The crane he’d climbed the other day had been moved out to the pier, probably by an ox team, and was engaged in either loading or unloading one of the ships. The stevedores had dropped their work and were shouting and pointing back up the shore toward the warehouse and customs shed, from which dark gray smoke was now billowing, its nose-stinging acridity already penetrating the soft salt air. Most of them abandoned the pier and jogged off toward the fires. Pen expected some sort of bucket brigade from the sea would soon be organized. He didn’t think they’d be able to save either building, but they were welcome to try.
His feet were still planted on this bloody island. Ships. Boats. Rowboats. Rafts, barrels, anything.
Out in the harbor beyond the pier, Falun’s galley still sat. Pen hadn’t had much luck with the gratitude of freed prisoners up to now, but being chained in the hold of such a ship must surely concentrate the mind. Given the choice of rowing to Rathnatta and slavery, or Vilnoc and freedom, surely he wouldn’t have to apply much persuasion…? He could probably swim out that far, but—
“Do you see any rowboats at all?” Pen asked the girls, squinting.
Lencia stood on tiptoe. “There! In the shadows under the pier.”
“Ah. Yes. Well, it’s our rowboat now. Come on!”
In the clash between terror and excitement, excitement must be winning, for they followed him all-eagerness, laughing a bit wildly. They slid down and clambered awkwardly over the stones at the shaded base of the jetty. The boat’s painter was hitched to a rusty iron ring driven into one of the big boulders. Pen waded without hesitation into the murky water laced with tan foam. It wasn’t cold by his standards—in the cantons, you could drive a horse and sleigh across properly cold water—but it was cooler than his body, and drew dangerous heat from his blood. He ducked his head for good measure, then shoved the boat around close enough for the girls to tumble in.
Oars lay tucked under the thwarts. Pen was more surprised by their presence than he would have been by their absence, at this point. He might have swum ahead towing the boat by its rope, he supposed, much like his imagined dolphin, but it would have been slow going. He unhitched the knot, heaved a leg inboard, and shoved off, flopping down into the damp bottom where he lay wheezing for a moment.
The girls must have been in a rowboat before—well, Raspay was a port town—because they earnestly pulled up the heavy oars and managed to get their pins seated in their oarlocks without dropping one overboard. Then they looked to Pen.
“Where are we going?” asked Lencia. “We can’t row to Vilnoc.”
“Alas, no. Just out to that galley.” Pen gestured. “You boys can row if you want.”
“Oh!” Seuka grinned in delight, and the two hastily arranged themselves on one seat, an oar each. They pulled with reasonable coordination, and the boat began to slowly move alongside the ship docked on this side, its hull rising up like a wooden wall.
A head and shoulders leaned over the top of this bulwark. “Hey!” shouted the silhouette. “What are you doing?”
Good question. Pen wished he knew the answer. He crawled over to the side of their boat, propped his chin on the thwart, and considered the passing hull. Running a dual line of rot along it just below the waterline for several yards as they rowed by seemed almost routine, but he wasn’t above trying anything. He wasn’t sure if he was about to sink a pirate, a prize, or a legitimate merchant, and at this point scarcely cared.
Des giggled. She was getting dangerously excited much like the girls, but he couldn’t bleed off her nervous energy with rowing.
As they came out into the sunlight and the view widened, he rolled over on his back and studied the rigging of the ship tied up on the far side of the dock. Almost out of range, he snapped stays and started a couple of fires in the rolled-up sails. “The Bastard’s blessings upon you all,” he murmured, and bit his thumb at them.
Lencia gave him a chary look. Seuka, intent upon her rowing, just sucked her lip in concentration.
Pen considered his next plan. It was probable that most of Falun’s crew were enjoying time ashore, though some might be engaged with provisioning. Prisoners, even if chained, required some guards. He was getting very practiced with guards, but that was no invitation to get careless. He was also hot and ragged and worried, with red anger pulsing treacherously through his veins, but dwelling on any of those things was no help. He hoisted himself upright and squinted at the galley.
“I think I see climbing netting hanging over the port side. Row over that way.”
They passed not far from another vessel at anchor, clearly a rich pirate by its sleek lines and three masts prepared to carry a wide burden of sails for speed. Some crewmen hung on its landward-side rail, pointing and goggling at the clawing blazes ashore, the flames a strange transparent orange in the bright daylight, the air above them shimmering. Pen systematically snapped every stay within his range, igniting the rigging as it collapsed. Cries turned to screams.
There was crew aboard the galley, ah, for they, too, had collected on the starboard side to watch the inexplicable disaster progress. Visible smoke was finally rising from the pier. The hull Pen had perforated was starting to list, ever so gently, outward.
Two boys and a man plodding along in a little rowboat passed unremarked, with all this show going on.
“Isn’t this Captain Falun’s slave galley?” asked Lencia apprehensively as they slid into the shade of its far side.
“Ayup,” said Pen, discarding his wet, worn, stolen sandals as slippery and useless. He sat up and prepared to reach for the netting.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Probably,” sighed Pen. “I think I’m getting used to it.” He looked up past the line of oar ports, back at the girls. “Stay here a few paces off, and be ready to row away if they start to come for you.”
They looked at each other. “Without you?” said Seuka in a tentative voice.
“If necessary.”
Lencia cocked her head at him, and said in a remarkably dry tone for a ten-year-old, “To where?”
Pen stared around the disrupted harbor. “I’ll… return.”
“You’d better,” said Seuka, with determination.
Pen swung up onto the coarse rope weave and flashed a grin over his shoulder. “I thought I was the evil sorcerer.”
Lencia shot back, “Yes, but you’re our evil sorcerer.”
“Ah.” Pen hung a moment, liminally, letting that claim settle into his bones. It made him feel oddly fond. “Yes. I think that must be so.”
Seuka nodded firmly. “So don’t you get hacked up, either.”
“I’ll do all I can.” He hesitated, then corrected that to, “All we can.” Because whatever he was heading into, he wasn’t going alone. He tapped his lips with his thumb, felt for toeholds, and pushed himself up the side.
I told you I liked those girls, said Des smugly.
You were right. He paused just before mounting the deck. Sight. No souls immediately nearby, though that didn’t mean someone farther off couldn’t be looking this way. He rolled silently over the rail and crouched barefoot, taking his bearings.
He was on a kind of walkway between the rail and one of the two low sheds or cabins that filled the deck fore and aft on either side of the mainmast. This galley was square-rigged in an older style, though with a smaller mast toward the bow for some sort of jib sail that had the air of a later addition. Somewhere, there must be hatches down to holds… there. He edged around the cabin, found the dark square in the deck, and slithered down something like a lethal cross between a stairway and a ladder.