“It is all right, majay-hì,” Wayfarer whispered as she knelt beside him. “The greimasg’äh wishes to protect Magiere and Léshil in all that he does.”
Chap did not snarl at her gullibility. He cared for and worried about her too much for some angry retort.
Brot’an was not gone long, and when he hurried back in, he left the door open. Before Chap could even snarl ...
“We will place Wayfarer and the boy in a safer room,” Brot’an said. “Then we go after Magiere and Léshil. Now.”
Chap glared at him. With no way to speak directly into Brot’an’s mind—having never dipped into the man’s memories for words to use—he was not about to use the girl again for some long attempt at getting answers.
“The team of anmaglâhk is here,” Brot’an said flatly. “I have seen them in port.”
Chap’s rage erupted, and he snarled, baring his teeth.
Wayfarer drew away in fear, and Paolo jumped up from the floor and flattened against the wall.
Chap ignored them, for everything was now clear. Brot’an was using Leesil and Magiere as bait in a trap for his enemies.
“There is no time for this!” Brot’an snapped. “Neither you nor I could dissuade Léshil. I watched you try—and fail. We have a chance to pass unnoticed, as our enemies will focus on them.”
These anmaglâhk were not Leesil and Magiere’s enemies as much as Brot’an’s. Chap lunged, snapping for Brot’an’s leg.
“Majay-hì, no!” Wayfarer blurted out.
Brot’an hopped to get out of reach and stood in the open door.
“They were coming sooner or later,” he said. “Better that they come on our terms. We have a chance to take them unaware and end this ... if we act now.”
Chap hesitated. Brot’an was using Magiere and Leesil because he had not been able to stop them. Now he wanted to go after his enemies while they were distracted ... in going after Leesil and Magiere.
Brot’an looked to Wayfarer. “Come.”
“But ...” Wayfarer stammered in confusion, and Paolo didn’t move.
In two strides Brot’an swept in, not even glancing at Chap. He grabbed Wayfarer’s hand and snatched up Paolo in his other arm. The boy looked so frightened that he didn’t struggle.
“There is a safer place for them downstairs,” Brot’an said and, turning his back, he slipped out the door.
Chap followed with no other choice.
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.