The Myatheira Chronicles: Volume Two: Beyond the Veil (72 page)

“You expect me to believe that your method of relaxation was to sit and gossip about me with the Consul?” It flattered her to consider, but it was too good to be true. She found it easier to believe Callum’s interest in visiting Feolan and his wife was to see their daughter. Jaslyn was a beautiful woman and closer to Callum in age. A match between them almost seemed more suitable. Jaslyn was the perfect lady. An image of feminine grace and etiquette. Although they were friends, Aiva had always found herself mildly envious of Jaslyn in many ways.

Callum squinted at Aiva as if reading the hidden questions behind her eyes. He knew her too well. Even through the alcohol he could sense her insecurity. “You suspect my visits to have been for the young Miss Diah.”

Clearing her throat she shrugged her shoulders awkwardly. The last thing she wanted to do was voice the concern out loud. “Perhaps,” she struggled to sound nonchalant. “She is more your age. A radiant jewel of our people trapped in Siscal due to her father’s profession. The men at court fall head-over-heels for her when she comes to visit. Faustine considered Jaslyn one of her most prized pupils of recent generations.”

“Miss Diah is a sweet girl, but she is too quiet. Too dainty. If I were to have an idea to wrestle her someday, I would probably break every bone in her frail body,” Callum smirked. “You know me, Aiva. I like to play rough. I cannot attach myself to a woman who isn’t capable of keeping up with me.”

A barrage of thoughts flooded into Aiva’s head at his statement. For some reason it sounded lewd. Had she read something into his words which was not intended? Warmth rushed to her cheeks to realize the inappropriateness of her thoughts. She couldn’t let herself think about Callum wrestling with anyone. In the back of her mind she kept seeing him on the litter in Tunir, chest bare, glistening from sweat in the humid jungle air, hands pinned over her wrists to prevent her from getting away.
Yes. He certainly did like to play rough…
Nervously, she ran her fingers through her hair, trying to avoid his stare. “I think it best I not picture you wrestling with women. I’ll take your word for your preference of roughness.”

This time it was Callum’s face that flushed, burning a bright crimson at the tips of his pointed ears. “I… Aiva, I didn’t mean…” he stammered.

She couldn’t help laughing at the desperation in his tone. He floundered to find the right words, unable to retract the mistaken innuendo Aiva pulled from his statement. “It’s too late, Callum,” she smirked. “Your secret is out. How perfectly naughty of you.”

“As if you have room to talk,” he glanced around the tavern, lowering his voice. “You aren’t exactly the most angelic of women. I find it hard to believe you would be so gentle and delicate while – wrestling – with a man.”

“And you should not picture what I would be like in such a position,” she winked. “Maybe I would surprise you.”

“Are you implying that you would show me?” Callum leaned his chin on his hand with exaggerated interest.

Caught in the web of her own joke Aiva found herself speechless. Her mouth opened and closed, searching for the right words to say, finding nothing which wouldn’t dig her deeper into her already impossible hole. “That is not something a proper lady would admit,” she mumbled, shifting to straighten her posture, lowering her leg onto the floor to position herself in a more appropriate fashion. It didn’t matter if the other women in the tavern were behaving so scandalously. She needed to maintain a semblance of the respectable lady she was brought up to be.

He looked her over, seemingly amused by her evasive response. “That’s not exactly a no, Milady.”

“And it is also not a yes,” she said smugly. “Isn’t it fun to be left guessing?”

Callum chortled, lowering his arms onto the table to rest them on the surface. “I didn’t realize Faustine taught you to be such a tease. You may claim you performed poorly while under her tutelage, but I daresay that must have been a lesson you excelled in. However…” he leaned forward as if in preparation to tell some great secret. “Your eyes belie your confidence. While your lips spew the lines of a seductress, your face reveals your innocence and lack of experience in how to handle the advances you bring upon yourself. It is cute.”

“I am not cute,” Aiva glared at him. Arms folded across her chest she stuck out her lower lip irritably. Callum shifted his weight backward in the seat, his laughter making it impossible for Aiva to remain bothered by his observation. He wasn’t wrong, though she found it frustrating that he could read her so easily. Callum was a strong man. He seemed the type who would prefer a confident and strong woman. How was she supposed to make him view her in such a way if he always saw her mannerisms as adorable and cute? Why could he not find her sexy? That was a word she wouldn’t mind hearing him call her again.

Shouting directed their attention toward the center of the room, cutting through Callum’s laughter. His body went rigid. Tensed in case a need to fight arose. Something flashed in his eyes, the lightheartedness vanishing without a trace.

Curious by his strange reaction, Aiva followed Callum’s gaze to a taller man arguing with one of the women seated on the lap of another patron not far away. His hand was on her wrist, gruffly pulling her to her feet despite the protests she gave. Fear was evident in the woman’s voice. Aiva felt a strong urge to come to her aid. To rush in and protect her from this brute. Something about Callum’s cautionary stance told her to remain seated and not draw attention to their presence.

The ruckus continued while everyone in the room looked on. No one said a word, the only sound coming from the woman’s shrill shrieks over her assailant’s cold laughter. He jerked her a few steps toward the stairs before seeming to lose interest, pushing her to the floor, coughing up a large ball of spittle to shoot through his teeth, nearly striking the woman in the face. With a loud cheer of self-approval he walked toward the bar. Several girls rushed to the fallen woman’s side to help her up, quickly hurrying away to put distance between them and the newcomer.

Tearing her eyes from the scene Aiva became aware that Callum was no longer watching. His face was turned downward, hand shielding his eyes, body turned in toward the wall as if in attempts to hide himself from view. She was used to Callum being confident and poised. To see him attempting to remain out of sight made Aiva begin to wonder if there was something about the man at the bar that she didn’t know. “Callum, what is it?” she hissed quietly, leaning across the table to close the gap between them to avoid being overheard. “Is something wrong?”

“That is one of Ireni’s men,” he replied in a hushed tone. “After she was apprehended on my ship, he was the first of her cohorts we discovered among our ranks. If he sees my face, he will recognize me, and he will start a fight. I would prefer not to put you in that kind of danger.”

Her heart jumped at the thought. One of Ireni’s men? Were they still in the port city? “This is good, isn’t it?” she asked. “That means Shae might be here.”

“Shaelyn isn’t here,” Callum shook his head, sliding deeper into the booth. “That particular man wasn’t with them on the beach in Palinon and I don’t recall seeing him with the others at the ravine in Carpaen. It’s more likely he is just passing through himself.”

“Why would Ireni leave men behind? I don’t understand.”

“Ireni doesn’t always work with the same people,” he explained. “She works for someone on the mainland who employs her and the others. Her orders come from him and from what I am led to believe, that employer has well over a hundred men at his fingertips. She is his second-in-command so she remains involved in everything he does, but the men who work with her change from job-to-job. That particular man is probably running a raid ship between here and the mainland when the next group of traders leaves port.”

“They would attack traders bringing goods to their country?”

“Of course. If they have control of the food and other merchandise, it makes their boss more influential. Like I said before, it’s a constant struggle for power. If gaining influence means robbing your own people of food, they will do it.”

Aiva leaned back in her seat with a sigh of frustration. Whether the man was involved in the kidnapping of Shaelyn or not, she didn’t care. She wanted to fight him. Out of sheer hatred for the people he was involved with. If they couldn’t fight him, they had to at least do something. She didn’t want to walk out of there knowing he was inside and they simply let him walk away without exploiting him in some way. There had to be something useful which he possessed. Something that might help them in finding Ireni. “How much do you know about their boss?” she inquired, her curiosity building. Since departing Tanispa she had no memory of anyone discussing details of the group responsible for Shaelyn’s kidnapping other than Ireni’s name. It made her wonder if they really knew the enemy as well as they thought.

At the question Callum’s expression fell. Jaw clenched, he avoided looking Aiva in the eye, keeping his body turned toward the wall. “Not as much as I would like,” he frowned. “Ireni didn’t give a lot of information when she was taken into custody. We know it’s a man and that he currently holds significant sway over the Luquarr mainland, but details are sketchy at best.”

“Do you know where he operates from? Where they might be taking Shaelyn?”

“I wish I could say yes, Aiva. That information was never provided.”

She gawked at him in disbelief. “You mean to tell me we are blindly chasing after these people in their own land without a clue of where they might be headed? I thought you knew them…”

“I know their tactics, which makes me useful in the event of an attack, especially while at sea. I’m not any more pleased with the way things have turned out where tracking them is concerned, but when we left Tanispa, our goal was to catch up with them before they reached the Vai’ld Sea. We certainly didn’t anticipate them gaining several days and leaving us scrambling the way they did. If we could have kept on their heels, finding their intended destination would have been a simple matter of following their track the way we did through Carpaen. At this point, we really have nothing unless our fathers took note of their track at the port in Dackdyn when they arrived.”

“Would the man at the bar know where we could find their boss?” Aiva glanced over her shoulder toward the man, watching him carefully. He was leaned backward, a tall mug of ale in his hands, tilted over his face, more of the liquid spilling through his tangled beard than seeming to actually reach his lips. At the final swallow he slammed the mug down on the bar, letting loose with a disgusting belch that echoed throughout the room. Some of the men at the bar cheered at the display, patting him on the back, their laughter ringing out while calling for the bartender to bring them more drinks.

Callum laughed miserably. His face remained downturned, shifting his gaze to stare at Aiva through his peripheral vision. “You think he’s going to just tell us that information? Did you forget the part where I told you pirates are smarter than those in the stories you heard as a child? He may be a disgusting slob, but he’s no fool. He wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“But if he wasn’t in Palinon or Carpaen, then he would not recognize me,” Aiva pressed on. She wasn’t going to give up so easily. “After he’s had a few more drinks, I might be able to drag the name from his lips.” Not wanting to give Callum a chance to argue, she started to slide out of the booth, stopped by the sensation of Callum’s hands grabbing firmly onto her wrist.

“You are insane,” he hissed. “Are you trying to get us both killed?”

“I’m not insane. Perhaps a little drunk,” she stared down at her wrist, wincing from the discomfort caused by Callum’s tight grasp. “You’re hurting me…”

Apologetically, he released his hold. He gazed at her, desperately pleading with his eyes for her to listen. “You cannot do this,” he whispered loudly. “That man is a miscreant. One of the most vile men you will ever lay eyes upon while in Luquarr. If you think I am going to sit here and let you approach him, then you have lost your mind beyond the influence of the wine. Did you not see the way he treated that woman?”

“She is a prostitute. I mean no offense, but it seems as if that is behavior she must be used to seeing from men when she is here specifically for their physical pleasure. He wouldn’t dare treat me that way.”

“He would treat you worse!” Callum gasped, his insistence growing. “I don’t doubt that you could acquire the information, but at what cost, Aiva? He would blackmail you into sleeping with him. And that is the least violent scenario that comes to mind! A man like him might choose to force himself upon you with the lure of providing the name you desire and then leave you with nothing once he had what he wanted.”

“Perhaps, but you would never let him take me from this room,” she argued. A chill coursed through her spine at what Callum suggested. She couldn’t let it bother her. This was something they had to do. For Shaelyn’s sake. They had over two weeks in Tunir to relax from their mission. They had to make up for lost time. If they could find where Ireni had taken Shaelyn, they could easily locate them when they reached the mainland. Without that information, they would be running around Luquarr, clueless and vulnerable while Ireni’s men did whatever they pleased with her sister.

“I might be able to fight him alone, but I can’t claim to be good enough to take on all of his friends here with him. They would kill me and take you wherever they pleased.” He rubbed at his temples, tortured by what Aiva planned to do. She could see in every line of his face that he wanted to grab her and leave the tavern. He was stopped from doing so by the fact that he knew she would create a commotion which would draw attention to them.

Her chest fluttered almost painfully from the racing of her heart. Why did Callum find this such a hopeless possibility? There were so many things they could do! It would just require a little planning. They had spent hours as children plotting tricks and games together for false battles. With the knowledge they held now, how difficult could it be for them to plan something like this?