A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) by Prue Batten Read Free Book Online

crack in the folds of canvas above told him the mainsail had been unfurled and he felt the deck rise like a horse jumping a fence, the wind filling the vast sail, the design of a black fleur-de-lis ballooning.
     
    ‘You like my ship?’ A faintly tinged Py mm voice spoke beside him. He turned and found the speaker was a man of stringy appearance, his cheeks a patchwork of red veins.
    ‘Indeed.’ Intrinsic di slike filled Finnian’s bones. T his man had a temper steeped in vitriol, he could sense it as surely as if a faint red mist hung on the horizon. Aine knows he’d had a lifetime of learning what that was like.
    ‘I run a tight ship. One step out of line and the crew will pay. Laxness and levity have no place on my command.’ The captain’s hands clenched and unclenched on the taffrail and Finnian observed the muscles in the man’s calves bunch beneath his white stockings as he balanced aga inst the burgeoning sea-swell. He turned directly to Finnian and the eyes, close together and small, blinked once above a pinched nose and a m outh flatter than the horizon. ‘I hope you will be comfortable. The cabin boy will run after your needs a nd I will see you at my table. By the way sir, if you weren’t aware, you only step up to my de cks on my explicit invitation. Passengers’ decks are there,’ he pointed to the main deck awash with men and ropes. ‘I shall let it go this time.’ He dismissed Finnian with a perfunctory nod.
     
    But Finnian mesmered and the cap tain forgot about invitations. Forgot even that Finnian stood on his pre cious stern castle, wandering around, examining and absorbing al l that shipboard life offered. To see without being seen, to do without being remembered – an artform peculiar to Others , and one he intended to make so much use of now he was away from Isolde’s intimidating presence.
    He leaned over the rail and glanced down at the purling wake as the ship made swift progress sout herly to the tip of Trevallyn. He knew he carried the weight of a damaged child’s hatred in his soul and there were moments when he wished he could rise above it now that he was free. But his fingers tightened on the polished timber beneath his hands as he reconciled himself to the knowledge that as long as Isolde was alive, he would never be truly safe.
    The boat shifted along in the light breeze. He gu essed the speed at four knots. With good winds they could cover about fifty leagues in a day, one hundred and fifty miles, a few less nautical miles. Distance, distance and more. Once in the Narrows the vessel would tack along that cold stretch of depthless water and finally turn to beat northerly up the west coast, heading for the deepwater port of Marino, one of the outer islands of th e great canal city of Veniche. His spirit soared with the success of his escape thus far and with the knowl edge he had avoided detection. Above him he could see gulls and gannets scooping and swooping in the humid airs and it was only the tiniest movement in the lower corner of his vision that made him look down again at the sea.
    A merro w watched him back. Rolling and flipping like some obscene dolphin, he waved his arm at Finnian and then more particularly his finger, which waggled back and forth. The sun glinted on a blade-like fingernail and an unwanted image of stilettos flicked thr ough Finnian’s mind. He turned his back on the malign water-wight, returning to the cloistered space of his cabin to pour a wine.
     
    As they tacked into the Narrow s, the journey began to alter. Finnian wondered if he had drunk more than was wise, but who cares? Convinced he was safe from Isolde’s discovery, he became jovial with the crew, pointedly sarcastic and dismissive with the Captain and deferential with the Ambassador, liking the mark h e began to make upon the ship. He lurched across the deck as the vessel veered to starboard, the br eeze hardening about his ears. She shook herself, listing one way and then the other