Leesil turned around. “I tried coming in that way. The door was barred.”
He thought he heard the old assassin sigh, just barely.
“Yes,” Brot’an whispered, “but at least one crew member has come or gone from the hold by using a key on the door. How and why else would one have come up into the passage at the noise made by the girl and the majay-hì? Or did you not remember this while picking the door’s lock from the outside ... and too noisily?” Brot’an turned, heading even deeper in the hold’s rear. “Enough talk. Come.”
Leesil wanted nothing more than to get this food to Magiere, Chap, and Wayfarer. With a glance up at the hold’s opening, he crept after the master assassin. It still made no sense that any food would be placed near a hold’s lower door.
“This captain doesn’t care about supplying the crew,” Leesil whispered.
Again he barely heard Brot’an sigh. “A ship is constructed like any structure for efficiency of use, not a single captain’s deviance. A glutton and miser still wants discreet access to his hoard, preferably in a way that does not display it before all whom he considers potential thieves.”
The crewman who’d appeared in the passage might have been secretly trying to move more food to the captain’s quarters—and maybe sneak out some for himself. Unfortunately Chap and Wayfarer had gotten in the way. That also meant someone else would have had to block the door from the inside—after it was locked—and then climb up the ladder to the deck.
There must be a few crewmen Amjad either trusted or had terrified enough to allow them inside his precious hold without worrying about theft.
“Here,” Brot’an whispered.
“What? Where?” Leesil asked.
Inside this far, it was too dark to see much. But as he closed behind Brot’an, he heard the scrape of wood on something hard, perhaps metal.
Leesil realized that Brot’an was removing whatever barred the door from the inside. At the soft click that followed, a little light showed the stairs beyond the open door.
“Go,” Brot’an said. “I will bar the door and return the way we came in.”
Leesil stepped out, glancing down the side passage along the outside of the hold’s wall. Down the way, light spilled from the entrance into the kitchen. Perhaps the cook was still up, but he rarely seemed to leave his stench-ridden cabin.
So far Leesil had been successful. There was nothing left to do but sneak up the stairs and hide the bulk of the food in Brot’an and Wayfarer’s cabin. And then he had to hope the theft was not discovered anytime soon, and, when it was, that no one connected it to the ship’s passengers.
He stalled briefly as he heard the wooden brace slide home beyond the hold’s door, and then he slipped up the stairs to the passage lined with cabin doors.
Brot’ân’duivé swiftly scaled the ladder. He understood the greater necessity for the actions that he and Léshil had undertaken, but he had no desire to be caught. When he reached the ladder’s top, he balanced on a rung and cracked the hatch open with his head to keep both hands ready to strike. Upon seeing no one on deck, he climbed out to crouch behind a mast.
Almost instantly two forms stepped out from around the mast’s far side. Two sets of eyes glinted by the light of dim lanterns hanging above, and they saw him. The first looked down at the bulging front of his shirt as the other drew a cutlass.
Brot’ân’duivé did not move.
“I thought I heard something,” the first said in Numanese.
The night watch could not have heard his own descent. Had they heard the hatch creak earlier when Léshil had come down into the hold?
The first man, now with his own cutlass drawn, pointed the blade’s tip at the bulging shirt.
“I know what you have,” he said, his eyes wide with longing. “Hand it over, and we won’t tell the captain.”
Brot’ân’duivé knew both sailors assumed he had stolen food.
He never pondered what to do, for there could be no witnesses. Locking eyes with the first sailor, in order to distract the man, Brot’ân’duivé’s left fingers curled upward. He pulled the tie string at the inside of his left wrist. A stiletto sheathed beneath his left sleeve began to slide down, and he closed his hand on its hilt.
The cutlass’s tip rushed in toward his abdomen. Brot’ân’duivé turned so slightly. As the cutlass slid sharply away along his side, he spun the stiletto in his off hand and thrust. The thin, silvery blade pieced the sailor’s heart and slid out again, dark and wet, before the man’s eyes could widen. He turned on the second sailor before the first began to drop.
Brot’ân’duivé did not need to see the second cutlass swinging for his head. As he ducked left, he rammed his shoulder into his first crumpling target and pinned the body against the mast to keep it from hitting the deck with too much noise. He dropped the stiletto from his left hand and caught it with his right.
The second man tried to reverse his sword, and his mouth opened to call out.
Brot’ân’duivé thrust upward, piercing flesh at the top of the sailor’s throat below his jaw and sinking the stiletto deeply. The worst of it was that the man instantly dropped his cutlass, and it clattered on the deck.
Brot’ân’duivé released his hold on the embedded stiletto and grabbed the second dead sailor. He quietly lowered both bodies to the deck and crouched there for an instant.
All was finished in less than a moderate breath, as it should be.
He pulled a handful of jerked beef and a clay crock of olives from his shirt and scattered the first around the bodies and dropped the second on the thighs of one sailor. When he drew his stiletto out of the second man’s jaw and skull, he took a moment to disguise each man’s suspicious wound with a thrust of the other’s cutlass.
On a ship like this, those wasting away in hunger would draw no suspicion for killing each other over stolen food. Brot’ân’duivé silently stepped on toward the aftcastle door to below. By the time he reached the passage to the cabins, he no longer thought of bodies left upon the deck. He thought only of surviving the remainder of the voyage and keeping all those under his guardianship alive as well.
Even when Wayfarer finally awakened, Magiere continued to sponge the girl’s head and give her sips of water. Magiere felt helpless for the most part—and she hated feeling helpless.
Something had to be done. Perhaps she could speak to Saeed in the morning about buying any possible food hidden among the sailors. That was a slim chance at best, as food was more precious than coin on this slop bucket of a ship. But she had to try anything.
—Leesil ... has been gone ... too long—
“What?”
Magiere glanced over as she realized Chap was right. How long could it take to locate Brot’an?
“Where is Léshil?” Wayfarer asked weakly from the bunk.
“He went to find Brot’an, but he’ll be right back.”
Just the same, Magiere began to worry. She’d vowed to keep a close watch on Leesil, and she had no idea where he was. Right then the door opened, and, as if he’d been called, Leesil slipped inside.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “Where’s Brot’an?”
He didn’t answer, and his amber eyes fixed on Wayfarer. “You’re awake,” he said in relief.
Before Magiere could press him for answers, he hurried over, dropped to his knees, and pulled a rolled cloth from inside his shirt. He unrolled it on the bunk’s edge next to the girl.
Magiere’s voice caught as she gasped, “Leesil?”