When the enemy broke and ran, Marcus trotted after them, not so quickly as to catch up, but enough to keep that little bubble in the greater crowd open for as long as he could. They reached the broader, more open streets. Bodies lay on the cobblestones, and blood trickled in the gutters. Smoke and the smell of death thickened the air. The masts of the ships stood to the south, pointing at the sky like the leafless trunks of a winter forest. Marcus looked back. Cithrin’s eyes were glazed, but still open. Her jaw set. That was as much as he had time for.
At the piers, the fighting was worse. The ships that hadn’t cast off were in danger of being overrun, and their crews were locked in battle with the men and women fleeing from the city. Hours ago, they had all been allies against Antea. Now they were beating each other with bricks and fists, kicking and shrieking. Many of the boats had untied from the piers and were floating off in the water, where the brave and crazed swam toward them without any way to climb up into them. Outside the harbor, the remains of three Antean roundships burned and smoked. In the chaos, it was as if their destruction was another blow against Porte Oliva, the earlier victories turned to loss by the overwhelming collapse of the city.
At the edge of one pier, Ahariel Akkabrian, Pyk, Smit, and Hornet stood, blades drawn, before a wall of panicking citizens. One guard, one notary, and two actors against the throng. A pair of ship’s boats bobbed on the water behind them, sailors ready at the oars. Magistra Isadau stood in one boat as steady as a mast, her hands clasped at her chest like a statue of abstract grief.
“Come on!” Marcus shouted, for himself as much as the others. “Just a little bit more. Push, you bastards!”
The crowd around the boats seemed dense and unyielding as stone. Marcus shoved, and they shoved back. Several of the men in the group had blades and cudgels. If it came to an open fight, the bank and her allies would win, but not without losses, and Cithrin was on the wrong side of the water for that. He sheathed his blade and nodded at Yardem. The Tralgu flicked his ears and put his own back in the scabbard, then back to back they pressed into the group, saying reassuring nonsense about there being room for everyone and the queensmen having the enemy on the run. It was like carving a groove into a wall. Creating a weak spot. When they pressed out and let Enen and Halvill and Cithrin stumble through, the crowd sensed that they’d been tricked. The roar of voices was like a storm wind, wordless and full of threat. Marcus stood on the water’s edge, his heels on the last board, while Enen and Cithrin tumbled into the ship’s boat with Magistra Isadau.
“Best get out now,” Marcus shouted.
Smit and Pyk dropped into the second boat. Then Corisen Mout and Ahariel Akkabrian. Yardem was preparing to drop Halvill down to safety when the crowd surged, pushed from behind like a wave. A thick, solid shoulder fixed against Marcus’s chest, and when he stepped back to steady himself, he was falling. Cold water forced itself up his nose, into his mouth. The padding under his armor swelled instantly, and the weight of the steel links pulled him down. His first thought was that he was drowning. The second was that his hands were empty. Above the water, people were shouting. Others had fallen in with him. Cithrin’s screams were like rips in the air. Marcus filled his lungs and dove.
In the green beneath the surface, the world was quiet. Even calm. He pushed down, ears and eyes aching. There, below him, the sword turned as it fell. He kicked his legs, willing his armor to help him sink faster. Something splashed high above him. The light began to fade. He came nearer the blade. Nearer. And then he had it, his hand around the hilt. He turned. The surface of the water danced above him, the blue of the sky made green by the water and distance. The bottoms of the two boats stood solid as black clouds. A half dozen flailing bodies surrounded the nearest one. Oars dipped down toward him and then vanished as the other pulled away. Marcus aimed himself toward the second one.
His chest burned as he clawed his way up the thick water, fighting for every inch toward the dancing air. The boat nearest the shore shuddered, and a new body fell into the water, trailing an arc of bubbles and blood. It was too big to be Cithrin. He fought. The urge to breathe grew to a shriek, and he was still too far from the surface. He wasn’t trying to reach the boats anymore. Not any of them. Up was all there was. His mouth opened without his willing it and a great bubble of air gouted out. Don’t breathe in, he thought. If you breathe the water in, that’s drowning. Don’t drown.
The silver mirror of the surface shivered and teased. Five feet above him. Four. Three. The world began to grey and spin at the edges. He bared his teeth and willed his legs to kick, his arms to move. His body had been remade from clay and stone. It wouldn’t move. Two feet. He lifted the sword, and its tip rose out of the water. Two feet. His sluggish body patted at the water. Two feet. Two feet.
Three feet, and sinking.
He barked out his despair, and seawater flowed into his mouth, his lungs. The pain seared him, and then there was something around him, solid and ropy. The root of a great tree. Or no. An arm. Marcus’s head was in air, and he was vomiting, coughing. He was aware, distantly, of screaming voices. Anything farther than his own skin seemed to belong to some different nation. Something hard dug into his ribs like a blow. It was the edge of a boat, and he was being tipped into it. He rolled forward onto the boards. The sword was still in his hand.
“Don’t… don’t touch the blade,” he managed.
“Clear on that, sir,” Yardem said and let go his grip around Marcus’s chest.
Slowly, the world expanded. The sailors working the oars were Barriath Kalliam’s pirates and also Hornet working manfully alongside them with tears streaming down his cheeks. Cithrin and Magistra Isadau were huddled together at the stern, their arms around each other, their eyes wide and lost and horror-filled. Yardem, soaking and stinking of wet dog, sat beside him. Enen and Halvill were at the stern, looking back at the riot on the seafront. They were already halfway to the roundship. Marcus pulled himself to the edge of the boat and retched up another mouthful of fouled seawater.
“The other boat,” he said.
“Swamped, sir. A dozen or so people fell into the water. They panicked.”
“Pyk?”
“In that boat, sir.”
“The guards?”
“They didn’t make it out, sir.”
“Go back for them, Captain,” Hornet said through a sob. “Please go back for them. Smit’s out there.”
Marcus pushed himself up. The pier was fifty feet away. It could as well have been a thousand.
“He’s gone, Hornet. If we go back into that, we’ll be gone too. We have to get to the ship.”
The heartbroken gasp came not from the actor, but from Cithrin. Carefully, Marcus put his blade back in his scabbard. I hope you were worth it, he thought to the sword. The cost of having you keeps getting higher.