Dänvârfij glanced up at the ship’s rail. She saw no crewmen, though she heard running feet on the dock beyond the Bell Tower.
“Get under the pier,” Rhysís whispered, and he went off, swimming with one arm and dragging Én’nish’s limp form by her collar.
Dänvârfij followed. There was nothing else she could do. The side of her neck burned, and more so the wound on her thigh, even with the water’s chill. The latter injury might be deeper than she had first thought. Even pulling Én’nish, Rhysís outdistanced her. He stopped, treading water, to look back.
“Can you make it?” he asked.
“Go,” she urged.
He kicked onward, swimming around the ship’s prow and in between the dock pilings. Exhausted and wounded, Dänvârfij followed him. It seemed far too long before they reached the shoreline and the walkway below the waterfront.
Rhysís pulled Én’nish out of the water as Dänvârfij barely got herself onto the floating walkway. Breathing heavily, they both knelt beside the young one.
Én’nish opened her eyes slightly and looked up at them. Rhysís pulled back one side of her bloodstained, split tunic. Dänvârfij had no idea how bad the wound might be, but regardless, the night’s failure turned her thoughts down darker paths.
Tavithê was gone, taken by the traitor and left lying in a ship’s hold. Two more of them had been wounded, and though she had done the same to Magiere, their quarry had escaped again ... because of the traitor.
Dänvârfij grabbed Rhysís’s wrist. “Brot’ân’duivé will go for the Cloud Queen. Eywodan is alone there. Go now, and I will watch over Én’nish.”
“No,” Rhysís said and continued attending Én’nish’s wound.
His abrupt disobedience struck Dänvârfij mute at first. “Rhysís—”
“No!” he nearly snarled, looking her in the eyes. “Én’nish is down, and you can barely walk. Do you think I will leave either of you? And what if the traitor does not go for the ship but comes after us? I would, in his place.”
Dänvârfij stared at him as he turned his attention back to Én’nish. She could not force him under the circumstances, and in truth, he could be right.
“If any of us can face the greimasg’äh alone,” Rhysís added, “it is Eywodan. They were old friends once, and they know each other’s ways.” He glanced at her thigh. “Get something to tie around that leg.”
Dänvârfij was at a loss as to what to argue anymore. She tore a strip from her soaked cloak and began wrapping it around her wound.
Magiere was numb as she leaned against Leesil and looked up at the Cloud Queen, deserted from what she could see. She tried with the back of her hand to wipe away the blood in her left eye. She barely remembered what had happened on the other ship.
Chap stood at the boarding ramp’s base. A dark stain matted the fur on his right shoulder. It looked worse than what she suffered; a scalp wound always bled too freely at first.
Brot’an, as well as Dirken and some of the others wishing to escape, had collected around her and Leesil. Most appeared uninjured other than minor cuts and bruises. They were lucky in getting off the ship before too many of the crew had been roused. And she wondered whether the crew would be coming soon, searching for their lost “cargo.”
She touched her forehead and tested with her fingertips to see whether the wound had stopped bleeding. Leesil let go of her and reached under his velvet tunic to tear off a piece of the shirt beneath it.
“Press that on the wound,” he said, and she did so as he looked to the ship. “Where is everyone?”
Brot’an stepped past both of them. “The ship appears deserted because it was taken by those who came after us. I saw a line in the rigging between the two vessels. Some, at least one of them, may still be aboard the Cloud Queen ... as I counted only four aboard the other ship.”
A more frightening thought struck Magiere. “Where’s Wayfarer?”
“Safe,” Brot’an answered. “I arranged for her and the boy to be hidden away under watch.”
Magiere wasn’t certain what that meant. But if Brot’an and Chap hadn’t come, she and Leesil could have been taken or killed. Still, it angered her that the old assassin had left Wayfarer with strangers. What had motivated him to come in the first place?
Magiere peered at Chap. How Brot’an had gotten the dog aboard the slave ship would wait until later.
“Chap, you lead,” Leesil said, and then switched to Numanese. “Brot’an, Dirken ... follow. All other come last.”
As the dog, with Brot’an and Dirken behind, stalked up the ramp, Leesil tried to lift Magiere’s arm over his shoulders, but she held him off. She could fight if need be—if he let her.
Perhaps he was too distracted to argue, for he turned silently up the ramp, and Magiere followed him.
When they reached the deck, Chap, Dirken, and Brot’an had spread out. Chap returned first and huffed twice for no, which meant he’d found nothing. Brot’an and Dirken returned with the same result. Leesil motioned the rest of the freed slaves toward the bow, and they did as he directed.
“Stay—hide,” he told them, and turned to Magiere and switched to Belaskian. “Stay here and guard them, no matter what you hear.”
That jolted her, and when she opened her mouth, he shook his head.
“I don’t want to bring them below until we know what’s happened here,” he whispered.
That wasn’t the only reason, although maybe he was right.
“Keep Chap with you,” Magiere told him. “He and Brot’an might sense anything wrong more quickly than anyone else.”
Leesil nodded, handed over her white metal dagger, and turned away. Chap was already waiting at one aftcastle door. Magiere stood pressing the piece of shredded shirt cloth against her scalp as Leesil motioned Brot’an toward the other door. Dirken followed that way as well.
With reluctance, Magiere backed toward the huddle of freed slaves. Leesil and the others were gone, leaving her dizzy, bloodied, and guilt ridden on deck.
By Brot’ân’duivé’s count, only one anmaglâhk remained here, if Fréthfâre was secreted elsewhere in the port. He had counted four on the Bell Tower. He killed Tavithê and flushed another from the crow’s nest. The two who’d been wounded on deck were both women, so he knew who they were.
The one here had to be either Rhysís or Eywodan.
The human called Dirken followed at his heels as they headed down the stairs beneath the aftcastle. Brot’ân’duivé saw Léshil and Chap step into the passage’s far end, and each pair turned its separate way into the ship’s depths. When Brot’ân’duivé reached the hold and continued into its darkness, Dirken followed him.
At a click of tin, light glowed in the space, and Brot’ân’duivé glanced back to see that Dirken had grabbed a lantern off the deck along his way.
“You are Lhoin’na?” Dirken asked.
“No, I am ... something else.”
“Those others, on the Bell Tower, looked like you ... darker than a Lhoin’na.”
Dirken said no more as Brot’ân’duivé walked into the ship’s hold and stopped midway to close his eyes. He listened to every sound and tested every scent in the stale and musty air. Then he pointed.
“That way.”
They exited through the hold’s far door and made their way down a short passage Brot’ân’duivé had not visited before. This was the lowest deck—down below the passenger’s quarters. At the passage’s end, a thick door was barred from the outside. Iron braces had long ago been installed on both sides; the door had been designed to lock something or someone in if necessary.