"None at all," the young woman said with a smile. "Most of my bridges in Luke have been completely burned. But it all depends on what Jack has to say."
"Righ," Melas said, nodding. She directed her attention to Jack. "What do you think? I know you don’t like Dwarves and all…"
"Lisa has a point," he grunted. "And I don’t have a problem with all Dwarves. I have a problem with a Dwarf. We have nothing else left in Luke, and if we’re going to the Taw Kingdom, I can finally resolve that problem."
Gennady sat up from where he had been seated. He turned to the smuggler who avoided his gaze. "Hey, wait! If ya have a problem with only one Dwarf, what’s your problem with me?"
Jack scowled. "Shut it. The way you talk reminds me of him."
He sputtered. "But all Dwarves talk like me—"
Melas ignored their conversation, muttering under her breath. "Huh, uh, that was easier than I thought it would be."
Ginah turned her attention to the young girl as the argument in the room drew to a close with Lisa stopping Jack from continuing. She regarded Melas optimistically. "So, we just have to bring you to Taw, huh? That doesn’t sound too difficult."
"Nope." Melas hesitated. She glanced between everyone in the room, an uncertain look on her face. "It’s a tad bit more difficult than that."
"What do you mean?"
She took a deep breath. "We’ll have to… deal with Saintess Lilith first."
This time, everyone— not just Ginah— raised objections. But Melas quickly waved her hands, silencing them.
"We have no choice. If we deal with her now, the Church might decide that it’s not worth pursuing me in such a direct fashion any further. But if we don’t deal with her now, she’ll come back again in the future and cause a lot more problems than what we’d have to deal with right now."
"That makes sense," Lisa said, nodding. "But how do you expect us to take care of a Saintess."
"Well," Melas sighed. "I have a plan…"
***
Even at the moment, I knew it was such a cliche thing to say— I was internally cringing as I said it. But it was true. I had a plan. And that plan led to the current situation.
Jack and Braz left me in the storage room of the ship; they didn’t treat me too roughly once they were out of sight of Lilith. They set me down and chained my antimagic manacles to a pillar before they turned to leave.
Well, Jack tried to leave, but Braz stayed for a moment to whisper to me. "Sorry about the rough treatment."
"It’s fine," I said, before gesturing at the door. "Go before you arouse any suspicion."
"Right."
He was about to turn around to leave before I quickly added.
"And thank you."
The pirate paused. He glanced back at me, then shot me a grin. "Thank me once this is all over and we’ve dealt with that insane woman."
I met his gaze for a moment, staring into the golden eyes of his. Then I nodded, before he finally left the room. I watched him as he took his leave, heaving a sigh as I leaned back on the pillar I was chained to.
It was no more than a minute until I heard the creaking of the wooden crate behind me and the hushed whispers of a Dwarf.
"Pst, lass." He tried to get my attention. "All clear?"
"For now. But your role doesn’t come in until later. What if you get caught?" I glared back at him.
"Just wanted to check in on ya," he said, ignoring it. "Think everything will go according to plan?"
"I hope it does. Because if it doesn’t…" I trailed off.
Gennady just snorted. "You’re always so grim, aren’t ya? Relax for a moment. It’ll all go smoothly."
"But what if something goes wrong?" I asked, looking up at the ceiling. "What if they decide to betray us? Rat you out and truly hand me over to the Saintess and the Church?"
It was a fear that had been eating me up inside since we concocted this plan days ago— before we had the rest of the cove evacuated and set the stage for the fake ambush. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, yet it could fall apart any moment.
Anything ranging from Lisa deciding that she wanted to take all the gold for herself and Jack, to Ginah and Kai having second thoughts. Perhaps Lilith might decide she didn’t want to uphold her end of the deal and slaughter every single one of them while I was down here locked up and unable to do anything about it, effectively ruining our plan.
Even bad weather stood to threaten what happened next— if our ship was tipped over by a large wave or if the storm somehow ruined our masts, we might be forced to migrate to one of Lilith’s ships. And that made our plan all the more difficult to achieve, possibly even ruining it.
For all these reasons, I was worried; stress gripped my entire being in spite of me going through with this plan. And it must have shown only my face as Gennady reassured me.
"Come on, Melas. You’ve done your part, now it’s up to them lot. You have to trust that they play their roles well."
"Right," I said. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. Trust. It was something I had so little of before; it was something I had robbed from me by a young man who saved my life. But things were different now— things had been different for a while.
I had to trust that things would go well, even if I feared that I would once
