hold opening, resolved as the heads of watchful, muttering pirates. They gazed down at their crewmates with varying degrees of surprise, humor, and real fear. None of them had seen Anusha's reflection.
A new voice blared down, "What's all this then, Brida? What's wrong with Dorian? I wager you stuck him, but are trying to claim it's spirits that done it. Am I right?"
Anusha saw the speaker peering down from the top deck, the toes of his boots overhanging the square opening. The elaborate hat revealed the man as Captain Thoster.
The woman on the ladder, apparently named Brida, kept her eyes fixed on the fallen shield in which she'd glimpsed Anusha's dream image. Brida exclaimed in a fear-coarsened voice, "No, sir! It was a ghost! I saw it myself, right after it got Dorlan right there!" She pointed. Her arm shook as she tried to indicate where she'd seen the "ghost."
Anusha took a few more steps away from the fallen shields, then paused. What would Captain Thoster make of the claim?
The captain turned his head and spoke to someone standing just back from the opening, his voice not loud enough for Anusha to hear his words. It sounded like a question.
Then a cloaked shape appeared at the edge of the hold access. Her breath caught slightly. It was Japheth!
Even from two decks below, Anusha could see Japheth's eyes gleamed red. His gaze locked with her own. Fear thrilled down her spine and her stomach tightened.
A third shape appeared next to Thoster, a woman dressed in a bone white sari wielding a scarlet-glyphed wand.
It was Seren, the Green Siren's mercenary wizard.
Thoster complained to Japheth and Seren, "I don't see anything."
Japheth looked up at the captain and the wizard, then back down into her eyes, still silent. Could he see her, or was she imagining it?
Seren traced symbols in the air with her free hand. Where her fingers passed, lines of magical energy persisted moments before fading. Syllables of pure arcane magic tumbled from Seren's lips. Her eyes flashed with a glint of citrine light.
"There!" said Seren, gesturing with her wand down at Anusha. "I see it now-an apparition! The spirit of a drowned woman, perhaps, lingers in your hold, Captain."
Anusha cursed. She nearly woke herself… but then thought, I've got to lead them away from my travel chest!
Instead of retreating, Anusha ran to the steps of the ladder and climbed. She slipped past the still petrified Brida on the broad rope rungs without touching her.
Seren cried, "It ascends; it attacks!"
Seren backed out of Anusha's view, as did Thoster, his features betraying bafflement and a hint of concern. Japheth merely cocked his head and observed. There was no doubt he saw her; his eyes didn't leave her as she climbed, and she ascended quickly. Without any real weight, rising required hardly any effort. She wondered, even as she clambered onto the top deck, apparently in full sight of Japheth, if she needed a ladder to ascend at all. She'd had dreams of flying when she was younger. Maybe if-
Seren hadn't run away; she'd merely retreated a few steps to cast another spell. The war wizard threw out her free hand, and from her fingertips sprang a tremendous stroke of blinding purple-white lightning.
Anusha screamed as obliterating, mind-shattering pain coursed through her naked, unprotected soul.
CHAPTER NINE
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) City of Nathlekh
A remarkable bridge provided access to Nathlekh. Not long ago, no such bridge had been required.
A decade earlier, a slow but inexorable earth movement thrust a majority of the city's Shou ward several hundred feet higher than the rest of the city. Hundreds of structures along the edges of the fault were destroyed. By chance, the destroyed structures were mostly the homes of non-Shou, though the Shou faced their own share of loss. When the earth stopped moving, the survivors slowly forgot their fear, especially those whose homes, mansions, and businesses remained. As many pointed out too, the new city heights provided an unexpected but welcome defensive stance against a landscape suddenly more dangerous than ever before.
Thus, once the sky fires, earth movements, and attacks by plaguechanged monsters subsided, a collection of the city's Shou nobles poured a large portion of their considerable wealth into the creation of the bridge.