Page 67 of Witchshadow
“If you think that upsets me”—Kahina closed the spyglass with aclack-clack-clack—“then I fear you will be disappointed, my dear. I have killed more men than I can count, and though you may not remember it, so have you.”
“I’m not who you think I am, and I’m not yourdear.”
Kahina sniffed. “Such disdain for an ally.”
Stix sniffed right back. “You are not my ally.”
“Of course I am.” Kahina traded her spyglass for her pipe, resting on a nearby stool. “I know who you are, just as you know who I am. And this?” She twirled the pipe around the Ring. “Is not where you belong, as much as you might enjoy it here.”
“Enjoy it? You think I enjoyed swimming for my life while sea foxes hunted? You think I enjoyed having a flame hawk sear off half my hair?” Stix knew she was taking Kahina’s bait, but she didn’t care. She had just faced off with three sea foxes; Kahina didn’t frighten her. “If we’re going to speak plainly, Admiral, then let us speak plainly: I’m here to answer the voices in my head. I don’t care about you or your games or your silly riddles. I want answers, and then I want to leave again.”
“Games?” Kahina’s eyebrows sprang high. “Riddles? You think I toy with you?”
“Of course you do.”
“Of course I do not.” For the first time since Stix’s arrival, something like anger reached Kahina’s face. A strike of stone on flint to flare within her pupils. “The past dwells inside us, Water Brawler, and it can only be set free when we see the places from before. This”—she opened her arms—“used to be yours.”
“Not mine.” Stix mimicked Kahina’s movement. “Theirs. These voices are not me.”
“But of course they are.” Kahina’s face creased with mocking pity. “And you are in for such disappointment if you continue to cling to that belief.”
No,Stix wanted to retort,you are.But she quashed the words in her throat. This conversation was already slinging out of her control. She had intended to come here and tell Kahina to leave the prisoners alone. Then she’d intended to tell Kahina to leaveheralone so she could finish what she’d come here to do: Stix wanted out of this cursed pirate hole. She wanted to be back in Nubrevna, back with Vivia. And she didn’t want any more deaths on her conscience before she got there.
Kahina slid her pipe between her teeth. The bowl sparked, smoke plumed, and the edge of a smile fluttered on her lips. She saw herself as thewinner of this argument, and it made the storm brew once more in Stix’s blood. In her fingers, aching to curl into fists. This must be how Vivia felt every time she faced the High Council in Nubrevna: like the only sensical one in a room full of fools.
“I,” Stix said, lowering her voice in a lethal imitation of Vivia, “am not like you, Admiral. I am my own person, and soon these voices will go away. And you?” She motioned between them. “Are not my ally and never will be.” She turned on her booted heel then, water from the Ring sloughing off her as she aimed for the doorway.
The cat’s ears perked at her approach.
“Enough,” Kahina snapped, and though all of Stix’s instincts shouted at her to keep going, she let her feet slow beside the gray cat. It opened a single green eye. “We are running out of time. We have been waiting too many years for you to find us—your memories have come late—and now the end approaches. We must find the tools, Water Brawler, and we must restore them.”
“Tools?” Stix asked innocently. She swiveled her head toward Kahina. “What tools?”
Kahina scowled. “You know damned well what I mean. I can see it on your face, even if you hide behind those spectacles. The blade, the glass. The tools from a thousand years ago that disappeared after our world collapsed and that we must find again before a new collapse sets in.”
“So… you want them.” Stix spoke this as a statement, not a question, and the gray cat popped open both eyes. Meanwhile Kahina cocked her head to one side, studying Stix with a raptorial stare.
It was not the frustrated scrutiny from earlier, nor even the pitying one. This was the stare of someone reassessing what they’d thought was a known quantity. Stix could practically see the knives sharpening behind her eyes. “You know where they are,” Kahina said quietly.
“I don’t.”
“Of course you do.” Kahina flipped up her hand and flames ignited around her fingers. “Tell me where you found them.”
Where I found them, Stix thought.Not where they are.And just like that, she saw a solution—a bargaining weight that tipped the scales in her favor. Kahina was a Master of the Ring; her power was vast. She could fling prisoners into the arena as easily as she emptied her pipe bowl. Which meant she could also…
“Free the prisoners, and I’ll tell you where I found the blade and glass.”
Kahina’s pipe ignited. “I could free a few.”
“All of them.”
Kahina scoffed. Then, after several seconds when Stix offered nothing else, she gave an outright laugh. “You cannot be serious. I can do many things, Water Brawler, but freeing every prisoner from the Ring is not one of them. Many people own them.”
“Then buy them.”
Kahina’s left eye twitched, a movement Stix would never have noticed without her spectacles. Behind her, the Ring’s chaos continued unabated, while beside Stix, the cat stretched onto its feet. Moments misted past. Stix refused to break eye contact with Kahina.
Vivia would have been proud.
