“For the time being, you will be confined to this cabin. Once you have proven that you will not try anything foolish, you will be allowed to join me on deck to enjoy the fresh sea air while we continue your studies.”
The possibility of earning a measure of freedom was too great a temptation to pass up, so Gabriella willingly donned the mask of a docile, obedient slave and dedicated herself to learning all Solish Utua could teach her about becoming Minush the Red’s Most Favored Jewel.
The part wasn’t too difficult to play, and Gabriella soon came to the conclusion that being bought by Solish Utua was probably the best stroke of luck of this entire ordeal. He didn’t maul or molest her. He didn’t starve or mistreat her. He didn’t loose a magic eater on her several times a day. He even gave her real clothes—soft, loose-fitting gowns, and luxurious robes. So long as she remained docile and compliant, he treated her with an almost courtly courtesy, including answering the questions she asked about his acquaintance with Mur Balat (he’d known him ten years), the price he’d paid to purchase her (her weight in gold and diamonds, plus an ancient book reputed to be the grimoire of a famous, long-dead enchantress), and what he knew of Balat’s plans for her sisters (nothing, although given the expense and risk of their kidnapping, he assumed Balat had extremely wealthy and powerful buyers lined up to purchase them).
Best of all, he made no attempt to block the strong, bright, sunlight that streamed through the large windows that lined the back of the cabin, utterly confident in the efficacy of Balat’s inhibiting collar. Gabriella imagined that under most circumstances, that confidence would be well deserved, but as the ship sailed closer to Mystral’s equator, Summer began to notice a familiar warmth gathering inside her. A warmth that grew stronger and more palpable with each passing day.
Magic—hermagic—was coming back.
Elated, she made a point of sitting in direct sunlight as often as possible, trying to fan that warmth into hot flame. It was slow going. The collar prevented her from wielding her magic, but it also prevented her from actively calling the sun’s energy to fill her magical stores. Theywere,however, filling. And without the Shark there to constantly drain her dry, there was soon a bright, hot pool of sun-fed power smoldering beneath her skin.
She also discovered that although the collar prevented her from accessing her power and wielding it, it didn’t stop her emotions from affecting that power. Including—or rather, especially—that fierce, volatile fire at her core, that power she’d locked up so firmly that even Mur Balat and the Shark hadn’t been able to reach it.
The one thing Solish Utua did not do was give Gabriella much time alone. He or one of his guards was at her side every hour of the day, and he slept in the same cabin, only a few scant feet away from the cot to which she was chained each night. A guard stood near the door, watching over her as Solish slept.
In those quiet hours each night, as Solish slept, Gabriella saturated her mind with thoughts of vengeance, rage, and violence. The more she did, the more she could feel the fiery inferno of the monster boiling madly inside her, trying to get out. The pressure inside her built and built and built until she passed out from the pain. And when she woke the next day, she soaked up as much sunlight as she could, so that each night, as Solish slept, she could push herself harder, and stoke the fires of her rage higher.
Chapter 22
“He’s headed for the Kuinana,” Kame, Dilys’s first mate, pronounced grimly as Dilys and the Calbernan fleet closed in on the rapidly fleeing invisible ship.
“I know it.” The Kuinana was a series of massive reef systems, riddled with caves, that surrounded the northeastern tip of the Ardullan continent. A narrow, twisting channel though a forest of razor-sharp coral was the only navigable passage through the ocean-facing side of the reef.
For three days now, Dilys and the Calbernans had pursued the invisible ship across the Varyan into the warm, turquoise waters of the Sargassi Sea, closing the distance so rapidly that their prey had dropped their cloak of invisibility and concentrated all their magic on outrunning their pursuers. To sail that fast required tremendous magic, a fact that further solidified Dilys’s suspicions that the Shark was his cousin Nemuan. But no matter how strong the Shark’s magic, Dilys had the power gifted to him by both Gabriella and Khamsin of the Storms, and every ship in his fleet was speeding along on swift currents of both sea and air, all but flying across the ocean’s surface.
The Shark’s ship was clearly visible now, perhaps thirty miles ahead of the fleet.
“If he makes the Kuinana we lose him.”
“I know that, too,” Dilys said.
With its narrower lines, shallower keel, and smaller length, the Shark’s ship would have no trouble navigating the passage through the reef, or sailing the long stretch of calm shallows that ran for two hundred miles between the reef and the Ardullan coast. Dilys’sKrackenwas at a distinct disadvantage. His ship was wider and longer, built for battle, not for racing through tight, curving passages lined with razor-sharp reefs.
“Who do we have near the south Kuinana Gate?”
Kame named two ships.
“Send them to block off his escape.” Not that boxing the Shark’s vessel behind the reefs would net him Nemuan. Even if Nemuan couldn’t reach land and disappear into the dense jungles of Ardul, the reefs of the Kuinana were riddled with undersea caves. Nemuan and his entire crew could abandon ship, and Dilys might never catch them. It was much easier for Calbernans to hide themselves in the water than hide a ship... they could simply make the creatures around them think they were sharks or dolphins.
“I’ll try to slow our quarry down before he enters the Kuinana, but if that doesn’t work, you follow him in.”
“Tey, moa Myerielua.”
Dilys clapped a hand on Kame’s shoulder. “If for some reason, I don’t make it back, there’s a message in my cabin for my Uncle Calivan. See that it gets to him immediately.”
“Tey, moa Myerielua.”
“Good.” Although Dilys was almost certain it was Nemuan in that ship, he hadn’t shared his suspicions with his crew. He wouldn’t blacken the name of a Calbernan prince without incontrovertible proof. His crew wasn’t stupid. They’d noted the same things Dilys had, but none of them would suspect a Calbernan of rank—especially a prince—of being the murderous pirate responsible for the deaths of so many of their own and the kidnapping of the three Seasons. They all thought the Shark was a powerful magician.
Leaving Kame at the wheel, Dilys dove over the side of the ship. The ocean here was as warm as bathwater. He let the clean, salty depths surround him, let his senses flow out.
With his pursuers closing in on him, Nemuan had dropped the invisibility enchantment on his ship. Either he was focusing all his efforts on maintaining his ship’s high speed, or whatever spell he’d been using to mask his ship had run out. The now visible fleeing ship was not Nemuan’sWave Dancerbut a different, unfamiliar vessel. Dilys didn’t find that surprising. A prince of Calberna was hardly likely to commit grand treason in his own vessel.
Focusing on a fifty-mile swath between the swiftly cruising ship and the Kuinana reef, Dilys began pulsing fist after hammering fist of power into the sea. The ocean swelled up, then smacked down, swelled up, smacked down. Slowly, great waves formed, five foot, ten, twenty. Too high for Nemuan to risk a reef entrance through the Kuinana’s treacherous northern gate. He would have to calm the seas before he could.
Calming the seas would take time.
Strong webs plumped between Dilys’s fingers and toes. He gave a kick and speared through the waves swifter than a dolphin, continuing to send out those pulses of power before him as he went. Behind him, theKrackenand the rest of the fleet sailed on the same magic-fed current Dilys was using to propel himself.
