Grefan inclines himself slightly in return, the movement almost an insult. “I am sorry, kelari, to hear of your friend’s disappearance.”
I don’t think him sorry in the least. I turn to Garrin. “Verin, did you find any sign of her?”
“I’m afraid not, kelari. I’m sorry.”
“I would like to take a look below myself, as we discussed.”
“I don’t think you can,” Grefan interrupts with amusement. “Not with that foot of yours.”
Oh, the gall of the man! I’m not letting this go without a fight. Until I’ve seen that hold and made sure for myself that Kirrana isn’t here, I’m not leaving. I may not be a noble lady, but I know how to act like one. Jasmine has given me plenty of tutelage there.
I eye Grefan with contempt. “I assure you I am well aware of what I am capable of, however little you may know of the subject.”
I stride off toward the hatch, and if I stumble slightly as I go, well, there’s not a thing I can do about that but grit my teeth and keep going, cursing the captain each step of the way. Matsin and his quad fall into step with me as I near the hatch, the men walking tall, with squared shoulders, as if they were my honor guard. A glance shows me Garrin watching with an amused curl of his lip, Diara beside him, and Grefan hurrying after me.
“Are you quite sure about the ladder, kelari? Perhaps take a look at that first.”
If I can make it down a rope of braided linens, I can certainly make it down whatever the boat offers—in this case, a wooden ladder bolted to the opening. Matsin casts me a glance that conveys a grim approval and precedes me down. I sit on the edge of the hatch, put my toes on the rungs, and start down. My wounded arm hurts with each step I lower myself down, but I’m careful to keep my expression easy. I’m not about to grant Captain Grefan the smallest iota of satisfaction.
The hold runs the length of the ship and is filled with crates stacked nearly to the ceiling, strapped down to keep from shifting. It’s dark and faintly damp, the sound of water loud against its sides. There’s clearly no space in this hold for a hidden room, the walls curving with the hull of the ship.
“Where did they search?” I ask Matsin.
“They walked along, tapping on crates and calling.”
I purse my lips. “What do you think? We’ve one last chance to search this hold. If you were keeping a young woman hostage, where would you put her?”
“In a crate,” he admits. “But short of opening each of these, if she’s unconscious or even just bound and gagged, we won’t know she’s here.”
“Then we open them,” I say shortly.
Matsin nods. “I’ll speak with Diara. But Garrin will have to approve your request.”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll go back up and speak to him.”
He nods and scales the ladder, disappearing into the bright sunlight above in a matter of moments. His quad waits below with me. I nod to them and slowly walk the aisle, listening. There isn’t even the scuffle of a rat to be heard.
“Kirrana!” I call. “Kirrana?”
I pause, listening, but there’s no answer. Diara starts down the hold ladder as I call again, “Kirrana, can you hear me?”
“Don’t think she’s here,” Diara says conversationally. “You really want every last crate opened?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll take a while. And we’ll have to close them up again when we’re done.”
“That’s fine,” I say. I’m pretty sure she’s asking for a bribe for herself and her men, but I don’t have much to offer in my pocket, and this is her duty anyhow.
Diara sighs and sends one of her men back up to collect the necessary tools. I move back to the ladder, and there is Garrin looking down into the hold, a frown settled low over his brow, Matsin speaking quietly beside him.
“Kelari,” Garrin calls down to me. “I understand you are checking all the crates?”
“Yes, verin. If Kirrana cannot answer, we won’t know if she’s hidden within or not.”
He nods. “I’ll remain above, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.”
I head to the back of the hold, scanning the crates as Diara’s man returns with a set of bars to use as levers. Matsin descends, and he and his men each take a bar. The other soldiers move to the prow to begin their search.
“Here,” I say, pointing. There’re rows of crates against the stern that haven’t yet had additional crates piled on top of them. “Let’s start with these. We can shift crates over as we go to reach the ones underneath.”
It doesn’t seem likely that they’d hide a person beneath other crates, but I’m not going to risk missing Kirrana on a faulty assumption either.
Matsin pauses beside me to look. “Unusual, don’t you think, that these crates against the wall are only one deep, and the rest are stacked high?”
That is strange.
“We’ll see. Keep an eye out, kelari.”
“For what?”
“For what Diara and her men are doing while we’re working here.”
I nod and move back to lean against the flat boards of the stern to watch, crates stacked to either side of me. Between my wounded arm and my clumsiness as the galley occasionally bobs, I’ll do the most good staying out of the way. Across the hold, Diara and her men work systematically through the far crates, opening the tops, peering in, then fitting them back down and hammering them shut. But if Matsin doesn’t actually trust them, then they could just as easily look in on Kirrana and cover her back up again.
I glance toward Matsin, then back at Diara.
“Stay,” Matsin says, looking sideways at me.
Is he always so perceptive?
“If what you’re thinking is accurate, there’s no point looking on that side anyway.”
Because Diara would attempt to start us on a part of the ship where there was nothing to be found? Or is Matsin just trying to keep me safe and out of the way? I bite my lip and stay where I am.
The men work through the first set of crates to the left, then start on the next row, shifting over the topmost crates as they’re opened and resealed. I watch them with a growing sense of helplessness. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe every bit of evidence we gathered was so circumstantial, so indirect, that I’m on the wrong ship now, and Kirrana is somewhere else entirely. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I stare across the hold at Diara’s men. They are nearly a third of the way through the crates. A pair of Matsin’s men cross the aisle to start on the crates to the right of me, but it seems less and less likely Kirrana will be found.
I’ve failed her, and now I will go back to the palace and the snatchers will continue, because all I’ve learned is that those behind them are too big, too dangerous for even the princess to take on. This corruption is so deep, so vast, that all I’ve managed is to ensure that nothing will be done. I’ve handled this all wrong and now Kirrana is paying the price, and nothing will change. The royals will apologize for inconveniencing Grefan, and Berenworth will go on, as will the Circle, and whoever is on the street doing the actual snatchings.
I shove away from the wall. If I can’t stand still, at least I can pace. But as I step forward, the boat dips again. I take a quick step sideways to regain my balance and my turned foot bangs painfully into a crate. Clenching my jaw to keep from cursing, I boost myself up onto the crate to take the weight of my foot—and promptly freeze as my arm protests. Because I’m still a clumsy cripple who can’t seem to go three days in service to the princess without gaining a new wound. I lay my throbbing arm across my lap and lean back, rest my cheek against the rough wood.
It takes me a moment to realize what’s wrong. I straighten with a jerk.
“Kelari?” Matsin says softly from where he squats atop a crate.
“Come here,” I whisper.
He does, crossing the crates to crouch beside me.
“Listen,” I say. “Tell me what you hear.”
He leans his ear against the wood, his brow furrowing
.
“There’s no water,” I say for him. “The sound of it is too distant.”
He looks at me, his teeth bared in a sharp, pleased smile. “Well done, kelari. We’ve a secret room to find.”
Chapter
51
Together with his men, Matsin pulls away the crates, one by one, shoving them farther down the hold.
“Haven’t you searched all those crates already?” Diara asks, walking over to us.
“We heard something,” Matsin says. “Just checking.”
Diara grunts, and then goes back up the ladder.
“Do we need to worry?” I ask softly as Matsin watches her climb up.
“Perhaps,” he says. “But we’ve got our own quad and Garrin’s up above as well. It’s unlikely they’ll attack while we have backup and a lord watching over us.”
“What’s this?” one of his men says in surprise, pulling away a crate to reveal a low door, and over it, a thin piece of wood mounted to the wall. My heart jumps as I recognize the inked ward painted there.
“The door we’re looking for,” I say. “Can you open it?”
It’s barred from the outside, and takes only the work of a moment for the soldier to lift the bar and push the door open. Matsin warns me back with a raised hand, and together he and the first soldier duck into the darkened room.
I glance back through the hold to see that the remaining soldiers of the river guard are walking toward us. The sound of Matsin’s voice rumbles faintly in my hearing. The soldiers keep coming. They look grim, but no one has reached for a weapon yet.
I glance back toward the secret room. Please, let Kirrana be there. And let us all get out safely.
I hear a faint whisper and turn back to the soldiers just as one of Matsin’s men gives a shout. The soldiers race toward us, swords drawn. I scramble up on a crate and back away alongside the wall, the hem of my skirt catching under my feet. I don’t know how to fight, don’t have the first idea of how to defend myself against swords. I fumble my bone knife from its sheath, even if it will do little good against a weapon with longer reach.
The hatch bangs shut, plunging the hold into half-darkness, lit only by a single lantern hung from a peg. And then the soldiers meet in a flurry of blades. A scream lodges in my throat. I can’t quite make out what’s happening, only that the fight is swift and brutal, the clash of swords and the thunk of bodies against wood, the sickening sound of metal plunging into flesh. Matsin appears as if from nowhere, slamming into the fight, and within another breath, it is over, the floorboards slick and dark.
“Report,” Matsin barks. His men answer equally shortly, but for one man who reports a cut on his arm.
“Bind it,” Matsin tells him. Turning to the others, he points his sword toward the little door. “There are five children in there. Get them out while I check the hatch. We’ll have to fight our way out.”
I slide down from my perch, aware that I’m shaking. It’s an absurd reaction—the soldiers never got close enough to endanger me, but I can’t wipe the horror of the fight from my mind.
One of Matsin’s men moves to the door, entering silently. I wait, clenching my bone knife in my grasp as if that might still my trembling. He emerges again a moment later, herding a pair of young boys before him. They are both no more than nine years old, their eyes huge.
“Is . . . ,” I begin, and stop, knowing that Kirrana isn’t here. Matsin would have said so by now.
“Can you take them?” the soldier asks, nudging the boys toward me. “There’s three more.”
I nod shakily, gesture the boys forward. We’ve found five children—this, this is proof. And at least these children can be returned to their homes, or given shelter.
At the top of the ladder, Matsin swears softly.
“Come,” I say to the boys. “Hold hands and follow me.”
I reach the ladder as Matsin jumps down, skipping the last two rungs. “We’ll have to try to ram it open.”
I look up at the square of daylight showing around the edges of the hatch. “How?”
“However we can,” Matsin says grimly.
“It’s barred?” I ask, shifting my grip on my knife. My bone knife, that won’t cut my skin, but will slice through meat and bone as easily as butter.
Matsin nods.
“You help with the children. Let me try something.”
“What is it?” he asks, glancing from me to the hatch.
“I think my knife can slip between the wood up there.”
“It’s not going to cut through a wooden bar, kelari.”
“It might,” I say. “It’s Fae-made.”
His eyes widen, and he casts a glance upward again. “Can you brace yourself up there well enough to try?”
I look up and know he’s right. Maybe if it were just my foot I had to take into account, I could manage it. But my arm still throbs from my clumsiness earlier, and I know I won’t be able to hang on with one hand and saw with the other.
“Take it,” I say shortly, and turn back to the children.
Matsin scales the ladder again, moving silently. He pauses, listening. One of the soldiers gestures to me, and I move the children a few feet back and crouch down with them. The faint creak of footsteps sounds off toward the stern, perhaps near the stairs to the rear deck.
Matsin reaches up, slides the bone knife into the gap between hatch and floorboards, and works it silently up and down. We wait what feels like a lifetime, the children gathered beside me, the first two plus a third little boy and two young girls behind him, eleven or twelve years of age.
Matsin’s men gather at the foot of the ladder, waiting. One with his arm bound by a strip of cloth; the others unharmed. And Diara’s men all dead. These men, the most elite of all the guard, are terrifying.
Matsin leans back, studying what he can see through the crack, then descends once more. “That’s all it can reach, but you were right. It cut through the wood like butter. We might be able to break through what’s left of it now.”
“Shall I try?” one of the soldiers asks. If Matsin is tall, this man is built like a bull, huge and burly and made of muscle.
Matsin nods. He hands me back my knife as he tells the man, “Expect an immediate attack. Bring them down with you. I’ll go up when you go down. We fight our way out from here.”
“And the children?” I ask, because clearly these words aren’t meant for us.
“You stay,” Matsin says tersely. “My men and I go up first. When I give you the all clear, you bring the children up and send them straight to the docks—to your carriage. You stay with them, and if I give you an order, you follow it.” He turns his gaze on the children. “All of you do what the lady says.”
I nod and say, “Yes, kel,” and a small, wavering chorus of voices rises up to echo me.
Matsin looks back at me, and it’s as if he can see right past my facade of calm to the roiling horror beneath. “If we end up fighting, don’t watch. Make yourself move. Get these children to safety. That is your fight.”
I nod again. “I understand.”
The burly soldier climbs up, and Matsin follows after him, scaling the back of the ladder so that he’s ready to swing around and up as soon as the way is clear.
It takes three massive thumps for the hatch to give. The burly guard hurls it away, to the sound of shouting above. He draws his dagger and takes the final step up, his head clearing the hatch, and then he ducks back down, the dagger swinging up. It smacks against something flashing silver. The guard’s other hand swings out, grabbing his attacker’s wrist as he drops off the ladder, twisting to send his attacker flying down past him to slam into the planks underfoot.
Diara shouts as she hits the ground, but she’s already moving, rolling and shoving herself up, one hand reaching for her dagger—and then a sword cuts straight across her neck, held by one of Matsin’s men.
I scream, twisting away, my arms going around the two boys beside me, hands reaching to cover their eyes. T
he burly soldier spares us half a glance as the other man shoves Diara’s flailing body backward, blood pouring from her throat. Oh God. I look up only to see that Matsin has already made it out, and another guard is on his way through the hatch, dagger in hand. There is shouting above now, the clang of weapons, and a moment later a ragged scream.
I force myself to look to the children. My responsibility. I gesture the girls closer, ring all the children around me. “Listen carefully,” I say, and tell them what to expect above deck, what our carriage looks like, that they’re to get in it and stay in it. “We will get you back to your families,” I promise. “But we need your help.”
I pair them up, an older girl for each of the boys, the youngest boy for me.
“Now,” I hear Matsin shout. “Amraeya, now!”
“Up!” I push the first boy forward. He climbs quickly, the girl he is partnered with clambering up nimbly behind him. “You next,” I say, and the next boy and girl go up.
“I’ll be right behind you,” I promise the last boy, but it’s a lie. He’ll be faster than me. “You keep going, stay with the others,” I tell him, and climb as fast as I can after him, grasping the hilt of my knife tightly.
Matsin stands with a scarlet-rimed sword just before the hatch. “Go,” he says before I can even take in the bloodshed before me. There are two sailors facing him, but one is wounded, and the other glances around desperately, as if seeking an escape.
“Amraeya, move.”
I do, past a fallen body, this one a river guard. I catch up to the little boy who is mine to watch over as he stares at another corpse, the eyes wide and unseeing. It’s Matsin’s man—the one who went into the hidden room to bring out the children.
“Go,” I rasp, shoving the boy along, but he barely moves. “Go,” I cry.
He can’t seem to move. I grasp his hand and hobble as fast as my aching ankle can take me, watching as the two girls hurry across the gangplank, each with their hands tight around the boy who is their ward.
The Theft of Sunlight Page 37