Free Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts) by Holly Lisle

of Souls to stay with the parnissa or to go to Calimekka. If that’s your demand, we all die here.”
    He chuckled. “I wouldn’t expect you to agree to giving the parnissa your prize, girl. You came all the way across the ocean and braved terrible dangers to get it.”
    She nodded. And waited.
    “Something you’ve gone through so much to get, you deserve to have, don’t you agree?”
    She nodded again, slowly sensing a trap closing around her but not able to see where it was coming from.
    “Good.” The captain smiled a tiny smile. “Because everything you went through to get your prize, our parat went through to rescue you. And if you deserve to keep your prize, you must agree that he deserves to keep his.”
    Click. The trap snapped shut around her, and she had already agreed with the captain that its bars were solid and its use acceptable. “You want me to . . . give myself to him?”
    “No. I insist only that you share his quarters and remain his companion throughout the return trip. Meanwhile, I will sail you and your friends and Ry and his friends and your Mirror of Souls to a neutral harbor: neither Brelst nor Calimekka. I think Glaswherry Hala might serve. Once you’re on land, all of you may go where you please. Should he decide to go with you, he may. Should he decide to return to Calimekka with me, he may. In that way, I will fulfill my duty to him and meet your needs as well.”
    “You
can’t
let her have the Mirror!” the parnissa wailed.
    “You
can’t
force Kait into Ry’s company!” Ian snapped.
    The captain glanced first at the parnissa, and for a moment Kait saw the hint of disdain that every captain she’d ever known held toward the parnissery. It was the look that men who were truly free and in charge of their own domains held toward those who chose the path of bureaucracy. “I can and I have.” He turned to Ian. “And you . . . you are not a captain on my ship. You are less than nothing—you and the rest of your people will be the parolees of this woman. As long as she speaks for you, I’ll see you’re treated with courtesy. But you have no voice of your own. You understand?”
    Kait watched Ian from the corner of her eye. He blanched and nodded.
    She wanted to refuse. Ry and his men would surely choose to “accompany” them once they were on land, and she and Ian and Hasmal and Jayti would be outnumbered, and would lose the Mirror of Souls to the Sabir Family anyway. They would simply lose it closer to home. Meanwhile, she would have to share quarters with Ry, when sharing a continent with him already seemed too intimate.
    She could not demand that the captain guarantee she and her people would keep the Mirror once they were on land again; Captain’s Law began and ended on the sea, and he could offer nothing that would bind Ry and his men beyond the decks of his ship. Further, she had chosen to negotiate with him—she could not now state that she wanted to negotiate with Ry, too. If she tried to demand too much, she’d lose everything.
    She wanted to spit in the captain’s face and tell him she’d sooner see him in hell. But she had defined winning as getting her people and the Mirror safely across the sea to the Reborn. The captain’s bargain would let her win, at least temporarily—and she would have the whole voyage in which to figure out a way to win permanently.
    She stared into the captain’s eyes. “You swear to protect my friends’ lives as if they were the lives of your own family or crew, protect our cargo as if it were your own, get us safely to a harbor that isn’t Calimekka, and let all of us leave when we get there, permitting us to take the Mirror of Souls with us?”
    “I swear.”
    She saw honesty in his eyes, and smelled sincerity in his breath.
    “And you will be satisfied that I have carried out my portion of the bargain if I share a room with Ry Sabir and attend him as a companion during the day; you do not stipulate that I become his