Ramson collapsed onto the deck.
“Marvelous, Nita,” Kerlan said. “Now, take the others and load them onto the two wagons for the Blue Fort. Leave some to guard the ship. We must make haste. I shall join you, once I deal with my old friend, over here.”
No.A voice in Ramson’s head was screaming, but he couldn’t move.
Click-click-click.Kerlan’s shadow fell over Ramson, and for a moment, he looked down with mild pity.
Then he bent and wrapped his fingers around Ramson’s neck hard enough to cut off his air supply. His face morphed into cruel fury.
“Did you really think I’d let you ruin it all?” Kerlan hissed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Nearly fifteen years, I’ve been waiting for this—did you really think I’d let one pathetic son of a whore interfere?” He thrust Ramson’s head back against the wooden deck so hard that Ramson saw stars.
He coughed, sucking in air through his cloth gag, his stomach heaving. Yet his mind latched on to Kerlan’s words.Fifteen years.Kerlan had been planning this for fifteen years.
He thought of Daya’s words, of how she’d told him that her first job for Kerlan had been eight years ago, that Kerlan still had men waiting for him in Sapphire Port. Ramson had grown up listening to his father’s stories of Alaric Kerlan and his criminal empire. But, he realized suddenly, with a growing dread, he’d never known the reason why Roran Farrald had exiled Alaric Kerlan in the first place.
A small smile was playing about Kerlan’s lips. “I’ve made many Trades in my lifetime, paid pretty sums for pretty things. But the look in your eyes right now, my son, is simply priceless. The confusion. The anger at my triumph. The helplessness.” His smile stretched. “Tell me, did you bid good-bye to your beautiful blood princess?”
Something in Ramson snapped and he twisted, choking against his gag, his chains rattling.
Kerlan laughed. “Imagine my surprise, my utterdelight,in hearing that the so-called Red Tigress had landed in Bregon, right into the lap of my network of spies. Intending, I heard, to warn Bregon about Empress Morganya’s intentions to steal their weapon.” He chortled, wiping a tear from the edge of his eye. “Who do you think developed the siphons fifteen years ago? Who do you thinktoldMorganya about its existence in the first place?”
Ramson couldn’t breathe. His head spun, struggling to process what Kerlan had just revealed. The greater picture that he had been seeking all along, spanning oceans and kingdoms and decades.
“Yes,” Kerlan crooned, watching him carefully. “Oh, how lovely it is, watching you connect all the pieces of my lifetime of work. But how could you have known? All along, you’ve only seen the tail end of my grand plan. All those enhancements to the Blue Fort, the searock that those pitiful little fools in the Naval Headquarters now tread on—who do you think mined those materials in the first place, discovered the properties that made them so powerful?”
It couldn’t be. Back at the Naval Academy, they’d learned about the A. E. Kerlan Trading Company, which had excavated precious stone and supplied it to the Kingdom of Bregon. They’d been told that it had been a criminal empire operating under a façade, and that it was Admiral Roran Farrald who had banished its notorious leader forever.
“And then came Roran Farrald, my supposedfriend”—Kerlan spat the word—“who rose so quickly in the ranks of the Navy, and declared me a criminal once he saw what I had developed with searock. He sent me into exile, and took over everything I had built, all the knowledge I’d discovered.” He straightened, his face sliding back into mild serenity. “He’ll get his retribution tonight. My forces have already infiltrated the Blue Fort. Within hours, my army arrives, and we strike.
“And,” he said, slowly, with relish, “once I take down Bregon and deliver your Red Tigress back to Empress Morganya, I shall be crowned King of Bregon in the new era of our world.” His gray eyes bore into Ramson’s. “But first, I’m going to savor this moment: seeing you die, knowing just how hard you’ve failed. Knowing that everything you’ve ever loved and cared for is about to end.” He stood. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get going, Ramson. The biggest party in all of the Blue Fort awaits me tonight. Good-bye, my son.”
Ramson vowed that he would never give Kerlan the satisfaction of hearing him scream. Yet as he was dragged to the edge of the ship, the waves below black and impenetrable, he found his resolve wavering, his entire body beginning to shake against his will. But his frantic, scrabbling fingers met nothing but the smooth metal of his cuffs, and the weights chained to him were hard and unyielding.
In his last moments, images flashed through his mind. His father, eyes flat and black as an abyss, as he waved for the guard to kill Jonah. As he ordered Ramson’s arrest. As he slashed his blade through Sorsha.
Kerlan, jamming the hot brand to his chest, taking the broken, jagged pieces of him and sculpting them into something cruel and ugly.
And Ana. The way she had looked under the moonlight that night, seadust shimmering over her skin, lovely and bright. How she made him feel like a boy again, wretched and inadequate and fumbling and awkward.
How desperately, desperately he had wanted to kiss her.
A splash as the weights were hauled over the edge. Ramson barely had time to draw breath before Kerlan’s foot slammed into his stomach and the ground fell away from him.
The sky and the sea wheeled overhead as he hit the surface of the water. For a moment, he floated, and a wild, irrational part of him thought that if he kicked hard enough, he would stay afloat, he would escape.
But then he felt a sharp yank and the next thing he knew water, cold and black, closed in over his head, and he was being dragged down, down. And then he could only watch, his lungs on fire and his head spinning, as the surface drew farther and farther away and the light of the moon became a faint sliver, and then nothing at all.
Pressed against a pillar in a room of blackstone and chains, Linn felt as though she had been thrown back into a nightmare. The chamber had the septic smell of drugs mixed, Linn could tell now, with a rotten metallic stench that sent nausea spiking through her.
Linn edged forward until she could see the white robe of the scholar, the leather heels of Sorsha’s boots. The blond girl was slumped in between them.
Sorsha was facing a shelf; when she turned back, she held something in her hands. It resembled a bracelet made of a material that looked like jade and lapis lazuli interwoven. Like…searock.
Sorsha spoke some words, low and crooning, to the scholar before her. His head snapped up sharply, his eyes widening in fear. “Nen,” he said, raising a hand and backing away a few steps, gabbling some other words that Linn couldn’t understand. “Nen, nen—”
Sorsha lunged at him, teeth bared, dagger drawn. The scholar might have been physically bigger than her, but he was no match for Sorsha’s violence. He shouted as she knocked him against the wall.
Click.
