Dog in the Dark

Chapter Twenty-four

Leesil reached the waterfront while still wearing his fine breeches and tunic, but along the way he’d left the cape, hat, and walking stick behind. The clothes were loose enough for him to move easily, and his tool kit from his early days was stowed in the back of his tunic. Magiere was down to her breeches and shirt, with her long falchion strapped over her back and out of the way.

They headed quietly down the shoreline stairs to the walkways below the piers and the skiffs tied off below.

Though there were some people still about on the waterfront and many of the ships, Leesil and Magiere found themselves completely alone down below. It took no time to find a small, manageable boat under the third pier where the slave ship was docked. Magiere climbed in while Leesil untied it from a piling.

They ignored the oars and instead pushed the skiff along between the pilings; sometimes they had to duck all the way down to slip under a cross support. They remained hidden from sight by anyone above on the docks, and even those along the shoreline would not be looking for anything below.

They reached the pier’s end without hearing a warning call or spotting a single person stopping to look their way. As they floated out into the open, Leesil leaned his head close to Magiere’s.

You ready? he mouthed, and she nodded.

The bay was calm, and they pushed off around the last piling to hand-walk the skiff along the back of the Bell Tower. Ripples from the skiff’s movement spread around the ship’s greater hull with no sound at all.

Leesil looked upward, listening, but neither of them saw nor heard anyone up on the aftcastle. As they rounded to the starboard and the open side, he glanced about for anyone watching.

There on the end of the next pier was the Cloud Queen, and he sank low in the skiff and motioned for Magiere to do the same. He couldn’t see much more than the hull and the masts above. No one walked the ship’s near-side rail.

Lantern light didn’t reach the crow’s nest on the central mast, though he knew someone was likely up there. Here in the dark, next to the slave ship’s hull, he hoped they wouldn’t attract any attention.

Leesil dug into his pack and pulled out a coil of thin rope that ended in a plain metal hook he’d wrapped with strips of cloth. Magiere tried to steady the skiff as he rose carefully to his feet and looked up. Even if he’d borrowed Brot’an’s hook-bladed bone knife to match the one he carried, that kind of climb wasn’t like scaling a stone wall with cracks and mortar lines. Leesil wasn’t sure he could manage it quietly enough, so he’d opted for a different strategy. Right now he simply hoped the padded hook would make little noise when it passed over the rail and banged against the deck’s sidewall.

Even so, he worried about what would happen after that.

The problem was that once he and Magiere freed the prisoners, they had to get a large number of people up on deck, deal with any sentries while not rousing the rest of the crew, lower the ramp, and get everyone off.

No small task—but he believed it could be done if executed quickly, before any guards realized what was happening. He and Magiere would leave last in order to help hold off any pursuit. He also hoped to find makeshift weapons in the hold—anything to arm the stronger prisoners and put them out in front of the escape ... in case all of this did come down to a fight.

After that there was still one more consideration.

Paolo had suggested that the slavers were here to gather more prisoners, and the ship had already been here for three days. Odds were that by now someone in the hold was from Drist. Once the prisoners made it off the ship, their only option would be to run to whomever or whatever passed for the authorities here, even if that proved to be only the harbormaster.

Leesil believed that most harbormasters would have a problem with the transportation of human cargo. Would it matter here, where even people became property? Someone in the hold had to know, and Leesil had to learn, before even one prisoner stepped off the ship.

“Leesil?” Magiere whispered.

He flinched, looking down to find her watching him. He shook himself to clear his head and slowly swung the hook on half an arm’s length of rope, then whipped it upward along the hull. With the rope sliding through his hands, he prepared to stop it when the hook dropped over the rail so that he could pull it short of striking the deck.

Én’nish surveyed the Cloud Queen’s deck as Tavithê and Eywodan walked opposite circuits three strides in from its rails. A few terrified crewmen stood in plain sight of the shoreline and remained obediently silent. With the ship secured and its ramp lowered, any returning crew might find the lack of sentries at the ramp’s base to be odd. But they would simply come up to see what was wrong instead of calling out from below. And they would be dealt with.

Everything was quiet and controlled as Én’nish glanced shoreward in anticipation. No one worth noting wandered the waterfront, but after two steps toward middeck, she stopped and looked shoreward again.

Something had not been right.

Moving closer than she probably should to the rail, she realized it was not the waterfront wanderers that had caught the corner of her eye. As if gliding upon the water between the pilings, shadows moved beneath the base of the next pier. She was not even certain what it was as she walked rearward until she had to stop at the aftcastle wall.

A bulky, low shadow glided along beneath that other pier and vanished behind the massive vessel docked across the way.

“Tavithê,” Én’nish whispered sharply, not looking away.

“What?” he asked, now standing beside her.

Én’nish kept her eyes on the other ship. “Find Dänvârfij.... Something strange is happening over there.”

His soft steps rushed off, and she walked back along the rail and peered all ways and over the Cloud Queen’s side, in case this was some human criminal element working to raid ships in the harbor. She found nothing until she raised her eyes again and froze.

A skiff slipped out around the huge ship’s rear end.

She heard no oars dipping the water. The shapes of two figures, as best she could see, were pushing the skiff along the waterline of the Bell Tower. Én’nish could not make them out, but who would round a ship in the dark in such a fashion?

She watched to see whether the little boat would keep on along the ship’s hull. The skiff stopped at a point directly below where the towering aftcastle’s wall met the deck. One figure remained low, perhaps seated, but the other rose.

Én’nish heard something like a soft whirl of air in the night. Then the standing figure began climbing up the ship’s outer hull. His white-blond hair gleamed as his head rose above the rail’s edge.

Leesil grabbed the rail and pulled himself up to peek over the edge for any crew nearby. There would be one in the crow’s nest above, but most likely all eyes were turned to the ship’s dockside or toward the waterfront. With no one close in sight on the deck, he slipped over the rail and tugged the rope sharply twice.

The rope pulled tight.

He looked over the side and watched until Magiere rose from the darkness below and climbed upward. He glanced out over the port for anyone watching, and as he was about to look down again, he noticed something that startled him—as if he’d walked into a dark room and caught the reflection of something there in a mirror.

Across the way, another skiff floated at the waterline of a large vessel. It took him a blink to remember that the vessel was the Cloud Queen. He couldn’t see the ship clearly, for there were fewer lanterns hanging over its deck than there were on the other ships about the port. It was too dark to spot anyone in its upper crow’s nest.

Magiere’s hand grabbed the rail next to Leesil’s. He reached down to help pull her up and over, but he left the rope dangling by its hook. It could serve in a hasty retreat if necessary and was less noticeable than if coiled on the deck.

A door waited three strides away along the aftcastle’s front wall. Looking toward the nearest mast, he spotted the first of three broad hatches along the deck’s center. Those probably dropped directly into the hold, or an upper one if the ship’s belly was multileveled.

If only he and Magiere could reach the first hatch unseen.

“Now?” Magiere whispered.

He was pondering their next move when a stocky man with a cudgel tucked in his wide belt came around the mast. The man stopped at the sight of them. Perhaps this ship had never been boarded before, for he just stared.

The last thing Leesil wanted was a fight attracting other sentries.

The man’s shock passed—and Leesil charged.

As the crewman grabbed the head of the cudgel to pull it, Leesil ducked into a slide across the deck. His right foot extended first, with his booted toe outward. As that foot passed the man’s right boot, the man faltered with his cudgel half-drawn. Perhaps he was caught between shouting, pulling the weapon, or even trying to hop aside.

Leesil twisted to the right on the deck. As he flopped over, his extended foot hooked the back of the man’s right boot. Leesil flattened his hands to the deck and pushed up as his left foot shot upward.

His left heel slammed in under the stocky man’s chin.

The maneuver was among a few that his mother had taught him in his youth, though he hadn’t learned a name for it until later. She, with her long legs, could use it to even greater effect as an anmaglâhk. Sgäile had once called it “the cat in the grass.”

The stocky guard never even grunted. The worst of the noise was the guard’s body toppling on the deck. That couldn’t be helped, and Leesil rolled into a crouch and listened carefully as he looked about.

All he heard was Magiere scurrying in low behind him. He saw no one else, even up in the rigging. Magiere helped him shove the unconscious guard in against the first cargo hatch’s frame sidewall.

The hatch wasn’t that large. In place of netting or a grate, it was covered with a lashed-down canvas. Leesil undid one corner to peek in, and Magiere tapped him on the shoulder.

She pointed around the hatch’s side, and there was a rolled-up rope ladder.

Dänvârfij stood beside Én’nish at the rail and stared toward the great ship at the end of the next pier.

“What do you mean, someone with white-blond hair climbed that hull?”

“Yes,” Én’nish answered sharply, “and when they were under the lanterns, I knew the second one by the sword on its ... her back. Léshil and his woman are aboard that ship, unguarded by the traitor!”

“There,” Rhysís said, pointing.

A loose skiff floated at the waterline of the Bell Tower, and Dänvârfij was at a loss. Though she believed what Én’nish claimed, she did not understand it.

Léshil and Magiere had boarded another vessel in secret. Had they arranged other passage in trying to flee the port unseen? Were they after something on that other ship? The latter seemed unlikely, and either way, why had Brot’ân’duivé let them go alone? Or had he?

It left only one tentative conclusion.

“They know we are here,” Dänvârfij whispered.

Worse, there was only one way they could have found out: Brot’ân’duivé must have spotted her when she had tried to follow him. But why was the traitor not with Léshil and Magiere? Had they tried to leave the greimasg’äh behind? If so, why abandon the majay-hì as well?

“If they are not fleeing by arrangement,” Eywodan posed, “then they are at risk of discovery. If they are killed before we can extract the information they have, then we fail in our purpose.”

Dänvârfij had contemplated this as well. Even if Léshil and Magiere were only captured, they could be locked away out of easy reach. That they had pulled their skiff around in plain sight of the Cloud Queen suggested one useful thing.

They did not yet know their own vessel had been taken.

“Rhysís, get over into that ship’s crow’s nest,” she commanded. “Cover us from above as we board it. Eywodan, remain here and lock up all of the crew. We need somewhere close to bring captives and quickly take them out of sight.” Glancing at Tavithê, she added, “Bring your bow, remain out of any conflict, and wound either of our quarry for easier capture.”

The team broke apart as Rhysís rushed to climb the Cloud Queen’s main mast and Eywodan began herding the few crewmen below deck.

Dänvârfij led the way as Én’nish and Tavithê followed her over the side, into the water, and then into their own waiting skiff. Once aboard the skiff, they pushed off with their hands and drifted to the starboard side of the Bell Tower.

Boarding was easier for the rope that had been left dangling, but Dänvârfij did not climb over the rail when she reached the top. She hung there against the hull and out of sight from its deck, and looked back to the Cloud Queen.

It was too dark to see Rhysís go up into its rigging, but she heard the whir of a rope followed shortly by a quick clatter overhead. Rhysís had already gained the heights and had cast a line between the two ships. Before the lookout in the crow’s nest of the Bell Tower even saw him, the man would be silenced with an arrow.

Dänvârfij rolled over the rail into a crouch and waited for Én’nish and Tavithê to follow.

Magiere would do anything Leesil asked of her, but as she climbed down the rope ladder into the ship’s hold, she wondered about the wisdom of what he did tonight.

He knew what it was to be a slave in the Warlands—to be used as a weapon. Once he’d escaped that life, he’d drunk himself to sleep for so many years, even after they’d first met. Dreams of his victims could be smothered only by strong wine or worse.

Magiere knew something of servitude from her own youth as a peasant caught between the feuding would-be grand princes of Droevinka, her homeland. She understood the guilt that now drove her husband, determined to carry this through. Foolhardy or not, she loved him for this as well, but they had their own task to complete.

The weight of that grew each time they thought they had finished after too many years far from home. And now here they were, risking their lives to free indentured servants off a ship. Much as she would have done the same at some other time and place ...

Magiere kept silent as her right foot stepped down and found the hold’s floor.

There were no lamps, and barely any light from the deck filtered through the corner of the peeled-back hatch cover above. She saw the barest movements, like black shadows deeper than the dark, in the hold. She pulled her falchion over her shoulder, and then she clapped her other hand over her nose and mouth.

The place reeked like a fetid pig barn, with the stench of urine, filthy and sweating bodies, and rotten swill or food. All of her senses began to sharpen, and she swallowed hard.

A whimper, like crying, rose from somewhere in the hold and then choked off in a fearful draw of breath.

“Who’s there?” a frightened voice whispered.

The voice sounded young to Magiere, belonging to someone no more than a child.

“We hadn’t done nothin’,” the tiny voice whispered. “We been quiet ... so quiet ... please.”

Magiere felt tears start rolling down her face as her irises expanded. The scant light slipping through the opened canvas above showed them to her eyes.

Dozens and dozens of bone-thin people, young and old, in threadbare clothing, huddled against the walls and between the barrels and crates. Tight and thick ropes were knotted about their arms and ankles. Four, five, or more were bound together to iron rings bolted into the hull walls or floor. There was no way of knowing how long some of them had been held down here.

Magiere’s gaze fell upon one face with skin so taut that the man’s cheekbones and jaw looked sharp.

He wrapped his arms around a woman and tried to pull her farther back between a stack of lashed-down casks and the hull wall. When his gaze dropped down, Magiere remembered the falchion gripped in her hand. She pulled it behind herself and hid the heavy blade with her leg as she looked at all of them trapped here in the darkness ... which slowly grew brighter in her sight.

Her jaws began to ache under a fury-fed hunger. She wanted to kill someone for what had been done here.

A hand latched down hard on her shoulder and jerked her around.

“You keep yourself whole!” Leesil whispered. “If we have to kill, we do it cold and quick ... my way! You understand?”

Magiere looked into his amber eyes. He was right. The last thing he needed now was her losing control.

“Yes,” she got out in a stuttering breath.

Leesil released her and looked about the hold.

“We not guards,” he whispered loudly, struggling with his Numanese. “Any here know Paolo?”

Magiere was unable to help him for a moment, and he went on as best he could.

Someone shifted in the hold’s dark rear. “Yes,” a young boy’s voice answered. “Is he all right? He didn’t come back after they took him up.”

“He with us and safe,” Leesil answered. “He sent us to you. Any here from Drist?”

No one answered. The man with the woman between the casks and hull eyed Magiere with open fear, as if she and Leesil weren’t to be trusted. Leesil didn’t appear to notice and had already cast about for anything that might be used as a weapon.

“It is ... all right,” Magiere struggled to say, hoping no one saw her eyes in the dark. “We came ... to get you out.”

“Get us out?”

This voice was stronger. She half turned to see a tall man standing bound to the hull’s right wall. His wrists and ankles were tied separately, and his face and dull gray eyes were calm. Leesil turned from scavenging, holding a flat-bladed shovel pulled from a crate filled with tools.

“Yes,” he said. “We free you ... to leave.”

The gray-eyed man shook his head. “I will not.”

Magiere’s shock made her anger grow.

“The village chieftain agreed to forgive my debt if I worked for seven years,” the man went on. “If I break my word—that contract—my wife and children will be homeless.”

An unbound young woman stood up. “The captain paid my father’s tax upon our farm. If I run, my father will be guilty of theft.”

Leesil looked about, as if searching for anyone to deny what the man and woman had said, but no one spoke up. “This ... wrong!” he insisted harshly. “No one ... own you!”

“I signed myself over,” a young man added. “I’ll not be branded for escape if we get caught. I could end up working more years, if not worse.”

There were more who began murmuring—not all, but most. Magiere watched in frustration as Leesil’s eyes filled with pain. Of all that might go wrong, this wasn’t something either of them could have imagined.

“I’ll come.”

Magiere’s head snapped around as Leesil spun toward the voice.

A filthy man with no shirt and dark hair down to his shoulders rose from the floor. His eyes were so dark that their irises could have been black. His shoulders were wide, and he was well muscled all over, unlike the others, who were mostly withered.

“They took me out of a prison in Sorano,” he said, “charged and locked up for something I didn’t do. I owe no one anything.” He pointed at a small boy huddled behind him. “But he comes, too. He was brought in with his mother, and she died a half moon ago. I won’t leave him.”

Magiere saw panic drain from Leesil’s face at those words. This was what he’d come for. She stepped in before he even moved, and hacked straight through the thick rope binding the man’s ankles to the floor.

“Any other?” Leesil called a bit too loudly.

Several more stood up or reached out.

Leesil drew a winged punching blade and hurried among them as Magiere rushed the other way through the dark hold. In the end a dozen or more gathered around Leesil at the ladder. The shirtless man used the shovel Leesil had dropped to pry open several crates before stopping at the third one.

“Here,” he whispered.

Leesil went to the crate and began lifting out more tools to hand to the others as weapons.

Magiere stopped short of joining him and looked to the shriveled man hiding the woman behind the casks. The man lowered his eyes and curled away from her. She wanted to drag them out of this place whether they wanted to come or not.

“Dirken, you’re going to bring trouble down on us.”

Magiere turned toward the tall man lashed to the hull wall; his eyes were looking upward toward the hatch’s opening. The shirtless one, now holding a pickax, took a step toward him.

“Shut your mouth! You call out to the guards, and those’ll be your last words.”

Leesil grabbed the shirtless man and pulled him back.

“You lead ... take fighters,” Leesil ordered him, and then gestured to the women and children in their small group. “They stay middle. Magiere and I ... rear, fight guards who follow.”

Dirken nodded, gripping his pickax.

“But you must run,” Magiere got out. “We cannot ... protect you all, so run to the city guards.”

A half-starved woman blinked at her. “City guards? In Drist? There ain’t no such thing here, and anyway, holding us here ain’t no crime. The captain’s got papers on all of us.”

Dirken nodded, turning his dark eyes on Magiere. “I’ve been here before. There’s no law in Drist. This ship was taking us all up to the Northlander coast to work in some shipyard. We’re indentured workers, not slaves, so it’s legal. Even if there was a constabulary, they’d turn us back over to the captain.”

Leesil went quiet at this, and Magiere knew his desperation was growing again. Something else Dirken said bothered her enough to clear her mind a little more.

The Northlanders that she’d met used only longboats. Why bring so many to build longboats? It didn’t make sense. Unless these slaves were to build something else, something that required a good deal more labor, in a true shipyard?

Leesil appeared to waver, looked to her, and switched to Belaskian. “I’m not sure about this now. I won’t break them out just to get them killed or imprisoned again. Where can we send them?”

Magiere didn’t know, but she wasn’t leaving anyone who wanted out. Quickly she counted those willing to try to escape.

“We only have fourteen,” she answered, “and Wynn said our hotel is safe.”

“For anyone who can pay,” Leesil answered bitterly, and then he grew too quiet again.

Magiere knew he was scheming and, desperate as he was, that could be trouble.

“What about the Cloud Queen?” he said. “Bassett may be hard, but he’s no slaver. Maybe he’d offer them a short refuge, hide them in his hold until the next port.”

This was possible, but Magiere still felt trapped in not having a better answer. The scant light above, shining down upon Leesil, suddenly grew slightly brighter.

Magiere barely looked up when ...

“Down!” Leesil shouted.

She caught a glimpse of a glint before he shoved several prisoners aside. A thrum in the air caught in her ears, and then a shriek of pain pulled her eyes. An arrow stuck out from the leg of a half-starved woman, who crumpled right beside her.

“Hide!” Magiere called, backing away from the ladder. Any who weren’t chained or tied scattered as she stepped in front of the wounded woman.

Leesil was nowhere to be seen.

Falchion in hand, Magiere crouched, reached back for the woman, and then heard someone else behind her drag the woman off. Her hand slipped up to the small of her back, and she pulled out the white metal dagger.

Unless she stayed near the ladder, there wouldn’t be enough room to use her sword, but she could be easily picked off from above. She sidestepped, inching around the open crate of tools, and crouched lower.

At another thrum, she shifted left.

An arrow suddenly quivered in the edge of the crate’s opened top. She looked up, her sight widening.

The hatch’s cover had been fully pulled back, and the silhouette of a form knelt up there. It took less than a blink for Magiere to make out its cowl and a matching wrap over the face of the archer.

That anmaglâhk drew back another nocked arrow.

Magiere couldn’t scale the ladder quickly enough. She and Leesil were trapped and pinned down—and where was he? She couldn’t turn her eyes away to look for him. All she could do was wait for the bowstring’s thrum and charge the ladder whether she was hit or not.

The light above on deck suddenly dimmed ... as if something passed between the archer and a lantern.

The anmaglâhk hesitated. Perhaps his head turned, though she couldn’t be certain, as the shadows within the man’s cowl deepened in that instant.

A darker shadow enveloped the anmaglâhk’s head.

She made out an arm that wrapped around his neck.

The anmaglâhk’s neck and head slammed against the hatch’s edge, and a muffled crack echoed in the hold, but the shadow that had appeared above him continued to drop.

Both forms passed through the open hatch and fell through the dark air. Magiere watched in silence as one form landed lightly in a crouch like a man of immense height. Magiere saw amber eyes inside his hood ... and that one was looking out at her through bars of scars on his face.

Then a body slammed upon the hold’s floor. The archer lay still, with his head twisted at an unnatural angle.

“One,” was all that Brot’an whispered as he rose before Magiere.

Prisoners began screaming and scattering amid the sound of strained chains and ropes.

“On deck, now!” Brot’an ordered. “Chap is outnumbered.”

Magiere heard snarling above, and Leesil had reappeared, already scrambling up the ladder. She rushed after him with no time to ponder Brot’an’s sudden appearance.

Dänvârfij saw victory within reach for but a moment.

Her team had seized the Bell Tower and eliminated any crew on the deck. They prepared to slip into hiding to search for the quarry, and Tavithê had pulled back a partially opened canvas atop a cargo hatch.

He had looked to her and nodded, and she had known they had their quarry—and so quickly. She had nodded back, and he aimed and fired, intending to wound for easier capture.

Shouts rose out of the hold as he drew another arrow.

It should have ended there, with either Léshil or Magiere incapacitated and the other unable to save either of them.

An enraged snarl rose somewhere behind Dänvârfij. Before she could turn, Én’nish cried out. Savage snaps, scraping claws, and shattering wood rolled across the deck just before ...

A shadow fell through the light of a lantern dangling beyond Tavithê.

Dänvârfij never finished her turn.

Tavithê was slammed headfirst against the hatch’s edge. She lunged for him and then heard his neck snap. He fell from sight beneath the form of an immense shadow, and both vanished into the hold.

Dänvârfij’s heart seemed to stop. She wanted to scream Tavithê’s name, but she did not dare do something so pointless.

The traitor was among them again.

True anger, so rarely felt, surged inside her. She whirled to run toward Én’nish’s shouts but gained only three strides before she heard a door slam open.

Two humans with cudgels and sabers rushed out of the aftcastle’s left doorway. One instantly grunted and fell, and momentum slid him across the deck with an arrow protruding from his back.

Dänvârfij did not glance up toward Rhysís in the crow’s nest. She set herself for the one human coming at her. More shouts carried across the deck.

“We’ve been boarded!”

A white-blond head of hair popped out of the hold’s hatch.

Léshil rolled out into the open with his monster of a mate right behind him.

Chap rammed Én’nish again and sent her bouncing sideways off a water barrel. He was on her before she could right herself.

Throwing his bulk atop her, he clawed her arms and tried to pin at least one as he snapped for her throat. Instead he had to clamp his jaws on her wrist when she tried to slash a blade at his face.

Chap ground his teeth through forest gray wool until Én’nish let out a savage scream, and then a sharp pain burned across his right shoulder, and his hold faltered. His snarl turned into a yelp when he twisted away and stumbled off as she tore her wrist from his jaws. A stiletto came at him again in her other hand.

Chap had to duck, and Én’nish rolled away to her feet and ran off. He lunged after her but faltered as the open deck filled his view.

Dänvârfij kicked a crewman, who staggered off to her right and nearly fell. The man then stiffened, arching, and toppled forward with an arrow through the back of his neck. Chap could not tell from where that arrow had come, and Dänvârfij bolted straight at Magiere.

“Do not fire at the quarry!” she shouted out in Elvish.

Before Chap could blink, Dänvârfij and Magiere went at each other ... and Én’nish closed on Leesil in a maddened rush.

Where was Brot’an? This was all his fault. If they survived this, Chap would make certain Brot’an never had such a chance again.

As if summoned, the old assassin appeared to leap from the uncovered hatch. Three crewmen came running out of the aftcastle’s far door, though they faltered at what they saw. They would have no idea who was with whom or that more than one faction had boarded their vessel.

“We’re under attack!” one of them shouted.

They would simply kill anyone viewed as an intruder.

Én’nish and Leesil slammed together, falling to the deck in a flurry of blades.

If either Magiere or Leesil was taken, one hostage was all these anmaglâhk would need to control the other.

Chap stalled too long in choosing either Magiere or Leesil to aid first. Heavy footfalls came at him from behind. He lunged aside, and the head of an iron mace cracked the deck boards.

Én’nish saw no one but Léshil ... the one who had killed her beloved, Grôyt’ashia.

She barely heard the guttural shrieks of rage from Léshil’s monster of a mate, or the click and screech of Dänvârfij’s blades off the heavy falchion. She had barely heard Dänvârfij call to Rhysís not to fire.

Én’nish’s orders were to take Léshil alive. Once, the thought of his being tortured had held her to obedience. The hope of him watching his mate die would have even been enough.

She rushed at him and drove a stiletto straight for his throat.

Léshil twisted as her blade point nearly touched his flesh. The stiletto’s tip caught and tore a hunk from his tunic’s collar, and suddenly he was gone.

Én’nish leaped, tucking her legs up in midair.

Léshil attempted to lash his leg across her shins, but his foot passed below her raised ones. Then he was up again, spinning away across the deck and pulling one of his winged blades as her feet touched down.

Magiere tried to hold on to reason as she fended off a double slash of white stilettos with her falchion’s tilted blade. She couldn’t let the hunger overwhelm her; she had to stay sane. None of them could falter here and now if any of them were to escape alive. And it wasn’t her own life that she feared for.

She could kill this woman, this anmaglâhk, but if she lost all awareness of Leesil, or Chap, or what she had to do to back them up, someone might die.

As the woman’s double slash passed off her sword, Magiere dropped to one knee and swung with her white metal dagger.

The hair-thin black line down the blade’s spine lit up with orange-red heat. Humid air sizzled in its passing. The blade missed her opponent’s right thigh ... and grazed the left.

Forest gray wool split, smoke rose from the gap, and Magiere heard a sharp suck of breath. She quickly pulled the falchion’s blade up and across. Two more screeches rose on the steel under the flash of white stiletto blades.

Magiere slashed again with the dagger. Her opponent twisted out of the way this time, and she straightened up, looking into the woman’s amber eyes. They were somehow familiar, though she couldn’t place them above the wrap across the woman’s face.

A trace of smoke from the woman’s wound blew away in the breeze, and her eyes betrayed no pain. She came again so fast that Magiere barely blocked.

Fear, not anger, let hunger begin to escape.

Magiere’s jaws ached under the change in her teeth. Everything in the world but her own body suddenly slowed. She dodged and chopped down with the falchion at the anmaglâhk’s shoulder.

The woman leaned under the sword’s path and pulled her left wrist out of the way last.

A glint of white passed before Magiere’s face.

She barely saw her opponent’s right hand finish its swing as a burning sting rose along a line from her left temple to the center of her forehead.

Blood ran down into Magiere’s left eye and half blinded her.

Leesil knew exactly whom he fought. Above the wrap that hid the rest of her face, her slanted eyes were sick with fury. He knew the depth of her pained hatred for him and knew the reason for it, but he felt no pity for her anymore.

Én’nish and her kind had come at him and Magiere too many times. It would end right here.

He held on to control and grew coldly calm, as in his youth. He could taste those nights that had haunted him for so many years after. Carrying a thin blade between his teeth or a garrote wire coiled between his gloved fingers, he would crouch in the dark or scale a wall to slip into a bedchamber.

Én’nish tried to get inside his guard, to strike for his throat, his heart, his abdomen, and finally the inside of his thigh to pierce an artery. He kept her going with feints of his own but had no chance to pull his second blade.

When her speed waned, when the fury used her up ... he feinted straight at her this time, as if to aim a kick and expose his left side.

She took the bait and lunged.

Leesil spun in his false kick and turned his back to her. The winged blade he held in his right hand swept around, and he heard his blade clink against one of her stilettos.

She had tried for his heart again, as he knew she would: it was the only kill point of which she could be certain in a fast attack from behind.

He dropped to one knee as he came around with Én’nish’s blade still grating on his own, and he punched his free hand under as he swept her blade upward on his. His fist cracked against her small knee, and she began to buckle as he slashed down.

The point of his winged blade tore open her tunic, down her abdomen, and off her right hip.

She staggered back. Shock rather than pain washed the malice from her eyes.

Leesil felt nothing as he pushed off, rising to finish her.

An arrow hit the deck right in front of his foot, and he jumped back, looking up.

Never looking at the man, Brot’ân’duivé rammed two straightened fingers into the right eye of a crewman. As his target fell, dropping both cudgel and sword amid a scream, he unfocused his sight and took in the whole deck at once.

He had expected Dänvârfij to send two, perhaps three, to take either Léshil or Magiere. Only one need be seized to subdue the other. He had taken out one anmaglâhk, but two were left: Dänvârfij was obviously one and Én’nish the other.

Brot’ân’duivé had planned to take those two and then kill the others one by one when they came to investigate. Now the crew had been alerted, and two more men rushed out of one aftcastle door.

He saw Dänvârfij’s blade slash Magiere’s forehead.

Léshil split the front of Én’nish’s tunic and stepped after her as she retreated ... and an arrow sprouted from the deck at his feet.

Brot’ân’duivé ducked under one crewman’s cutlass as he kicked out the knee of another. He rammed an elbow into the back of the first one’s neck and peered upward into the rigging.

Four, not three, anmaglâhk had boarded this ship. There was an archer above.

Everything had come apart for both sides. In these circumstances, if he were the one coming after Léshil and Magiere, at this point he would try for a kill instead of a capture—at least of one of them.

Brot’ân’duivé crushed the throat of the second crewman wavering on an injured knee, rushed for the base of the main mast, and climbed fast up into the dark.

Dänvârfij saw blood run down Magiere’s forehead and into her eye. She had faced the monster before in the Everfen, but the sight of Magiere still unnerved her. She was fighting something unnatural.

Magiere’s one clear eye suddenly flooded black, as if the iris had swallowed all of the white. Her face twisted up and her mouth gaped, exposing teeth like a beast’s.

Dänvârfij fought for calm, for focus. She needed another crippling blow to put this thing down. Her left thigh burned from the dagger of white metal no human should possess. And she now wondered about the wisdom of having ordered Rhysís not to fire.

He might have ended this already, but from his distance above, he might kill Léshil or Magiere. That could not be risked; then again, both Léshil and the monster were within reach. Only one need be left alive, and this creature before her was insane.

Madness spawned mistakes.

Dänvârfij tensed as Magiere roared from pain. Dänvârfij feinted with her right blade toward Magiere’s blinded side. Trying to see with her clear eye, Magiere twisted her head and raised the dagger to defend.

Dänvârfij spun and kicked Magiere’s cut temple.

Magiere’s head barely snapped aside. Though she lost her grip on the dagger, that same hand came slashing back with hooked fingers. In the same instant, Dänvârfij glimpsed a shadow racing up the main mast. Then she felt the impact on her neck.

Fingers—nails as hard as claws—raked her skin but failed to dig into her throat.

A shout sounded from high above in Elvish.

“Abandon!” Rhysís cried out.

Brot’ân’duivé closed on the crow’s nest as he heard the shout. The one up here must have spotted him somehow. He gripped the lookout’s edge and pulled himself up, but all he saw was an anmaglâhk sliding away along a rope by a short bow’s haft gripped in both hands. Brot’ân’duivé grabbed for the rope’s anchored end to wrench it and throw his quarry off balance.

The rope went limp in his grip.

He watched half its length fall, severed somewhere out there in midair. A splash came between the ships and piers, and his own half of the rope fell to dangle.

Brot’ân’duivé looked where that rope had led a moment before. Across the water at the next pier was the Cloud Queen. Wrapping the corner of his cloak around the rope, he vaulted the crow’s nest wall as he slid quickly toward the deck of the Bell Tower along the rope’s length.

Leesil heard one word shouted in Elvish.

He barely took a quick glance to see where the arrow had come from, and then he fixed on Én’nish again. He couldn’t risk looking for Magiere or Chap. If he did, Én’nish might not come after him but instead go after whomever he couldn’t save.

The look of shock in her eyes at that shout from above almost stunned Leesil.

There was such a loss of hope amid her fury.

Before he could go at Én’nish again, a slender forest gray form rushed in from the corner of his sight. That other one snatched Én’nish by the back of her cowl and dragged her in a race for the ship’s starboard rail.

Leesil almost went after them ... until Magiere, with blood covering half her twisted face, charged after the pair. He grabbed the back of her shirt, and his feet slid as she tried to rush on. Trying to make her stop, he pulled hard and threw himself onto her.

Then he spotted Chap, penned in near the rail by a large crewman with a mace.

A small number of prisoners from below must have come up the rope ladder, because Dirken and two other raggedly dressed men were on deck and trying to clear a path for the others through the remaining crew.

“Help wolf now!” Leesil shouted at them.

That was all he could do as he dropped his winged blade and wrapped his other arm over Magiere’s shoulder to pull her back. He heard splashes in the water below.

The pair of anmaglâhk had jumped overboard.

Chap dodged a falling mace and looked for an opening to lunge in and rip out his attacker’s knee.

A dull clang rose as a shovel blade rebounded off the back of the crewman’s head.

The man’s eyes and mouth went slack, and Chap quickly leaped aside before the crewman fell on top of him. Once clear, he looked up into the face of a shirtless, thickly muscled man watching him warily.

Chap spotted Leesil struggling with Magiere and rushed away down the deck.

Leesil looked wildly around while still trying to control Magiere. The ship’s boarding ramp was up. Most of the crewmen who had appeared were down, and the freed slaves outnumbered the rest. Then two more armed sailors came out of the aftcastle’s far door.

“Valhachkasej’â!” Leesil cursed.

A large form dropped from the aftcastle.

Never slowing, Brot’an flattened both crewmen as he landed, and rushed toward the port side.

“Off—now!” he shouted, as at a full run he snatched up Leesil’s abandoned blade.

Leesil reversed his effort and wrenched Magiere on her own force to the rail. He looked over the top of it and down it at the pier. It was a long jump but straight down. Magiere twisted suddenly, breaking his hold. All he could do was stun her with a slap across her cheek. She whirled on him; half her face was coated in blood, but her one clear eye showed white around an enlarged black pupil.

“Over!” he shouted at her. “Onto the pier!”

Magiere froze as if confused.

From out of nowhere, Chap hit Magiere in a leap with his whole bulk. Both went over the rail. Leesil shook off his surprise and snatched up Magiere’s dagger.

“Dirken!” he shouted in Numanese. “Your people ... jump! To pier!”

Leesil vaulted the rail as Brot’ân’duivé cleared it beside him.

The world went black as Magiere hit the dock and air rushed out of her under Chap’s crushing weight. When her sight returned, Chap was gone, and someone grabbed her arm and shouted at her, “Get up!”

She heard others landing roughly on the dock as she was hauled up. Her scalp and forehead burned as if she’d been cut, and through one eye only, she saw Chap take off down the dock as ragged people rushed by, following his path.

A vaguely familiar shirtless man carried a boy in his arms.

“Run!” Leesil ordered, shoving her. “Down the pier and up the next.”

She didn’t question him and started to race after Chap. Too little of what had occurred was clear in her head. The last thing she remembered was the pass of a white stiletto ... and then pain ... blood ... hunger had followed. She couldn’t even look at Leesil as they ran.

She had failed him, left him, in losing herself again.

They ran onto the waterfront, hurried to the second pier, and broke into a full run again. But as they approached the end of the second pier, everyone began to slow. Through her one clear eye, Magiere took in the sight of the Cloud Queen.

The ramp was down, and it shouldn’t be at night. As Leesil halted beside her, she saw no sentries up on deck.

The ship looked deserted.