Dark Shores Read online

  He shook his head. “I’m not leaving you. Not like this.”

  An iron ball landed off the port side, spraying them with water.

  Laying her mum down, she clambered to her feet. “No one else can swim so far. It must be you. Now go! Find Magnius and warn the other ships.” He hesitated and she shoved him toward the stern. “That’s an order.”

  With one final look at Teriana, Bait leapt over the rail to disappear into the foam of their wake.

  “Drop sail and run up the white flag,” she ordered the crew. It was time to find out the depths of Lydia’s betrayal. And how much it would cost her.

  10

  TERIANA

  Teriana spent three days locked in the brig. Alone. She didn’t know whether the rest of her crew were alive or dead. Whether her mother was alive or dead. She’d never been more terrified in her life.

  Or felt more guilty.

  “This is all your fault,” she told herself every time she sensed a bout of self-pity coming. “You brought this upon yourself. You deserve everything you get.” And her verbal flagellation might have been some comfort except for the fact that her mother and her crew hadn’t deserved this. None of them had opened their big mouths and told all the secrets of their nation to a bloody weakling of a Cel girl.

  Because that was what she told herself: not that Lydia had maliciously betrayed her, but that she’d been too weak to stand up to the inquisition of her future husband. That Teriana had placed her secrets in a wicker basket rather than the steel box they deserved. Her mother had been right. It was straight to the underworld for Teriana’s soul for what she’d done. There was no argument for it being otherwise.

  Not that she didn’t try. Day and night she knelt with her head pressed against the floor, praying to Madoria for forgiveness. Even when her Cel captors gave her foul water and food, which made her sick from both ends and almost glad she was imprisoned alone, she prayed. Curled up in a ball on the damp deck, she prayed, promising she would do whatever her goddess asked in order to earn forgiveness. In order to make up for what she had done.

  But Madoria was silent. As was Magnius. She hoped fervently that he was far, far away with Bait, warning their people of the danger. But part of her feared that the Quincense’s guardian had turned his back on her, too.

  As sickness caught hold of her mind, sending her into wild fits of delusions, fear fled in the face of her anger. “You trusted her, too!” she screamed at the serpentine shape swimming before her. “You should’ve warned me against her. You were supposed to protect me!” She pounded her fists bloody against the boards, tears running in torrents to join the murky seawater slowly flooding the leaky ship.

  But there was only silence.

  * * *

  “Wake up, you little twit.”

  Teriana coughed and choked as a bucket of water splashed against her face. With one shaky arm, she pushed up onto an elbow, blinking against the unaccustomed brightness of the sun. She was lying on the deck of the Cel ship, though she had no memory of getting there. One of the sailors must have carried her. She cringed at the thought of their fingers on her unconscious body.

  “Where?” she croaked. They were docked, but her bleary vision and dizzy head couldn’t place the port.

  “Celendrial.” The sailor kicked her in the ribs. “Now get up.”

  Clutching her side, Teriana dragged herself upward, holding the railing for balance. A wave of blackness threatened to send her back down to the deck, and it took several measured breaths until the feeling passed. Once it had, she noticed about a dozen of her crew with their wrists bound on the far side of the deck. Some were injured. All of them were afraid.

  “Where’s the rest of my crew?”

  The sailor shrugged. “Some’s on the other ships.” Then he grinned. “Some’s dead.”

  A sob tried to tear out of her throat, but she forced it down. The crew members were her friends, her family. Most of them she’d known her entire life, and now who knew how many were dead because of her? “And my mum? The captain?”

  The sailor didn’t answer and dread filled her. “Please, no,” she whispered. “Don’t let her be gone.”

  “Speak Cel,” the sailor said, then backhanded her.

  “That’s enough!” someone shouted, and she saw a flash of red and a gleam of metal. Legionnaires. Teriana clutched the rail of the ship, trying not to cower.

  “I don’t take orders from land grunts,” the sailor snapped.

  The legionnaire leading the group shrugged. “Have it your way.” He jerked his chin at two of the other soldiers, who rushed the sailor and tossed him overboard.

  The legionnaire glanced around at the rest of the navy crew. “Anyone else have opinions they’d like to voice?” The crew all shook their heads. “Good. Get the rest of them cleaned up. Give them food and clean water. We need them alive and functional, not half-dead from dehydration and gut rot. We’re taking the girl.”

  He started in Teriana’s direction, and she recoiled. Not because he was as broad as a rain barrel or because of the gleaming gladius at his waist. It was because of the number embossed on his breastplate. 37. The legionnaire reached for her and she screamed and tried to run, but he caught hold of her arm.

  “Easy, girl,” he said. “We don’t mean you any harm.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Tears and snot ran down her face, but she was too weak to pull away.

  “I don’t blame you.” A waterskin was pressed against her lips. “Drink.”

  Cold, clean water filled her mouth, dribbling down her chin as she guzzled it. Nothing had tasted as good in all her life.

  “That’s enough.” He pulled it away from her lips. “Any more and you’ll be sick.”

  “Where’s my mum?” she asked, clutching at his arm. “She’s the captain. Is she alive?”

  “Was the last I saw her. She’s talking with the consul and the rest of them now.”

  “Consul?”

  “Cassius.” The legionnaire pulled her upright. “We’re taking you there now. Can you walk?”

  “Yes.” With him half holding her up, she staggered toward the gangplank. “What does he want? Why is he doing this?”

  The legionnaire’s shrug almost lifted her off the deck. “Information. You tell them what they want to know, maybe you live another day. You don’t, I suspect they’ll kill you.”

  Teriana swayed on her feet.

  “You’re scaring her, Servius,” one of the other legionnaires said.

  “Am not. She’s a pirate, not some silly patrician girl. Bet she ain’t scared of nothing.”

  Teriana was terrified, but she appreciated the sentiment.

  “She just needs a few sips. Here.” He extracted a flask from a pouch at his waist and pushed it against her lips.

  She took a long swallow. The rum burned down her throat, making her cough. “That’s not water.”

  Servius grinned, his teeth bright white against his deep brown skin. Not Cel. Probably Atlian, one of the many provinces that supplied children to the Empire’s legions. “Sometimes you need something a bit stronger, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Aye.” Teriana took the flask and downed another mouthful. “I reckon that’s exactly something I’d say.”

  * * *

  Teriana had thought they’d bring her to the hill that loomed over Celendrial, its slopes filled with senators’ villas, of which Cassius’s was certainly one. A home like Lydia’s, cool and scented with perfumed oils, tinkling fountains filling the air with music. Instead, the legionnaires took her to the slums. The insulae were four, sometimes five, stories tall and filled with tiny apartments into which entire families were crammed. Unlike the rest of Celendrial, these buildings weren’t plumbed, and the people living within them threw their waste out their glassless windows. The gutters were full of piss and shit. It was into one of these buildings they took her. The inside was oppressively hot, the dust in the air threatening to choke her if she breathed too deeply. But that w
asn’t what made sweat break out on her forehead. Above the smell of the streets, she could make out the iron tang of blood on the air. A soft whimper escaped her lips. Servius didn’t say anything.

  “Down here.” The door to the basement swung open, and with it came the stench of blood and bowel. She gagged, and Servius swore. “Blasted useless bastards. I told them to deal with this before I got back.”

  Teriana wasn’t listening. A dull roar filled her ears as her eyes fixed on the pile of forms lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. With a shriek, she tore out of the legionnaire’s grip and stumbled down the steps. “Mum!” She wildly pulled apart the still bodies, searching their faces for the most important one.

  “None of them are your mother.”

  He was right. But she still knew them. All of them. All captains and first mates of ships without guardians, which explained why no warning had come when they’d been captured. All of them bore signs of torture, and she tugged one of them, Illria, into her arms, the old woman’s grey braids stained brown from drying blood. “I am so sorry, so sorry,” she whispered into the woman’s ear. “May Madoria accept you into the realm of the Endless Seas.”

  “I told you to get rid of the bodies.” Servius’s words reached her ears.

  “Consul’s man told us to leave them here.”

  “He ain’t consul yet. You take your orders from the legatus or from me, no one else. Is that clear?”

  A hand shook her shoulder, and she looked up through blurry vision.

  “What do you do with your dead?”

  She stared uncomprehending at Servius for a moment before mumbling, “We return them to the sea.”

  “Not going to happen. Second choice?”

  Teriana swallowed the lump in her throat. “Burn them then. Or leave them out for the carrion. Just don’t put them under the ground.”

  “Right.” He let go of her shoulder. “Take them out back and burn them. Get ahold of some oil and do it right.”

  Nothing about this was right. Nothing at all.

  “Come on, then.” Servius hauled her to her feet. Once inside, he dropped her arm and slammed his fist against his chest in salute, but Teriana didn’t note where it was directed. Her eyes were on the woman shackled and on her knees in the dirt. “Mum!”

  Flying across the room, she flung her arms around her mother’s strong shoulders. Blood ran down the side of Tesya’s swollen face, the fingers of her right hand broken. “The Six preserve us, what have they done to you?”

  “Tell them nothing,” Tesya responded. “For the sake of your immortal soul, for the sake of all of Reath, tell them nothing.”

  “What do they want to know?” Teriana asked, but her mother stayed silent. Reluctantly, Teriana pulled back and assessed the situation. A man with oily golden skin wearing the white toga of a Cel patrician sat watching her—the same man she’d seen the last night she’d spent with Lydia. Lucius Cassius. She scowled at him before turning to look at the legionnaire leaning against the wall. He wore officer’s regalia, but she could not make out much more in the shadows.

  Teriana could’ve sworn there’d been another figure in the room when she came in. She rotated her head in the other direction, then froze when her gaze settled on a pair of legs standing only an arm’s reach from where she crouched. Her eyes drifted up, taking in the black trousers and tunic. Up and up until they reached a face shrouded by a black mask. Terror filled her veins and she clutched her mum tightly.

  She was about to face the questioner.

  11

  TERIANA

  Before Teriana could think to move, the questioner clapped iron manacles around her wrists and dragged her toward a ring embedded in the floor. He attached the chain to the ring and then strolled to a table full of tools on the far side of the room.

  “Why are you doing this?” she demanded of Cassius, knowing that he was the instigator. “What do you want to know?”

  He shifted on the well-stuffed chair, entirely out of place in the damp cellar. “How nice to see you again, Teriana. You’re here because it has come to my attention that you are in possession of valuable information about the lands across the Endless Seas.”

  His words were a punch to the gut, confirming the fear that had been lurking in her heart ever since the Quincense had been boarded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m afraid we’re past the point where denials will do you any good.” He sighed dramatically. “You ought to have taken more care with your secrets if you wished to keep them that way.” Reaching out with one hand, he lifted a heavy book, revealing a title deeply familiar to Teriana: Treatise of the Seven.

  Lydia, how could you?

  Teriana’s eyes slid to her mother, certain she’d see disappointment in her mother’s gaze, but Tesya’s lids were closed, her lips moving. Praying. She was devout, but Teriana had never seen her like this. Had never seen any of her people like this. It was almost as though she weren’t there—like her mind was somewhere else entirely.

  But Teriana didn’t need her mother’s disappointment to feel it herself. Lydia was the only person to whom she’d told Maarin secrets. The only person she’d told any of her secrets, and her friend had done the same. Dreams. Hopes. Desires. All whispered in each other’s ears while they lounged on silken pillows in Lydia’s home, or wandered the enormous Celendrial markets, or perched in the top of the Quincense’s rigging the one time she’d convinced her friend to climb to the lofty heights. Precious moments, which now seemed more like regrets. But she’d be damned if she confirmed the secrets Lydia had spilled, would be damned if she’d confirm having told anything to Lydia at all.

  Teriana spit at Cassius, and he grimaced before continuing. “We know you and your people travel regularly to what we call the Dark Shores. We know from your maps and your records that these lands are diverse and populated, and that you trade with them. Speak their languages.”

  “Let me guess,” Teriana interrupted. “You want me to tell you how to get there so that you can conquer and enslave them like you’ve done to this half of Reath.”

  Cassius clapped his hands together like a small child. “Marvelous! Finally, someone who understands. And speaks! If only we’d started with you in the first place.”

  “Save your breath, you old sloth. I’m not telling you anything.” She closed her eyes and began praying, hoping her imitation of her mother would put them off, make them think she was no more likely to spill her people’s secrets than anyone who had come before.

  Except you are, a voice inside her head whispered. That’s why all of this is happening.

  The questioner took hold of Teriana’s left wrist. Cold metal touched the tip of her finger, and her eyes snapped open as he tore off her fingernail. Pain lanced up her hand and into her arm and she screamed.

  One by one, he tore the nails off her hand. Teriana cried, “Mum, Mum, help me,” but Tesya didn’t even twitch, much less acknowledge her pleas. When the questioner finally lowered his tool, she curled up on her side, clutching her hand to her stomach. “You cannot tell, you cannot tell,” she repeated to herself through the agony. “Better to die than to tell.”

  “Reveal the Maarin route to the Dark Shores, Teriana,” Cassius said. “Reveal it now, and this will all be over.”

  Slowly, she pushed upright, and with her bloody left hand made a gesture that was universally insulting.

  “Break her fingers.”

  Teriana recoiled, but it was the legionnaire’s voice that saved her. “Enough! This is getting us nowhere.” He shoved himself away from the wall, stalking toward them.

  “You’ve no business interfering,” the questioner hissed.

  “Interfering in what, precisely?” the legionnaire demanded. “All afternoon I’ve watched you ply your trade on half a dozen people and for what? Nothing. The only thing we’ve learned is that the Maarin care more for keeping this secret than they do for their own lives.”

  Teriana tried to stifle h
er sobs, but her shoulders continued to tremble and jerk. Her mum, it seemed, was unaware of what was going on. Her eyes were still closed, her lips moving in silent prayer.

  “You aren’t going to break the captain,” the legionnaire continued, bending over to examine her mother’s face as though she were some strange creature he’d never seen before.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.” The legionnaire peeled back one of her eyelids, but her eyes were black and unseeing. “There is something she fears more than pain, more than death. More than the torture of her own daughter.”

  “We’ll see about that.” The questioner reached for her mum with his pinchers.

  “Leave her be!” Teriana tried to intercept the steel clamps, but the shackles on her wrists kept her latched to the floor. She wouldn’t have been fast enough anyway. With shocking speed, the legionnaire’s fist struck, catching the questioner in the gut. As the man staggered, the legionnaire snatched off his mask and threw it on the floor. A glob of spit followed suit.

  “You twisted bastards make me sick,” he said, shoving the questioner up against the wall. “Covering your faces so the world doesn’t see the pleasure you take from your work.”

  “You know nothing,” the questioner hissed.

  “I know a real man owns his actions. He doesn’t hide behind a mask.” The legionnaire jerked the keys off the questioner’s belt. “Your methods are ineffective. Get out.”

  “Legatus…” Lucius Cassius’s voice had a note of irritation in it.

  “Shut up, Cassius.”

  Teriana sat back on her haunches, hugging her throbbing hand to her stomach as she watched. Who was this man who dared to speak so to a consul?

  “I don’t like repeating myself,” the legionnaire said, his tone frigid.

  The questioner’s face darkened, but he nodded. Snatching up his mask, he scuttled from the cellar. The legionnaire turned around, and Teriana averted her gaze. But not before she got a good look at him.