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Pelkaia cuffed him on the back of the head. He jolted, spun around to tell her off, then noticed the watchers spilling onto the dock. A scant handful had mastered their fear long enough to break through the storm, but there would be more. With a grunt he sprinted toward the Larkspur’s gangplank, dragging a startled Tibs along behind him. They scrambled up together, fell panting side by side in a heap of silky-smooth ropes piled up against a cabin wall.

Laying on his back, shivering with remembrance of the whole experience, he watched Pelkaia stride up the gangplank after him, her first mate and young, brave Laella trotting at her heels.

“Bring it in!” she barked to her sweating, straining crew, and spun around to heave up the gangplank with her own hands.

The ship jerked as she hauled the plank in, slewing away from the dock by the unseen force of someone – no doubt Pelkaia – shoving on the selium hidden away in the ship’s buoyancy sacks, clustering it to one side of the ship. A sloppy turn, but a decent enough fix to lurch them out of reach of watcher hands.

Groaning, Tibs hauled himself to his feet and offered a hand to Detan. He eyed it, wary.

“Get up, sirra. Work to be done.”

“Ship’s got a full crew,” he grumbled.

“Little busy right now.”

Detan took Tibs’s hand and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet, every joint screaming in protest. The sensitives were arrayed against the Larkspur’s aft rail, hauling in the clouds of selium they’d used to frighten the watchers. Great snakes of it flowed out from the watchtower lobby, trailing after the ship like the tail of a shooting star. They were straining, all of them, and even Pelkaia had gone to join them. Every hand was needed to hold onto and reclaim the precious selium that hid their ship from prying eyes.

And not a single hand was left to see to the ship’s tiller.

“Good ole-fashioned flying,” Detan grinned at Tibs as he forced himself over to the captain’s podium, working the cranks that angled the sails and set the gearboxes on the ship’s great propellers spinning.

“Not for long,” Tibs said, jerking his chin to starboard. Detan leaned from his heightened perch at the captain’s podium, peering down at the dock they’d abandoned. The watchers piled onto the craft he’d spotted earlier, encouraged by the sweet prize of the Larkspur, and were lifting off below.

“Oh,” Detan said, fingers going white on the wheel.

“Tie on!” Tibs barked, and reached for his anchor rope even as he latched one onto Detan’s belt.

Muscles burning, breath stuttering, Detan threw his back into the crank of the Larkspur’s largest aft propeller, throttling them out and into the clouds – and toward the dark smudge of a storm appearing upon the horizon.

The watchers followed, chasing the starfall trail of selium Pelkaia’s crew struggled to reel back in.

Chapter Twenty-Six

When the cell doors were opened for the morning meal, Ripka’s was left sealed. A few coded knocks against the wall she shared with Enard revealed that he had been left in place as well. After their neighbors were led down to breakfast, stale buns stuffed with stewed greens were shoved through the slots in both their doors.

Ripka ate the now familiar fare quickly, anxiety stirring her feet until she paced while she chewed, wearing a thin path in the dusty floor of her cell. Was the sealed door Kisser’s doing, or Radu’s? There was no way to be certain, and the question gnawed at her. She had expected to pretend to her guard that she was too ill to attend the morning meal and subsequent work shift, not to be left alone while the gears of the Remnant ground on without her.

As the bells rang out to call the convicts to their work, two slips of paper followed Ripka’s roll through the slot in her door. She scooped them up, hungry for information. One was sealed with wax, Nouli’s crest stamped into the dark-gold blob – his letter to the empress, no doubt. The one which she was not supposed to open, lest Nouli’s contacts think something was amiss.

The other was folded over and sealed with a blob of guar sap. She tore the page apart and peered at the sloppy hand, taking a moment to resolve the slanting letters into words.

— ⁂ —

You will be escorted to the drop by a guard of my choosing. Ask no questions, speak only when spoken to. Do not fuck this up.

— ⁂ —

Ah, Kisser must have written this. She crumpled the note and shoved it up her sleeve to dispose of later. Nouli’s report she slipped into her pocket, careful not to disturb the elegant seal holding the paper’s lips shut.

The information should have soothed her, but she continued her furtive pacing. What guard would Kisser choose, and how could she be certain that guard was loyal?

Why, if a guard must be used to explain Kisser’s movements when she made these meetings, didn’t they send the guard to make the exchange? If they were truly loyal, then there should be no need to risk other guards – or Radu himself – discovering a prisoner out of place.

It made no sense, and that made her skin crawl.

Kisser was not, so far as Ripka could tell, a sloppy woman. She must have her reasons for this method, but Ripka could not work out what they were.

When presented with an unanswerable question, Detan had said, stall.

Ripka grunted at the memory. Not, she supposed, the most useful advice – that man was unnaturally assured of his own invulnerability – but it was the only path she had to follow for the moment.

A thump sounded on her door, startling her out of her thoughts, and it swung inward. Hessan, her block’s centerpoint guard, stood at her threshold, eyeing her with barely concealed disdain.

“Out,” he ordered.

Swallowing a sharp retort, Ripka stepped out into the hall and was startled to see Enard already waiting, a pensive crease to his brow. Kisser had implied that only one of them would make the exchange. Her stomach churned with a sudden pang of worry. Was this really Kisser’s man – or another play of Radu’s? There were too many unanswered questions in the air for her comfort.

“You have it?” Hessan asked.

Ripka arched an eyebrow, then realized he must mean Nouli’s report. “Yes.”

“Good. Follow me.”

She fell into step alongside Enard, the silence between them thick with tension. There was little they could do now, save move with events and see what happened. To return to their cells would invite nothing but trouble, and to cry for help would do nothing but draw unwanted attention.

The weight of Kisser’s letter was like a stone in her sleeve. She hated being so far out of control – so vulnerable to the whims of those she did not like, let alone trust. As she walked, she ran through her options.

She could disable Hessan, if it came to that. But what then? She could not shut herself back within her cell and pretend innocence. No doubt she’d be tossed to the sharks – and then what of her contact with Nouli? To betray Kisser, even in self-defense, would erase all hope of winning the man and his talents over to her side.

Ripka exhaled slowly, breathing out her worry. She’d promised Detan and Tibal she could recover Nouli. And though she knew they would not blame her, she knew as well that the man might be Hond Steading’s greatest hope.

They passed through a door and out of the prison walls, onto the hard, rocky soil of the island. A bitter cold nipped her face, but she found she no longer trembled at the sea’s chill touch. She’d always been an adaptable woman. If she hadn’t been, she’d be bones beneath the sands of the Brown Wash by now.