Dearest (21 page)

How had Mordant captured them? The ship had fled after the breaking of the curse, but then it must have doubled back around under some sort of magical cloak. Gana could have easily managed that sort of thing, once her power had recharged.

Philippe might not yet know of their kidnapping, but Friday would raise the alarm and send Rumbold’s forces after them in all haste. She would know he had not left her willingly. She would do whatever it took to be with him again.

Wouldn’t she?

Tristan tried to imagine the scene from Friday’s point of view. Many would believe that the siblings, now returned (mostly) to their former selves, would waste no time in going back to the Green Isles to reclaim their birthright. Only Velius had Christian’s word that they wanted to proceed with caution, and Friday had Tristan’s promise. He had promised her—in front of her flock—that he would not do anything with regard to their future without asking her permission first. And then he had disappeared.

Somehow, he needed to send her a message.

“Where are we?” asked one of the twins.

“On a ship,” said Christian. “Mordant’s, no doubt.”

The twins had a few other, more colorful names by which they referred to their captor.

“I wholeheartedly agree,” Christian said to the twins. “Has he taken all of us?”

Elisa sat up and wiped the sleep spell from her eyes. “I am here.”

Tristan loved the sound of her voice.

“Sebastien is here with me”—the swan honked at the sound of his name—“but not Odette.”

“Then she isn’t far behind,” François pointed out. “Or she’s hiding on the ship somewhere.”

“I propose we do nothing until Mordant reveals his intentions,” said Christian. “We’ll be able to make a better plan when we have more information.”

While they waited, the twins decided that their cage was sturdy enough to resist being smashed to pieces, and that they were hungry enough to eat a whale. François found a lock but he was useless without a pick, so he busied himself by stretching his slight body as far as he could through the bars and trying to pull the contents of the hold—mostly crates and barrels—closer to their cell.

Elisa worked to keep Sebastien calm. Swans were not meant to be caged, and Sebastien made sure everyone was aware of that fact. Elisa smoothed his feathers and spoke to him in a low cooing voice that eventually served to soothe the bird—and the rest of her brothers as well.

No one was prepared for François’s scream. He writhed against the bars of the cage, left arm pinned awkwardly against what looked like . . . nothing. And then nothing’s face appeared, a shadow from the shadows with its black mask and red eyes.

The Infidel.

“Elisa, tell him to stop,” said Tristan. A woman’s voice had worked before; perhaps it would again.

“Please stop,” Elisa said softly. “You’re hurting my brother.”

The Infidel remained still as a black stone. So much for that theory.

“That will do, my pet.” At the sorceress’s words, François’s body dropped to the ground. The twins flung themselves against the bars, swiping at the Infidel, but the man slunk back into the shadows. The sorceress’s cackle filled the air, as did the cloying smell of her perfume. “I trust you’ve all realized the futility of escape. The lock is charmed, and there is nothing but sea for miles.”

“What do you want from us?” Christian asked.

Gana reached a thin arm through the bars and traced the line of Elisa’s jaw with a crimson-nailed finger. “Such hopelessness. Such fear. Mmmm.” She kissed the finger. “You will be delicious.”

“I’m going to lose my punch,” said Bernard.

“Can’t you just put us back to sleep?” asked Rene.

“Why would I do that? We’re almost home.”

Home. The Green Isles. If it hadn’t been Gana speaking, the words would have been music to Tristan’s ears. But after so long an absence, what would they find?

Gana smiled and turned back toward the stair. “I’m sure there’s something in this hold to keep you occupied.” She vanished into the light and let the heavy wooden hatch slam shut behind her.

“Almost home?” asked Bernard.

“Magic,” answered François. “It’s the only explanation.”

“I wish she had magicked a different cologne,” said Rene.

“She smells like dead people,” said Bernard. “Has she always smelled like that?”

Elisa nodded. “Be glad you were swans those last days in the palace.”

“But what does she want with us?” Christian asked again.

“I think I know.” Elisa eased the swan off her lap and moved to the center of the cage. She lifted a hand, and the porthole opened a crack; not enough to afford an escape, but enough to send a breeze through the hold to rid it of Gana’s ghastly stench. Bernard was right—it did leave that lingering odor of rotting carcass. Finished with her bit of magic, Elisa folded her hands before her. “She’s going to kill us.”

“If Mordant wanted us dead—” started Bernard.

“—he would have killed us already,” finished Rene.

“Not Mordant,” said Elisa. “
Her.
She needs magic. Killing people is how she increases her power.”

“Of course,” breathed François. “That’s why she smells like a graveyard.”

“The lost children in the palace,” remembered Tristan. Elisa’s punishment for not accepting Mordant’s proposal of marriage had been to see to the well-being of a group of orphaned children whose parents had died in the uprising—nothing so large as Friday’s army, of course, but enough that it was noticed when the children began disappearing, one by one. Tristan and his brothers did not know what had happened to the children, so they had not been able to tell King Rumbold the truth when their sister’s life was at stake.

But Elisa could tell them now. “Yes, the children were murdered, and yes, I knew they had been murdered, but it was not I who took their lives. One by one, Gana stole them away from me, making it look like I had lost track of them. When people began asking questions and the magistrate discovered the bodies in that shallow grave . . .” The rest of the story was lost in Elisa’s sadness and guilt of the past.

“They blamed you,” said Tristan, “but they shouldn’t have.”

“Shouldn’t they?” she asked. “I might not have been able to speak, but was there really nothing I could have done to save at least one of them?”

Christian stepped forward, took her into his arms, and let her cry. She gasped, hiccuped, and expelled such great, heaving sobs that Tristan was afraid she might pass out from the effort. But none of them tried to stop her—there was near a decade’s worth of tears in that release. Elisa cried for the children, their parents, the loss of their old home, the loss of their new home, the loss of control of their destiny, and who knew what else.

Finally she regained control of herself, taming the weeping into sniffles. “She drinks the blood,” Elisa said. “Or bathes in it; I’m not sure which. But it’s definitely something to do with blood.”

“That’s why she needs us alive,” said François.

“We are walking, talking blood bags,” said Rene.

“Pleasant thought,” said Bernard.

“And our family possesses the power of the Four Winds in our veins, though Elisa may be the only one able to harness it,” Christian added. “I suspect that makes our blood particularly . . .”

“. . . attractive,” finished François.

“. . . delicious,” added Rene.

“Tristan,” said François.

“What?” asked Tristan.

“We need to cause a distraction and find some way to set you free so you can fly back to the mainland.”

“First of all, I’m not even sure I can fly. Glide, sure, but fly? And over such a long distance? I’d most likely end up in Troll Country.”

“I’d rather take my chances with Gana,” said Bernard.

“Sebastien can fly,” said Rene.

“But would Sebastien know where he was going?” asked Christian. “And how would he pass along a message once he arrived?”

“He’ll be human again at the full moon,” offered François.

“We’ll be dead by the next full moon,” said Elisa.

“Let’s keep thinking,” said Christian. “François is on the right track. Let’s not lose faith.”

None of them contradicted their elder brother, but neither did they rally. Trouble was, they didn’t have much faith to begin with. Their dreams had gone from the beaches of Arilland to the palace ballroom and no further. Faith was a thing sewn into the patchwork skirts of a girl on another shore.

Tristan tired of standing and curled back down onto the hard floor. Bernard and Rene took over François’s task of trying to pull the boxes to the cage to see what was in them. Finally, their fingers found purchase enough to inch one forward. After a lengthy period of prying and kicking and pounding and cursing, they managed to smash into the side of the box. The two men removed handful after handful of packing material in search of the contents . . . until they realized the packing material
was
the contents.

An enormous pile of spun yarn stared at them all from the edge of the cell.

Elisa gagged.

But Tristan smiled. Gana’s little prank would be her downfall.

“See if you can pry the lid off,” Tristan told the twins, “and don’t break the frame. I want to do a weaving.”

“Are you mad?” asked Philippe.

“In the finest sense of the word,” Tristan said proudly.

The twins managed to remove the box’s cover and slide it through the bars of the cell. They broke out the inner plank so that only the frame remained. Tristan wiggled the boards—nothing as sturdy as a picture frame, but they would do. He tied one loop of yarn around the bottom corner of the loom and began creating a warp.

“I can’t watch.” Elisa huddled back into her corner of the cage beside Sebastien. If she wasn’t already shaking, Tristan could tell she was about to start.

“You don’t have to, dearest,” he said. “Rest yourself. Pay your featherbrained brother no mind.”

The comment was meant in jest, but as soon as he said it, he realized that a feather would be the perfect tool with which to thread the weft strands through. He tried pulling out one of his own, but he couldn’t force himself to do it, nor did he have the proper angle.

“Help me,” he asked of his brothers. Christian stepped forward.

“Turn around.” Christian stuck his hand into the patch of feathers Tristan had indicated. Tristan turned his body away and braced himself for the pain. It was not insignificant.

Tristan collapsed on the floor, biting back a scream that would have brought Gana back to the hold—or worse, the Infidel. When he recomposed himself, he stood and faced his brother. Christian held out one bright feather roughly the length of his forearm. It would do.

“I tried to make it quick.”

“And for that I thank you,” said Tristan. “Let’s hope it’s not necessary again.”

Tristan leaned back against the bars, selected a separate yarn for his weft, and began to weave. It would be difficult, but he wanted to incorporate some sort of message into the cloth if he could. A more talented man would have sewn the words she had taught him into the border or hidden some longer, more complex message, but his skills were crude at best.

After a while, Elisa overcame her disgust and eased over to help guide Tristan’s hand. Between the two of them they managed to incorporate something that looked more like a swan and less like a giant white blob—at least, Tristan thought so. They added green spots to represent the Green Isles, and a red ship of sorts. Elisa had her doubts. But if even a scrap of fabric got to Friday at all, she would know who had sent it, no matter what the pattern or the quality of the work.

“You should probably work faster,” suggested Bernard.

“He’s working as fast as he can,” said Rene.

“I just wish I knew how much time I had,” said Tristan.

“She’ll stay on the deck to maintain the spell on the boat,” said Elisa. “Though judging by the smell, she’s close to the end of her strength.”

“Have you thought about how you’re going to send this?” asked Christian.

Tristan nodded as he wove the quill through the warp. “My shirt,” he told his brothers. “We can use the buckles to strap it to Sebastien.”

Rene considered their cage. “He probably
could
fit through the bars.”

“He’s not going to like it,” said Bernard.

“Do you think he’ll be able to fly all that way?” asked François. “Or know where he’s headed?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Tristan said. “It’s the only plan I’ve got.”

“I can help him,” said Elisa. “I can summon the wind beneath him so that his wings don’t tire as fast, and I can set him on a current that will take him as far west as he cares to go. We’ll have to trust him to find the palace on his own.”

Christian unbuttoned Tristan’s collar and set to unfastening the buckles of his shirt. Tristan never stopped weaving. Elisa had done this for all their sakes, for three straight days.

“If I didn’t appreciate you enough before, sister dear, then I certainly do now,” he said as he pulled another strand through the warp.

Elisa kissed him on the cheek. “This will work. I know it will.”

“Oh yes? How’s that?”

“Destiny,” she said confidently. Tristan didn’t argue, mostly because he was too cold to do so. Elisa saw him shivering and called a breeze from warmer climes in through the porthole to thaw his frozen fingers.

When the crew began to cry the sight of land, Tristan stopped weaving. Bernard and Rene sawed at the warp threads with broken boards from the crate until the weaving fell away from its frame. Christian wound it up in Tristan’s shirt and buckled the bundle tightly across Sebastien’s back. The swan did not struggle, which gave them hope that, somewhere inside that body, their eldest brother had heard the plan and intended to fulfill it.

As expected, the swan did not enjoy being squeezed through the bars, but the twins made it happen, apologizing the whole time. Then Elisa set to blowing the porthole open as wide as she could. She managed a few more inches before it wedged against another crate and budged no farther.

Suddenly there was a great honk, and a substantial white body came hurtling through the porthole, knocking the crate aside and throwing the window wide open.