Of Kings and Killers (Elder Empire Sea #3) - WIll Wight Page 0,50

as it may, I will not waste what remains of my crew on your…your…dash headlong into the maw of madness!”

Calder took a deep breath and reminded himself that this man had just endured a very stressful few weeks.

“We will be leaving at dawn,” he said with forced calm. “I would like your assistance. Without The Reliable, I will be forced to take a more dangerous method of reuniting with The Testament, but I will find a way. However, if you choose to stay here, we will be taking the crown with us.”

All three of the other crew members stiffened. No one had mentioned the crown thus far, focusing instead on their immediate crisis of survival.

Jerri finished plucking an eyelash from her eye, blinked it out, and then examined the strange reaction from The Reliable’s crew. “You do have the crown, don’t you?”

“Of course!” Tommison blustered. “I would scarcely abandon my sacred charge. But I have no reason to turn it over to you.”

“We need to see it,” Calder said.

“Never! You will have to accept my good word that I—”

“Captain,” Calder interrupted. “We need to work together to escape this situation, I’m sure you will agree. So I hesitate to take negotiations in a more aggressive direction. But either you show me the crown or I will have Urzaia find it.”

Urzaia gave a cheery wave with a hand that happened to still be holding a hatchet.

Tommison’s jowls turned a slow red, but he leaned away from the champion. He began sputtering about honor and trust, but as he was doing so, Miss Lakiri stood up. She turned around, huffing as she lifted with both hands the object she’d been sitting on.

It was an iron box secured with chains, and from her strained expression, Calder knew it must be heavy.

“If it’s not inside here,” Lakiri said, “we made this trip for nothing. But we don’t have the key.”

Calder nodded. That had been in the packet of information Cheska had provided them regarding the mission; Captain Tommison wouldn’t have access to the crown itself for the duration of delivery. “Thank you, Miss Lakiri. Now, we’d like your help and access to your munitions as we leave. You’re all invited to come with us. But we are leaving at the first light of dawn.”

Tommison fussed with his jacket and his hands, and he looked to his crew members as though searching for some reason to refuse. Finally, he shot a quick glance at Jerri that Calder suspected he wasn’t supposed to notice.

He suppressed a surge of protective irritation. They weren’t even aboard the ship, and the man was already making eyes at Jerri.

“Agreed,” Tommison said at last, deflating.

“Very good. Now, we have no guarantee that the Slithers will leave us alone tonight, so we should post a watch on the doors. Andel?”

“I’ll take first,” the quartermaster agreed, taking a seat next to a crack in the makeshift barrier that served them as a door. He folded his arms and looked out into the night.

“Mister Goss, do you have an inventory of your munitions?”

The ship’s navigator nodded quickly.

“Then I suggest one of you prepare them for transport. We’ll need them at some point, either to free your ship or to burn down the entire island as Miss Lakiri suggests. The rest of you, make sure you have packed up anything you’d like to take with you.”

They set up a watch schedule, which involved at least one member of The Testament’s crew awake at all times. Everyone, Calder had insisted, should do their best to sleep over the course of the night, but he didn’t trust Tommison or his crew.

People did stupid things out of fear.

Half an hour into Jerri’s watch, when Calder’s breathing was slow and even and Urzaia’s snores threatened to bring down the tower, she abandoned her post and slipped deeper into the structure.

It looked as though the tower had once been an outpost of the Imperial army, or maybe one of the earlier Guilds. Although the stairs leading upward had been destroyed decades if not centuries before, the ground floor was still divided into multiple rooms. She passed a sleeping Goss and Lakiri, who had curled up under one blanket in each other’s arms.

That was unexpected. She thought Lakiri must have fifteen years on Goss, and she had a face about as appealing as the blunt edge of a cliff. Then again, Goss himself looked like a skeleton animated to haunt the nightmares of children, so maybe it was a match decreed