Dance of devils and dayl.., p.27
Dance of Devils and Daylight (Legion of Thieves Book 2), page 27
Nyar stepped back, putting some distance between them before she matched Freya’s stance. She cocked her head as she waited for Freya to make her move. Her skin glinted where the silver thread of her scar carved the cheek around her eye. Given to her by a lover, she’d once told Freya. A lover she claimed to have killed….
Freya studied the woman who had wooed her best friend, wondering how dark a soul had to be for them to kill their lover.
An idea came to her, as unnerving and foreign as the power within her. She lifted her blade, ignoring the pain in her shoulder and the tremble in her wrist. Within herself, she drew back the bolt on the door she locked Bryn’s power behind. Then she danced forward, remembering what it felt like to fight Hex, letting her feet move out of memory while her mind worked on calling forth a tendril of that power.
Nyar parried her attack with ease, swiping Freya’s sword out of the way with a sharp jerk of her blade.
Freya came back, throwing down another strike. The clash of their blades sent sparks winking against the near-frozen deck. While the steel whined, Freya imagined a sliver of power snaking through her fingertips, into the blade that was sliding along Nyar’s, into the twisted hilt and down into the veins of her fingers.
Cold wind stirred the air, chilling the sweat that beaded against the back of Freya’s neck and whipping her hair into her eyes. For a sudden, panicked moment she wondered if Nyar could see it; the power she had called forth.
But the thought was swept away as a wave of ruin hit her. Sadness, deep and tormented, echoed with pain and guilt, flowed into her. Anger and loneliness, longing and hope. The emotions swirled within her like wine, rich and dark, heady and intoxicating. They consumed her until she was forced to break the contact, stepping back with a gasp.
Nyar stared at her, confusion drawing down her features. Her arm lowered slightly, falling from the defensive position she’d held. She rolled her shoulders, as if a chill more carnal than the wind had brushed her neck.
“Did you feel that?” she asked, still frowning.
Freya blinked against the tears that had sprung into her eyes. She struggled to even out her breathing as the whirlpool of emotions slowly began to drain away.
“The wind?” she replied weakly.
“No,” Nyar said cautiously. “Not wind. Something…else.” Her dark eyes narrowed as she scanned the deck, searching for a threat.
Freya forced a smile, even as the lingering despair turned the contents of her stomach sour. She lifted her arm, showcasing the sleeve of the naval jacket she wore. “Maybe it’s the spirits of the soldiers come to haunt us.”
Nyar’s attention flashed back to her, lips pulled down into scowl. She stabbed her sword at Freya.
“Don’t tempt them,” she hissed, then muttered something scathing in her native tongue. She sheathed her cutlass in the scabbard at her waist, dark fingers moving to hastily unbutton her jacket. “I’m not wearing this cursed uniform,” she grumbled. “I don’t care what Hex’s grand plan is, I’m not spending the rest of my existence haunted by an army of Pyredamian ghosts just to save one damned Kuyjlor.”
She shrugged out of the jacket and tossed it to the ground, kicking it away as if it was riddled with lice. The twist of her scowl almost had Freya sharing her superstition.
“We’re done with training today,” Nyar said. She retreated belowdecks, slamming the hatch shut behind her, leaving Freya wondering what in the dark depths she’d just done.
An hour later, Freya sat in the commons belowdecks, ignoring the raucous chatter of the crew as she bent over a particularly bloody jacket. Lantern light warmed the room, though the evening had set in and the cold had found its way belowdecks. She huddled beneath the folds of her jacket, feeling the fur trim brush the back of her neck.
Hetty and Davie sat at her sides, helping to restore the rest of the uniforms. Hetty held a bucket of soapy water between her boots as she used a pig bristle brush to scour the blood stains from a jacket. She was rambling, giving Freya and Davie a step-by-step recount of her training session with Connell.
Though she tried to give Hetty her attention, Freya’s thoughts kept drifting to the end of her own training session.
Her chest ached as she recalled the concoction of emotions she’d felt after she’d extended the power towards Nyar. She wasn’t sure where the emotions had come from – or, who, exactly, they belonged to. She considered that power itself could have been the source of the pain; a dark stain of agony to echo the souls of its countless victims.
What if those souls lingered inside her, a part of the power she had never asked to wield? What if the true reason they called Bryn’s kind Soul Spinners had nothing to do with taking souls and instead had everything to do with trapping them?
The idea made the bones in Freya’s spine crawl. She forced herself to focus her attention on threading together a savage sword wound in the upper leg of a pair of pants. She drove her needle through the fabric, pinching and pulling the needle through as though she were sewing closed the Rifts themselves.
Beside her, Davie sniggered. “What did the pants ever do to you?”
She looked up, suddenly aware of the deep scowl on her face. She forced herself to relax.
“Nothing,” she said, drawing her attention back to her needle. This time she was careful to be gentler.
“It’s okay to be nervous, you know,” Davie said, tugging on his own threads. “I’m nervous, too. Can’t say I’ve had much experience with breaking in and out of prisons.” He smiled, brown eyes glittering beneath his crop of unruly blond hair.
Freya paused her stitching to eye his stomach, remembering the injury he’d sustained only a week ago. “Should you even be going?”
Davie’s smile slipped. “Why wouldn’t I go?”
Her gaze dipped to his stomach, where she was sure a thick layer of bandages would be protecting his abdomen. “Your injury. Is it healed?”
He shrugged. “Is yours?”
Freya flushed. “Mine was a sprain,” she lied. “You almost had your guts ripped from your stomach.”
Davie lifted a finger, eyes closing briefly as if he had to mentally wipe away the image she’d just laid before him.
“One,” he countered. “I like to think my entrails were never in that much danger. And two, I’ve fought in far worse conditions, and no one has bested me yet.”
“No one?” Freya challenged. Before she could stop herself, her gaze flicked to the neckline of his brown leather jacket, where she knew a meld of scars twisted the skin across his shoulder.
Davie tracked the direction of her attention, his smile almost entirely gone now. “That wasn’t from a fight,” he said quietly.
Curiosity burned inside Freya but she held her tongue, opting instead to nod as if she understood everything he was not saying. Her thumb brushed the scars on her wrist. Perhaps she did.
“I don’t know how much of my story Hex has told you,” Davie said, and from the corner of Freya’s eye she saw Hetty’s scrubbing slow, the whir of the bristles softening to match Davie’s quiet voice. “But I haven’t been with this crew very long. Before I joined – or, before Hex found me – I was part of another crew. A travelling circus. I have been to nearly every city this world has to offer, and I have hated them all the same. The only place I truly found peace was on the sea, where no cities, no shows, no audiences exist.”
Hetty’s scrubbing slowed to a stop, and Freya’s needle and thread lay idle on her lap.
Davie’s sharp eyes flicked between them. “You see, the circus master was wicked. Greedy in every way. He…liked to punish people. Liked to treat people like animals. He kept us in cages and enjoyed watching us beg and pine for scraps of food and sour milk.”
A memory flashed in Freya’s mind, of the cages she’d found in the Hook, where three defeated souls had been held and abused. She didn’t need to imagine what it was like for Davie.
She knew. Had seen. Still felt the anger and disgust that came with realizing someone could treat another as anything less than a person.
Davie shifted in his jacket, dropping his gaze as he said, “I wasn’t a beggar. But the circus master found ways to make me one. Hot coals, burning oil, corde lisse, snake venom. In the circus, tricks and talents can easily become methods of torture. The master had one strength, and that was turning art into agony.”
Freya swallowed, watching the torment cross Davie’s face as he recalled the horrors of his past.
“I was one of the lucky ones,” he said with a smile that never stretched to his eyes. “The circus master thought repeated punishments in the same spot would prove more effective on me.” He pulled his collar to the side, exposing some of the scarred tissue there. The warped skin caught the candle light, rippling like the dunes of the desert behind Orlenea. “All I have is this,” he continued. “But some of the others…they had more scars than skin.”
“What about your parents?” Freya asked. “Were they not able to protect you?”
Another lightless smile. “My parents were the ones who sold me to the circus. I don’t know what the price for children was ten years ago, but it was enough to convince them that my life was worth trading.”
Freya glanced to Hetty. She sat as still as Freya did, her blue eyes wide and watery as she watched Davie.
Freya shook her head, unable to fathom how a parent could sacrifice their child for something so fleeting as coin. Until now, she had always thought the darkest creatures were those who preyed on the weak and the poor, but what sort of wicked was someone who would sell their own blood?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Davie shrugged, dark eyes sparking sagaciously. “I suspect your past was not all glitter and gold, either.”
At that, Freya fell silent. Davie reminded her of a man who had never outgrown the boy he once was, with his scruffy hair and unwavering enthusiasm. She could sense the pain of his past, though his eyes were bright and he remained quick to smile, even as he fell back into his work.
Eventually Hetty resumed her scrubbing, the swish of her brush filling the silence that had fallen over them. Occasionally, Davie looked up, flitting his attention across the room and through the crew as if his thoughts had not settled since their conversation.
Freya pinched her needle between her fingers, poised to resume stitching the pants that lay across her lap. But something niggled at her. A theory, a dangerous one, and yet one she struggled to ignore.
Carefully – ever so carefully – she lifted the lid on the power within her, letting a delicate thread come to the surface.
It moved through her, not a rush this time, but a tingle. A draft swept across her ankles, chilling her already cold feet, but she could see no shimmer in the shadows – no evidence of what she was doing, besides what she could feel in her body and mind. She cast the thread like a fishing line, imagining Davie was the pond.
At first, she felt nothing. Just the thrum of power waiting to be put to use. She cast the line again, waiting a few breaths to see if it would snag.
This time she felt it.
The return of emotions, as if the line was a current between her and Davie, giving and taking like the lap of a tide.
Freya closed her eyes, concentrating on the flow. It was gentle this time, more controlled. She felt Davie’s eagerness and determination, his loneliness and admiration. She felt the grief and anxiety that riddled his past, and the swell of pride as he looked at his new crew. When his attention shifted to Hex, admiration and loyalty emanated from him, followed by a flare of attraction when his bright gaze flicked to Nyar.
Freya pulled back, guilt rearing within her. She reeled in the tether of power, shame burning her cheeks as she realized what she’d done – what she’d stolen.
So, those dark feelings she’d felt earlier had been Nyar’s. To steal secrets was one thing, but to invade someone’s thoughts? To know their feelings, even the ones they buried…? It felt wrong. Unnatural. Forbidden in so many ways.
She stole a glance at Davie, hoping he would not know she had just robbed him. His shoulders twitched, and he lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck, a crease between his forehead.
When he noticed Freya watching him, he smiled sheepishly, brown eyes softening, and dropped his fingers back to his needlework.
Freya stared at the threads of torn fabric on her lap, into the abyss of shadow that collected within the slash.
How? she asked the darkness. How can I feel what they feel? How is this possible?
The questions tumbled through her mind, rushing and roaring until a dull ache formed at the base of her skull.
Because, the dark whispered back, in a voice that was strangely familiar. You wield the power of a Soul Spinner. And it is not their minds you’re taking from…it’s their souls.
Forty
It had been Bryn’s voice echoing through her mind. She was sure of it. Immediately after she’d heard the voice, she’d tried to find it again, asking question after question in her mind, hoping to hear the answers whispered back to her.
Bryn, is that you?
Can you hear me?
Where are you?
How did Kila find you?
Why did she lock you up?
Why did you give me your power, Bryn?
How do I control it?
Answer me, Bryn.
ANSWER ME.
But no answers came; nothing except the cold, damp dark as night pressed in and the Scoutess drifted on towards Nuiswesja.
Freya excused herself soon after, claiming her training had exhausted her. In truth, she couldn’t help the hollow ache of disappointment that had found her in the resounding silence. She retreated to the quarters where she and Hetty had been assigned hammocks. Though the Scoutess was bigger than the Emporia, much of the extra space had been filled by the additional cannons. The former-pantry space they’d been offered as their quarters smelled of onions and hessian sacks, with an undertone of canvas attributed to the four new hammocks that had been strung between the posts.
Freya climbed into one of them, not bothering to lock the door behind her. Hetty would be following soon enough.
She lay awake, tucked beneath the weight of several scratchy woolen blankets and her fur-lined coat. The hammock cradled her as the ship swayed, and she replayed the voice she’d heard over and over in her mind, until the words scrambled and she could no longer be sure of what she’d heard at all.
Eventually, her eyes drifted closed, and the angst in her mind gave way to the strangeness of dreams.
She lay on her back, looking up at a night sky woven with ribbons of turquoise and emerald light. They shimmered above her, bolder and brighter than any star or moon, dancing like flames over tinder.
Water lapped at her fingers, cold against her skin. She tore her eyes from the shifting lights, her skull grating against something hard as she looked down to her fingers. They hung off the edge of a piece of wood, dipping into an expanse of dark water that rippled around her. She craned her neck, taking in her supine form. She was sprawled on her back across a wide piece of planked wood, the splintered edges scraping the surface of the water on which she floated. Her clothes were damp, torn in places, and when she tried to move, pain lanced through her spine. She moaned, head lolling back until she was once more staring up at the sky. A moment passed and she lay there, unmoving, wondering where she was and why her back hurt, and how it was possible the night was filled with so much light. She dragged her tongue through her mouth, tasting smoke and ash in the air.
Smoke and ash.
Freya had tasted them before, a long time ago when her city had burned. She reached over her chest until her fingers found the edge of the wood. Her breaths turned to pants as she slowly rolled her body onto her stomach, biting down a scream as agony ripped down her spine.
The wood keeping her afloat tipped, unbalanced by her shifting weight, and she rolled into the water. She scrambled to stay above the surface, propping the wood beneath her elbows as she looked across the rippling tide.
Red flickered across the black water, glinting in the peaks of the waves. The Scoutess drifted between Freya and the horizon, her sails ablaze with red and gold flames. Water lapped across her deck, the bow completely submerged as the sea fought the flames to be the first to claim her. Ashes and embers rose into the air, accompanying the sound of splintering wood as one of the masts cracked and buckled, crashing down onto the slanted deck. A flurry of embers whirled through the air around the fallen mast, fresh flames licking at the deck.
Freya stared in horror. Her throat felt as though it was filled with ashes as she rasped, “Hetty?”
She listened for the screams that would be sure to rise from the drowning vessel, but an eerie silence gripped the ship, as if any souls on board had long since perished.
“Hex?” she croaked. “Nyar? Anyone?”
Between her and the ship, the water rippled, parting to reveal dark hair slicked back from a pale face. Amber eyes glittered.
The siren smiled. “I told you we would be back,” it sneered.
Freya’s heart began to hammer against her chest as the creature sunk beneath the surface, the flames that had engulfed the Scoutess reflected in its wake.
“No,” she whimpered, feeling herself begin to crack. “No. No no no.”
Her eyes burned, a broken, bitter scream clawing its way past the sobs rising from her throat. She felt something sharp wrap around her ankles, and her scream was cut off as she was jerked beneath the water.
Freya bolted upright with a gasp, panting as she took in the dark, paneled walls around her. Her fists tangled with her blankets, and she threw them off, sliding from the warmth of the hammock into the cold midnight air.
Hetty’s soft snores toyed with the silence.
On her tip toes, Freya crossed the room, pressing an ear to the door. The ship was quiet. No screams filled the night. No crackle of flame or hiss of beasts.
Still, unease sent goosebumps marching across her skin. Returning to her cot, she dragged off a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She plucked her dagger from the barrel against the wall before opening the door.
