Scimitar's Heir Read Online Free PDF Page A

felt her lean against him for support, her body trembling. “Now, we’re short a bosun on Peggy’s Dream , so we’ll transfer you over there and you can have that cabin.”
    “So you can keep an eye on me?” he asked in a mildly sarcastic tone, though Feldrin could tell that the lad was trying to curb his belligerence.
    “Absolutely,” Cynthia agreed. “But as a precaution, not as a hostage. I want you to practice your skills, Edan. Hone them. Learn control. I can help you with that when it comes to manipulating the winds, and I can also douse any fires you might set accidently when you’re practicing with fire. I’ve also brought along a number of things I thought you might want.”
    “So be thankful you’ll be under Cyn’s thumb and not mine,” Fedrin growled, “’cause I’d just have Horace throw you overboard if you set my ship aflame.”
    The comment earned him a swift glare, but Feldrin didn’t care. Cynthia was playing with fire here, quite literally, and he prayed to the gods that she didn’t get herself burned.
    ≈
    Sam lifted the viewing glass, steadied it on the topmast hounds, and watched the two schooners rounding the reef off Plume Isle. Her vantage was from high atop the mainmast of the galleon First Venture , the prize she and her cannibal crew had taken the night before. She had hoped to pass by Plume Isle unseen, but it seemed that fate had deemed otherwise. At least , she thought anxiously, we’re downwind. If they decided to pursue her, a downwind run was just about the only point of sail a galleon could come close to matching a schooner for speed.
    Unless the sea witch uses her magic … She clenched her lip between her filed teeth until she tasted blood, willing the two schooners to continue heading south.
    Three figures came out onto the deck of Orin’s Pride , and she recognized them immediately. Even at this distance, the huge frame of Feldrin Brelak was unmistakable, and the woman at his side could only be the sea witch, Cynthia Flaxal. The smaller figure with a brush of fiery red hair, she knew all too well.
    “Edan…”
    Whenever she recalled their time together, she felt a strange warmth in the pit of her stomach, a physical memory of their lovemaking. Why that one experience had affected her more than the many times she had lain with Parek confused and troubled her. She had told herself that it had been just an act on her part, a ploy to hide her true motives. But now, feeling her stomach clench and her heart pound as she watched Edan in the distance, she had to admit that she had felt something else. Something deeper. Edan’s intensity had overwhelmed her, broken down her defenses and quelled the hatred, the ruthlessness and malice that made her a pirate. She couldn’t deny it; there was something there, something worth pursuing.
    And he was a pyromage. She’d seen what he’d done to the emperor’s flagship. If she could figure out a way to control him, to wield that power for herself…together, they would be invincible.
    A shout from below snapped her reverie, and she looked down. Below her lay the broad deck of the First Venture , still stained with blood from the ship’s former crew. Sailing in the ship’s lee was the relatively small ship she had stolen from the seamage’s very own docks, the double-hulled Manta , hidden from the schooners by the galleon’s bulk. But what drew her eye was the squabble that had broken out among her crew of cannibals. Though it probably wouldn’t come to blows, she would have to quell the discontent quickly and decisively if she was going to maintain control. She sighed. The crew was paying more attention to the two men involved in the disagreement than they were to sailing the ship, and it showed: the ship was sliding off course. The cannibals paddled their own small crafts to other islands on raids, and they had quickly learned how to sail the simple rig on the Manta , but the rig on First Venture was vastly more