Page 9 of Take No Prisoners
The girl held her brother's hand as water seeped through her cell's floorboards. She had him braced against her chest, trying to keep his head above the water. They were both dark-skinned with white hair. The boy's was shorn close to his head, while hers curled to her shoulders, where it then hung limp and wet below the water line. Niall worried she would soon sink beneath the water, if she continued holding her brother's dead body.
The children had shared a cell, by the looks of it. The cell door gave easily when Niall tugged on it. He entered the small space, and then he reached for ... he couldn't explain it. He sensed the boy's life force hovering just above the body, if only he could grasp it and force it back inside. He reached for it with a part of him he'd never used before, something almost outside himself.
The little girl shrieked as she noticed him for the first time.
"I'm here to help," he promised, though he didn't know what he could do. All he knew was, the boy's life force was now flowing through Niall. He reached out his hand and touched the boy, jolting his arm like an electric shock.
"Ow!" The little girl dropped her brother's hand into the water and rubbed at her arm. "You shocked me!"
"I'm sorry," Niall said. "I didn't mean to make it worse."
She scrunched up her face like she was about to scream bloody murder, but a cough, and then a violent choking fit, caught their attention.
"Renald!"
The boy tried to stand on wobbly feet, but fell backward against Niall. "Jasmine?"
"We have to get out of here!" Niall hefted Renald over his shoulder the way he would carry a bag of clay. He offered his hand to Jasmine. "You coming?"
She took his hand. "You saved him," she whispered.
The water was getting deeper by the moment, the waves sloshing over Jasmine's shoulders and drenching her face with each rock of the boat.
"Can you swim?"
She shook her head.
"Float?"
Her shoulders came up above the water for a moment and sank beneath it again. "Never learned."
"Do you trust me?"
She nodded.
"Lay on your back on my hands." He held them out in front of him, and she jumped into his arms. Renald steadied himself on Niall's shoulder, and he helped her float.
"Stiff as a board, all right?" he said as she started to sink. "There. Like that." He dropped his arms and took her hands, walking ahead and helping her wrap her hands around Renald's arm until Renald grasped both her hands in his.
"Got her?"
"Yes." His voice was raspy and weak.
"We're going to move as fast as we can toward the front of the ship. You ready?"
"Ready!"
Jasmine sounded far more hesitant than her brother, but Niall appreciated her attempt at bravery.
He ruined the mood when his first step and choppy movements sloshed water on Jasmine, and she shrieked again. "Sorry."
Every step felt like fire as he pushed against the water's resistance. Until it didn't. The water seemed to divert around him, pushing up against the large cargo hold's walls and away from the walkway. He wasn't doing that, was he?
"Hurry! I can't hold it for much longer."
A man in a drenched leather tricorn hat hovered in a ray of sunlight before Niall. He looked like an avenging angel come to save Niall and the children from the emperor, or at least his sinking ship.
"Thank the gods," Niall whispered under his breath. He pushed ahead, no longer feeling the burn in his legs until he banged into something with his shin.
