(POV: Leonardo)
The world was black. Not the night sky with its faint stars, not the dim glow of torches in a camp, but a suffocating blackness pressed against Leonardo's eyes.
The blindfold cut across his face, damp with sweat, biting into his skin with every shift of the rocking deck beneath him.
His wrists burned where the ropes dug deep, tighter than any soldier's knot he had endured in drills. The coarse fibers had already rubbed raw patches along his skin. Every attempt to shift sent fresh jolts of pain up his arms.
For a moment, Leonardo thought he was still in the mountains of Asturias, still among the corpses and the stench of mud and blood. But then the air hit him — sharp, briny, filled with the heavy tang of saltwater and something else.
Spices. Strong, foreign, unfamiliar. It wasn't the smoke of muskets or the iron tang of fresh steel. This was another world.
He inhaled deeply, his chest rising against the tightness of the ropes around him. A ship. He was on a ship.
The realization struck harder than the poison still sluggish in his blood.
From somewhere to his left came the rhythm of feet across planks, the low murmur of men speaking. The voices rose and fell with the crash of waves, in a language he strained to follow but could not fully grasp.
Not Spanish, not Portuguese. The syllables rolled strange and sharp, carried by confidence. He caught one word repeated with emphasis: "M'phamvu." The cadence was commanding, unquestioned.
Then he heard her.
The sound of Kara's voice carried easily above the crew, cutting like a blade through the damp air.
Even without sight, Leonardo knew it was her, the assassin who had struck in the forest, whose blade had sent his body numb, whose presence had dragged him from his men into this exile. She barked orders in Chichewa, her tone steady, no room for refusal. Men obeyed immediately.
Leonardo shifted, his head pressing against the rough wood behind him. He couldn't see her, but he imagined her, tall, deliberate, adorned with the beads he had heard clink faintly in her braids during the ambush.
Her silence in the fight had been more terrifying than her blade. Now her voice was measured, calm, as though commanding the sea itself.
He ground his teeth.
"¡Maldita sea!" he spat under his breath. His voice came hoarse, but his fury gave it strength.
He pulled at his bonds again, ignoring the burn in his arms. The ropes only cut deeper, wet now with a mix of seawater spray and his own blood.
A laugh came from nearby, mocking. The accent was thick, Spanish twisted with something harsher. "El perro del rey todavía respira," the guard muttered. The King's dog still breathes.
Leonardo lifted his head, blindfold and all, and forced his voice into a growl of pride.
"Soy el perro del rey… y muerdo." I am the King's dog… and I bite.
The guard chuckled, boots shifting closer, until another sharp word from Kara cut him off.
Leonardo couldn't understand it fully, but the tone was final, the kind that silenced men before they dared to test her patience.
Her steps approached instead. Leonardo felt them in the wood beneath him, deliberate, unhurried. The jingle of beads brushed the air as she crouched, and suddenly her presence was right before him.
"You fight your ropes like they will listen," she said softly, not in her tongue this time but in Spanish.
Her voice was lower than he remembered in the chaos of battle, each word deliberate, as if meant to etch itself into his mind. "But they are stronger than you."
Leonardo tilted his head, blindfold shifting against damp skin. "Desátame y verás lo fuerte que soy." Untie me and you'll see how strong I am.
He expected a blow, perhaps a laugh. Instead, Kara leaned closer, her breath brushing against his cheek.
"No eres mi igual. Eres mi carga." You are not my equal. You are my burden.
The words cut, not because of insult but because of how little emotion she gave them. Cold. Absolute.
Leonardo tensed, every muscle coiled, but the poison still hummed in his veins, betraying his strength. His wrists trembled against the bonds, sweat dripping down his temples. He wanted her to see his fury, but she had robbed him of sight.
"Cobarde," he muttered, low but sharp. "Hiding me in darkness."
For the first time, a pause. The beads shifted as she leaned back.
Kara did not respond. Instead, her footsteps retreated, unhurried, until the sound of the deck swallowed her.
Left alone with the crash of waves and the murmurs of crew, Leonardo pressed his head back against the wood. His chest heaved. Every breath burned with salt.
His mind clung to images — Mateo's voice shouting in Asturias, the King's hand lifting him from the ground after their last campaign, the oath he had sworn at court: Hasta la muerte, por la corona. Until death, for the crown.
Now, across an unknown sea, blindfolded and bound, Leonardo knew death might come sooner than he ever imagined. But as his jaw tightened, a vow rooted itself deeper.
If he lived, he would return. If he died, it would not be forgotten.
The ship rocked, the ropes cut deeper, and Kara's voice carried once more across the waves.
***
The sea was endless, or so it seemed.
Leonardo's sense of time dissolved into the rhythm of waves slamming against the hull, the groaning of wood, and the creak of ropes above.
Morning and night meant nothing here. Blindness stretched every second into hours. His body, once a weapon of iron discipline, now betrayed him, thirst dried his tongue, and the poison's ghost still dulled his limbs.
But his mind, his soldier's mind, refused to break.
He tested every knot, every slack in the ropes. He shifted his weight to memorize the angles of his confinement. Each detail mattered. A commander did not survive battles by surrendering to despair; he survived by calculation.
Still, the voices of the crew tormented him. Their words rolled like waves in a tongue he could not master. Chichewa, rough-edged yet strangely musical, carried orders, laughter, even curses.
At first, Leonardo ignored them. But as the hours bled into each other, he began to catch fragments. Patterns. A word here, a sound there. The way they said "madzi" when they passed water. The sharp "ima!" when Kara halted them.
Language became another battlefield. He listened harder, committing the sounds to memory. If survival meant patience, then he would carve patience into a weapon.
The scrape of boots announced her again. Kara. Even without sight, he felt the shift in the air when she drew near, calm, deliberate, her presence heavier than any soldier he had faced. The crew quieted when she moved, as though the sea itself obeyed.
A hand seized his chin, forcing his head upward. He clenched his jaw, refusing to give her the satisfaction of weakness.
"Sigues vivo," she said flatly in Spanish. You're still alive.
Leonardo's voice was hoarse, but his defiance held. "Disappointed?"
She ignored the question. Fingers traced the edge of the blindfold, pressing it tighter against his skin.
"You listen to us," she continued, switching briefly into Chichewa with a sharp command at the crew. The planks around him shifted as men moved away at her order. Only the sea remained, the two of them bound in that suspended silence.
"You think listening will save you," she said at last, her Spanish precise, unhurried. "It will not. The ocean does not care what tongue you understand."
Leonardo forced a dry laugh. "No, but men do. And kings do. And when I return, the crown will care very much about you."
A pause. The kind of pause that made even the waves seem hesitant. Then Kara leaned closer, her voice so near he could feel the weight of it.
"Vas a un lugar donde ningún rey puede encontrarte."
You're going where no king can find you.
The words cut colder than the sea spray against his skin. Not shouted, not snarled, spoken like a certainty, a prophecy she had no need to embellish.
Leonardo's breath slowed. He forced himself to stillness, to silence. But inside, his pulse hammered.
A place beyond the reach of Spain? Beyond the reach of Carlos, of Mateo, of the armies he commanded? Such a place should not exist. Yet Kara spoke with the calm of one who knew it well.
He tested his bonds again, straining until the rope tore into open skin. The pain was sharp, grounding. He welcomed it. "Even if no king can find me," he said through clenched teeth, "I will find my way back."
Kara gave a short, dismissive sound — not quite a laugh, but something colder. "We will see."
She rose, her beads clinking softly as she stepped back.
To the crew she gave another order in Chichewa, her tone sharper this time.
A moment later, a ladle touched Leonardo's lips. Water spilled, salty and warm, but he drank anyway, swallowing greedily. Even poison could not dull his need.
When the ladle was pulled away, Kara's voice returned, this time in her own tongue. Though Leonardo could not yet understand the words, the intent was clear. A warning. A vow.
Then she left him again in darkness.
Leonardo exhaled slowly, the ropes burning against his skin. His world was still blindfold and salt, but her words stayed lodged in his chest, heavy as iron.
Vas a un lugar donde ningún rey puede encontrarte.
But he was Leonardo, Commander of Spain. Brother in arms to the King. Even stripped of sight, bound like an animal, he refused to believe that truth could be erased.
Somewhere across this sea was a shore. Somewhere, Kara's allies waited. And somewhere in that darkness, the fight for his crown, and for his life would begin anew.
He closed his fists against the rope, ignoring the sting, and whispered in Spanish to the void, "Todavía respiro." I still breathe.
And for Leonardo, as long as breath remained, defeat was never final.