to Corin. It hung a hair’s breadth from the skin of his throat, and it wavered erratically now. “Don’t you dare insult me, sir!”
“I am no sir,” Corin said. “And you are now a dog. You might have been a captain, but your gambit has failed. Now drop your sword, and go with whatever honor you have left.”
“Oh, no!” Blake’s voice was manic. “No. Let them quail at their chance. But I can cut you down right here! You’re unarmed. Call me a dog one more time—”
“We are all dogs,” Corin said, deliberately, infuriatingly calm. It drew just the response he wanted.
Blake’s sword flashed back, readied for one brutal slash, and in that moment the air hissed with the sound of all the other blades being drawn. The first mate’s eyes went wide as nearly every pirate in the crew drew arms against him.
But Corin still stood unarmed. He smiled pityingly and shook his head. “It was a bold bid, and it could have worked if you had just waited half an hour. But now, you are a dog. Jim…put him on a leash.”
Sleepy Jim took up a loop of rope he hadn’t even touched at Blake’s earlier order. Now the deckhand stomped toward the first mate, and Charlie Claire came forward with sword drawn to back him up. Corin didn’t look right at David Taker, but from the corner of his eye he saw the brutal deckhand slinking back toward the circle’s edge. That man might find himself forgotten when next the Diavahl set sail.
No one else spoke up for Ethan Blake. Corin waited just long enough to see the disbelieving defeat take hold in Blake’s eyes, then he turned his back. He looked to the carved stone wall, not to the slave girl still waiting nearby, but he spoke to her. “Iryana, it is time to open the way.”
She came to his side, gripping his arm with surprising intensity. “Have you not seen proof of my wisdom? I warned you against Blake, and I warn you now against desecrating this sacred place. Take your men and go.”
Corin gave her a smile. “Aye, you warned me of Blake, and you see how he has been muzzled?”
“I see you soaked with blood.”
The gash at his collarbone still ached, but it was just a flesh wound. Drying blood lay sticky on his shirt, but his spirit soared. The winds were with him now. “You see me victorious. But it is a fragile thing unless I give the men their gold. Open up the way.”
She shook her head. “You would lose more than your life. I will not give it to you.”
“There are still the cannons.”
“Use them if you must,” she said, tears in her eyes. “Then let the retribution fall on you. But I will not be the one who gave you entry to that place. I will not have your blood upon my hands.”
Corin held her gaze, unblinking, hoping she would yet relent. But there was iron in her core. At last he shook his head and said, “I should have known. Clever as you are, you must bow to your superstition. It’s in your blood.”
“Call it ancient wisdom. You pirates own the claim to superstition. I have seen how they jump at shadows.” Instead of answering, Corin drew a small wrapped bundle of silk from a pouch on his belt. He spilled out of it a tarnished tin ring and a thin copper hoop. Iryana hissed in shock, and Corin smiled at that. He held the jewelry out toward her. “How is this for ancient wisdom?”
“I cannot be bought with such cheap baubles,” she said, but her voice trembled.
He laughed at that. He hung the hoop from his earlobe and slipped the ring on his right hand. “Am I doing it right?” he asked. The astonishment in her wide eyes was answer enough.
Corin didn’t know if this would work, but he knew the motions anyway and time was short. He turned, raising both arms to the walls, and cried out to the stone, “Iftah! Ya! Simsim!”
Iryana grunted as though someone had punched her in the stomach, but otherwise silence poured across the excavated pit, smothering as a Feland fog. No one moved. And then, with the grinding whisper of heavy iron hinges, the carved stone sank back into the cliff face. It revealed a deep shadow, a yawning cavern just behind the cliff’s facade.
“Behold,” Iryana whispered. “The gateway to Jezeeli.”
CHAPTER FIVE
A whisper passed among the men and then a