Page 49 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

I blinked at her and then around at everyone else, who had finally stopped work to gape at us. They think I’m a fey, I realized. One of those nobles who were apparently a giant bunch of dicks. I’d put up the hood on the cape as we walked here since I had too many enemies to count, but it wasn’t helping now.

And neither was that, I thought, when I pulled it down, and then everybody started screaming.

I stared around in confusion as they dropped whatever they were doing and ran for the exits, fighting each other to get through the doors. Except for the redhead, who caught one glimpse of my messy, air-dried hair and unmistakably rounded ears. And fainted.

“Do you fucking mind?” Alphonse said to me, shouting to be heard over the din. “I’m trying to interrogate someone here!”

“I was just trying to get a meat pie,” I said, bewildered.

“Tell them that,” he said as I knelt to check on the girl.

I figured it couldn’t hurt, and enhanced my voice to be heard over the crowd. “I don’t mean you any harm; I just wanted a pie. And can I get some help here? I think she knocked her head.”

The panic did not noticeably subside, but the man Alphonse had been trying to question unhooked himself and knelt, his eyes twitching from me to the hulking vampire. When neither of us did anything, he bent to examine the girl and frowned.

“She’s bleeding,” he said, looking up. “May I get her some help, Lady?”

I stared at him blankly because hadn’t I just asked for that? “Yes?” I said when he just squatted there, letting her bleed. And giving the impression that he might have let her bleed out if I’d said so. Which caused a rash of goosebumps to break out on my arms.

What the hell kind of place was this?

But once permission had been given, he snapped into action. Some shouted commands, none of which my translator understood, halted the desperate flight, and some more had several burly men rushing over, one of whom picked up the girl and took her off through an arched doorway. Neither looked at me, keeping their heads down and averting their eyes.

And giving the impression that they thought I was going to go for them fangs first, like a hungry vamp.

Instead, I was just a hungry human who understood exactly nothing.

And then Pritkin showed up.

“Well, that’s just jolly,” Alphonse said bitterly before I could. Although I probably wouldn’t have commented, being too busy noticing something weird. Namely that none of the fey seemed to be afraid of Pritkin.

They were gathering around him instead, talking rapidly in the strange speech that my translator didn’t know, even though it was supposed to know them all. And hanging off him with pleading faces and grasping hands, with the clear implication: please save us from the terrible monster. Suddenly, I knew how the Kraken had felt.

“Okay, what did you do?” Alphonse asked me.

“I didn’t do anything! I was admiring the pies and—”

And suddenly, I was inundated with them, heaps and heaps of them, on multiple trays held aloft by kneeling people with their faces turned away. Like ancient worshippers making offerings to a . . . vengeful . . . goddess. . . And, okay, I got it.

“Look,” I said, and everybody pulled back, almost as one, getting as far as their bodies would let them while still offering up the requested snack.

“You should probably take a pie,” Alphonse said dryly, although he looked somewhat sympathetic, probably at whatever was on my face.

I took a pie.

It was too hot and threatened to burn my fingers, being just out of the oven. But I was afraid to say anything lest the woman offering it killed herself or something. I caused a glove from my armor to appear underneath it, hoping nobody noticed.

“Thank you,” I whispered, which did nothing. I was still ringed by pie bearers.

But the head honcho said something rather sharply to the mass of people around me. Who scattered on the winds, back to their stations to fill the orders that the throng of younger types in clean, mostly sweat-free clothing, were waiting to take to hungry diners. Pritkin’s crowd abruptly deserted him, too, and our eyes met across the crowded room.

Well, shit.

Chapter Fifteen

Well, I didn’t know you were a friend of Prince Emrys, did I?” Honcho said, striding down a corridor that branched off from the back of the kitchen. He was talking to Alphonse but kept shooting me little looks over his shoulder as if he didn’t enjoy having me behind him.

Or maybe he was looking at Pritkin, who was scowling from beside me. “Damn it, Rhosier,” he said. “I’ve told you a dozen times to call me John.”

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