The Runaway King

As soon as the pirates left, Fink started toward me but Erick grabbed his shoulder and held him back.

“He’s not a friend,” Erick said coldly. “Not mine or yours.”

Fink looked at me, and I very slightly shook my head. I’d told him that he had to convince Roden of his dislike for me. His eyes darkened as he realized he had to convince everyone else of that too.

“I just wanted to hurt him myself,” Fink said. It wouldn’t have mattered if he did, because I doubted Fink could hit hard enough to compare with anything else I’d faced today, but I was glad to see him back off anyway.

“For what it’s worth, Erick, I’m sorry.” I said the words slowly, because my stomach still ached.

“It’s worth nothing!” Erick shouted. “You lied about who you are and lied about the treasure! Anything that happens now is better than you deserve. I put my own life on the line to bring you here. When they’re done with you they’ll kill me, probably Fink too.”

“Things didn’t go the way I’d planned.” Not that it would make any difference to him, or to me, but it needed to be said.

Erick stepped forward. I hoped he didn’t intend to hit me too. Or that if he did, he would choose one of the few spots on my body not already bruised. “There’s one thing that’s been bothering me,” he said. “When we went to that noble’s house in Libeth and you chased after that man, did you really kill him?”

“I never claimed to have,” I said. “That was your assumption. And no, I never touched him. He was my friend.”

“You say that as if he no longer is.”

“He’ll serve me for as long as I’m king.” I paused, thinking of how much frustration I must have caused Mott over the past several days. “But I doubt that I have any friends left.”

“Not here you don’t.” With that, Erick sat heavily on the chair in the room and folded his arms.

Fink climbed onto the table beside him, sat cross-legged, and rested his head in his hands. Neither of them looked at me.

I shifted my weight so that I could lean into the corner of the room and then closed my eyes. If nothing else, at least I could get a little sleep.

Whether I slept for two minutes or two hours, I couldn’t be sure. But I awoke to loud voices, and the sound of a key turning in the locked door. My eyes opened slowly, reluctantly. I glanced at Erick and Fink, who were still sitting in their same places as before.

Erick cocked his head, hearing the key as well. “Are you ready for whoever’s on the other side?” he asked.

“No,” I muttered. And I wasn’t.

When the door opened, Erick and Fink jumped to their feet and backed against the far wall. I still felt groggy and was slower to straighten up. In fact, it was difficult to summon any energy whatsoever. The strain of the last several days had finally caught up to me.

This time it was Roden who entered. The same two pirates who had chained me up came with him, and as before, several others waited in the doorway.

Roden folded his arms and stared icily at me. It was nothing new to have someone look at me with expressions of anger or dislike. But I didn’t like it coming from Roden. Back at Farthenwood, we had formed what I thought was a decent friendship. Then he became manipulated by Conner’s servant Cregan, to fulfill Cregan’s dark ambitions. Perhaps it was my own arrogance at work, but I found it hard to believe that Roden could hate me so much, just because I had the crown and he didn’t. In light of this, I thought it best to let him speak first, so I waited, eyes lowered.

He spoke first to Fink. “Erick claims he didn’t know who Sage was before. Did you?”

Fink shook his head, then said, “But I didn’t think he was a regular thief either. He was just different from the rest.”

Moving his attention to Erick, Roden narrowed his eyes. “Even the boy knew something was wrong. Neither of you leaves this room alive.”

The obvious exception to his words was me, which I found less than comforting. Whatever Roden wanted me left alive for, it wasn’t going to be good.

“Please,” Fink said, sniffing. I looked over and the kid was actually crying. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m only a child.”

“Stop that.”

“Please, sir.” Large tears rolled down Fink’s face. It was impressive, really.

Roden rolled his eyes, but the tears did their job and he softened. “I’ll think about it, all right? Just stop!”

“If you keep us alive, we can still prove ourselves.”

Roden cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah? How?”

“We’ll take care of Jaron for you.” Recovering a bit too quickly, Fink wiped his eyes and said, “Erick and I have a score to settle with him now.”

I nearly laughed. It was a good attempt by Fink to sound hateful toward me, but he didn’t pull it off well. Roden only shook his head at him. “Thanks, but I have my own plans for him.”

Which, unfortunately, I had already suspected.

Now Roden turned to me. “You ignored my threat last week.”

“Looks that way.”

“Did you think I wasn’t serious? That I couldn’t do everything I told you I would?”

“I knew you were serious,” I replied. “That’s why I had to come.”

“But you were looking for me before that. You sent Mott and Tobias all over Carthya to find me. Why?”

“I didn’t like the way things ended in that tunnel.” Roden and I had fought in a narrow passage beneath the castle on the night I returned there. If he had defeated me, he would have entered the castle and tried to claim the throne as Jaron. But it wouldn’t have worked. Roden never would’ve gotten far with Kerwyn and the fraud would have been exposed. At one point during our fight I had backed off when I could have killed Roden. There was a moment when I thought he had also backed off, though I had never been sure of that.

Roden chuckled. “You didn’t like how things ended? And how is that, with me alive?” His tone darkened. “I suppose you think you were merciful that night, allowing me to run. But you weren’t. You cursed me. Where else was I supposed to go to get away from you?”

“It would’ve been nice if you had chosen somewhere less dangerous,” I said. “You’re an even worse pirate than I am.”

In an instant, Roden’s face hardened and he backhanded me across the face. “We’re equals now, so you can’t talk to me like that. I’m as much of a king as you are.”

“Hardly,” I scoffed. “There’s no honor in being the king of the pirates. No glory, and no reward other than an eventual death at the hands of your own men.”

“Then I wonder why you’d take the trouble to come all this way and join us,” he said.

“You didn’t leave me much of a choice.”

“Or maybe you want to finish what we started in your gardens.” When I held my gaze on him he added, “I was there because you cheated before, that night you were crowned. You cheated to win that duel and cheated me out of the throne!”

When Roden and I fought that night, I had pretended to fall and lose my sword. But what I’d done wasn’t a cheat. It was a trick, yes, but Roden had no one to blame for falling for it except himself. Especially because I had warned him earlier it’s what I would do.