Venture to Uncertainty (#1)

23 | The Dissonance of Uncertainty

Archer watched the moonlight dance across the wall of his room in the form of waves. He watched them twirl and jump, each water droplet a part of something bigger. His eyes were heavy and his body was exhausted, but he stared at those waves as if staying awake meant staying alive. In a way, it felt like it did.

He needed a redemption, a moment away from all the madness to refocus on his purpose. Still, he was far too antsy to simply sit and think. He needed to be out there, doing something that was helping to move his mission along. So when the moon was high in the sky, throwing those same dancing lights across the wall at the right angle, he sat up in his bed and pulled on his boots. He walked silently, opened the door and looked both ways quickly, but the hallway was dark and empty.

The walkway was quiet and so were the stairs. The common room above him was dead silent; the pirates often stayed awake into the late hours of the night, but it was past late, teetering into the early hours of the morning.

Jackson was the scout tonight, but Archer easily avoided him. After all, he didn't need to go on deck. He just needed to slip by the stairs. To the cells.

The Avourienne was nicer, for the most part, than even a king's ship—but the cells weren't as luxurious as the rest. Even the hallway that led to them was uncleaned and smelled of algae. The bars of the cells were rusting but still strong, the locks unbreakable. He wondered briefly where the key would be hidden, but he didn't need it tonight.

Kerian Kain, heir to the throne and Prince of the Cobalts, was slouched against the back wall of his cell, his neck bent at an odd angle as he slept. The floors barely glistened in the damp atmosphere, the moonlight just filtering down.

Archer pulled the stool out from the other end. He positioned it in front of the Prince's cell, unsure where to start, unsure of even what to call his former roommate, unsure how to wake him up at all. He settled for whirling a little piece of softened wood at him, which startled him awake immediately.

"Kingsley? Is that you?" Kerian asked, squinting in the darkness.

"It's me," he replied.

Kerian scooted forward so he could see better. He wrapped his hands around the bars, the undersides of his nails spotless and the pads of his fingers uncalloused. Everything about the Prince reminded Archer of something he'd missed, like those obsidian locks he brushed away from his face.

"Came down just to stare intensely at me, did you?" Kerian asked.

Archer leaned back on his chair, rolling out the kinks in his neck. "I want to talk."

"Of course," Kerian said. "Curiosity is a flaw of yours."

"What do you think I have to be curious about?"

He was met with a royal smile, full of those sharp teeth. "How I pulled it off."

"I know how you pulled it off," Archer replied. "Nobody expects an utterly useless and incapable man to be much of anything." He leaned back, watching the Prince carefully as he spoke, "Not the mention the fact that you didn't pull off anything. You're in a cell, and Silta lives to see another day."

Kerian tilted his head, then glanced over at the stairs. "Well, you are half right. I didn't pull it off quite the way I intended, but considering we're headed right back home, I would say it worked out in my favour. I believe I have you to thank for that."

"Me?"

"I heard you and Silta talking. She suspects you convinced Bardarian to head back to the Kingsland."

So Kerian had been eavesdropping, keeping tabs. An informant and an assassin.

"Answer me this," Archer began. "You're no killer—I can see it in your eyes, clear as day, yet you allegedly set out to murder your own sister?"