“Why the charade of having your man come to Midas and feed me information?” I ask. “Why get me involved at all?”
“I’m not an idiot,” Rycroft says, though I beg to differ. “Nobody can make the climb up the mountain and live to tell the tale. The ice prince may have been willing to tell me about some ancient necklace nobody had seen in a few lifetimes, but he wasn’t going to give up the most carefully guarded secret of their bloodline.”
“And you knew that it was information I could get.”
“You’re the prince of Midas,” he says. “Royalty sticks together, doesn’t it? I knew you’d all be in on one another’s dirty secrets. Or if you weren’t, you could be.”
And he was right. I managed to weasel my way into the secrets of Sakura’s family just like Rycroft knew I would, learning things I had no right to, for a mission he had planned. All of my talk about being a captain, telling Kye I wasn’t some na?ve prince to be advised and influenced, and all the while I was playing into the hands of Tallis Rycroft and his merry band of miscreants.
“So you planned to use me to find out the way up the mountain.”
“Not just that,” Rycroft says. “I need entry, too. I’m not about to start a war with the Págese by trespassing on their mountain. They’d know I was there the second I started the climb, and they’d be on me and my guys before I got anywhere near the ice palace. A pirate isn’t gonna get close to that crystal.”
Lira slinks back into her chair, realization dawning on her face the moment it does mine. “But a prince might,” she says.
Rycroft claps his hands together. “Smart girl,” he says, then turns to me, his arms wide and welcoming. “Your diplomatic connections are gonna come in handy, golden boy. If my bets are right, you’ve already talked your way into some kind of deal with them. Offered them something in exchange for entry. If I’m with you, I can stroll right on up there with nobody on my back and then loot the whole damn place. By the time they realize what me and my lot are doing, I’ll already have the power of the ocean in my hands.”
“Great plan,” I say. “Only problem being that I’m not telling you a thing and my schedule is a little packed to take you on a guided tour of a mountain.”
“Not like I thought you’d be easy,” Rycroft says. “But you don’t have to take me anyway; we’re taking you.”
The Xaprár inch closer, creating a circle around us.
“As for the information, I can torture that out of you and your little lady on the way. It’ll be a time-saver.”
I smirk and look over at Lira. She blinks, not in shock, but as though she is considering what he’s saying like a proposition rather than a threat. If she’s scared, she does a good job of hiding it.
She lifts her rum from the table with a slow and steady hand. “Just so we understand each other,” she says, swirling the goblet indifferently, “I’m not his lady.”
Before I can register the look on Rycroft’s face, Lira lurches forward and throws the golden liquid straight into his eye. Rycroft lets out an ungodly howl, and I jump to my feet, knife drawn as the pirate clutches his face where the gold dust slices with every blink.
“You bitch,” he snarls, blindly drawing his sword.
Lira pulls out the small dagger she slipped into her boot earlier, and I press my back to hers. Rycroft’s shadows surround us, and from the corner of my eye, I see snipers gather on the quarterdeck. I can take a dozen men, maybe, but even I’m not bulletproof. And Lira, for all the fire that runs through her veins, is not invincible.
“You think that was clever?” Rycroft wipes his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
“Maybe not,” Lira says. “But it was funny.”
“Funny?” He takes a step closer, and I see the anger rolling from him like smoke. “I’ll show you funny.”
I arch my body, turning our positions so Lira squares off with the Xaprár and I come face-to-face with Rycroft. “No point crying over spilled rum,” I tell him.
For a moment Rycroft stares at me, deathly still. His lips curl upward and he blinks back a dribble of blood from his left eye. “To think,” he says, “when I tortured you, I was going to let you keep your most precious appendage.”
When he lunges, I push Lira to the side and dart back. The Xaprár clear a path for us and then circle like vultures, ready to peck at the leftover carcass of the kill. Rycroft brings his heavy sword down, and when my knife meets it, the sparks are blinding.