Page 33

brITT

Malcolm and Henrik took their sweet time.

Britt ground her teeth as she inched her way along the darkening jungle floor. “I don’t like this,” she sang. “I don’t like it.”

Wisely, Lars walked behind her, preventing her departure. She couldn’t skirt around him, or her shoulder might brush an ikon. The thin footpath required them to walk single-file, avoiding ikons with every paranoid step. As night descended, the ikons glowed a brilliant lime green.

Lars claimed that every ikon resulted in some horrific fate, which made them all the more terrifying. Some ikons recurred frequently, but new ones popped up often.

Malcolm and Henrik’s low registers had faded after only a few steps. The plush jungle made her think of the inside of a pillow. Stuff and fluff everywhere, warping the way sound registered. She moved cautiously until, what felt like hours later, Malcolm and Henrik reappeared.

With only a nod between them, Malcolm delicately slipped past, then Lars, with the ease of someone used to this jungle navigation. He scraped the edge of her waist as he slid by, activating a quick tug of pain across a still-sensitive scar. She sucked in a breath through her teeth. He didn’t notice.

“Let’s go,” he commanded with all the annoying self-righteousness of the older brother she deeply loved. “We’re not far from the camp. We’ll take my trail to the beach after you touch the ikon.”

Britt attempted a glimpse at Henrik, but Lars stood in her way. She caught only Henrik’s profile in the light of an ikon. He studied the jungle.

Did he avoid her attention on purpose?

The sense that something else occurred overcame her.

Malcolm’s silent tour of the interior was wildly unvarying and underwhelming. Continuing marbled flower petals, pungent fragrance, vague noise, rampant ikons. While the jungle seemed to constantly speak, she couldn’t make out individual voices. Everything close had silenced, the rest came from distant reaches.

Animals, insects, or powers?

Did the ikons scream?

Or did they sing?

Malcolm grabbed her elbow and spirited her away from a dropping vine, which grazed her elbow as it fell. The unexpected movement inspired a flow of magma-like heat across her scarred back. She bit the inside of her cheek to withhold a cry, and earned a concerned glower from Henrik that she registered only by dim ikon light.

Malcolm glanced at the vine, then Britt, one eyebrow lifted in silent warning. An ikon swirled along the vine near her eyes, like an elaborate, tiny mandala had been stamped into the virescent leaves every handspan. The heat probably burned it into the fibrous plant. She tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear. The failing braid melted around Denerfen, hiding him.

“We’re here,” Malcolm said.

Ahead lay a small area cleared from thickest brush, with less size than the state dining room table General Helsing often used. A delicate mat of woven fronds, stacked on piles of rocks, hovered above the thick, black ground. The crumbled dirt had a sheen like ravens’ feathers. Little wonder that Malcolm had chosen this spot to camp. Despite the nighttime density, ikons glowed from a near-ceiling of vines all over the trees, the leaves. She could easily make out Henrik’s expression several paces away.

Malcolm paused at the base of a tree. He crouched, one hand protectively cradling Tesserdress as he lowered, and pointed to an ikon embedded in the fibrous trunk.

“This ikon is the one I keep following and seeking. The one that I call the safety ikon. You called it the exit ikon?”

Henrik shrugged his response. A slice of visible trunk revealed a slash of white and two dots on either side, silvery-lime in appearance, stamped on the thick bark beneath. The exact same symbol on their forearms. This was white, not green or black.

Lars muttered, “The man’s brilliant.”

Henrik frowned. “Too easy.”

“How did you keep track of that tiny thing?” Britt cried.

“Not much else to do, except search and wait. Besides, once you know what you’re looking for, it makes it easier. The vines, you see? They won’t touch the ikons. Plus, it only moves every so often. I think it’s somehow connected to the vittra and her movements, but I’m not sure. After awhile in here, you start to . . . get a feel for it. It’s almost like the arcane respects those who respect it. Time has passed and I haven’t harmed anything, so . . . I think the arcane helped me. Anyway, I realized that the ikon power isn’t bad. It’s not even mean or vindictive. It’s . . .”

“ . . . watchful,” Lars said.

Malcolm nodded.

Britt kept her doubts to herself. Such a simmering arcane was likely waiting for something very specific. Revenge, perhaps. Revenge on Stenberg, to the point. Like Henrik, uneasiness stirred within. Indeed, this felt too simple.

Henrik’s machete still poised in front of him as he spun on his heels, surveying the small space.

“Britt,” Henrik commanded with the quiet of a moving predator, “touch the ikon with the five fingers of the arm where you want the mark. Say, Great Follorat spirits of the island, I honor your ikons , your power, and your history. I ask for safe passage off your beaches. ”

“What would happen if I don’t say it right?” she asked.

Lars uttered something that sounded significantly like, and then the vittra eats you , you bastid, but she couldn’t be sure.

Henrik leveled an irritated glare his way.

“It’s more about intent than exactness,” Malcolm muttered. “But that’s really close.”

Britt dropped to her knees, but a gleaming sword at her throat stopped her words.

* * *

“Rise,” a gravelly voice said. “Slowly.”

Britt clenched her teeth.

Oliver.

The sword guided Britt from her knees and onto her feet. She moved a heartbeat at a time, captured by the hot metal pressed into the base of her throat. The edge of it shivered, threatening to bite into the sloshing blood just beneath the surface.

Denerfen hissed and ducked beneath her hair. She resisted the urge to snatch him off her shoulder, afraid that Oliver would slice her neck open if she moved unexpectedly.

She glanced up.

Oliver stared at her, sword arm extended in a firm and sure threat. Very little remained in his eyes but sheer desperation, and how well she knew that panic. This was a man teetering at the edge.

“Up,” he sang. “Up, up, little Kapurnickkian. The big, bad soldats have things to settle and lives to steal. What a handsome little dragul you have there.”

Henrik, Lars, and Malcolm stood out of view behind her. Shuffling feet surrounded them, moving slow, but fluid. Soldats flowed into a half circle behind Oliver, deftly avoiding ikons in the way of highly trained warriors. She counted at least four in her view, recognizing none. They had a slightly different appearance, but she couldn’t peg it exactly.

An ambush.

Of course.

“Your fight is with me,” Henrik said, his voice taut with fury. “Let her and the dragul go.”

“Don’t think I will,” Oliver said.

Britt kept a wary eye on his hand, poised to flick a wrist and end her life in the length of time it took her to bleed out. But if she leaned back and?—

“Don’t even think about it,” Oliver ground out.

He shoved her. Britt’s spine slammed into the tree. Her head crashed onto a branch, jarring her teeth. Pain rattled all the way down her toes, screaming from welts and bruises. She stifled a moan as the resulting agony ricocheted through her head. Her back arched, shrieking in protest all the way down. A cry choked her. Denerfen, with a squeal, dug into her neck to stop himself from falling.

“Better,” Oliver said.

Vines crawled across her chest, securing her. She tried to swim out of the daze. Did the vines move of their own accord, or did a soldat yank them around her torso and squeeze the breath out of her lungs?

“Stay put,” Oliver commanded, swinging his sword away from her neck and pointing it to Henrik, Lars, and Malcolm. “All of you.”

The splashing lights coalesced back into blurry figures, then limelight bodies. Oliver had pinned her to the tree with the safety ikon, and with uncanny timing. Seconds before she might have had the island working in her favor . . .

“This is between you and me, Oliver,” Henrik growled.

“Sure.”

The vines tightened. She gasped.

“My plan stands,” Oliver said.

A cool brush of teeth came along her spine. “Denerfen,” she whispered, “no.”

The vines doubled down. Agony ripped across her back. The hot squeeze of blood dribbled onto her clothes as tender wounds sprang open. Her stomach muscles clenched, but didn’t alleviate the strain. If Denerfen or Tesserdress had still been in her skirts, they’d be ground to a pulp.

Her hazy vision cleared, sharpening into an ugly picture. Henrik, his face contorted into a barely controlled snarl, stood in front of Lars and Malcolm with his shoulders puffed up, arms clenched, legs braced. Soldats in similar defensive states circled his back. Lars faced them with shaking knees and saucer-sized eyes. Beads of sweat rolled down his neck.

Malcolm kept an assessing stare on Oliver, unusually cool and aloof, though his hand hovered at his side. She hadn’t seen any weapons on him, but he must hide something. Tesserdress was nowhere in sight.

“Last chance, Oliver. Britt has nothing to do with this,” Henrik said. “Let her go.”

Her name on his lips had an oddly powerful magic. The snarl in his voice stirred something deep within.

“I think she does, Henrik.” Oliver held his hauteur like a pro. “In fact, I know that she does . . . because she’s somehow earned your loyalty. She’s not the only one who you’ve been fool enough to care about.”

A grunt, and a suppressed shout, sounded from the other side of her tree. A man stumbled forward, falling flat to the mat of woven fronds that Malcolm created. By whatever miracle no ikons were triggered, Britt couldn’t fathom. The man moaned, face turned to the side, eyes closed.

Einar.

But not the Einar she knew.

Swollen left eye, split lip. Blood dried on a tattered shirt. He breathed in an uneven, ragged way. Broken rib, probably. The one eye visible and without swelling was glazed and drawn. Rich black earth coated his distorted face. He didn’t make a sound, but grimaces tore across his face, contorting every breath. After a wave of pain, he controlled his expression for a few seconds.

Henrik’s only visible reaction was his bobbing throat. He didn’t spare Einar another glance. Oliver smiled, frigid as the netherworld where the harpies lived and breathed frost, torturing the souls of those found wanting.

“Let’s talk, Henrik.”

“I’ll talk,” he immediately countered, “when they go free. Britt, Einar, Lars, and Malcolm.”

“No.”

Henrik spread two hands, seemingly unconcerned. “It’s my price.”

Oliver ruminated. Between the blood leaking from her reopened wounds, the pain with every staggering heartbeat, and the ever-tightening vines threatening to grind her into dust, Britt struggled to draw a breath.

She opened her mouth to shout, but a vine wrapped over her teeth. Someone she couldn’t see controlled the jungle ropes. She choked, nearly gagging from the pressure, wrought mute. Her tender, barely-healed wounds grated beneath the rough-textured bark. Heat poured over her.

Henrik kept a trained gaze on Oliver, but it felt as if he stared right at her. In the distance, a familiar, high-pitched scream loosened. Malcolm’s eyes shot to hers in silent question. She nodded once, almost imperceptible.

Drake.

Pedr had arrived.

Her hair stood up on end as she formed a plan. Little wonder that Oliver had followed all this way, but his speed in finding them was remarkable. Had they docked on a different part of the island? Based on what little information Henrik gave about his previous visits to the Unseen island, she presumed that these soldats also had the exit ikon already.

Oliver created a rather advantageous and strategic situation. With Einar in tow, he could rid himself of leaders in the soldat resistance and control the narrative over what happened. Henrik and Einar would be slain, thrown into the ocean as shark chum, and Stenberg would forget them. Henrik might never know the truth about Selma.

Britt wouldn’t have it.

None of it.

“How about I kill them first,” Oliver offered, “and then you talk?”

Malcolm advanced a step. Henrik twirled the machete once in bold invitation, legs braced. “What you saw at the whipping post is a meager promise of the fight I will bring to this jungle, Oliver. You will not walk out of here.”

Boredom, instead of careful calculation, crossed Oliver’s expression. With a long-suffering tone, he said, “I’ll release the girl.”

“Lars, too.’

With a scowl, he said, “Who is he? Kill him!”

Two soldats moved to comply, but Henrik swung his machete into the closest tree trunk. The touch cut an ikon in half . . . or it should have. The clang of metal bouncing free reverberated with painful ululations.

The ground turned to sludge around the tree, slowing one of the rushing soldats. Tar clung to his ankles, pulling him to his knees. He shouted, but the tenacious substance had a fastidious hold, tripping him.

Oliver hesitated.

Henrik brought the machete closer to the next ikon, deftly avoiding the filth by stepping to the side of a forming oval. That ikon’s power only went so far.

“Shall we dance, Oliver?” Henrik murmured. “Your time on Stenberg is working against you, Captain, and you chose a poor battle ground. I know this island, and her ikons, better than you. Will you risk it?”

Oliver scowled. “Fine. I’ll release the girl and the captain, but Major Helsing and Einar stay.”

“Agreed,” Malcolm said.

A sword slammed into the tree from her left, severing her bonds. Instant release rushed through Britt. She dropped to her knees, hacking a cough. Blood trickled down her back, seeping through the shirt. Under better illumination, blood must gleam on the smooth trunk. Denerfen fluttered with pitiful squeaks. She reached back, clamping a hand on him a second before his bite.

“No,” she whispered, pulling him free.

In this state, she wouldn’t survive even the smallest emergence.

A soldat strode toward her. She threw out a hand, pressed the ikon at the bottom of the trunk, and whispered, “Spirits of the island, I honor your . . . your power. Your history. Grant me passage off this beach.”

The words were all wrong. The cadence didn’t match what Henrik said, but her thoughts raced too fast to recall it perfectly. With any luck, the arcane did have a heart. Searing pain slashed her arm, slapping a tarry mark with two sharp dots on either side. She swallowed the throb, which was pitiful compared to the agony awakening across her back.

Thank you, she silently whispered.

The soldat jerked her off her feet, reactivating the agony. Pure hatred carried her venom. “You bastid!” she shouted, slamming a heel into his shin. “Let me go!”

He released her with a grunt. Britt threw herself across the open space, into Malcolm’s arms. An inferno raged, blooming across previously-healed wounds, but she ignored it.

“Don’t do this!” she cried.

He put his right hand on her back, tensed when he felt the welling blood. “It’s fine, Britt,” he said, too loud. “It’s fine. We’ll work it out.”

Between their bodies, his left hand gave her Tesserdress. Britt accepted her, grateful beyond words that the dragul remained silent. Passed out? Terrified?

“Your back,” Malcolm hissed in her ear, without the dulcet sweetness meant to buy them time. She pushed Tess into her pocket.

“Go,” Henrik commanded in a barely-controlled tone she’d never heard before. “Get out of here. I mean it, Britt. Get on that boat and leave.”

The same soldat as before ripped her away. “Your chance to escape ends in five seconds!” he bellowed.

Britt stumbled, barely catching herself, until Lars grabbed an arm and hauled her up. She cried out against the wrenching pain, unable to help it. “Go, you foolish chit,” Lars cried. “To Birgitta!”

Britt veered toward a trail heading north that they hadn’t ventured yet. Presumably, the path to the north beach that Malcolm spoke about, where she’d find Pedr. She gazed over her shoulder as Lars hurried her along.

Henrik stood back there. His steely eyes met hers, solid and unswerving and glittering with furor. She’d never seen such hatred, such malefaction. For several heartbeats, she had no idea who that soldat was. The time for revenge had come, perhaps both for the island and for Henrik.

Lars swept Britt into the trees, snapping at her when she nearly trod on an ikon.

“Watch it!”

She risked a final glance. Henrik glared her out of sight, willing her not to return.

Well.

He would be one angry soldat when he realized her plan, indeed.

* * *

“Tell me you touched the ikon,” Lars hissed under his breath as they scurried around an impossible number of ikon-laden vegetation. “Tell me we’ll make it out of here!”

“I did.”

“Finally! Some stroke of luck.”

The growth was eccentrically tight around this trail, but Malcolm had created a more defined trail than expected. She pressed on, Lars swearing at her back, Tesserdress heavy in her pocket. Denerfen wriggled in her hands, but she gave no freedom.

“I’m telling you,” he growled. “These Stenbergian?—”

Britt slid to a stop.

“Quiet!”

He obeyed, mouth snapping shut so fast it would have been comical under different circumstances. Through the blending forest noise, she could just make the unnatural sound out again.

Drake.

“Keep going!”

Britt ignored the ikons and raced down the trail. Leaves sliced her face, her neck, the back of her hands, her forearms. Streaking blood smeared her clothes and pungent, nauseating fragrances filled the air, jarred loose as she rampaged through the forest.

“The ikons!” Lars shrieked. “You’re activating them!”

“We’ll have to deal with it,” she shouted. “We must go!” After a few panting breaths, she demanded, “Tell me about them.”

“What?” Lars shouted.

“The ikons!”

“What about them?”

“What happens if I touch them?”

“Anything!”

She skidded to a stop. A held hand prevented Lars from speaking as she gazed around a slightly-more open area. Thick trunks with skinny, straight branches, and fewer vines. Ikons glowed here as much as Malcolm's camp. She paused, arrested at the sight. Though she’d seen them imprinted on the leaves minutes ago, she hadn’t comprehended their sheer number.

Thousands.

No, hundreds of thousands.

One ikon, in particular, drew her gaze, if for nothing else but the sheer size of it. As long as her forearm, and as wide. Her breath calmed as she approached. The smooth design drew her, with a swirling, oily appearance. So flat and shiny against the grainy bark of the tree. Stunning, with the tones of deepest emerald that ran through it, spiraling into the darkest sea.

She lifted a finger to touch it, utterly entranced.

Was it as smooth as it appeared?

A hard palm landed on her shoulder, shooting new spirals of pain into her bones. The spikes jolted her out of the swirl of curiosity with a gasp.

“They draw you in, imbecile!”

Lars jerked her away, and the hazy spell broke. Britt winced, sucked in a breath. Tears collected in her eyes. Lars paused. He eyed her bloody dress, his hand, her shoulder, and jerked away. Apology lined his twisted expression.

“S-sorry, Miss. I—I didn’t realize. All the blood.”

“It’s fine.” She swallowed hard, shaken. “Thank you for stopping me. I didn’t . . . know. They’re so . . .”

“Fascinating?”

Sheepish, she nodded.

“They’ll fascinate you to death.” He pointed to the ikon she almost touched. “Especially that one.”

“What does it mean?”

“That one calls the vittra. See how the lines form a half circle, like the sun? Others jut out, reaching higher? Then on the bottom, arrows pointing down? It’s the vittra.”

With a shiver, she hurried through two trees. Somewhere ahead, waves crashed. “Why would someone call the vittra?”

“Why would someone live here?” he countered. “There’s no logical reason for any of the Chain Islands, is there? The arcane makes everything strange.”

She called over her shoulder, “How many different ikons are there?”

“Twenty seven.”

“What do they do?”

“I’m not telling you!” he shouted. He clumsily dodged a hanging vine, swerved around a low-lying branch. “Don’t waste your breath on stupid questions.”

“Just tell me!”

“They call tar from the earth! They summon the vittra. They send poison in the air, and darts into your eyes, and pungent aromas that’ll cause hallucinations. The ikons do whatever the Follorat islanders and vittras commanded them to do! Now stop wasting our time. We need to find the beach and escape. We’re lucky nothing has stopped us thus far. Don’t press it!”

Distracted by another peal from overhead, Britt said nothing. Fifteen seconds later, they spilled onto a beach. In the near distance, Burning Beard’s ship awaited, sails awash with flames like glittering rose gems in the night.