Inquisitor's Bane (Knight Protector: Black Wyvern Book 2) by Rachel Ford

Author:Rachel Ford [Ford, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

Valia saw her words effect a remarkable transformation in Viktor. He stammered out an apology, and led them toward the house. He had been out hunting that afternoon, he said, but he had caught glimpses of the ship.

“Seemed to be sailing along right as rain. Then, when I seen it later, it had changed course, like it was heading out to the deep sea.”

“Really?”

He shrugged. “That’s what it looked like to me. But I didn’t see it again after that. By time I got home, it was gone.”

Viktor’s mother was a wizened old lady. But behind the wrinkles sparkled a pair of eyes as bright and intelligent as her son’s.

“I’m Agathi,” she introduced herself. “And certainly, I fed them, and gave them beer too. Half-drowned they were, the lot of them. Though some stayed clear of the farm.”

“Do you know what happened?”

Agathi shook her head. “Not I. Some kind of disaster, but they were tight-lipped about it. Although, I did hear one speak of a demon what done them in. Though I figured he must have meant the captain. Men talk like that sometimes, don’t they?”

“All the time,” Trygve declared, a twinkle in his own eyes. “Captains are the scourge of any seafaring man.”

Agathi nodded. “My Tommasi, gods rest his soul, he were a sailor afore he was a farmer. Not that he were much good at it – sailing, nor farming neither, for that matter. But he had a devil of a captain, he did. Plain cured him of his love of the sea.”

Takis cleared his throat. “Did they say what had happened to their captain?”

“No, not a word of that. But I got the impression it were something awful. To tell you the truth, I thought maybe they had staged a mutiny. Killed their captain and jumped overboard.”

“Mother,” Viktor hissed.

She glanced up at him, and then shrugged. “It ain’t a crime to think something, is it?”

“Of course not,” Takis said. “What made you think they’d killed their captain.”

“Well, the way they talked about her. It was all past tense, wasn’t it? Like you talk about someone who died.”

Takis nodded. “Thank you, Agathi. That’s very helpful.”

“My pleasure.”

“Did you see where the ship went?”

“I did. I tell you, I don’t think there was anyone left onboard. Not alive, anyhow. She floundered for a bit, and then caught the wind out to sea. Last I saw, she was heading out in the direction of the islands.”

“The islands?”

“I know them,” Valia said. She did, though she hadn’t actually been there. Mariners tended to stay clear of those islands.

They were bad luck and death, if half the stories were to be believed: a series of landmasses far from the mainland, where ships came to their ends on rocky shores, or stuck on hidden sandbars.

Treacherous waters. Deadly waters.

Agathi nodded knowingly. “If she’s a ship of the dead now, she’ll be right at home out there, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Indeed.”

Takis glanced a question her way, but she ignored it. That conversation could happen later.

“Is there

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