Page 7 of The Queens and the Kings (The Isles #2)

PEDR

The acrid, smoky fireworks that shot out of a hollow metal tube lingered with a gritty scent similar to gunpowder. Pedr wrinkled his nose at the horrible smell, intensified by the humidity.

Whatever. He could deal.

Anything to get that bastid creature out of the air and away from his ship.

As the last embers dissipated, Pedr studied the sky. The tension that crackled through him rivaled lightning. He scanned, throat heavy, for another flash of wings. The whip of a violent tail. Nothing.

“C’mon,” he growled, “you bastid piece of?—”

The litany of curse words cut off as a hint of wing, heading west, caught his attention. His eyes shot over to see the wyvern fading out of sight, lost in a thunderhead. Pedr clenched the wheel in his palms.

West?

A wyvern heading west was not a good sign.

Pain shot through his jaw as he ground his teeth, shoved away from the wheel, and headed down the stairs. His steps thudded against the sea-warped boards until he shoved inside his quarters. Without light, he moved by instinct and feel, fingertips searching the edges of book spines.

Too thick.

Too thin.

Too papery.

There.

He paused, breath held, and listened over a crack of thunder. That sound was only thunder, not the wyvern. No, the confounded, daring beast headed west. West, west, west.

Which meant everything .

Pedr tipped his fingernail on top of the book, slid the spine closer, and grasped it in his palm. With a slap of his hand on a knotty protuberance in the shelf, then a two-note whistle, a lamp illuminated across the way.

He fanned the pages of an old diary, stopping at the end. A sentence splashed with rainwater commanded his immediate attention. The haphazard, scribbled letters required contemplation because they were his own atrocious handwriting.

The Wyvern Kings will return to their place in the west at the end of one thousand years. There will be few signs.

Few signs?

How about no signs?

He slammed the book shut, tossed it onto his bed, and tore back out. No, the diary had it wrong. When he wrote that entry, he’d been half mad. Crazed with arcane. Couldn’t really understand what happened to his body when he became the Arcanist of the Sea.

He’d call for Himmel. She’d know. All mainlanders and islanders had was speculation. While they believed in and used the arcane, mainlanders in particular, they didn’t remember its origins. The folklore tales of the Wyvern Kings would only be laughed at, no matter how real they were.

The rain had ceased into a gentle rhythm as he returned to the top deck. Waves rocked, calming as the wind ebbed. The empty sky held hints of midnight. Pedr had to suppress the urge to coordinate another firework attack.

No need.

The wyvern saw the fireworks and it headed west. None of these facts had much in common except the wyvern.

Bastid wyverns.

Questions raced through his mind, loose as ribbon. Why a wyvern so far west? What did he seek at Kapurnick? How did he fly this far? Had the end of a thousand years arrived?

Hand cupping his mouth, he bellowed, “Himmel!” The words coalesced into a bright green vapor, spiraling higher. A second burst of traveling words manifested, whirled upward in a whirlpool. They spread into glimmering crimson, shouting into the sky for him.

Ten seconds passed.

Twenty.

A prickling sensation built along the back of his neck. He leaned into it with relief. Himmel would understand. The Arcanist of the Sky would know what to do with this disparate information. The strangeness of it. She lived in the wind, the clouds, the stars. She’d know.

She had to.

Someone had to know.

The needle-like sensation ballooned until it swamped him.

Vapor fanned into wispy clouds that twirled into strings.

Just as Himmel began to take form, a distant clatter of sound, like pots banging together, broke the stillness.

In fact, it was pots banging together. When someone crossed his rope, they made an indisputable noise.

Himmel's coalescing visage paused.

“Himmel,” he said, low. “Don’t you dare leave. I have questions and you’re the only one that can answer them.”

She neither left, nor stayed.

Livid, Pedr glanced to the side. Britt scampered up his rope ladder and flipped herself onto the deck like a regular sea monkey. She stumbled over her own feet, racing for him. “Pedr! Did you see it? The wyvern.”

The hesitating vapor hung, suspended within arms reach, until a feminine whisper promised, “Later.”

Pedr locked his jaw as Britt raced across the ship, hiding his profound ill humor. Henrik and Einar followed more sedately. Agnes joined them. Naturally, Britt was soaked all the way through, with dirt along her pants hem. She stopped a few paces away, eyes wide.

“Did you?” she demanded.

When he thought the words, Yes, I saw the blasted Wyvern King! a flare of pain rose to his throat. It happened as quickly as the words he wanted to say.

He managed a halting, “Yes,” before Britt plunged into her story. His lack of an answer didn’t matter. Not yet. As always, he had to figure out how to communicate without saying a word about . . . them .

Explanations would have to wait for . . .

. . . never.

He would never be able to explain to Britt because of curses, and history, and the profound disturbance the arcane brought to his life fifteen years ago.

Britt’s strange assortment of friends trailed behind Pedr as he crossed the wet deck, headed for the bow.

Rainwater sloshed, draining to the side.

The turbulent waters calmed from high peaks into dark troughs.

Britt pirouetted to face him as he grabbed the wheel, feeling the ship flow into his forearms.

Off course.

He could immediately feel that they weren’t where he wanted to be. Something in the currents, the way the arcane felt in his body. A feverish panic, something not quite right. By instinct alone, Pedr commanded the ocean to change.

With a second intentional thought, the arcane went to work.

The sea currents shifted. Rosenvatten chugged into a languid curl, heading away from the stormy west. Southeast would be better, away from General Helsing’s view, and into the eventual shadow of Dragul Mountain.

He wouldn’t lead them away from Kapurnick yet.

They needed supplies.

He blinked out of the arcane, shaking his head. The deeper he pressed into the arcane, the harder to extract.

“How and why was there a wyvern?” Britt demanded. “This is too far from the mainland. Something must be happening.”

Satisfied they sailed with the correct heading, Pedr braced his hips against the railing, palms splayed to either side.

He stared at Britt in her high ire, moderately amused but wise enough not to show it.

Henrik and Einar and Agnes shared her unease.

He swallowed the forming weight in his throat.

Between their heavy expectations and the restriction of his curse, this would be a tricky conversation.

“It was a wyvern,” he said.

Britt threw her hands in the air. “We know what it was! How did it get here? Wyverns are only supposed to be on the mainland.”

“I didn’t bring it.”

Einar sent Henrik a questioning look. Henrik shrugged. Even soldats from Stenberg had heard of wyverns, though probably more as an inflammatory story than truth.

Britt spread her hands. “Who did?”

Pedr shrugged.

She stacked her hands on her hips and glared. “Kapurnick is too far for them to fly. They’ve never been here before. It means something.”

Saliva filled his throat as he said, “They live on the mainland, but they’re not from there.”

The curse activated like a hard fist to his sternum.

Not yet restrictive, but he entered dangerous territory.

Those horrid biddies who cast the curse hadn’t prevented him from speaking about wyverns, only the Wyvern Kings.

The wyvern topic flirted a very dangerous line.

He couldn’t even think about . . . them .

. . without painful spasms in his voice box.

Britt shook her head in a wordless question, hands lifted with her palms up, as if to say, what do you mean ?

Pedr shoved away from the railing, folded his arms across his hard chest. His shoulders shifted, brow lowered. The more he thought about how to answer, the greater the curse’s discomfort amplified.

“I can’t say, except that the presence of the wyverns this far away from the mainland means . . . it means . . .”

His breath failed.

The lump in his throat grew ballast. As his fingers curled into his palm, he grunted out a final, “Nothing good,” before words stopped completely.

Britt paled. “An attack from the mainland?” she breathed. “Is that what’s going on? There’s no other explanation.”

There are many other explanations, he thought with deepening irony. None of which you’re likely to believe.

Pedr said nothing. If he did, his body would lock down entirely.

“How could the Lordlady attack here ?” Britt cried.

As his thoughts shifted to the Lordlady, leader of the mainland, the restriction ebbed enough to speak. “No one said the Lordlady was attacking,” he muttered.

“The wyverns haven’t been here for centuries. If ever! They’re under the mainland’s supervision, thus the Lordlady’s domain. What other parallels should I draw?”

He rolled his eyes, said, “Plenty of others, Britt!” and held up a finger.

“You are correct on one count, and only one. The Lordlady can do whatever he wants. He is the most powerful leader in Elestra. If he wanted control over The Isles, it’s a simple matter of harnessing the wyverns to be his attack dogs.

As that’s unlikely for many reasons, assume it’s something else. ”

Britt studied him, not at all put off by his mention of the Lordlady’s power. She read him far too well. Her tone grew arch.

“What else do you know about the wyverns, Pedr?” She softened her demanding tone by adding, “Please.”

Pedr shook his head.

Suspicion deepend her tone. “You don’t know anything?”

I’m sorry, he thought. I’m so sorry. I would tell you everything. Everything.

His silence said enough.

After a pause several seconds long, Britt relaxed her hands and shoulders. Brimming with hurt, she asked, “Why won’t you tell me?”

Britt, I’m sorry.

He licked his lips, but wouldn’t let himself look away. He owed it to her to stare into her eyes as he dodged her fair questions. Questions he never fathomed her asking.

Britt pressed a hand to her temple. “Fine. We’ll deal with . . . that . . . later. At least tell me why you shot fireworks at the wyvern?”

Pedr scoffed. “You want to deal with the havoc a wyvern would wreak on Kapurnick?”

“It didn’t.”

“Because I scared it off!”

“I don’t think that’s true. The wyvern could have done a lot of damage. I saw it. I went to the draguls to make sure they were safe and it flew by. That’s all.”

“You went to the top of Dragul Mountain while a wyvern soared around?” Pedr barked.

“Of course I did!”

“Britt!”

She advanced with flashing eyes, “If you lecture me about risking my safety for the draguls, I will not hesitate to use your own arcane ship against you. Do you hear me?”

Tempted to dare her to try—it was impossible for her to access any arcane on her own—he withheld. If Britt was standing up for herself in pursuit of a question, he wouldn’t stand in her way.

Well.

Sort of.

When he offered no rebellion, she continued. “The time for lectures passed when I was fourteen. Now, let’s focus on the point. I saw the wyvern up close. It saw me . It didn’t attack. Not me, not the draguls, though it had plenty of opportunity.”

“The wyverns are ferocious, bloodthirsty creatures,” Pedr muttered, “and you’d be a fool to involve yourself in anything to do with them. Leave it for General Helsing. With any luck, the wyvern will devour her and then we’ll know it’s here for war.”

She flipped a hand, a saucy, dismissive gesture that made Pedr growl. “You’re no help, Pedr. I need to know what to do next, not what you wish the wyvern would do to General Helsing.”

Pedr nodded to the shore. “Ask sweet aunt Gertrude for information. She’ll help you decide.”

Britt glowered. “You know she hates that name.”

He smiled with feral satisfaction. Little in life gave him the same thrill as irritating General Helsing. Pedr jerked his thumb toward Dragul Mountain, where fluttering wings surrounded tunneled entry points into the rock faces.

“Drakes are pouring in from everywhere, which means your darling wyvern must have also flown over the outer Kapurnikkian isles as well. Ask Gertrude, then bring me any information you can find.”

Britt folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes capitulated first. She’d do it, because that burning curiosity—so like their mother’s—never backed down. But that didn’t mean she liked it.

“General Helsing isn’t going to give you supplies,” she retorted.

Pedr barked a laugh. “I knew that before we landed. Don’t worry about it. I always figure something out. Send Malcolm, will you? He and I need to talk.”