"We ought to sneak out the back way and follow him home to Daddy," Chaz growled.
Spud, trying to spoon-feed Su-Cha in the dark, said, "We already know where to find Daddy."
"What? How?"
"All those reports the sergeant gave me? While you guys were loafing I was reading. There's wheat in amongst all that chaff, and it adds up to another waterfront warehouse. While we were killing time giving you guys a head start, the general called in some favors. As soon as Shai Khe's gang heads out, wherever, they'll hit the place and get Soup, Greystone, the girl, and whoever is guarding them. Then they'll lay for Shai Khe in case he gets lucky or gets away out here."
Chax grunted. It was an eloquent grunt, replete with sarcasm and cynicism. "And it all depends on Rider being somewhere handy, looping snares and nets into the web for when Shai Khe cuts loose, eh? Ingenious."
Preacher quoted something scriptural; predictably cryptic and confused; fierce, fiery, and deifically vengeful. He added, "It's falling together. We have that rat in the middle, between two terriers, and we'll choke him on his own arrogant overconfidence."
Perhaps the word choke occurred to him because of the strangling noises issuing from Su-Cha because Spud kept jabbing too-rapid spoonsful of food into the imp's mouth. Su-Cha finally got his message through. He was recovering. He was ready for the next stage.
They began their wait for the mad enemy.
XXX
When the alarms went off there was a tinge of grey in the night beyond the nose of the pirate airship. Men bolted to their weapons. There was panic in the air. The airshipmen's morale was low.
It was not about to improve.
A man appeared outside, hands raised, yelling at them to restrain themselves, that he was on their side, that he had a message, that they were to let him come inside.
They let him in. Not because he insisted but because some of the crew recognized him.
Immediately he began chattering in a clicky tongue Rider recognized but could not follow. His message was received with groans and outrage.
A sleepy crewman leaned out of the airship gondola and demanded, in a language Rider could follow, "What's all the racket?"
One of the others replied, "The Celestial Lord wishes us to put our guests back on the boat and take them back to the city. Right now."
Puzzled, Rider watched preparations being made. When the airshipmen brought their "guests" forth he began to get a glimmer. Whatever had happened in the City, some of his associates had survived to counterattack. Through guile.
Caracene had arrived under loose, indulgent restraint, like a wayward child being shepherded home. She was departing in bonds, hung about with every piece of silver the airshipmen could muster. She went silently, aware that protest was useless and time the sole cure for this indignity.
Rider permitted himself a rare grin. Somehow, Su-Cha had convinced Shai Khe that Caracene might in fact be a certain nimble-witted shape-shifting imp.
The airshipmen hustled their prisoners out of the cave. Before they disappeared, Rider was at work preparing his own unnoticed departure.
A spell of minor scale—the one he had employed to escape the treasury vaults—blinded the staybehinds to his presence. He then turned to Shai Khe's network of protective and detective spells.
He saw instantly that slipping through would be easy. All the hectic in and out of airshipmen, prisoners, and messenger had left the magical artifact in a state of vibrant dissonance. It was a moment's work to confuse his own passage with that of those ahead of him.
A narrow, steep pathway descended the face of Shroud's Head. From a ship on the Bridge it looked like the thin scar that appeared on the faces of all the old king's statues and busts.
Rider reached the head of the path only minutes behind the others. They were just two hundred yards ahead. But he was stumped.
The pathway slanted down to a wooden jetty that would be invisible from the shipping lanes.
Tied up to it was a small smuggler's ship with mast unstepped. From the Bridge it might look like a rock.
Rider's immediate concern was the fact that the pathway appeared to be the only way to reach the ship.
Or was it?
He set his mystic senses roaming.
There were handholds enough for a descent, but that way would be slow. And, shadow spell or no, he would be seen if exposed to enemy eyes that long. However ...
The alternative appeared mad even for a man as remarkable as Rider.
He cast his senses again.
And hesitated not an instant.
He retreated into the cave as far as he dared, took several quick, deep breaths, sprinted forward—right out into the nothing of a two-hundred-thirty-foot drop to the waters of the Bridge.
Shadow flickered around him. His plunge went unremarked—till he hit water a dozen feet from the jetty.
The airshipmen halted and gabbled at one another about the tremendous splash. Several of the more daring hurried ahead.
Rider's collision with the face of the sea left him stunned for a few seconds. Then he realized he was going deeper than he wanted, dragged down by the mass of gewgaws he carried. He swam upward with powerful kicks and armstrokes, slanting so as to surface beneath the jetty. He rose, gulped air, clung to a float just long enough to dispose of such devices as would have been ruined by the water. Then he went under again, stroking under the smuggling craft.
The ship was long and narrow and had a very low freeboard. Rider grasped the gunwale amidships, levered himself aboard. The spell of shadows guarded him from the eyes of the forerunner airshipmen, who were approaching the foot of the path. He slipped into shadows beneath a raised foredeck. Before concealing himself within a pile of old tackle and sailcloth he flung a small spell across the deck and gunwale. The dampness there evaporated.
The three leading airshipmen clumped aboard the smuggler, grumbling. They had decided the splash had been caused by a rock falling off the face of Shroud's Head.
Within minutes the entire complement had boarded. The ship got under way.
XXXI
With Chaz and General Procopio more or less running the show, the welcome planned for Shai Khe was about as subtle and gentle as a sledge hammer.
Chaz was not a man to use a rapier where a battleaxe would do.
But it seemed the battleaxe would not get taken in hand.
It was not that long a wait before shadows began flitting about outside. There was even a moment when one of those solidified into the devil shape of Shai Khe, calmly assessing the house.
But the easterner was not to be taken easily. Whether or not he believed Rider dead, he would not abandon caution.
Nothing else happened.
When dawn came the watchers retreated. There was never any doubt of their nearby presence, though. Each few hours Su-Cha assumed Caracene's form and showed himself at a window, casting longing looks toward liberty.
"I wish he'd do something!" Chaz growled.
"He is," Preacher rejoined. "He's working on your mind. In a little while he'll have you charging out where he can bang your head all day long."
Chaz scowled but refused the bait. "We're the guys laying in the weeds. What's he waiting for?"
"He smells a rat," the general said. "The man has a nose for danger. The gods alone know how many times he slipped my snares out east."
Su-Cha guessed, "He's waiting for the real Caracene, I'll bet. I'll bet he sent her out of the City, then had to have her brought back to make sure she isn't me."