“When I was still in my first youth I fell upon very hard times,” the Captain told them while the fire burned low, “I was treated sorely and end of all ends I was abducted by low pirates as you were, but at no specific orders. Only to be a slave. By the time those pirates found me, I was half mad from abuse.
“But I saw I was on board a ship full of women, bound for the slave markets in the Spiral Isles, and in those markets a woman only had one trade. I, personally, had been used enough, and in just that way. Having earned my freedom, I had no intentions of losing it again.
This is where I met Camilla, whom you may or may not meet. She was a great fighter, grown up in the warf streets of Solahn, and she freed me and herself. Karmine was a little girl then. These pirates had come to her village, murdered the men and taken the women. Her mother, Roxana, was the third of us. We were of a like mind. We took the ship, killed the crew without mercy. By then all remorse, all regret and most conscience were burned from me. The women who did not want to join us we let go. Those who did we taught to fight. At first we were just finding slave ships and freeing them, bringing the women and girls to us who wanted freedom. But the slave trade has…” the Captain smiled to herself, “faded a bit in this sea since we took the waves. It was when I met Rizhihard that he suggested that perhaps we go in for more than freeing slaves and taking the wealth of slave ships.”
“And so you became pirates?” said Rendan.
The Captain nodded. “We became pirates. With the Solahni in mind as many of us were Daumans and Spiral Islanders, but usually it was other pirates and slavers. We went into business with Rizhihard.”
“Some say,” Mehta began with a breathless voice, “that the two of you were lovers?”
“Some do?” The Captain raised a mischievous eyebrow.
“Well, that is a tale for another day, But this is how I became what I am now.”
“But why did you search for Bellamy? What did you want to do with my uncle?”
“The same thing you do,” said the Captain.
She turned her blue green eyes to Rendan and said, “I want to kill him. I would kill Phineas if I could, but I’ve already seen that task will not fall to me.”
Mehta looked at her, opened her mouth, and then closed it.
“Speak,” the Captain said. “Ask your question, and I will answer.”
“We don’t—” Mehta began, and then said, “What we mean is… how did Bellamy harm you? What did he do?”
The Captain nodded and raised her finger.
“Do you remember how I told you that when that slave ship found me I was mad out of my mind? He was the reason. He and Phineas. Listen,” she said to Rendan and Mehta, who were looking at her wide eyed, “and I will tell you why.”
“First, you need to know my name is Cayanne. I grew up on the Borders, like you, and we never had much. Some who say that add, we never had much, but our house was full of love. Mine was not. Ours was a house of misery. I left, heading for one of the northern cities, and it was there that I met a rich man, and he took me in. He did more than take me in,” the Captain said. “I became his kept woman. He set me up in a little house off of the grounds of a castle. I thought it was his, but he said it belonged to one of his tenants. In time I learned that he was a prince. That, in fact, he was the Prince Bellamy.”
At this Mehta sucked in her breath, and Rendan looked at her in disbelief. The Captain, Cayanne, nodded.
“I belonged to him for some few years and one night he was staying at the house and a fearsome man arrived. He was all cloaked in black and very white. A Black Star was on his hand so I knew what he was. I felt cold just seeing him ride to the house. It seemed as if the sky hardened and the wind rose at his approach. I hid and did not hear his business. But that night Bellamy called me down.
“He told me he had made some agreement with this man, and I did not know what this agreement was, but I must have been the price of the bargain. The man looked at me. I still remember his face. How cold it was. All white and absolute blackness.
“‘You will bear wonderful sons,’ the man said. And it was as if he were laughing at me. That night he took me away. We left in the middle of a windstorm. When it was time to rest he chose a cave. He set his men outside of it, took me in and he had me there. I tried to fight, but only a little. He was a powerful sorcerer, I knew. There was no not letting him have what he wanted. That was how I knew Phineas. That was how he claimed me for the Black Hand. He kept me in his own house and each night his Hands used me. Soon I knew I was with child.”
Cayanne looked away from the fire and straight to Mehta.
“Speak.”
“But… who was the father?”
Cayanne, fingers linked, shrugged. “Who can say? A viper or a cobra, what is the difference. Phineas kept me until the child was born, and when he was born he sent me and the baby to one of the houses. I never saw him again.
“But I had a son. And we were not with the other women, and none of the Hands touched me. I raised my boy with the select group, the Mothers, and we were happy. He played in the grass. He was so full of life. Looking back, I must have been a very different woman than I am now, a girl, really. I thought things would never change. I thought I had been through enough.
“But enough only seems to come when we say it’s enough. When he turned five, they took my boy. They took him. They took him to Ennsalisa and they made him into a Hand. They erased his name. They turned him into one of them, to do the evil from which he had come. I…” she passed a long hand over her face, unable to talk.
“I could not move. I was too stunned to speak, to do anything. And then… I don’t know… it was only a few days. Nothing had happened to me, but something snapped. I realized all those years I had just been waiting for them to do something. And then they had. They had taken my boy. What else would they do? Part of me said who cared, I didn’t want to live. But I had changed, and there was something in me that said that whatever life was, I wanted more of it. I wasn’t ready to be finished off.
“So, to make a long story much shorter, I escaped. For days I ran. I know I was tailed. But I met a witch. Actually I believe she was a great enchantress. She was traveling too, and cast a charm upon me, she said they would never find me and from now on my fortune would change. A few days after we parted I was caught by pirates and so I cursed her, though she had been kind to me, but now I see her charm was true. My son was dead, or good as dead, but I swore that, if I was able I would kill those who were responsible. In the end, if I could not have my Kenneth, I would have revenge.”
“Your who?” Mehta said while Rendan sat up, straighter.
“My son,” Cayanne said, looking at the two of them as if they might have been slightly stupid.
Rendan waved this away.
“My lady, what did you call him?”
“His name?” Mehta said.
“His name,” Cayanne said, “was Kenneth. It… it is not a common name in these parts. I met a sailor once by that name and thought the name fair.”
“Yes,” Rendan murmured. He looked, desperately at Mehta.
“Lady,” she began. “Cayanne…?”
The Captain looked at her, waiting.
“It’s just that… I had never known anyone with the name before either. I only… What I am saying is…”
“Your son lives,” Rendan said.
Cayanne’s eyes flew wide open.
“We believe your son lives,” Rendan continuned. “The name is too unusual in these parts. It is a northern name I believe, and all of our travels have been guided by the gracious hands of the Gods.”
Cayanne opened her mouth, but Mehta said, “The Kenneth we knew had been a Hand, but he was a Hand no longer, he had come out of a deep enchantment and was…”
“Finding himself,” Rendan said. Mehta nodded.
“He talked of the last thing he remembered being… how he was turned, into a Hand. And his mother. He remembered his mother, golden haired.”
“Green blue eyes,” Rendan remembered.
Cayanne’s face did not move. It was frozen.
At last she spoke in a dead hiss.
“Gods.”
“It is too much to be a coincidence,” Rendan told her again. “Your son is with our friends. Kenneth lives, and my lady is always in his thoughts.”
