The Pirate's Legacy: New Horizons

Chapter 15: A Tale of Gold

Kim did not know how long she watched the black shadows and the weak yellow light dance together on the panel ceiling. To the left, she hear the sound of pages softly turning. The ship groaned every once in a while. But mostly, she heard silence. It is night, was the first thought that sprouted in her mind. An unfamiliar night, however. She couldn't recall, either in Politicka or on a ship, the last time she had not woken in a room bathed in shades of red. That moment of thought disturbed her internal equilibrium. A dull pulse ran through her body, starting from her head and traveled down to her toes. Though the pulse didn't hurt, it was very discomforting, eliciting a soft moan from her dry lips. Kim laid on the bed in the room she and Louise shared. Her body throbbed again as she slowly pulled back the covers and sat up. Her limbs felt like lead weights. Her head felt as if water sloshed inside. Bending her torso awakened the intense hunger her stomach had been nursing while she'd been unconscious.

Kim turned her head at the sound of creaking. Sitting on a stool beside the rickety table was Daryl. He held a leather-bound dissertation written by Magistrate Virequei about the continued Draconian threat and how Tarym's ailments were Politicka's concerns. "Skentios," said Kim, her voice raspy. Her arms trembled as she turned her body around. Daryl leaped up. With his free hand, he helped her settle on the edge of the bed, her legs dangling over the side. Then, he proceeded to check her pulse at the base of her throat. Kim was perspiring lightly by the time he returned to the stool.

" 'Tis good to finally see you up," Daryl said. "Try not to overtax yourself within your first waking moments." He twisted to place the dissertation on the table. Kim saw her weapon lying on top. The knife end glinted underneath the weak light coming through the porthole. Kim felt trepidation crawl up her back as Daryl's hand went around the weapon's cord. "This is very impressive," he told her. " 'Tis called a yushimori, correct?" His calloused hands stroking the braided rope. "This cord's quality is too fine, and at such a length, to be animal hair."

Kim kept her face expressionless when Daryl turned his hazel eyes on her. "Is it your hair?" he asked. When she nodded, a ghost of a smile flitted across Daryl's lips. "I thought so." He eyed the length of Kim's braided hair. The tip barely went past her shoulders. Many strands had come loose, and the bumps in the plait were different sizes. Lightly, he said, "You must have looked very regal when it was long."

Kim's gut clenched at the description. She placed her hands in her lap in a complacent gesture, but she was trying not to show how deeply her chest heaved. Mentally, she ordered her body to stay calm. Though she knew the exoticism of her foreign looks drew non-Ayshian stares, it was the way he said "regal" and that he was associating it with her which were setting off bells in her head.

The stool creaked as Daryl leaned forward to rest his elbows onto his knees. He intertwined his fingers in front of him. On his face was a calculating expression that Kim knew he'd picked up from the author of the dissertation. Yet, his voice was still light as he asked her, "How are you feeling?"

Now that she knew she was being drawn into a dance to which she didn't know the tune, Kim stepped carefully around Daryl by asking, "Skentios, why you not working on the uba?"

" 'Tis finished; not to worry," he said. "Tim Powers welded the axial impeller to the casing. If we're lucky, he didn't tamper with the circumferential piston and jam the gears. Apparently, Tim used to be an engineer before being chain ganged into piracy. He liked the profession change, however, and that's why he stayed." The smirk on Daryl's lips left as quickly as it had come, and he regarded Kim with utmost seriousness. "Kim, you had been unconscious for four days. You had a terrible fever and chills." Daryl glanced down at his clasped hands for a moment before he said, "I don't know how you did it, but you managed to pull yourself back from the brink of death."