Page 41 of Take No Prisoners
"He said I was."
"He's the last person I would trust to assess a weaver's ability. Come. We'll talk more inside."
They'd walked up to what Niall had mistaken for another tree trunk. When it opened, he recognized a door carved into the largest tree he'd ever seen. It opened into a large room lined with a circular staircase twisting its way up to a balcony with a row of doors. Whether they opened to additional rooms hollowed from the tree or outside, Niall didn't know, but his fingers itched to grab the railing and climb.
"Down here," Elder Beatrice called.
He'd missed the rope ladder dropping into the darkness below.
"It's not far," she said.
He'd never been fond of true darkness without stars or ambient light on the water. He shivered as he stepped onto the ladder and a cool breeze tickled his ankles. There was a light below, thank the gods. It put Elder Beatrice in shadow and didn't stop him from groping for each wooden rung like a drunken sailor. Finally, he made it to the chamber with the wall sconce. The rest of the crew waited for them at another door carved through a gnarled tree root.
Elder Beatrice walked ahead to unlock the ancient door, leaving Niall to mill behind the crew. Stan turned to him and traced his finger along the door jamb. "It's earth magic."
Niall thought he felt an ancient vibration as he pressed his thumb to the frame, the same as Stan. Something old and powerful reached for him, and it made his skin crawl.
Despite being far beneath the ground, the circular room at the bottom of the ladder and the hallway beyond the gnarled door smelled faintly of fresh pine instead of the damp earth Niall expected. The hallway walls were a mixture of wood and earth. Tree roots poked out of the floor here and there before curling back into the dirt. Niall would have feared a cave-in if he hadn't felt the same thrumming vibration throughout the corridor. Deep magic had been used to construct a hidden fortress from a giant living tree.
Niall wondered if all pirate islands had a sanctuary like this one. Pirates often raided the empire's ships and rich ports, but Niall had never heard of Coryn successfully sacking a pirate island. According to the sailors who frequented the pubs along Merchant Row, she had made several attempts.
The corridor ended in another gnarled door. This one opened into a giant natural cave hollowed from rock. Water burbled from somewhere in the darkness beyond the raised plateau. Blocks of stone had been positioned like chairs around a table with ornate carvings down the middle. Elder Beatrice took the seat at the head of the table, motioning for Niall to sit at her right.
"Vadim." She motioned for the death weaver to take the seat across from Niall, and Efren dropped onto the stone block beside him as though he were guarding his prisoner.
The rest of the crew shuffled to empty seats around the table, leaving over half of them empty.
As if on cue, there was a deep scraping sound behind Elder Beatrice, as though a giant boulder had been shifted. Niall noticed another door-shaped indent in the otherwise seamless wall. Three men dressed in the same manner of flowing clothes entered through the door. They walked with the confidence of the gods themselves, buzzing with the same energy as the place around them. Niall touched the table and felt more earth magic reaching back at him, and a bald elder with a wrinkled face cut eyes at him. Instead of a rebuke, he flashed Niall a beaming smile.
"Elder Beatrice, what have we here?"
Niall heard a deep voice in the air, as though he was everywhere in the room instead of twenty feet away.
"Elder Jermain," she said. "Have a seat. We have much to discuss. First, I promised these dear friends a meal."
In the blink of an eye, plates of steamed rice and vegetables appeared before them, along with sauce bowls and wooden spoons wrapped in cloth napkins. Niall didn't sense any magic in the food, but he could feel a residual spell along the edges of each item placed before him. It smelled delicious, but he watched the others, who each placed their napkins in their laps and looked expectantly to Elder Beatrice.
"May the gods bless this food to our use," she said. "We are honored to have our brothers Efren and Vadim returned home to us along with their crews and our new guests." She bowed her head, which seemed to be the signal for everyone to pick up their utensils and dig in.
Niall felt like he hadn't eaten in days, though he'd only skipped breakfast. The exertion before they disembarked and all the walking in the sun would have normally knocked him on his ass, but he'd been too awed by his new surroundings to notice. Now, he was grateful for the chance to sit and eat in relative anonymity. Olivia sat between him and the other two elders, blocking them from view. Jermain seemed more intent on Vadim. Every so often, he glanced at the death weaver's gloved hands.
A cup of water appeared before Niall, and he drank his fill, noticing it automatically refilled with each gulp. It seemed so simple. Niall hoped he would be able to do magic like that one day. The thought seemed foreign after a lifetime of thinking he was mundane, with no magical power whatsoever. His entire worldview had changed in an instant, and now he wanted to learn everything he could about his new skills.
That would have to wait. Once the dishes were cleared away, except for their water cups, Elder Beatrice called for everyone's attention and began the meeting.
Chapter 10
Efren
As Efren looked around the table at the assembled elders, he noticed how much they had aged in the last six months. Jermain and Frost had deep furrows around their mouths and more gray in their dark hair. Allora, their enchantress and one of the oldest on the island, was absent, as usual. Her usual spot beside Martiz was vacant. She was absent so often, Beatrice had overtaken her command of the elders at the last vote.
Even Bea looked more haggard and pale. Efren wondered what he and his crew looked like to them. Tracking Vadim had cost them a few gray hairs and a few bumps and bruises along the way, too. Thankfully, Hannah had only struck themself with lightning once, and they were practically immune to it by now.
Everyone showed their age but Martiz, who still held the glory of his youth thanks to his healing weaves. He and Vadim were opposite sides of the same coin, both strong in their natural talent and with only a trace of its opposite.
Efren glanced at his former lover. Vadim's laugh lines and crow's feet had deepened in his five-year absence, but so had Efren's. Vadim's white hair had always made him look older than his forty-five years. Efren didn't see any fresh scars on his face and neck, but who knew what damage the death weaver had taken as Hugo's palace guard. He never fully healed his wounds, leaving his skin painted and puckered with scars.
Long before Emperor Hesse had taken ill, General Coryn had made a faulty assumption. When she'd led the navy to overtake the unincorporated islands to the north, she'd assumed unbalanced weavers were more powerful than their balanced counterparts.
