Page 6 of Take No Prisoners
Vadim, the most powerful death weaver in the realm, was afraid. Even more confusing, he was afraid of Niall.
"I'm not afraid of you ... wait. Are you still in my damn head? Get out!"
Niall sank into the welcoming blackness again. At least there was no pain.
The next time he woke, he recognized the lazy shifting from side to side for what it was. He was on a large boat, probably the giant navy vessel he'd seen docked at Landale before Klaus had betrayed him. The fucker had worked for the navy all along, seeking weavers among the commoners living in Landale. He'd handed Niall and a handful of weavers over to Vadim.
Niall wasn't a weaver. That was impossible. His parents had tested him several times. His mother had tried to show him water weaves with no luck.
If he were a weaver, his life would have been easy as pie. He would have been able to conjure whatever he wanted and go wherever he pleased. He could have provided water to those in the desert. He could have lit the darkness as a lamplighter. With earth power, he would have made the most beautiful pottery with a thought, or built huge fortifications. The list went on and on.
Weavers were hailed and lauded in other countries. As a weaver, he could have jumped aboard a pirate ship and sailed away from Embertide to start a new life somewhere. A life of luxury. A life of relative ease.
Instead, he'd come of age as a mundane apprentice in Landale, orphaned thanks to the dispute between General Coryn and the weavers she'd kicked out of the navy. Apparently, the ban had been lifted. Vadim was a death weaver, and at least half his crew were wind weavers for the ship to be moving as fast as it was through the water. Niall didn't understand why General Coryn would ban weavers from the military when he was seven and then reinstate them and begin conscripting or killing every weaver in the empire thirteen years later. For the last five years, weavers had been running scared, even the ones who weren't pirates. Niall had been grateful his parents' power skipped him, or he would have been a sitting duck unable to flee his apprenticeship.
Niall's parents had been discharged from the navy when the general decreed she no longer trusted weavers in the imperial military. They'd saved enough to buy a sloop. Niall had spent his first seven years on an island out west, but when his parents came to collect him and his grandfather for their new life on the ship, he'd enjoyed sailing the seas with them. They'd pretended to be simple merchants, but secretly, they smuggled weavers across the sea to Glamiere, a country where they could be free.
Vadim had accused Niall's parents of smuggling weavers across the sea and sentenced them to death for treason. They were caught with a single water weaver, a child younger than Niall. General Coryn had strung them up on Landale's docks as an example. This was what happened to pirates smuggling weavers out of Embertide.
Vadim also claimed he found paperwork in the cabin showing they'd delivered countless weavers to Glamiere. Their entire crew were weavers, old friends from the navy. Vadim had accused them of aiding and abetting deserters and had taken them into custody.
Niall forced himself to take a deep breath. It eased the fury in his chest somewhat, but it was always there, lurking. Most of the time, he could smile and ignore it, but right now, his heart hurt worse than his bruised and chafed wrists. Seeing Vadim again and being betrayed by a friend the same way Vadim had betrayed his parents brought back all his rage.
Niall's parents had trusted Vadim as one of their own. He'd been the first mate on a respected ship. He'd boarded his parents' boat, theZephyr Starfish, as a friend and regaled them with pirate tales for days. Young Niall had eaten those stories up like candy. He'd wanted to be a pirate when he grew up.
"No, boy," Vadim had said. "You'll be a landed man. A shopkeeper. Make an honest living."
"I can make an honest living on the sloop with my parents!"
How naïve he'd been. He hadn't understood the look his mom and dad had given each other. He didn't know how they knew what was coming, but they did. They'd feared for him. Something in Vadim's statement must have reassured them of Niall's future.
They couldn't save themselves, but Vadim had saved Niall. He'd taken him to the orphanage and agreed to the hefty sum the director demanded for Niall's room and board. Even so, Niall had hated him for uttering the one syllable that had ended his parents' lives.
"Drop."
Why had Vadim saved him then, only to bring him aboard the giant naval ship now? It wasn't like Niall had a chance to make anything of himself in the years that had passed. He was twenty-five and still an apprentice. If Vadim had intended to turn him over to the general all along, he might as well have died when he was thirteen, hung up for treason along with his parents.
"I prolonged the inevitable. She's looked everywhere else. Now, she's moved on to the mundane children of weavers."
There was Vadim's voice in his head again. How was the death weaver making his thoughts known? Niall wasn't aware of any weavers with that power, but then Niall didn't know much about weavers beyond the few nautical tricks his parents and their crew displayed.
Pirates had been captured and hauled off to the capital since Emperor Hesse's death when Niall was seven. The empress died and Emperor Hugo came to power when Niall was twenty, when General Coryn started rounding up every weaver in the land. Now, instead of executing all captured and conscripted weavers, she sent them to work in a prison camp on an island to the north in the emperor's name.
"Emperor Hugo is a good man trapped in unforeseen circumstances, same as you."
Niall didn't question the voice this time. His head still throbbed too much to think clearly. Anger left him feeling drained. He wasn't a weaver, so he couldn't heal his own aches and pains. He also couldn't break his way out of the cuffs around his wrists.
If he were a weaver, he would use fire or lightning to heat them, or hardened air or ice to break them apart. If he had death powers, he might be able to shrivel his hands just enough to slip from them.
He tugged on the cuffs, and his hands slipped free. It wasn't supposed to be that easy! He dropped his hands to his lap, and they tingled back to life as blood rushed into them. The sensation of pins and needles in his fingertips hurt almost as bad as his wrists, which still ached from the cuffs. He risked a glance at his hands. They looked perfectly normal, save for the horrible sensation of tiny teeth trying to poke through from the inside.
How had he escaped? The cuffs were made of silver. Vadim had said they would keep him from using his power. Maybe Vadim hadn't tightened them enough.
Niall pocketed the cuffs in case he needed them later and rubbed feeling back into his hands. They didn't look any worse for wear. They weren't shriveled with death magic. They were his usual brown hands, streaked with dirt from the warehouse floor. He'd fallen after Vadim had thumped him in the back of the head. He'd come up from behind Niall, as though he could keep Niall from recognizing him if he didn't see his face. Niall would recognize his voice anywhere.
He glanced around the tiny cell of metal bars. They were made of an alloy of some sort, one he didn't recognize. When he touched the bars, they burned his skin, and he flinched away. He had no tools to work the outside lock. He would have to wait for a sailor to feed him or bring him water. Then, he would make a break for the deck and toss himself overboard. He was a strong swimmer. If he tired and drowned before making it to a safe shore, at least he would die a free man.
Chapter 3
