Treasure (6 page)

No, if all went according to plan, Kinni would take him to his death.

Kyo sipped his wine and smiled blandly, shoving his thoughts aside to focus on political maneuvering. When the interminable dinner at last ended, he made quick work of his farewells and slipped away, wandering the halls of the palace until he wound up at the shark pool.

The pool was enormous, as wide and long as the grand ballroom and protected by a ceiling of glass set in stone. The floor surrounding it was decorated with colorful tiles depicting dozens of scenes:  sailing ships, the Dragons themselves writhing and playing in the sky and sea, the Holy Temple of the Three Storms, the crowning of the first king—on and on the images went. The pool was also deep, too deep for any normal person to swim to the bottom and back up before running out of breath. Even should someone be crazy enough to try, he would also have to face the numerous sharks that filled the pool.

Magic alone kept the dozens of types of sharks from doing anything, but swim peacefully. They accessed the pool by way of a tunnel all the way at the bottom of the pool, drawn to it by the same magic that kept them calm.  Kyo looked over his shoulder, but it was unlikely anyone other than Taka would seek him there. Turning back, he watched the sharks swimming round and round. He slowly pulled out the pins holding his elaborate sash in place and removed it, folding the pins in it for safekeeping. His robes gaped open, and Kyo shrugged out of them. Folding them neatly, he set all the clothes well out of the way then strode back to the edge of the pool. His hair fell around him, down to mid-thigh, decorated with beads of esmeralda, saphir, and pearl; it was heavy, far too heavy to swim easily, but he was a prince, and the magic that flowed in his veins made it a non-issue.

Kyo dove smoothly into the water, relishing the cold as he hit it, the way it got colder the deeper he went. Magic thrummed in his blood, altering his body in small ways, allowing him to swim and breathe as easily as the deadly creatures around him.

Creatures that largely ignored him, and those that did not came up only to brush against him in friendly fashion. Kyo had always enjoyed swimming with the sharks. No one else bothered him there, and they were far more interesting than the sharks that inhabited the palace proper. Swimming with them was also a good way to strengthen his magic.

He kept swimming, all the way to the bottom, then headed through the dark tunnel and kept swimming past the various sharks going in and out until darkness finally gave way to light once more.

He began to swim up, moving closer and closer until he finally broke the surface. The magic-induced gills faded off after a few seconds, and he breathed normally as he kept swimming. Kyo headed slowly toward the shore, already tired from the effort he'd exerted, but vehemently against going back inside any time soon.

Reaching the shore of the small, secret beach only accessible by either swimming up as he had, or scaling down the cliffs that surrounded most of the palace, he collapsed in the sand and stared up at the sky.

If the information Raiden had given him was correct, he had three months to live. They would stop over in Pozhar for additional supplies, and after that … There would be no more people beyond those aboard the
Kumiko
. There would be no more dull dinners, no more lashings, no more being reminded he was not what his parents wanted him to be.

No more sneaking off to town with Taka at his side. No more sneaking off alone to watch the
Kumiko
and her captain whenever the ship was in port. No chance he would ever be able to find out if Kinni remembered him, if Kinni cared about the promise he'd made as a boy.

No chance of going off to find the ultimate treasure, secretly hoping that Kinni would decide—

Three months to live. Kyo drew a breath and let it out slowly, refusing to let any emotion rise up. He could do it, he would do it, if only because it meant he would die doing things
his
way, and there would be no more sacrifices. A hundred years after he died, no prince would be called into his father's study and be told that his sole reason for existing was to serve as sacrifice.

Kyo could not wait for the day that his father realized he had run away and taken the Eye of the Storm with him. His mouth curved in a smirk, thinking about it. He was going to die, but he would not be his father's pawn. He vowed it, in the names of the Dragons of the Three Storms. It was his life, and he would lose it how he chose.

He hoped that Taka would forgive him, eventually, though he supposed it little mattered since he would be dead, and dying the way he was guaranteed there would be no reincarnation. A sacrifice was a sacrifice, and no piece remained when it was over.

Would anyone besides Taka and Umiko miss him? Kyo dismissed the thought as pointless, but thoughts of Kinni rose up in his mind anyway. Wistful thoughts, stupid thoughts, painful thoughts. He reached up to touch the pendant around his neck. He had to replace the chain every few years, as never removing the necklace had its hazards, but the pendant itself remained exactly as it had that long ago day:  bright silver and gleaming, displaying a lighthouse with beams of light fanning out.

He wondered if Kinni had already found his ultimate treasure, and the thought hurt. Kinni was not a foolish, spoiled prince caged by a royal life. He was free to roam, had his own ship even—the world and all the treasure in it were his.  Why would he remember Koori?

Kyo scrubbed at his face and tried to banish his idiotic thoughts. He needed to focus on important matters. Such as how, precisely, he was going to steal the Eye of the Storm from Taiheiyou. The only turn of luck he'd had in his plotting was that their father had decided Taiheiyou should begin growing accustomed to wearing the stone that was the heart of their power. The dragon magic might flow through royal blood, but the magic only worked if they possessed the Eye.

He almost wished he could see their faces when they woke up and realized the stone was gone and they had no idea where to find him. The pace of his heart increased with anxiety and excitement, with the thrill of defiance, of escaping, of
doing
something that would really make a difference, instead of being reduced to menial tasks that any idiot could manage.

If they had not raised him as a sacrifice, he always wondered, would they have treated him differently? He liked to think they might have actually cared, but he doubted it.

Sighing, Kyo stood up and headed back out to the water, diving into the surf and swimming steadily for deeper waters.

By the time he climbed out of the shark pool, he was exhausted—and surprised to see that it was not Taka waiting for him. "Your grace," he greeted, wringing out his hair as best he could before accepting the dressing robe that Krasny held out to him.

"Your secretary and I crossed paths in the hall, and we stopped to speak. He was called away, and I offered to bring your robe to you," Krasny explained.

"I thank you," Kyo replied. "I thought you would have retired by now, your grace." He pulled on the robe and belted it, then led the way out of the shark pool.

Krasny shrugged. "I was on my way to speak with Prince Culebra to finalize our arrangements for our departure at the end of the week. He is quite eager to be home, and I am looking forward to seeing Piedre again. Kundou and Piedre have always been my favorite places to visit."

Mouth quirking in amusement, Kyo said, "Not Verde, your grace? The beasts will be quite put out you chose us over them."

"Verde is too busy admiring itself to care if others admire," Krasny retorted, returning Kyo's smile with the barest whisper of one. Coming from Krasny, it was practically a grin.

Kyo laughed as they came to a stop in the intersection of four hallways. "I hope you have enjoyed your time in Kundou, despite the difficult negotiations and the increased danger of getting here."

"Of course, Highness," Krasny replied, and Kyo believed him. Krasny's most redeeming features were his peculiar honesty and his cold indifference to everything—even seeing Kyo naked had not stirred anything, and it was a nice change from feeling as though people made a habit of mentally undressing him. Kyo bowed and then held out his hands, amused when Krasny, after bowing low, took them both and briefly kissed his knuckles. Always with the touching and kissing, Pozharans.  "If I do not see you again, Highness, Fires keep your hearth warm and your path lit."

"May the winds always blow in your favor, and the seas carry you safely," Kyo replied softly, and they bowed once more before going their separate ways.

He walked quickly through the halls, pausing only to bid a servant fetch his clothes from the shark pool. Back in his room, he sat at his dressing table and began the laborious process of removing the countless jeweled beads from his hair, carefully putting them away in the various and sundry boxes that held them.

When that was finally done, he stripped off his robe and climbed into the bath Taka had ordered drawn for him after dinner, and which had been waiting for him to return. He grimaced as he began to wash the sand from his hair, slowly and carefully soaping, rinsing, and combing it out. The process would have been easier with a servant, but Kyo hated for anyone but Taka to be in his room, and only if one of them was around was anyone allowed in his room at all.

Kyo had no intention of making it easy for his father's servants to snoop.

Two hours later, he climbed from the bath and pulled his robe on once more, then strode to his dressing table to dry out and braid his hair. When at last he was done tending his hair, he walked to his desk and settled behind it, picking up the papers Taka had left out for him to sign.  He frowned and set them down again, looking around the desk, rifling through a drawer. Where had he put them? Annoyed, he stood up and went over to Taka's desk and stole the reading glasses set neatly to one side of Taka's blotter. Sliding them on, he returned to his desk and resumed looking over the papers.

He signed warrants, search orders, and a handful of licenses requiring royal permission, then set them aside for Taka to take away again. Sitting back, he stared out the balcony off to his right at the dark sea glistening with moonlight.

Soon, very soon, he would finally be sailing that sea. For three whole months, he would have freedom of a sort. Three months to do and be what he pleased before he had to serve in a royal capacity one last time.

He fervently hoped he was doing the right thing.

Kyo sighed softly and stood up, then headed across the room to his bed chamber. There, he reached into the back of his wardrobe for the book he stashed there. It was old, barely held together, and the words were so faded they were illegible in parts. But what remained was sufficient enough to tell him that the
Book of Storms
his father had given him had very little in common with the barely-legible version that was a great deal older. Kyo had no idea how old. The book looked almost more like a private journal than a formal book, as it was old enough to have been handwritten, and he recognized none of the other marks upon it.

He did not even know where the book came from. He had simply found it on his bed shortly after his father had told him that he was to die, had been born for the sole purpose of preserving his family's hold on the dragon magic.

Everyone knew the Legend of the Lost Gods:  they had one day gone mad with rage and nearly destroyed the world they had created. Then they had fallen, either by the hand of their children or, in the case of the Basilisk, by his own hand. The only country about no one knew anything about was Lost Schatten; no one went in, no one came out, and those who tried were either killed by the turbulent sees or slain by the terrible beasts that lurked in the Jagged Mountains.

In Kundou, everyone knew that the Dragons of the Three Storms had been the first of the gods to go mad, betrayed by their twin priests. What, exactly, the priests had done was lost to time but the Dragons' rampage had changed Kundou forever. The little island that had rested in the middle of the three larger ones had vanished. Some said it sank, some said it somehow managed to float out to sea, some said it had simply ceased to be when the gods died.

To his everlasting regret, Kyo knew the truth:  after defeating the dragons and stealing the Eye of the Storm, Taiseiyou I moved the island himself to a remote location that was known only by the royal family.

Every one hundred years, one who possessed the dragon magic had to die to preserve the spell that kept the dragons sealed away and fed their power to the royal family by way of the Eye of the Storm and the sacrifice. Because nine hundred years ago, according to the book that had been left on his bed, Taiseiyou I had sacrificed a member of his own family to bind the magic to himself.

Why, the book did not say. Who had died was not given either, but Kyo had his suspicions there. He went to the chaise set by the balcony in his room and opened the doors to let in the cool night air, pulling up a blanket before he settled in to reread the books he practically knew by heart.  

Always he searched for something he had missed—some clue he had overlooked that was the key to accomplishing his goal without having to give his life. But he never found it, and he knew he never would no matter what he hoped. What had been stolen by blood must be returned by blood. Otherwise the mermaids would continue to increase in numbers and hate, Vessels would continue to die in Pozhar until eventually, there would be no saving the world, and no world left to save.

The dragons had begun the carnage, and that meant Kundou must be the first to repair it. He paged through the old volume gingerly until he reached the last chapter, where practically the only words still legible were a small part of a prophesy that was either foretold by the unknown author or simply recorded by him:

To defeat … and restore … will take a Child of Chaos
.

He just wished—

The sound of the main door opening and closing drew Kyo's attention, and he hastily hid his book beneath his blankets then stretched out indolently, gazing out over the black sky and sea, the fat moon hanging heavy and shining over the water.