Free Sword and Shadow by Saje Williams Page B

concerted sweep revealed no living pirates, Val couldn’t shake the feeling that they were missing something. All they could find were bodies. At least all the pirates were either dead or disabled, yet, thankfully, most of their own crew was alive and mostly uninjured. By all reports, their friend Goban had given a good accounting of himself aboard their ship—and even Bryon had turned out to be more effective a fighter than anyone had expected. The pirates asked no quarter and gave none. Val was just glad the butcher’s bill wasn’t higher on their end.
    The purpose behind their attack, and how they were able to creep up so close without being detected, remained a mystery. Raven murmured something about a theory, but refused to elaborate when she pressed him for details. “I’d just as soon have some sort of verification before I say anything more.”
    He ignored her icy glare and continued poking around the corsair vessel. “I smell a warlock,” he muttered, glancing around what they’d assumed to be the Captain’s cabin. Expensive rugs littered the floor, and inside they found the only real bed aboard the ship.
    Goban stood in the cabin doorway, shaking his head. “I didn’t see one.”
    “You weren’t supposed to. I do ask—where’s the Captain? I’d be willing to guarantee that the Captain and the warlock I’m sensing are one and the same.”
    “A warlock pirate? There’s a scary thought.” The watchman fingered the hilt of his sword. “Makes too much sense though,” he added, scratching his three-day-old beard growth. “So where is he?”
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    “Not he . Recognize that scent?” Raven asked Val, who sniffed experimentally.
    She nodded. “Very familiar. Spicy, but not too heavy. What is it?”
    “The perfume of choice of the woman who greeted you on your way into town.”
    Val took another deep sniff. “I didn’t smell it then.”
    “You didn’t smell it now until I pointed it out. You don’t have my senses. To me it’s as though she bathed in the stuff.”
    “That would be an interesting coincidence, wouldn’t it?” she asked him and received only a shrug in response. He was being rather closed-mouthed, to the point it was starting to piss her off. “Do you think she was after us in particular?”
    He nodded curtly. “Quite likely.” He began to cast about the room with his gaze, then reached up and plucked something she couldn’t see from the air. He repeated this a few more times, and then appeared to weave something invisible between his outstretched hands.
    Magic. She shivered. There was something deadly enticing about the magical arts—though her own gifts were unique and powerful in their own right. But magic—she’d always been curious, but never had the opportunity to learn anything about it. TAU recruited her straight out of college on Earth, just a backwoods bayou gal from Louisiana with a strain of the meta-bug that turned on the switches in her brain.
    She wasn’t even particularly powerful as a metapsi. Her strongest talent was her telekinesis—known commonly as TK or ‘Teek’—but she had a smattering of telepathic, empathic, and precognitive talents as well. They were occasionally useful, but involved a lot more ethical considerations than simply smashing someone in the face with a telekinetic fist.
    She was a powerful Teek, but it was an exhausting discipline.
    Physically lifting and throwing an average-sized man had left her pulse pounding and tiny lights going off in the corner of her eyes. She’d damn near overdid it on that one. One or the other, Val—maintaining a inertial shield or throwing pirates around. You can’t do both at the same time.
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    She came back to the present to realize Raven was staring at her, and he’d said something. “Sorry. What was that?”
    “This is no time to be woolgathering,” Raven told Val with narrow eyes. “Be ready and