Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 13

As the ship rocked in the sway of the increasing storm, Nicci looked at the pot Bannon had delivered to her cabin. She lifted the wooden lid and sniffed.

“It’s fish chowder,” Bannon said, happy to be of service. He caught himself against the door of her cabin as the ship lurched, but his smile didn’t fade. “The cook wanted to make sure you ate.”

“I will eat.” Nicci had not intended to venture out into the wind-lashed night to make her way to the galley. The young man was so eager, so solicitous; if she did not accept the food, she knew he would only continue to pester her. “Thank you.”

“I’m on watch. I have to get back to my duties.” Bannon obviously wanted to chat with her, hoping she would ask him to stay for a few more moments.

“Yes, you have to get back to your duties.” Nicci took the pot in a swirl of savory, fishy aromas, and when the young man awkwardly retreated, she closed the flimsy cabin door.

Her room had plank bulkheads, a washbasin, a narrow shuttered porthole, and a tiny shelf. A hard narrow bunk with a woolen blanket served as her bed, and a small oil lamp illuminated her quarters with a flickering flame.

Sitting on the bunk, Nicci lifted the pot’s lid and used a splintered wooden spoon to stir the milky broth. Chunks of fish floated amid wilted herbs, gnarled tubers, and pieces of onion. She ate. The taste was sour, flavored with unfamiliar spices.

When serving Emperor Jagang, Nicci had traveled the Old World, eaten many strange cuisines, and sampled flavors that only a starving woman could enjoy. This stew was one of those, possibly because the milk had curdled in the broth. But she needed the nourishment. This was food, nothing more.

The hull creaked and shifted as the ship felt the pressure of the waves and the building wind. Finished with her meal, she turned the key in her oil lamp to retract the wick and extinguish the flame. In her cramped cabin she had only the darkness and the sounds of a struggling ship for company.

She lay back on her narrow bunk, trying to sleep, feeling her insides churn much like the waves outside. Before long, she wrapped the blanket around herself, shivering. The shivers became more violent. Her muscles clenched, her head began to pound.

Within an hour she knew that the chowder was poisoned. Not just spoiled, but containing some deadly substance. She should have known. She should have been more wary. Others had tried to kill her before, many others.

But she found it incomprehensible that Bannon would poison her. No, she couldn’t believe it. The simple, eager young man was not a schemer, not a traitor. She had trusted the food because he had delivered it.

But he could have been duped himself.

Nicci curled up, panting hard, trying to squeeze out the fire in her gut. Sweat blossomed on her skin, and her shivers became so severe they were like convulsions. Her insides roiled as if someone had plunged a barbed spear into her stomach and twirled it, twisting her intestines until she feared they might be torn out, like what remained of the wishpearl diver.

Barely able to see or think, she slid off her bunk and swayed on weak legs. Her knees nearly buckled, but she clutched the joined planks of the bulkhead. Her head spun. She retched, as if some invisible hand had reached down her throat and was trying to pull out her insides.

Slumping against the wall of her cabin, Nicci was so unsteady that she barely noticed the Wavewalker shuddering in the heavy seas. Her vision blurred, but the cabin was so dark she couldn’t see anyway. Her muscles felt like wet rags.

Nicci needed to find help—needed to get to Nathan. She could think of no one else. Maybe the wizard would be able to purge the poison, heal any damage. But she couldn’t find the door. Her entire cabin was spinning.

She retched again—this time vomiting all over the floor—but the poison had already set in. She tried to call upon enough of her own magic to strengthen herself, at least to get out of this trap, but she was too dizzy. Her thoughts spun like a wheel edged with jagged razors.

She had to get out, had to find her way onto the deck, where she hoped the fresh, cold air would revive her.

She felt along the walls of her cabin, forced herself to focus, knowing she would find the door if she just kept moving. How could she be lost in such a cramped space? She encountered the small shelf and held on to it, placing so much weight on it that the nails ripped loose from the planks and came crashing down. She collapsed, and crawled across the deck, her hand slipping in the wet pool of her vomit. When she found her bunk again, Nicci was able to pull herself to her feet. Finding the wall, she worked her way around the cabin, one agonizing step at a time.

The deck kept heaving, but she needed to find the way out. She knew it was here … somewhere close.

Her cabin door burst open as someone pushed it inward. Nicci reeled back and barely caught her balance as she saw three men crowded in the doorway. She knew that Bannon was on watch, Nathan was in his cabin, and the rest of the Wavewalker’s crew were huddled belowdecks, hiding from the storm.

Nicci was here all alone.

The three wishpearl divers faced her. Rom carried a small lamp turned down low, so they could make their way along the corridor. They were still shirtless, and the unsteady lamplight cast dark shadows that chiseled their muscles. Their loose trousers had been cinched tight around their waists—and in her distorted vision, Nicci saw that Sol was aroused, his manhood poking against the fabric like a short, hard harpoon.

She retreated a step deeper into her cabin. Her knees wobbled, and her weak helplessness made Sol burst out in laughter. The other two divers joined him in their husky chuckles. “The sorceress appears to be under the weather,” said Elgin, then snickered at his own joke.

“She’ll be under me in a minute,” said Sol. He pushed his way into the cabin with the other two close behind him. “You’ll be too sick to fight or use your evil magic, bitch, and after we’re done with you, you’ll be too sore and exhausted to move.”

“Go,” Nicci managed, and forced herself to add, “last chance.”

“I get the first chance,” said Sol. “These two can take their turns afterward.”

With a careless gesture, he knocked Nicci backward onto her bunk. The muscular man stood over her, slammed her shoulders down against the wadded blanket, and fumbled with her breasts. She pushed at his hands, tried to claw them. Even though she was sick and unable to find her magic, Nicci’s nails were sufficient weapons, and she ripped deep gouges in his forearm. Sol slapped her hard across the face, and her head slammed against the pallet. Nicci reeled, but the physical blow was no worse than what the poison was doing inside her.

Sol managed to yank down the front of her dress to expose her breasts. “Bring the lamp, Rom. I want to see these.”

The three men leered down, laughing. Sol said, “Pink nipples, just like I thought! It’s good to see for myself after dreaming about them for days.” He put a paw over her left breast, crushing down, squeezing hard.

Nicci fought against the poison, delved deep into her mind, and struggled to find her strength. She had been raped before, not just by Jagang, but countless times by his soldiers when he had forced her to serve in their tents, to be a toy as punishment … as training. The powerful emperor had been able to force her—but these worthless men were not dream walkers. They were not emperors. They were disgusting.

Anger made Nicci’s blood burn. Whatever it was, the poison was just a chemical, and her magic was more potent than that. She was a Sister of the Dark. She possessed the abilities she had stolen from wizards she had killed. She could summon a ball of wizard’s fire and incinerate all three of these men, but that might also engulf the Wavewalker in fire.

No, she had to fight them in a different way, a direct way. A more personal way.

Grunting, Sol fumbled with the string on his trousers, loosening the fabric at his waist. He pulled his pants loose to expose his meaty shaft.

“For all your bluster,” Nicci managed to say, “I expected something larger.”

Elgin and Rom cackled. Sol slapped her again, then grabbed her thighs, pushing her legs apart.

It had happened so many times before. She had been powerless. She had been forced to endure.

But Nicci didn’t have to endure now. Even weak, even poisoned, she was stronger than these scum. She was better than they were. She felt flickers of fire within her hands, not much more than the little flame Nathan had summoned on the windy deck. But it was enough.

She clapped her burning hands against Sol’s naked shoulders, searing his skin. He howled and lurched back. Nicci released more magic into the fire in her palms, but it flickered and weakened.

The wishpearl divers backed away in fear. “She still has her magic.”

“Not enough of it,” Sol growled and came back at her.

Normally, calling fire was not difficult, but she had seen Nathan struggle with his powers, too. Still, she knew even more straightforward spells. She could move the air, stir currents, create breezes. Now, she summoned air in the confined cabin, not just as wind, but as a fist.

The invisible blow shoved Sol away from her, and he was so startled that his erection drooped. The other two men were still stiff, bulges poking prominently against the fabric of their pants, though the arousal probably stemmed as much from the promise of violence as from the anticipation of physical pleasure.

Sol recovered himself. “Bitch, you’ll lie back and—”

Nicci ignored the poison, ignored the dizziness, ignored the sickness raging through her. She called on the air again, focused it, pushed it, forming a weapon.

The storm outside blew with greater fury, and winds lashed against the Wavewalker. Sizzling, splattering rain came down so loud outside that no one could hear her struggles inside the cabin. But if she made these men scream loudly enough, someone would hear.

Nicci manipulated the air, shaping it like a hand … and then a fist. She used it to clutch the testicles between Sol’s legs.

He cried out in sudden alarm.

Nicci created two more hands of air that seized the sacs of the other two wishpearl divers. They cried out, flailing their hands against the invisible grip.

“I warned you.” She rose up from the pallet, not caring that her breasts were still exposed, and she glared at the three with her blue eyes. “I warned you—now choose. Do you want them torn off, or just crushed?”

His face a mask of red fury, Sol lunged toward her. Nicci manipulated the air to tighten her hold around his scrotum, and then twisted as if she were wrenching off the lid of a jar. She contracted her air fist with sudden force—but not so swiftly that she couldn’t feel each of his testicles squeeze until it popped like a rotten grape. Sol let out a high wail that could not begin to express his pain.

Giving the men no chance to beg, because she had no interest in mercy, Nicci crushed the testicles of the other two, leaving them moaning, whimpering, and unable to manage much of a scream as they fell to the floor of her cabin.

“I think you would rather I killed you.” Nicci pulled the front of her dress back up to cover herself. “I can always change my mind and come back.” Standing straight on her wobbly legs, she glared down at the writhing men. “Even poisoned, I’m better than you.”

She didn’t have time to clean up the garbage, though, before the main attack struck the ship.