“I’m listening.”
“I want your witch to train me.”
The floor might have slipped out from beneath his feet. He narrowed his eyes. “You want her to… train you?”
“Yes. In magic. It’s the only thing left I don’t already have that your party can offer me.”
Could a Veragi witch even help someone from another coven? Knowing his mother, she would try. She would do it out of the goodness of her heart. If he knew anything of magic, it was that left untrained, it became incredibly painful.
Luckily for him, he wasn’t as kind as his mother. “Only if you bring my party to the Iron Bay and then take usbackto Icruria, all of our loved ones in tow.”
Reid got the feeling this woman had never done anything without a backup plan, and the thought concerned him. Especially as he glanced at the iron-wrought map along her wall. She could very well lure them into the Iron Bay, slaughter them all, and dump his body in front of the gates to the fortress. Shecould demand her lost prisoner as her reward, and surely Ozik would grant it to her.
It all hinged on the thread of rage—ofhatred—that sparked in the pirate’s eyes at the mention of Dominik. The greatest problem for conquerors was that they had no shortage of enemies; whatever had been stolen from this woman needed to be enough to make her an ally. Given her flawless use of Icrurian and the magic that soaked her veins, she must be from a bloodline native to Icruria. To Sigguth.
But if she was here, it was possible Icruria had made an enemy of her, too.
Still, the woman balanced her blade in her fingers, letting it tip from left to right as she stared at him. “I want asylum for the members of my crew who choose to take it. All the best comforts in your capital. When this is over, they won’t be able to return to Asterya.”
“And yourself?”
She merely shrugged. “Sure.”
The pirate confounded him, but she was right. If they succeeded, without a doubt this crew would never make it back in and out of Asterya alive. This would be the end of her pirating—it would sever any relationship she had with Mekës.
“Deal,” Reid said.
“Deal,” she repeated.
Reid reached out his arm, the Icrurian way of greeting and symbolizing trust, but the pirate looked at it. She scoffed. “I’m not your friend, Wolf.”
He chuckled, perhaps nervously, and dropped his arm. “What is your name, then?”
Power threaded the room as the pirate—or witch, whatever the hell she was—said, “Sachia, captain ofThe Red Corsair.”
With each moment Reid spent above deck, he got a better understanding of the long stretch of sea that led into the Iron Bay. Cays littered the ocean between Zataar and Asterya, and their ship carefully avoided coming too close to any of them. “Each island belongs to different crews,” Sachia told him one morning as they stared out at the open ocean. “Kings in their own right, some even have castles to prove it.”
The entire way of life confounded him. “They’re like individual nations, then?” Reid asked.
“No.” Sachia stared out at the water, her hands curling around the gunwale. “Everyone gets in bed with Asterya or Zataar at some point. Some whore themselves to both. Those people wind up rich or dead.”
At that, Reid went rigid. He wondered if that was what had happened to Sachia’s brother.
The enormous glaciers and icebergs of the Sheets lent to tumultuous, freezing-cold water. Assurance rode his bones; the Icrurian army could not navigate this side of the continentandavoid the pirates in time to conquer Mekës.
They would need to go through the Loursevain Gap.
Dressed in warm leathers, a fur-lined cloak, and thick gloves, the numbness of Reid’s hands had ceased, the ever-present trembling of shivers long gone. Sachia had made their entire party comfortable, had treated them like members of her crew. They’d been given one of the private quarters in the hull to share. They slept on hammocks that were strung from the ceiling, and though it was nothing like his bed at home, it was far superior to the floor and thin padding they’d slept on in the merchant’s boat.
“Off the stern!” the quartermaster, who Reid had learned was named Jonáš, alerted.
Reid and Koen turned at the same time. Behind them, a set of white sails billowed in the wind, a ship moving with incrediblespeed. To keep up with Sachia’s boat was a feat itself, but to overtake—
“She slowed down,” Koen whispered from beside Reid, realizing how this ship had caught up toThe Red Corsairin the first place. Sachia had wanted it to. She’d been standing here, waiting for this very moment.
How long ago had she spotted it?
A loud boom sounded.
