A gasp of surprise brought his attention around. Jato’s eyes were rimmed white. “You’re that sorcerer!”
No denying it now. “Well, yes, but no danger to you. We can still escape.” Pen gave the rowboat a shove. It didn’t budge. “The four of us, plus me, should still manage to sail. Hurry!”
Jato did hurry—choosing to pelt away along the sand, trailed by his remaining men.
“Bastard piss on you for cowards!” Pen yelled after them, uselessly.
He wheeled, urgently surveying the harbor for other, smaller boats, and smaller rowboats to get out to them. The three likely candidates he’d picked out the other night were gone fishing or whatever, their owners making good use of this bright sailing day, their ferries tethered out at the moorings awaiting their return. Nothing else lay within immediate rowing or even swimming distance, though a couple more full-sized probably-pirate ships had recently arrived to drop anchor and await their turn at the loaded piers.
A yelp from behind him and Lencia’s scream of “Seuka!” whipped him around again.
Pen had overlooked one man, the crewman who had made to surrender first. For whatever reason, he’d chosen to grab up Seuka and start running for the town. Seizing the potential reward? Planning to offer her to the Guild as an apology in hopes of gaining a pardon? Saving her from the evil sorcerer? Pen couldn’t guess, but the son of a bitch was fast, even with Seuka struggling and kicking in his grip.
Worse, Lencia had started running after them.
“Lencia, stop!” Pen cried at her, and was unsurprisingly ignored. “Sunder it!” He clenched his teeth and sprinted in pursuit, his straw hat blowing off.
The kidnapper, or rescuer, angled up through the shore clutter. Pen overtook Lencia, her legs churning and her face set in a determined grimace, and did not stop. Moving targets were harder to hit with the delicate but so-effective internal disruptions, and this fellow was no exception. Furious as Pen was, he wasn’t furious enough to risk death and Des.
He didn’t have to. About the time the crewman swung in past the warehouse near the prison-side customs shed, Seuka finally managed to get a hand on her belt knife, draw it, and poke at her captor. He barked more in surprise than pain, but flung her aside reflexively. She slammed into the whitewashed wall and slid down. The fellow started to reach for her again, but then looked over his shoulder at Pen wrathfully closing upon him, jolted in fear, abandoned his prize, and just ran.
Pen let him go. He stopped, gasping, by Seuka, who was sitting up shakily not-crying.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she sniffled, breathlessly. No broken bones, at least, as there might have been. Bruises would show later.
Lencia arrived in their wake, also winded and not-crying, or at least denying the smears evaporating on her flushed cheeks. “Seuka, you idiot! Why did you let him grab you?”
“I didn’t let him. He just did!”
Pen turned back to survey what was happening on the beach. Quite a lot, regrettably, as people hurried to and away from the men he’d left in moaning heaps near Jato’s rowboat. The hunt would be up in minutes, and this time, he suspected, they would not repeat the mistake of trying to take him on with insufficient numbers.
Better give them something else to worry about.
Des, what do you make of the contents of this warehouse?
Crammed. Bolts of cloth, piles of clothes, furniture, all sorts of miscellaneous thievings. Plaster floor but wooden roof. The impression of an edged smile. Very dry.
Do it.
Yes, Penric, love.
He braced one arm against the wall and leaned, enduring the ripple of heat that even the most downhill of magics generated in his body. And this was going to be very downhill indeed.
Enough. Let the white god’s fire do its own work. An offering to make up for that cold temple plinth.
Right. Saving room for dessert, my lord.
A grin snaked over his face. Des only used his old title when she was exceptionally pleased with him.
“On your feet, now,” he told Seuka, giving her a hand up. She rose easily, so thin and light. No wonder her would-be stealer had made good time. “Follow me. Let’s go around the back of this building.” Temporarily out of sight from the shore, though more than one person must have seen where they’d run to.
They skated along the side facing the town, passing a locked double door. Pen kicked it open in passing to provide a better draft for his soon-to-be furnace. He paused at the corner. From the next building over, the customs shed, a few men ran off to investigate the uproar going on down by Jato’s rowboat. Pen led the girls past the rearward side of the long shed, trailing his hand over the planks, feeling each little back-blow of heat, magical friction Learned Ruchia had dubbed it. Dry wood indeed.
Next over was the prison. A half-dozen guards on the roof were gathered gazing out under the flats of their hands, also toward the shore. Pen considered efficiencies. Moving fast wasn’t going to be useful for much longer, but he thought he might squeeze one more foray out of it.
Leaving the sisters next to a building that would shortly be ablaze wouldn’t do, so he took their hands to prevent straying and had them hunker down by the corner of the prison, holding his finger to his lips to enjoin silence. He walked around to the back entry where, this time, two guards were posted, leaning against the stone wall but otherwise alert. Reaching for their short swords, they both pushed off and scowled at Pen’s smile as he approached with both his hands held out empty. For a moment, poised to react, they were usefully still.
Lingual nerves, sciatic nerves, axillary nerves, brush, brush, brush, and they were down, choking and writhing. He stepped around them and down the steps, lifted the bar, and popped the bolt. A quick jog down the dark central corridor left every lock hanging open. He pushed his head into the main prison, just as full of unhappy men as it had been the other night, and was there no end to this trade, and called in Adriac, “The rear doors are open. What you do with that fact is up to you.”
He hurried back out to where the girls stood staring down in shocked fascination at the guards he’d dropped.
“Was that a magic spell?” asked Lencia.
“No. Well, not technically. I really don’t think of anything other than a shamanic persuasion or geas as a spell, exactly.” They scrunched their brows at him, disbelievingly. “I’ll teach you the distinctions sometime if you’re interested, when we get home. But first we have to get home. This way.”
They continued on from the prison. Pen did not look back as the first hoarse voices reached the back doors and grew louder, fearfully marveling. Some of those men might die in this escape attempt, but… not by his hand.
You can’t save everyone, Pen, Des consoled him.
Yes. I learned that well back in Martensbridge. I am not likely to forget.
He was flushed with heat, sweat tricking down his neck and back. The next building seemed to be a run-down taverna. A couple of servants idling by its back door stared at him and the girls as they trotted past, but did not attempt to impede them, their attention seized by the outflux of men from the prison. They hastily darted back inside and barred their door, shouting warnings. Pen led the girls around the far side of the dingy building to where he could again get a view of the harbor.