CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Brishen dug into his chicken leg hungrily. It was cold and perhaps a little bland, but it was hearty and it felt good to have something in his stomach. He took a long swig out of a flagon of rum to wash it down, and felt that nice burning sensation all the way down. The captain had been entertaining him with stories of the crew's exploits, and he had repaid the man in kind with the tale of his adventure since he had been freed from the iceberg. Hearing both stories side by side, it was hard for Brishen to decide which tale was more exciting.

There was a clatter behind him, and he turned around. A large gang of the crew had started to venture out of the cave, abandoning their well-earned treasure and food. This, if anything, struck Brishen as odd. He jerked his head back to them. "Captain," he asked, "what are they doing?" The captain looked up, and his face gained a grim quality to it.

"Someone's here what not's supposed to be," he said, standing up and putting his hand on his cutlass. He started for the cave. Brishen was up on his feet and following him before he knew what he was doing. It looked as though his story was about to get a little more exciting.

Jack made to charge at the waiting cohorts of pirates, but he found himself being held back. "Jack! No!" Celia hissed at him. "Don't charge them, you'll be vulnerable!" Jack gritted his teeth, but calmed himself. She was right, of course. He would have to wait for them to charge him, yes. No point in letting their numbers overwhelm them. He gripped the hilt of his dirk so hard that even in the fading dusk light he could see that his knuckles were white. This was it, his great chance at glory. His way of giving back to the one who was destined to save their world. If there was any time for him to prove his worth and mettle as a warrior, it was now.

"Jack?" came an astonished voice. "Celia?" Before it could register in Jack's mind who had spoken, he heard the sound of water splashing around him as Celia let go of her hydromancy.

"Brishen?" Celia called disbelievingly into the dark, and ran for him. Jack could only watch helplessly as his precious moment was completely shattered. It was filtering now into his brain that Brishen was not the hostage in distress that they had imagined him to be. He was standing right next to the captain, even, and from what Jack could see he didn't appear to be in chains or bound at all. The hug that he and Celia were sharing was evidence enough of that for his eyes.

And then, it filtered into his brain that this was something to be happy about.

"Brishen!" he cried out happily, and rushed over. "You're all right!" He looked the Scion up and down. "The pirates…we thought—"

"They're friends," Brishen assured him. "And they were the ones who saved me from the Dominion. If it wasn't for them, I'd be on my way to the Fire Lord's palace by now."

"What he's saying," Celia said gently, "is put the sword down." Self-consciously, Jack began to sheath his blade again.

"It's a dirk, not a sword," he muttered under his breath. He looked around warily at the pirates, but they all seemed to have relaxed after seeing that he and Celia were friends of the Scion. As the battle-lust was leaving him, he was suddenly very glad he didn't have to fight such a tough crowd. Each man was taller and stronger than he, and armed to the teeth as pirates were wont to be. It didn't help matters, he added mentally, that they were probably far more adept at fighting in the night than he was. How ironic. He had come here to save the Scion, it had been the Scion who had really saved him.

He was well into his thoughts before he realized that everyone else was migrating back towards the cave. Shaking his head and muttering about people telling him these things, he had to run to catch up.

Diego was prowling the deck of his ship, as was his fashion. Most of the crew had gone to bed, leaving only a skeleton crew to man the Burning Blade. This much, Diego could not begrudge them. Tomorrow, no doubt, they would make landfall somewhere, and he wanted his men well-rested for another confrontation with the Scion, and possibly having to deal with vicious pirates. And beyond that, he liked the solitude afforded by the relative lack of crew. It was almost nice to walk down the corridors without every man saluting him when he came within twenty feet. He knew that it was only right; he was, after all, their prince. But nonetheless, the formalities often bored him, if they didn't outright annoy him.

Diego found himself sleeping less and less as his journey wore on. For the first year or so, he had managed to keep at a fairly normal routine, rationalizing that the Scion would find him an easy foe if he were ill-rested. But the longer he was at sea, the more the idea gripped him that he might never succeed. At first, the nagging doubt had been the simple one: what if he never found the Scion, and was doomed to sail until he died or chose to live out his life in ignominious exile? But that doubt had evaporated that one glorious day in the south seas, when he had, completely by chance, managed to emerge right when the Scion was resurrected. To one that was not at all superstitious, such as he, this was very significant. It was tantamount to proof that this was meant to be.

But now, a new and gnawing doubt was starting to emerge within him. Thus far, he had encountered the Scion twice: once at the Southern Water Tribe, and once at Katarin Island. And both times, the Scion and his companions had eluded capture. That much, he stewed over and everyone else knew. But what really perturbed him was how easily the Scion seemed to best him in combat, how simple a matter it had been for him to make his escape. His biggest worry was not that he would never catch his foe; he had been very close, twice. No, Diego's great fear was that he was not good enough to. When he was younger, he had not excelled as quickly in his pyromancy lessons as his father would have liked. He wasn't a poor student; in fact, he was better than most of the students in the class. But the presence of a pyromantic prodigy in their family tree meant that any achievements he made in the art had been overshadowed years before. For that reason, he had thrown himself completely into his fencing.

At first, court rules had been enough for him, but he had quickly mastered those. He had needed something beyond that, something more creative. He took to dueling against soldiers, against mercenaries, even against prisoners. He educated himself on every single facet that he could of the art of the sword, learned how to handle himself in any situation that he could think of where he would need a sword. And yet, against a foe such as the Scion, his greatest skill seemed so useless. The blade was grounded in reality, but the Scion was spiritual beyond his body. Just another way circumstances spat upon him; the greatest swordsman in the Dominion was set against the most powerful elemancer to ever live.

"You're deep in thought." Diego looked up. Lucrezzia was leaning against a railing, looking at him with a slight amount of interest. Diego regarded her, and spoke in the same swaggering yet detached manner that she had adopted.

"Does it matter?" She smirked coyly, but didn't respond. "What are you up for, anyway?" he continued. "Even your beast—"

"Shirshu," Lucrezzia corrected.

"—is sleeping on the front deck."

"If I were asleep, it would mean I was tired, Prince Diego," she replied airily. "And it would besmirch my reputation and name as a tracker if I were ever known to tire." Diego could have rolled his eyes; he had heard similar things from so many other sellswords in the past. She was hardly the first he had ever dealt with. But instead of skepticism, he found that the calm night air instead prompted him to just nod his head and allow her to continue as he somehow knew she would. "I merely ask out of curiosity. You are very different from most of my clients, as I am sure you know."

"Because I'm the crown prince?" he asked, only half facetiously.

"No," she said, sounding almost pleased that he had guessed wrong. "Because unlike every other client, you accompany me to find your target, while the others all sit and wait for me to do the work for them. And for that reason, more than anything else, you are interesting enough to talk to about things other than business." Diego was simultaneously intrigued by her reasoning, and yet at the same time he grated under her manner of examining him, as though he were a particularly interesting insect.

"I'm thinking of the Scion," Diego said with a good degree of finality in his voice. "And I'm imagining how I'm going to capture him tomorrow."

"Oh," Lucrezzia sighed, and Diego detected disappointment in her voice. "I wish you didn't have to lie to me, Prince Diego, but I do understand." She had that coy edge back now. "I will leave you be, and see you in the morning." She stalked off, leaving Diego even more perplexed. It was true that he had been thinking of the Scion, but she had been remarkably perceptive to know that that wasn't the biggest thing on his mind at the moment. Her insight simultaneously unnerved and fascinated him, and he could understand, other than the obvious reason of her beauty, why his uncle wanted to keep her around.

There was a rustle nearby. He called out into the dark. "Who goes there?" In response, all he heard was a throaty croak and he knew what was there. He flexed his fingers, and a small tongue of flame appeared floating above his outstretched palm. He held it up, and the soft firelight cast itself upon the form of a severe-looking black bird with a formidable beak and a surprising size. It was called a raven, and it had been sent out to follow the pirate ship to its port of call. Now it rested on the iron railing, something green clutched within its beak. Reaching out gingerly, Diego took it and examined it. It was a sprig of some kind of plant. That meant there was land fairly nearby.

He closed his fist, and the flame within extinguished itself with a soft hiss. He started to stalk off into the darkness after Lucrezzia. He needed to have a word with her…and her shirshu.

When the sun rose, it found Brishen sitting on the beach just outside the cave, his boots in a heap beside him and his arms around his knees as he stared out to the nigh-impassable rocks. His head was leaned back onto Appa's great flank, and for the first time in days he was relaxing against his companion's warm side. It was as though he'd gone on a great trip and was now returning to the bed that he knew as opposed to the ones that he had made for himself on the road. Certainly, it was more comfortable than the crow's nest. He breathed deeply, and knew the feeling of relaxation.

"I thought you'd be out here." Brishen opened one eye. Celia was there, stretching in the dazzling light of the sun and holding back a yawn behind her smile. He couldn't help but smile widely enough to match her own. She made to sit down next to him, but stopped herself. "You don't mind if I join you, do you?" Brishen shook his head.

"Not at all." She settled down next to him and leaned back against Appa's side as well. Appa grunted in greeting, and then lulled himself back to sleep. "I was just looking at the waves," he said. "Thinking about hydromancy, about the things that you taught me. I never realized how much in common hydromancy had with aeromancy."

"They're definitely the two soft elements," Celia agreed, though she was not sure what else to say. She had never really thought about the similarities between elements. Celia supposed that Brishen had to, as the Scion; after all, he was the only one that was capable of controlling all four. It gave him a unique, if not different, perspective on the way the world worked for them. "I just want you to know, Brishen," she said somewhat abruptly, "that Jack and I are very glad to see you again. I don't think Jack slept at all these past few days that we've been searching for you, and to find you here, not just unharmed, but well taken care of and among friends…" she trailed off, but Brishen seemed to understand what she meant.

"I was worried about you two as well," he said. Both of them wanted to say something else to fill up the awkward silence, but neither of them had anything particularly poignant to say, and neither of them realized that they didn't really have to say much of anything at all. Brishen looked back toward the sky, and saw a silhouette against the rising sun. He raised his arm, pointed. "A bird," he said simply. He strained his eyes to get a closer look at it, but what he saw surprised him. The bird in question was not white, like most seabirds. Quite the opposite, it was a stark black and had a very sinister appearance about it. Immediately, Brishen knew that something was wrong. He felt a nudge on his shoulder. Celia's touch was tinged with fear.

"Look." She pointed to the horizon, and Brishen saw what he had feared would be coming for them. Slowly, he stood himself up and faced the oncoming silhouette of the Burning Blade grimly.

"I'll go get the captain."

The small boat that rowed out to the rocks contained Brishen, the captain, Jack, Celia, and the boatswain, a man by the name of Gunther. Celia carefully navigated the currents, pushing their boat along with her hydromancy. Brishen and Jack were at the prow, looking out at the three figures that stood ominously upon the rocks before them. The first two, Jack recognized. There was the ever-familiar figure of Prince Diego, his scarred visage tinged with a glint of victory. Next to him, at his shoulder, the old man who always seemed to be accompanying the prince stood with an air of unflappability, calmly sipping something from a porcelain mug. But the third figure, a woman, was one that Jack did not remember seeing before. She was a young woman, perhaps only a few years older than he, and she was without a doubt one of the most beautiful women that Jack had ever seen. She had a look of deadly competence about her, and Jack could see a crossbow pistol and a well-used cutlass hanging from her sash. As they approached, the captain swept off his hat in a mocking manner, making an overly courtly bow to them.

"Welcome, emissaries of the Dominion," he said with facetious grandeur, "to our waters. But as flattered as we are to have your company, we think it would be best if you find another part of the sea to go hunting for treasure in." Diego looked decidedly unamused.

"Look, sea rat," Diego said. "We both know who it is you have in tow with you. Give him to us, and we will leave without harming you or your crew. Otherwise, we'll turn that entire island behind you to glass, and I'll personally smelt every bit of treasure you have on it to ruin whatever worth it might have."

The captain seemed unperturbed. "And if we refuse?" he demanded. Despite the gravity of the situation, Jack had to bite his tongue to stop himself from chuckling. Diego just looked more annoyed.

"Hand over the Scion now," he said. The captain shook his head.

"I think not," he said. "You can't pass through these rocks, not with that great ship you've got there. So, if you excuse us…" Without needing any more bidding, Celia whipped her arms around, causing the boat to make a very sudden about-face turn, one that almost sent Jack over the edge. Brishen began to move his arms, too, and the two of them kicked up a great wake as they started speeding their boat back to shore.

"We'll bring the broadside to bear on them once we get back to the lads," the captain said, looking forward at their destination. Suddenly, a huge bolt of flame arced past them and landed on the beach, exploding brilliantly and sending sparks everywhere. Jack looked behind him. The entire battery of artillery on the Blade was ablaze with the flashes of weapons, and more and more fire blasts started to shoot for the island. Jack reached for his bow and took another look at the foe arrayed before them.

"Looks like they have the same idea."