A Country Falls (Greatest Thief 3) - Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Figuring something out proved to be harder than I hoped it would be. For most of the trip towards Deorun, Castin and I were tied to the mast. Whenever we were untied, it was one at a time and with Sarnio breathing down our necks. He would let us relieve ourselves, then walk in circles on the deck to stretch. We were usually given food to eat while we walked, I guessed because Sarnio didn't want to deal with feeding us while we were tied up.
Kovin had the misfortune of being considered useful, so the Deorans kept him busy. They worked him so hard that whenever he was tied up beside us, he did little more than sleep. Mayah was being kept belowdecks. Once a day, Kassia allowed her up for fresh air, but she was kept far away from us. Seeing her was a relief, even if I couldn't speak to her.
A few days into our journey, Kassia came to speak to me.
I was resting my head back against the mast, facing the sky with my eyes closed. I was thinking, running through every detail that might be remotely useful to an escape. All the while trying to ignore the fact that even if I managed to get everyone untied without being noticed, there was the not insignificant distance between us and the Deoran coast. Water wasn't something I could just think my way around.
"Finagale?"
I inhaled deeply and opened my eyes. "What?" Exhaustion robbed me of any attempt at being polite. Kassia didn't like that, anyway. She liked honesty.
She was sitting on the deck in front of me, just far enough to be out of kicking range, for whatever good that would have done. Her legs were crossed, and she was balancing a tray of roasted fish on her lap. My stomach grumbled, but I forced myself not to stare at the food.
Kassia idly picked at the fish with her fingers, stripping bits of flesh from the bones. "I'm considering drugging you."
If she was hoping for a dramatic reaction, she didn't get it. "Why?"
"Because." She paused to eat a bit of fish. "I don't like that you're just sitting here. Thinking."
"I can't swim."
"Ah." Her expression brightened. "Well, that's certainly a relief. And I know you aren't desperate enough to risk drowning yourself. At least not yet."
I was quickly remembering how much conversations with her felt like tests. "Yet?"
"You're predictable. You fight and lie just enough to feel out your boundaries, then you back down until you can more confidently make a move. You fought me in East Draulin, now you're waiting for an opportunity. We're not in Deorun yet, so you think there's still a chance of escape. That's why you're not desperate enough to risk drowning."
"I'm not desperate because I know you don't want to hurt me," I said, maybe a little more firmly than I should have. But I didn't like how she kept calling out my behaviour so accurately.
"I would like to keep you in one piece for as long as possible." Kassia shrugged, but her attention was on the fish. "But don't attribute that to any noble intentions on my part. You're better leverage against Tandrix if you're alive."
"This isn't about Tannix," I said. "You still think you can convince me to join you. I'll be much more useful in one piece. You can protect me here, because these men report to you. Once we're in Deorun, Kalvahi won't care about hurting me."
Kassia scoffed, but I didn't let her interrupt me. "Or maybe you aren't going to hand me over to Kalvahi. You were sent to get Mayah, not me. Are you going to try to keep me away from him?"
Kassia looked up. "You're overestimating my interest in you, and you're underestimating my loyalty to Prince Kalvahi."
"You hate him."
I saw subtle tensing in Kassia's shoulders. Her gaze hardened, but she controlled her tone of voice much more effectively. Without the physical tells, I might not have realized how much my simple statement had gotten to her.
"Maybe I am interested in you. But Castin and the Crelan are only here to keep you under control. Any wrong moves, and they'll be punished on your behalf. I know you care too much about them to risk that. You keep—" She tore off another piece of fish. "Your attachments to other people are going to be the death of you. On your own, you could get out of anything."
Something had changed. Whatever Kassia had hoped to get out of this conversation, it was now forgotten. She was revealing more than I thought she meant to. I could have been predictable, backed down to consider whatever she was hinting at, and waited for an opportunity. Instead, I pressed forward. She was shaken and I couldn't risk giving her a chance to compose herself.
"Kassia, I'm never going to regret caring about people," I said. "I've been alone before. Taking care of myself was easy, but it didn't mean anything. Being part of a family means something. You saw that yourself, in Zianna. You might have even liked living with us. We took care of each other. We shared everything we had. Tannix and the knights are a family, and that means something. They trust each other completely. The thieves, the knights, even Lady Mayah—I built myself a family. Those ties were worth sacrificing the freedom of only caring about myself."
Kassia's voice slipped. "Those ties are going to get you killed."
I forced myself to shrug, like the idea wasn't frightening. "Maybe. Or maybe they'll save me, or I'll save them. The point is, I'm not alone. You can't understand that. That's why you think you can convince me to join you. You think I can just cut off everyone I care about and chase after my untapped potential. Because you don't know what it's like to have real, emotional ties to other people."
"That's—"
"You hate the man you're going to marry, and you hate King Deorun. You're loyal to them because you've been told to be, not because you actually agree with anything they're doing." I spoke without thinking, just letting my ideas come together as I said them. "You talk about my attachments being the death of me, but at least I chose who to be attached to. When was the last time you got to make your own choice about anything?"
I wasn't sure what I expected her to do. Threaten me, maybe. Throw her plate at me. Lash out verbally. Instead of any of that, she slowly got to her feet. "I apologize, Finagale." It wasn't hard to sense how forced her serene demeanor was. "In Talidor, I claimed that I wasn't going to underestimate you the way everyone else does. It won't happen again."
She walked away briskly. I let my head fall back against the mast again and stared up at the fluffy white clouds. The pit of nerves that I hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge during our conversation slowly dissipated. My fingers ached as I unclenched them, not even sure when I had clenched them in the first place. I took a few deeps breaths, willing my pounding heart to relax.
I probably felt as shaken as Kassia did. So when Castin nudged my side, my flinch was exaggerated. Only then did it occur to me that he had been sitting there the entire time, listening to the conversation.
"Was that helpful?" he asked dryly.
My nervousness had spiked because of his nudge. It took me a moment to settle down again. "I don't know," I admitted.
"I don't like you gambling with me like that," Castin said. "You did hear her say that if you cause problems, I'll be hurt. Right?"
His word choice caused a smile to flicker across my face. "When it comes to gambling, I don't lose."
"Are you saying you won that round?"
"I won that round," I said, realizing as I said it just how true it was. What that meant, I still didn't know. "Cast, I'm not going to promise to get us out of this. But I do have some ideas. You trust me, don't you?" I tilted my head to look at him.
After a moment, he met my gaze. "I'm with you, Finn."
As if I needed more proof of my conversational victory, Kassia didn't speak to me again for the rest of our trip. Sarnio was the only person who interacted with us, doing the same tasks as he had before, as well as yelling at us any time he caught us talking.
The only times we were moved was when we got close to other ships. We were a Crelan ship flying a Navirian flag. The Deorans, now that they weren't wearing their stolen uniforms, looked like regular sailors. Anyone who glanced at us with a spyglass would see Navirians and Kovin, and think nothing of us. We sailed along the coast, never getting too close. On the day we sailed past Hoask, the Deoruns bristled at the sight of Ziannan and Navirian flags fluttering together from every tower.
The day the pyramids of Deorun were visible in the distance, Kassia had Sarnio toss us below, along with Kovin. Hiding us wouldn't make much of a difference, sailing into Deorun's natural cove was going to be nearly impossible. Our navies had seen to it. I didn't like being inside the ship, but it had a single perk.
I could finally speak to Mayah.
"Finn." She hugged me before I had completely recovered from Sarnio's shove. He'd been harder on Castin, who stumbled, fell, and grumbled to himself as he struggled to get up with his bound hands.
Mayah released me and went to help him up. "I've been trying to convince that woman to let me speak with you, but she refused. Are either of you hurt?"
"We're fine," I said. "What about you?"
Mayah waved her arms at the room around us, and I finally looked at it. It was probably where the captain slept. There was a small bed built into the back wall, and a table that looked like it could be folded up to lay flat against the wall. It was much smaller than the captain's quarters on the other ships I had been on, but the Jaunty was a small ship.
Kalvahi had once stored Tannix in a captain's quarters, too. "Right, there's some sort of rule about how to treat important prisoners, isn't there?"
Mayah crossed her arms and furrowed her eyebrows. "To an extent. Once we're in the city and they're trying to use me as leverage, I doubt they'll care much for the rules. Well... I also think she was attempting to keep me away from the men. In East Draulin, the first time, she—"
Mayah closed her mouth abruptly as the door opened and Sarnio pushed Kovin inside. As soon as the door closed, she kept talking, although didn't go back to what she had been saying. "I don't believe I ever caught your name."
I was very familiar with Mayah, and even Castin had gotten used to being around her. Kovin's reaction was a funny reminder of who she was. He straightened and clasped his hands behind his back. "Kovin, my lady, at your service. For what that's worth."
"No sense standing on ceremony, Kovin," Mayah said, although her smile gave away how much she had enjoyed it. "We're all prisoners here. My name is Mayah."
He blinked. "Oh. But, miss, I... you're Lady East Draulin."
"You'll get used to it, Sailor," Castin mumbled. He was doing his best to roll his wrist despite his bound hands. I thought maybe he had hurt it when he fell, but he caught me watching and shook his head.
Mayah and I exchanged a few things we had noticed about our captors, but none of it was useful. Before long, we were all quietly waiting to see what was coming next. Mayah and I sat on her bed, while Kovin lay on the floor and Castin paced. It surprised all of us when, sometime later, Kovin sat up with a start.
"We've passed the city."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Got a sense for that kind o' thing," Kovin said. "Saw how far we were, right? Given the speed we were goin', we've passed it. We would've heard somethin' if the ship had been stopped or attacked."
"That does make sense," Mayah said. "The port has been blocked. Maybe the plan is to take us further along and walk back to the city."
It was a good explanation, but it didn't really help us. All we could do was wait to see what would happen next.
Mayah was right. When Sarnio and Kassia came to take us above again, the ship was floating as close to shore as possible. Instead of Deorun's desert, it was the lush, forested land that grew up around the Ady River. Kovin, Castin and I were tied together and bags were pulled over our heads. Because of that, the walk to the city took far longer than it probably needed to. Sarnio occasionally tried to warn us of obstacles, but more than once one of us tripped and pulled the other two down as well.
We were ushered onto what felt like a rowboat for the final stretch of the journey. I tried to pick up clues from what I could hear and feel. I knew we had entered a cave when the wind died down and I couldn't feel the sun on my skin. The splashes of the oars echoed, confirming my theory but giving me no clue to how big the space was.
With a thud, the rowboat landed. Sarnio, grumbling under his breath, helped me, then Castin, and finally Kovin climb out of the boat. The ground beneath my feet felt like loose pebbles.
Kassia and her men made plenty of noise, and still when I realized echoes were coming from a new direction, they caught my attention. I turned towards them instinctively, even though I still had a bag over my head.
One of the newcomers spoke in Deoran. Then abruptly switched to Teltish.
"Is that Finagale?"