Pavel, the ship’s priest and doctor, walked up next to Pollick. Elaina turned her stare on him as well, but he didn’t look cowed. The bastard probably believed his golden god would save him from harm.
“This is all that’s left?” Elaina said. “Out of my entire fucking crew, you two are the only ones that didn’t mutiny?”
Pollick dropped his eyes to the deck while Pavel gave a sympathetic smile that Elaina wanted to remove with a slap.
“Cap,” Alfer said quietly. “Reckon I got ’em calmed, but we need to get off the docks. They ain’t happy with the scene.”
Elaina turned around, and for the first time saw how big a crowd she had staring her way. Merchants, slaves, sailors, Clerics, whores, and good folk, and all of them were watching her.
“All ain’t lost yet, Cap,” Alfer whispered.
“But my ship is,” she hissed.
“Ain’t we here to convince the Council to give you more ships?”
Alfer was right. If she could get ships from the Council of Thirteen then she could go after Starry Dawn and take her back. She would gut Rovel and feed him to the beasties of the deep. But if she was to convince the Council, she needed to bargain from a position of strength, and having lost her own ship she was in a decidedly weak position.
“Find us an inn, Alfer,” she said quietly. “We might be here a while. One way or another, I’m getting a new ship from this fucking city.”
Chapter 22 - Fortune
Beck closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. When she opened them again, they were set with determination. She raised her right arm and aimed her pistol at the target, a splotch of paint on an empty wooden barrel.
Her arm shook. Her hand shook. Her pistol shook. She pulled the trigger.
The sand behind the barrel accepted the bullet with silent indifference.
“Shit,” she said quietly. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” She raised her left arm and aimed a second pistol.
The centre of the target splintered as the bullet burst through the barrel. Beck dropped both pistols onto the cloth she’d spread on the ground and spun around, dropping onto her arse in the sand and staring out at the sea. The sight of the endless blue gave her no relief, only made her homesick for the crystal clear canals of Sarth.
It had been a good two moons or more since the attack on New Sev’relain, and still Beck was feeling the injuries she’d received. Her right arm was weak and weary much of the time, and occasionally took to hurting for no reason the doctors could fathom. The bruising had faded, as had the swelling around her ribs and face, but she still had a couple of ugly burn scars on her arms. And her hair… Beck had always liked to keep her hair long, but the fire had burned much of it away and her scissors had cut away even more. What was left barely reached past her ears, and it seemed to have lost its golden shine. For a woman who liked to pride herself on her appearance, the scars and her ruined hair were almost more than she could bear. Beck knew that scars faded and hair grew back, yet it brought her no solace. To make matters worse, she had no idea whether her right arm would ever regain its strength.
A slight breeze picked up, blowing through her blouse and cooling her skin. Beck took in a deep breath and picked up a familiar scent on the wind.
“Good morning, Drake,” she said without looking his way. It was strange – she couldn’t look at the man without feeling guilty for something she hadn’t even done. It was why she’d thrown herself so wholeheartedly into the defence of New Sev’relain, and it was why she hadn’t fucked the captain since their return. Beck knew he wanted it, and she wanted it too, but the Inquisition had given her new orders, and those orders were going to cause Drake pain.
“How’s the arm?” Drake said. Beck hadn’t told him about her problems, but the man was too damned perceptive for his own good.
“How’s the crown?” she shot back.
“Heavy,” Drake conceded. “Can’t really call it a crown just yet though. Any fool with a slip of land and a few mouths to feed can call himself a king. It takes recognition to really sit a throne. I need Sarth and the Five Kingdoms to recognise us as legitimate, not just a bunch of criminals to be stepped on.”
Drake sat down in the sand next to Beck, and she couldn’t help but notice him staring at her cleavage. The man could be subtle when he wanted to be; he could also be as blatant as an open wound, and Beck wagered that was also by design.
“Nice secluded spot you found here,” Drake said.
Beck readied herself for an argument she didn’t want. “Tell me about the Drurr.”
Drake went from hot to cold in an instant, and Beck could feel his frustration. But some things were more important than the pirate’s feelings, and she needed to know how much he knew about the Drurr.
“Ain’t important,” he said sullenly. “Nice way to kill the mood though, eh?”
“It is important, Drake. As far as we know, you’re the only person ever to have escaped the Drurr. You’ve… seen things. You probably know more about the Drurr than anyone. We need to know what you know.”
“We,” Drake echoed with a bitter laugh. “You mean the Inquisition?”
“Yes.”
“You have a way of contacting them?”
Beck said nothing. The Inquisition’s methods of remaining in contact with their Arbiters had always been kept secret. Arbiter Darkheart severing their old lines of communication had only made the Inquisitors even more determined to secrecy with their new methods.
“Well, I don’t give a fuck what your Inquisition wants, Arbiter,” Drake said. “But if it’s you who wants to know, then ask away.”
There were a hundred questions the Inquisition wanted her to extract the answers to. There were some Beck wanted to know herself.
“The matriarch. Who is she, and why is she after you?”
“Did you know the Drurr used to rule over us like slaves?” Drake said. “At least, until the Dread Lords broke their civilisation and your Inquisition hunted them nearly to extinction. You drove them all underground, but you far from finished them off. It’s fair to say they ain’t too pleased about their current standing in the world. Most of them would like nothing more than to rise up and crush us all beneath their heels for a second time.
“But they can’t do that. Life is hard underground in the dark places the Drurr inhabit, Arbiter. There are things down there. Monsters your Inquisition hasn’t wiped out yet. They walk right out of the walls and snatch children from their beds. Some of them digest their food before eating it. Folk still alive with their skin melting…”
Beck glanced sideways at Drake. Tears were welling up in his eyes. She’d known her questions would cause him pain, but she’d never thought to see the man cry.
“They still take slaves,” Drake continued. “Pretty much as many as they can. For the most part the slaves are given the worst jobs. Mining out new areas, harvesting the fungi, scouting out the darkness when new tunnels are unearthed, feeding the trolls, being fed to the trolls. Pretty much anything the Drurr don’t want to do themselves, or anything deemed too dangerous to risk a Drurr life.
“The matriarch who…” Drake trailed off, and for a while said nothing. “The bitch who owned me was a sadistic fuck. She liked to pull the odd slave from the deepest, darkest of jobs and treat them with kindness. Make them grateful to her. She wanted to make them love her. Then she’d have them tortured. Nothing permanent – she wanted her pets whole.”
Drake shuddered, and Beck resisted the urge to comfort him.
“She’d torture them, then save them and treat them kind, like a lover, to make them love her again. Then she’d send them back for more torture. I reckon it was some sort of game to her. See how many times she could break a person before there was nothing of them left. I saw people kill themselves by biting open their own wrists just to escape the cycle of torment. Never saw anyone try to kill the bitch though. They all loved her too much, I guess. Despite what was done.” He sniffed loudly and fell silent.