“Hope your quarters are comfortable, miss,” he said in Numanese. “I meant to check earlier, but things are always a bit busy the first day out of port.”
Leanâlhâm shied away. She caught most of his words, though he spoke too quickly and was too close. His toothy smile faded.
“Sorry, miss, I forgot to introduce myself. First Mate Hatchinstall, at your service.”
With another grin, he thrust out a hand at her.
Leanâlhâm cringed, backing along the rail.
Chap fixed on Brot’an and waited for any memory to slip into the old assassin’s mind. Even so, he couldn’t stop dwelling on Leanâlhâm and the meaning of those flickers of memories he’d seen in her the day before.
Various majay-hì had watched her from the forest, perhaps for a few years or more before she’d left her homeland. What did it mean? Her emotional state was a more immediate concern. As much as she functionally accepted life beyond her homeland, she was still an’Cróan. Aside from wanting to know other, more important secrets, Chap did not like being kept in the dark as to why Brot’an had dragged Leanâlhâm—and Osha—across the world.
“Maybe you ought to go below,” Magiere told Leesil. “You don’t look good.”
“I need the fresh air,” he groaned.
Then Chap spotted a sudden movement up the rail.
Leanâlhâm cringed in retreat from a man’s outthrust hand.
“It’s all right,” the young man said in a rush. “I didn’t mean to—”
A hiss of breath and the slide of steel on leather made Chap flinch and look up.
Magiere was on the move with her long falchion in her hand. He tried to tell her to stop but was too panicked to find the words among her memories. She swerved around Brot’an, and Leesil had barely straightened as she passed him.
“Get away from her!” Magiere snarled, the words rasping in her throat.
In a lunging step off the cargo hatch’s edge, she went straight at the young man’s back. Leanâlhâm’s eyes widened at the sight of her.
“Magiere!” Leesil shouted. “No!”
Seasick or not, he spun off the rail and went after her, as did Brot’an. Both got in Chap’s way, and none of them were quick enough. The young man started to look over his shoulder. Leanâlhâm’s small mouth opened, but she never got out a warning.
Magiere grabbed the collar of the young man’s coat. She wrenched him sideways with one hand, and he tumbled onto the cargo hatch.
Chap had no relief that she’d not cut the young man down, as she turned to go after her target.
Leanâlhâm cried out, threw herself at Magiere, and clung to her hauberk.
Half a breath later, Leesil slammed against Magiere’s back. He closed his arms around her and pinned down her arms and the falchion. Leesil’s growing fear and worry over Magiere’s lack of control over herself—over her dhampir nature—had taught him to act fast and hard. Magiere hissed, but he had a solid hold on her.
Chap closed in, rounding all three of them, and Magiere’s eyes had turned utterly black. In the bright daylight, tears ran from that darkness where her irises had expanded to block out the whites.
“No, no!” Leanâlhâm kept shouting, still clinging to Magiere’s hauberk.
Brot’an stepped in and pulled the girl off, though she struggled to get out of his grip. Sailors began running toward them from all sides, and the captain nearly jumped from the aftcastle on his way.
Chap circled tightly, trying to gauge the worst threat while hoping Leesil did not lose his hold.
“No, please!” Leanâlhâm pleaded in Belaskian, still fixed on Magiere. “I am all right!”
Captain Bassett pulled up his first mate, looked the young man over once for any harm, and then turned on the passengers. Chap glanced back to find Magiere still in Leesil’s hold, though she had averted her face.
“What’s happening here?” the captain demanded.
Bassett was a wiry man with gray stubble on his jaw, and he was dressed in worn boots, a battered brown hat, and a treated hide jacket. He had not drawn the cutlass hanging from his left hip.
“A mistake,” Brot’an returned, pushing Leanâlhâm behind himself. “The girl knows too little of human ways and mistook the young man’s gesture.”
It was as good an explanation as Chap could have offered, though he could not voice it.
“Hatchinstall!” the captain barked.
“Sir, I was only checking to—”
“Tell your men to keep their hands off her girl!”
At Magiere’s shout in Numanese, Chap wheeled around to get in her way. She was fixed on the captain now, but at least her eyes had almost reverted. Their whites showed but not the brown in her irises. She thrashed once against Leesil’s grip, but even at her worst she had never used her full force against him—as yet.
Chap snarled at her in warning.
“Shush,” Leesil said. “Leanâlhâm’s fine, so stop it.”
Keeping his grip on her, he looked to the angered captain. “Sorry,” he managed in Numanese. “Maybe ... wrong knowing.”
The young first mate, now behind his captain, rubbed his neck as he scowled in silence.
Chap dipped into his mind for any surfacing memories. He found flashes of Hatchinstall with the crew in ports where they spent nights in revelry. The young man’s own exploits were rather tame compared to tales of seafaring men. A simple series of pretty women flickered by, but all interlaced with a vivid first sight of Leanâlhâm coming aboard.
He had intended no harm and was only charmed by the girl’s unique, foreign beauty. But Leanâlhâm’s fearful response was real enough. She was an’Cróan through and through, and he was a human she didn’t know.
Unfortunately Magiere had overreacted to an unnecessary degree.
Brot’an cut in again. “As I said, a mistake, a misunderstanding.”
Leesil would have been the better peacemaker, if he were not so inept with spoken languages.
“We see that no threat was intended,” Brot’an added, “and apologize for any offense given. The girl is unfamiliar with any people but her own. That is what caused her alarm, not your crewman.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten her,” Hatchinstall said, as if it mattered greatly to him. “I was just ... I wanted to make sure her ... their quarters were all right.”
The captain listened in silence, but his attention remained on Magiere.
“My other friends are protective,” Brot’an added. “Please forgive this disturbance.”
Chap bristled at Brot’an calling any of them his friends. The captain relaxed slightly, and the brown had fully returned to Magiere’s irises. Leesil began to loosen his hold on her.
“Good enough,” Bassett said, “but my men have work to do. Maybe you ought to go below to quarters ... away from the chance of another misunderstanding.”
Magiere scowled openly as Leesil released her. She did not sheath the falchion and held out her free hand to Leanâlhâm.
“Come on,” she said.
To Chap’s surprise, Leanâlhâm ducked around Brot’an and grasped Magiere’s hand. Both headed off and below, and Chap huffed in frustration. Leanâlhâm’s presence was becoming both a blessing and a curse where Magiere’s growing instability was concerned.
Leesil raised both hands, palms up, and cringed with a shallow smile—a quick apologetic gesture. He then hurried off after Magiere and Leanâlhâm. Brot’an followed in turn with a nod to the captain.
“And get this beast off my deck and back on its leash!”
Chap had been watching Brot’an as the captain barked that command. When he turned his head, he found Bassett glaring down at him.
Brot’an, waiting near the doors to below, was the only one left in sight to whom the captain could be speaking. When Chap didn’t move, Brot’an snapped his fingers.