Page 31 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Battered and bloody, but in one piece!

“We made it,” I said, wonder in my breathless voice. “We all . . . made it.”

“We did,” Pritkin’s tone was as grim as I’d ever heard. “But the Svarestri heir was just carried out to sea.”

Chapter Ten

Want some?” Alphonse asked, pushing a small brown paper spill at me sometime later.

I looked up from examining my tarot deck, which I’d been carrying as a good luck charm but which looked like it could use some luck itself right now. And peered inside the spill. I made a face.

“You think you’re funny,” I told him. “But you’re not.”

“No, seriously. You didn’t have dinner, and you gotta eat. You’re puny as it is.”

I looked at the contents of the spill again, which was stuffed with small, charred, suckered legs, and felt my stomach churn. “You couldn’t have gotten something else?”

“I got all kinds of stuff.” He pulled open his coat to display more little spills, shoved haphazardly into pockets.

Most of the time, said pockets held guns, knives, brass knuckles, and assorted mayhem equipment, as Alphonse liked to be prepared. But right now, they were full of food—wonderful-smelling food. I heard my stomach grumble.

“Where did you get this?” I asked because if it was the ballroom, hungry or not, I was taking a pass.

“Relax,” he told me. “They got a market down at Fountain Court—the main one with the big ass waterfall?” I looked at him blankly. Like I’d had time to sightsee. “Anyway, I stopped by before coming here as it’s got all these vendors. You can even eat the container; it’s made out of pressed algae.” He crunched off a bit to demonstrate, then made a face. “Can eat. Not should.”

He handed me a different spill of what appeared to be fried fish nuggets, and I tentatively took a bite. They were good and even a little warm still. Before I knew it, I’d finished the whole thing.

I moved on to wonderfully flavorful mussels cooked with herbs and citrus, some bland-tasting fish cakes, a ceviche of mostly lobster, and a half-dozen grilled scallops. But my stomach only grumbled ungratefully, as if the food had just woken it up, and demanded more. I pawed through Alphonse’s coat to see what else he had.

Meanwhile, Pritkin yelled next door.

We weren’t back in our room, and I wasn’t sure when we would be. Feltin, Nimue’s old flame and the resident power broker around here, at least until the end of the Challenge, had had his guards scoop us up following the fight and usher Pritkin and me here. Alphonse had come sauntering in a little later after a stop for takeout, as even the fey didn’t mess with a hungry master vamp.

Now, Pritkin was in what I guessed was Feltin’s office, along with the other heirs. I could hear them dimly through the door but couldn’t make out what they were saying, as my translator spell got confused when so many people were shouting at once. It had started giving me random words and sentences in a confused gobble-gobble that reminded me of a bunch of turkeys.

Luckily, Alphone’s ears were better, and since translator spells relied on them, his was better, too. He’d kept me up on things, not that I’d enjoyed it. The other heirs seemed to want Pritkin disqualified over what had happened to Aeslinn’s son, and Feltin seemed to be seriously considering it.

Not that it had had anything to do with us; one of the creature’s arms had refused to let the prince go when it escaped. It was something Feltin knew perfectly well, as he’d been there the whole time directing some of the guards. Or so he claimed.

But he was worried about possible Svarestri retaliation if the prince died under suspicious circumstances while at his court. And yeah, trying to explain to a murderous bastard that a giant octopus ate his son might be a hard talk. But I didn’t think that Feltin had anything to worry about.

Aeslinn had enough on his plate right now, and anyway, his son appeared to agree with his mother that dear old dad had really ruled long enough and needed to step aside for the next generation.

Or, you know, die.

I thought death was something they’d happily take instead.

In fact, from what I’d heard in council sessions, Efridis, Aeslinn’s queen, had tried to murder the old man, having had enough of his abuse over the years. And when that failed, she’d fled the court and attacked Nimue to open up another throne for her baby to take. I assumed that was why Æsubrand, her silver-haired son, was here.

Or had been here, I thought slightly guiltily.

“Don’t start that,” Alphonse said, handing me another spill, this one full of little squid rings.

“Start what?”

“The agonizing. The guilt. The goddamned angst. ‘Cause, seriously, I can’t do that with you right now. I really can’t.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?” I demanded. “And is there any sauce?”

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