Dänvârfij did not allow herself to think on what happened this night as she helped Rhysís lift Én’nish. He would have to carry the young one back to Fréthfâre.
They needed to regroup, heal, and plan yet again.
Dänvârfij had never seen enough value in Én’nish to outweigh her faults. But as Rhysís picked up the youngest among them, Dänvârfij took Én’nish’s hand.
“Rhysís will take you to Fréthfâre to be tended. I will go for Eywodan.”
Én’nish squeezed her hand.
Wounded as Dänvârfij was, she could accomplish that much. But when she turned to head up the waterfront, the flapping of a gull below on the walkway pulled her attention.
The bird stood perched on a large bulk and pecked at it.
Dänvârfij squinted in the night. The whole waterfront except for the bird’s squawks grew too silent in her ears. She drew a stiletto and let fly.
The gull’s piercing screech was cut short as the stiletto struck and its body skidded along the walkway.
Dänvârfij stood there breathing too quickly as Rhysís stepped near. When he saw what she did, he spun, looking all ways. Dänvârfij never took her eyes off Eywodan’s body.
“The traitor is here,” Rhysís said quietly.
“No, he is gone,” Dänvârfij whispered, numb, shaking her head.
Had Brot’ân’duivé left the body as a warning? Proof that he could slaughter any of them anytime he wanted? Or had he simply had his fill of killing his own for one night and made the choice to slip away?
She did not know the answer.
Chapter Twenty-six
Three days later, Magiere stood near the front mast of the Cloud Queen as the ship sailed south on its long run toward the port of Sorano. The deep cut above her temple was healing quickly, though not immediately as had other wounds she’d taken before.
Her world had settled into a brief calm.
“No, not like that,” Wayfarer said. “Use smaller stitches.”
“I am!” retorted the small boy who was sitting beside her and helping her mend a fishing net.
“He’s doing fine,” Paolo put in, sitting on her other side and peeling potatoes. “Stop bossing him around.”
“He needs to learn,” the girl insisted.
Magiere almost smiled. On that last terrible night in Drist, Brot’an had retrieved Wayfarer and Paolo—and all their gear—with astonishing speed. Not long after, Hatchinstall had returned with the crew who’d been onshore. Dirken and a few freed slaves had filled in the lighter duties requiring less skill. With a skeleton crew, the captain had set sail.
Paolo had taken over as the cook’s assistant, along with the boy, named Alberto, whom Dirken had brought. For some reason Alberto was quite taken with Wayfarer; he was likely charmed by her strangeness and beauty. When Leesil mentioned trying to get the two boys home, Dirken had shaken his head.
“Alberto has no home,” Dirken explained. “And Paolo can’t go back to his. If he does, his village chief will have proof that he broke his contract.”
Magiere had bitten down anger upon hearing this. Even freeing the boys might not stop what would come—only delay it. There seemed to be no answer that wouldn’t leave more victims.
However, when Captain Bassett expressed an interest in keeping Dirken as a deckhand, the man made it clear that if he stayed, so did the boys. Paolo didn’t object, and in truth, Magiere thought he was better off with Dirken than with parents who’d sell him to pay a debt.
So ... it seemed one worry had been settled.
Thinking on other worries, Magiere touched her forehead lightly.
Back on the night of the rescue and reclaiming of the Cloud Queen, when she had gone down to her cabin, she’d found Leesil and Chap waiting for her.
Leesil sat in silence on the bunk’s edge. At the sight of her, he began mothering her obsessively, trying to dress the wound in her scalp. It made her shrink in shame, and she pushed his hands away. If she’d only stopped at that. She’d made a bad mistake again in thinking ...
If she could just make that wound go away, it would be as if it had never happened, as if what she’d done—losing herself again—had never happened. She could let her hunger rise, let it fire her flesh, until the wound was gone without a trace.
But she didn’t even get the notion out before Leesil came at her and pinned her against the cabin wall.
“Don’t you even try,” he warned. “You let it scar.”
Chap was watching the whole time. His silence was enough for Magiere to know that he agreed.
How many scars did Leesil have for being there beside her? She couldn’t even count them from memory. There and then she hadn’t been able to look either Leesil or Chap in the eyes, and had hung her head and hid until Leesil’s arms closed around her.
Now Magiere looked toward the bow. There sat Chap a few paces behind Brot’an; he was watching the shadow-gripper’s back. Brot’an had been nearly silent ever since returning from the hotel back in Drist, and she was beginning to understand how much his determination to protect her mission was costing him.
If Chap had been suspicious of Brot’an before, it was worse now. Apparently Brot’an had known the anmaglâhk team had reached Drist to hunt her and Leesil again. He’d kept this to himself, using it and all of them to trap their enemies ... his enemies. But the old assassin had closed his own trap at the right moment.
He always did what he believed was right—whether or not it was. She could hardly fault him, considering how often she’d done the same. And now she was back on course, heading for the far-off Suman Empire.
At the bang of a door, Magiere looked back.
Leesil stepped out of the nearer aftcastle door. He was slightly pale and sick already, but being back at sea hadn’t put him down as it had before. Perhaps he’d kept his sea legs in their short stay in Drist. Spotting her, he crossed quickly and put his arms around her to pull her back against his chest.
That was what she needed now most of all.
He said nothing for a while, and when she tilted her head aside to look at him, he was watching Wayfarer and the two boys chatting away at their work. He looked around until he spotted Dirken repairing a sail. The man looked much cleaner, dressed in some borrowed clothing.
“Is there anything he can’t do?” Leesil asked.
“Not that I’ve seen yet,” she whispered.
Perhaps these moments were all about avoiding what they didn’t want to talk about anymore—the orbs.
“You did a good thing,” she added, nodding toward the boys, “in getting them off that slave ship.”
“Anyone would have done the same.”
No, they wouldn’t have, and he knew it, but she didn’t argue. He’d never known how to take a compliment—and she didn’t often give them. But she could tell he had something else on his mind.
“Bassett blames us,” he finally said, “for so many of his men being killed. I don’t think he’ll forgive or forget. He wasn’t in a position to throw us off in Drist, but he suggested we leave at the next port.”
She couldn’t blame the captain. A third of his crew had been murdered.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ll find another ship.”
Turning around, she pressed her face into his shoulder. They’d survived another day, and he was still here beside her. A shortsighted way to look at things, but she didn’t dare say or even think more than that as she held on to him.
Right now this moment was the only thing that mattered. Not the orbs, not Wynn’s warnings of a war already coming, and not that all Leesil wanted was to take her home.