On a ledge above the corner fireplace, unlit in this heat, sat a box of tallow candles. Pen snatched it up. One of the burly guards, now trying to crawl across the floor, made a valiant but futile lunge at Pen’s ankles as he skipped past. A couple of key rings strung with iron keys hung from pegs beside the inner door. Pen grabbed them down, hanging the rings on his left arm like clanking bracelets. He boosted the door bar out of its brackets, scowled at the overabundant choice of keys, shrugged, and popped the lock without the mechanical aid.
Stepping down into the deeper darkness beyond, Pen found a central corridor with stone walls, a couple of locked doors on each side. Two chambers on the right, unoccupied. A longer chamber on the left housed the present prisoners. Pen picked a candle out of the box, lit it with a thought, unlocked the nearest door with another—fire and unlocking were among his and Des’s oldest magics, and he half-smiled in memory—and nudged it open with his knee. He rocked back at the stench that rolled out.
This is an old Cedonian prison. Doesn’t it have drains?
Aye, Des reported after a moment. There’s one down at the end. Meant to be kept rinsed with buckets of seawater. Blocked, unfortunately. I doubt it’s been cleaned out since the pirates took over.
Or since the Cedonians left. Pen took a shallow breath and stepped through.
He raised his smoking candle high, less to see than to illuminate himself for his soon-to-be audience. A few gleams reflected back out of the shadows from widened eyes or bits of metal. Men lay scattered up the length of the chamber on the bare stone floor. They were secured by a miscellany of means, some manacled together at the wrists, some in leg irons, some with hands thrust through locked boards. A brief recoil rippled through them, then a slight, threatening surge forward as they realized the intruder was alone.
To prevent unfortunate misunderstandings, Pen quickly shouted in trade Adriac, “I’ve come to get you out of here! Your ship is still tied at the pier, and there’s only a night watch. You’ll be able to retake it together!”
Men stirred, neighbors waking others. Pen bent quickly to the nearest manacled pair and slipped their chains loose. He handed them the keys and the candles. “Start freeing the rest.” He stood and shouted again, “Who are the ship’s officers?”
A thickset man with a nasty green bruise on his forehead climbed to his feet and staggered forward, holding out his hands trapped in a plank. Before the light redoubled as the first pair shared flame from one candle to another, Pen passed his hand discreetly over the lock and let the man drop the device from his wrists.
“I’m the first mate of the Autumn’s Heart,” he said in a strained voice. “Captain’s killed. Who in the Bastard’s hell are you?”
“Out of it, I assure you,” said, well, maybe Des. Pen cleared his throat and continued, “Was yours the ship taken on its way to Lodi last week, carrying the two young Jokonan girls?”
“Aye…” The man hesitated, squinting with increasing bewilderment at Pen. “Do you know what happened to them?”
“They were… given into my care.” Pen didn’t venture to say by whom. Or Whom. “I’ll explain it all later. Right now, there are four guards in the front room who need to be tied up before they, uh, start moving again. You’ll find a supply of things you can use for weapons out there as well—at least, there was a pile of gleanings in the corner that looked promising.”
A number of men interned here were injured, mostly roughed up like the mate, but some cut or with broken bones. Don’t get distracted by them now, growled Des. You can fool with them later, once we’re at sea.
Right. But Pen added to the chamber, “Let the hale help the halt!”
Movement rumbled through the candle-shot shadows as the men began sorting themselves out. If they were mostly one ship’s crew, they must already be used to working together under dangerous conditions, or so Pen hoped. He turned to back to the first mate.
“Once I get you to your vessel, I want you to take me and my nieces—uh, that is, those Jokonan girls—to Vilnoc. There will be some reward for delivering us there. After that, you’ll be free to go where you will.”
“It’s not even my ship. I suppose it belongs to the captain’s widow, now. And I’ve lost all our lading!”
Upset people tended to get tangled in the most useless details, sometimes. “You might be able to make a new start on trade goods in Vilnoc, before returning the ship to the widow. She’ll want the news as soon as may be—better saddened than endlessly uncertain. Main thing is you have this one chance to get you and your shipmates off of Lantihera. Because I’ve met the Rathnattan here who is buying galley slaves, and trust me, you don’t want to fall into his hands.”
That seemed to focus the man. He nodded grimly.
While this was going on, another sailor had come up: rangy, skin a sun-darkened bronze, ragged and stubbled. An equally bronzed and scruffy younger man followed him. Everyone in here smelled like a privy, there was no helping that, but they seemed to have been soaking up the fumes for longer.
“What are they saying?” Rangy asked his partner in Roknari.
“Something about Vilnoc. Or Rathnatta, I’m not sure.”
“We don’t want to go to Vilnoc!”
Penric turned and shifted smoothly to low Roknari. “And who might you be, sir?”
The man grabbed his tunic sleeve. “You can speak!”
“And listen. How did you come here?”
“I’m just a poor fisherman of Astwyk.” Another island up the Carpagamon chain, Pen dimly recalled. “They took my boat! It was all I had!” Remembered distress pushed him close to weeping. “Why us? It was just a poor boat! And some fish!”
Pen wondered if he’d be less outraged over richer targets. “The prizes were your persons. Pirates will raid anywhere for those, poor boats or poor villages, as long as they are ill-defended and easy. Like plucking the fruit that hangs lowest on the tree.”
“But what’s this about Vilnoc?”
“I’ve come to free you, and we are going to flee to Vilnoc.” Assuming his conclusion, but if Pen assumed it firmly enough, he hoped it would stick. “Once we’re all protected there, everything else can be sorted out.”
“What am I to do in Vilnoc without my boat, without a single coin? We’d just be sold into debt-bondage!”
Debt-bondage was considerably easier to escape than slavery; indeed, most people who fell into it expected it to be temporary. Some were wrong, of course, either death overtaking them before they repurchased or outlived their contracts, or, if they found themselves in a comfortable situation, just settling down reconciled to their reduced status. But Pen could entirely understand the lack of allure.
“If it will reassure you, I can give you my personal guarantee that will not happen.” A certainty beyond Pen’s own purse; at that point he might have to start calling in favors.
“Who are you to promise that?”