Pathfinder's Way (60 page)

Tate leads a life full of
secrets. Having dragon tattoo that moves when nobody is looking and
no memory of her past makes things challenging. When a momentary
impulse leads Tate to return a hairpin to its owner, it sparks a
chain of events that soon affects Tate's survival. Now with several
people convinced that she holds the key to unimaginable power,
Tate’s about to learn how a single action can have unintended
consequences.

With no allies to watch
her back, Tate’s going to have to move fast if she wants to survive
in the city of Aurelia, where people are never who they seem.
She’ll find that monsters walk the labyrinth beneath Aurelia’s
streets where the secrets to Tate’s past rest. Unlocking her hidden
memories might just be the only thing keeping Tate alive and
preventing the coming war.

Prologue

It was cold. So cold. The kind that sunk
below the skin and dove straight for the bone. So deep she couldn’t
even shiver. There was no sense of self or place, just a vast dark
nothingness. The silence was so loud it practically screamed.

Ages passed, each moment the same as before.
In time, the tiny existence floating through the emptiness became
aware of a second presence. It curled itself around her like a
shield— unyielding. And silent. Sometimes she’d rail against its
silence begging for a word, a feeling, anything. Through it all,
the presence was a beacon of light that drew her like a moth to the
flame. Sometimes it felt as if that light was simply a shadow on
her mind, created to keep her company as the long years passed.
Real or not, she watched its glow with the hunger of a woman
starved for thousands of years.

She couldn’t tell you her name, what she was,
or how she came to be. Her world revolved around that beacon of
light. It was a hypnotic and soothing distraction that flickered
and danced in the darkness just for her.

Time passed.

Pain ignited along her nerve endings.
Startling, after an eternity of nothingness. The ground reeled
beneath her as she shivered and convulsed. She prayed for the pain
to end. An odd sort of keening began, assaulting ears used to
silence. And then there was the thumping beat that was felt more
than heard.

Her chest rose and fell. The keening
developed into a pattern, one that started and stopped in time to
her chests’ movements. The floor beneath her felt hard and
unwelcoming. She shrank from it, rejecting the alien sensation.
Something stirred against her skin, a gentle kiss of sensation.
Air, her mind supplied, it was air.

Her nerve endings were alive with sensation
and spots danced across her closed eyelids. Her eyes opened slowly
and blinked rapidly against the encroaching light. She held up a
hand against the assault. Unable to see anything but a blur, she
closed her eyes seeking the relief of the previous dark. But the
light was too much. It followed her. Even with her eyes closed, it
sunk below the lids and seared her retinas.

Gradually, though, her eyes adjusted, and she
stared curiously at the room she occupied. She was lying at the
bottom of a glass cylinder, one big enough to accommodate her
curled up body. Her knees were pulled to her chest, her arms
hugging them close as she hid her face against her knees.

On weak arms she pushed herself upright and
propped herself against the glass. The pants and thin shirt she
wore did nothing to provide warmth.

What was her name? She couldn’t remember. She
was a
somebody
. Surely. Her mind grasped desperately at a
word that might define her. After eons locked inside the emptiness,
her mind was slow to provide her information.

Name, she thought. Name. Name. Name.

And then, slowly, a word drifted up from the
recesses of her mind. It was a short word, but it was hers
nonetheless. Tate, her name was Tate.

Chapter One

The breeze caressed Tate’s face and arms,
teasing several copper colored strands from its tight braid as she
leaned against the ship’s railing. It brought with it the salty
smell of the ocean, a smell she’d become familiar with over the
last eight months she’d spent aboard the Marauder. It was a
comforting smell, one that invoked memories of being rocked to
sleep by the waves and sharing meals with friends.

She rubbed a finger over the weathered wood
of the railing and folded her arms over it. It was time to make a
decision. She grimaced and plopped her chin onto her folded arms.
She’d spent the last week lying awake at night, unable to sleep as
she went over every detail of her plan. Even now she didn’t know if
she had the courage to leave the ship at the next port or if she
would choose the familiar and stay.

“What do you think?” a voice said to her
right.

Guilt made Tate jumpy, and she tightened her
grip on the rail as she straightened, not wanting her companion to
know where her thoughts had strayed. Instead she made a
noncommittal sound and hoped he’d move along.

“When I first saw the jewel of the Aurelian
Empire, I was in awe,” he said about the city, resting tanned
forearms beside hers on the rail. His tall figure dwarfed her
considerably smaller one. Standing straight, she still only came up
to his shoulder. “It took a while for me to see that it wasn’t so
different from other cities. There’re still murders, double
dealings and, luckily for me, work for men intent on skulking
about.”

“Is that so?” Tate said, keeping her
attention on the city coming into view.

The captain was right; it was a magnificent
view. The sun was just coming up and dawn gently cradled the city
in its arms, setting it alight with orange and pinks. A slim
peninsula embraced one side of the harbor forming a half crescent
moon that was mirrored on the other side by high cliffs. It allowed
a strip of open water that ships could pass through before
deepening into the wide pool that formed the harbor. On one side a
tower stood sentry. Its purpose was to house the massive chain that
was strung across the harbor in times of siege and would protect
the city from a sea invasion. Framed by the tower and cliffs the
city sprawled in a maze of buildings and streets. A palace with its
majestic towers and gleaming windows, sat atop cliffs formed from a
black rock that sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight. It was an
architectural wonder, the crowning piece of the city, and people
came from all over the empire to see it.

“First time in Aurelia?” he asked
lightly.

She kept her sigh to herself. It figured that
he’d want to chat right then. He hadn’t had much of a presence on
deck for the last few weeks, instead choosing to remain in his
cabin and plan the next job. Now when she was thinking mutinous
thoughts, he popped up like a bad luck charm. And leaving the ship
would mean mutiny in his eyes. Since she hadn’t exactly volunteered
to get on his ship in the first place, she saw her departure more
as a continuation of her life’s journey. He, on the other hand,
would see it as a revolt. It wasn’t that she wanted to leave, quite
the opposite in fact. She loved the freedom of being on the open
seas and seeing the world one country’s port at a time. But it had
been made abundantly clear to her over the last few months that
there was only so much weirdness a crew could take, especially from
a female. When members of the crew cornered her in her bunk and
told her to leave or else, Tate had gotten the message. Being a
female on an all-male crew was difficult enough. Add odd things
happening when she was around and the situation was impossible.
She’d considered telling the captain. He might have even come to
her rescue, but she knew that his involvement would only turn the
rest of the men against her.

She was in danger if she stayed and more if
she didn’t. There was no doubt in her mind that the captain would
hunt her down if she left. She’d seen him do it before when a man
jumped ship without a word in her third month on ship. She still
had nightmares about what they’d done to him.

Tate faked a grin as she looked up at the
captain. A tall man, his face was tanned and showed his age in the
weathered lines around his eyes and mouth. Captain Jost’s brown
eyes were fastened on the city as the ship’s crew bustled around
him, preparing to weigh anchor.

“Not that I remember,” she said.

Jost stared at her with penetrating eyes. He
was a canny old seadog, unused to not knowing a person’s secrets.
Tate, however, still remained a mystery to him. He’d picked her up
about eight months ago wandering a strip of rocky shore not known
for being settled by humans, unable to speak any language he’d ever
heard, and he’d heard a lot. She claimed memory loss, her past
before the ship a complete blank.

“That’s right,” he said softly as if he’d
forgotten. They both knew he hadn’t. The man’s mind was a steel
trap. Nothing escaped. “It’s amazing how fast you picked up our
language,” he said, changing the subject. “What language did you
speak again?”

Used to his probing questions, Tate ignored
him. He often tested her, throwing out random questions that seemed
harmless but which were designed to catch her unawares.

His comment about her aptitude for the
language was true, though. She had picked the language up quickly.
Almost too quickly. Just another puzzle in her life. It was one of
the many reasons that some on the crew wanted her gone. They called
her a witch, and a witch had no place on a pirate crew.

“Is there something you needed, Captain?”
Tate asked, hoping to move him along.

“Just wanted to make sure you won’t be going
ashore alone.” One of his main rules for sailors was they were to
have a buddy when visiting a city. There were two reasons for this.
One to make sure the men had someone at their back in case of
trouble. And two, it prevented malcontents from just disappearing
or turning crew into the authorities.

“Danny, Riply and Trent offered to take me
with them when they went ashore.”

“Good, good.” Jost seemed like he was waiting
for something. Tate waited awkwardly, unsure whether she was
dismissed or not. It felt odd to see the normally decisive captain
acting unsure.

“Is that all, Sir?” Tate asked. His scrutiny
was making her uncomfortable. It would be very easy to start acting
paranoid and give away all her carefully laid plans. A knot of fear
and uncertainty tightened in her chest the longer she was in his
presence.

He seemed to come out of his thoughts. “Yes,
of course. You’re dismissed.”

Tate turned to go, exhaling with relief until
he called her back. Instantly she was on guard again, convinced
that he knew her plans. A small leather purse sailed through the
air. She caught it before it could hit her in the face.

“Tate, for your work these last few months,”
Jost said. “Thought you might be able to use some spending wages
while in Aurelia.”

More than he could know. The bag felt heavy
to Tate. She knew without looking that it was far more than her
usual shore allowance. It felt like all the extra wages she’d
earned over the months. She hadn’t dared ask for them, not wanting
to alert anyone to her real intentions before she’d even gotten
started. Now that she had the money, there was nothing she wanted
more than to return it. Jost didn’t need another reason to come
after her when she was gone.

“A boat is ready, sir,” a sailor said from
behind them.

Jost held out his hand to Tate, and she shook
it. This was it. Goodbye. He’d never know how grateful she was to
have been forced onto his ship and made part of his family. No
doubt if she hadn’t met him, she’d be dead, killed by one of the
monstrous beasts that roamed the northern territories.

His calloused skin was rough against her
smaller hands. Though her hands had toughened over the months she’d
spent on the ship becoming blistered and cracked and eventually
developing calluses, they didn’t compare to a veteran sailor’s.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you when I get back,”
she said. Her lips stretched tight over her teeth, but the smile
she offered him was tense.

“Not if the boys take you to their usual
place. Most of the crew stays there while we’re in port.”

She nodded. It was good to know. If she did
this thing she was contemplating, she’d have to lose them in the
city or sneak out in the middle of the night while they slept.

Still, she could decide to stay. Take her
chances. She’d given the men who’d come for her more bruises and
pain than they gave her. They knew she wouldn’t be an easy mark if
they came for her again. But even as she thought it, she knew it
wouldn’t work. They had the advantage of numbers. Next time there
would be more until there would be no way she could fight them all.
She’d never get a full night's sleep for fear of attack.

No, it was better to leave. She could control
the risk better that way.

She savored the feel of the ship under her
boots as she followed the sailor to the boat. It was unlikely she’d
walk its decks again.

The small oar boat bucked against the ship as
waves rolled gently under it. Several crewmen had already climbed
in, eagerly anticipating shore leave, no doubt. She threw her leg
over the side. The crewman standing next to the ladder grabbed her
wrist tightly. His grip was firm and unyielding. Tate refused to
let any sound of pain escape her. Weakness was a luxury she could
ill afford.

“Remember, witch,” he whispered harshly.
“This ship is no place for you. If you’re on it when we set sail
we’ll consider you fair catch. Perhaps you’ll have a little
pleasure before we throw you overboard.” His gaze darted down her
body in case she missed his meaning.

She jerked away, her skin crawling. She more
or less slid the rest of the way down. The rope ladder swayed
jerkily under her weight, the hemp cutting into her hands as she
raced down. Seawater made the rungs slippery, and she almost
slipped. Arms steadied her as she stepped into the boat and sat
down.