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.