Her staff floated and was buoyant enough to act as a swimming aid if she needed it. She did not. One handed, she sidestroked in an arc, heading toward the breakwater, knowing the tide would push her back toward the ship and not wanting to be swept past it. The rush of the water filled her ears, and she lost sight of the ships as she swam between the waves. Fortunately, she had judged her route well, and the huge dark shape of a warship soon towered ahead of her.
“Hope you’re the right one,” she muttered, and salt water coated her tongue.
She spat a stream of it and stroked to the hull, careful not to strike it with her staff. Inside, someone might hear random thumps and find them odd enough to investigate.
The tide pressed her against the hull, so she did not worry about slipping past the ship, but as she craned her neck to look up, she wondered how she would ever climb up there. The sides tilted outward from her position, rising like cliffs. Her father had been right to believe they would need a rope and a hook, and she wondered if even that would have been enough.
She paddled along the hull, hoping to find something that might work as a handhold. She snorted as she came to the starboard side and could see the rows of cannons extending from the gun ports. Had they been lower, they might have been something to use in climbing, but like the railing, they were too far overhead to be of use.
Taylina brought her staff around and pressed it against the hull, hoping for inspiration. Its warmth was even more noticeable in the cold water, but it hardly seemed hot enough to burn a hole in the wood. Bhrava Saruth had said to use her skills. What skills were those? Did he know she was a woodworker? She didn’t think she had told him, but he could see into her mind, so perhaps he knew and those were the skills to which he referred. If she had a few of her tools, she could have cut herself a hole in the hull and entered through the bilge pump room or whatever the Cofah equivalent was. She had never been on any vessel larger than her uncle’s fishing ship, so she felt out of her element here with this behemoth.
She slid her hand along the smooth boards, imagining the hole she would have liked to make. She might have started with an auger, placed just so. Perhaps she would have even drilled the hole below the waterline, to create a bit of sabotage as well as an entrance for herself.
As she had the thought, a faint creak reached her ears. She frowned at the staff, pulling it away from the hull. The creak stopped. She pressed the staff back against the hull, trying to line it up with the cracks between the boards. The creak came again. It was too dark to see anything, but when she pressed her hand against the hull next to the staff, she felt the faint stir of a current, something that had nothing to do with the tide.
Abruptly, something snapped. Nails? The entire plank bulged and warped, then parted from the hull, nearly clubbing Taylina. She shoved it aside with her hand. She didn’t know how this was happening, but she pressed the staff to the one above it, hoping she could pry a few more away—and also hoping there wasn’t anyone standing on the other side of the hull. She imagined popping into someone’s cabin. But shouldn’t those be higher up? She expected the bilge room and maybe storage areas down here, far from the light of the top decks.
Another plank fell free. She peered through the gap, but it was too dark to see anything. Could it be a cargo hold? She would find out when she crawled inside.
Remembering her thoughts of sabotage, she removed the lower boards next. Water rushed in through the gaps she created. She pulled out a few more planks until there was a hole large enough for someone bigger than she to squeeze through—if she did manage to find and free the others, they might have to slip out this way rather than running up and being shot at as they jumped over the railing.
A screech sounded overhead, and Taylina hugged her body to the hull, gripping the edge of the hole. She could not see the railing from her position, but she could see the sky. The gold dragon and his rider were returning, his scales gleaming with the reflection of the lights on the waterfront and the docks as he sailed low. Wings outstretched, the dragon flew straight for the warship.
Though the vessel blocked some of her view, Taylina suspected he was landing on the deck up there. She leaned her forehead against the hull. Did that mean that Bhrava Saruth had been sufficiently driven off? Or maybe he had been injured and left for dead.
An hour ago, she’d had Raff, her father, and Bhrava Saruth. Now, she was utterly alone, a lame girl trying to save her people.
“You have the staff,” she whispered. If she was careful, maybe it would be enough.
Taylina pulled herself and the staff through the hole she’d made, riding the current flowing in and landing on a deck crowded with crates, barrels, coils of rope, and other supplies. A storage area. The commander would not be pleased when everything got wet, especially if there was food down here, but she hoped it would give him another reason to leave. A ship of this size could take on a lot of water before sinking noticeably, and she knew the soldiers would be able to fix her hole, but maybe it would demoralize the Cofah somewhat.
She found an aisle leading between stacks of crates and groped her way through the dark, wishing she had a lantern to light. Right now, she couldn’t even tell where the stairs or a ladder might be. But, sodden after her swim, she wouldn’t have been able to light a lantern even if she’d carried one along.
To her surprise, her staff warmed even further and started glowing. She almost dropped it. Even though she was familiar with magical tools, it always took her and Raff days to create one. All Bhrava Saruth had done was place his paw on her staff for a few seconds. She wouldn’t have expected such versatility from him.
Aware that the dragons and sorcerers aboard might sense its presence, Taylina tried to tell the staff to keep its glow soft by imagining a dim light. Bhrava Saruth had attuned it to her somehow, but she didn’t know how much direction she could give it.
With the faint golden glow guiding her, Taylina found the steps leading up to a horizontal hatch in the deck. The ship creaked and groaned around her, and shouts drifted down from above. Would the dragons be sent over to deal with the prisoners Raff was trying to free? Aware of time passing, Taylina hurried up the stairs. She forced herself to pause at the hatch in the ceiling to listen. The noise seemed to be coming from topside rather than the cannon deck, which she gauged was above her.
She lifted the hatch carefully. Yes, there were the rows and rows of cannons, half of them with barrels pointed toward the town. A couple of lanterns at the end of the deck provided enough light to see them. Worse, she could also see men in hammocks strung between the cannons. A lot of men. There had to be fifty or a hundred down here. Some were sleeping, but she heard a few conversations too. She could not understand the Cofah language, but they sounded like questions or musing, the men probably wondering if they would be ordered to help with whatever was going on.
Before peeking more than her head into the space, Taylina willed the staff to fall dark again, and was relieved when it did so. She wished Bhrava Saruth were here to tell her where the prisoners were being kept. She did not want to go topside—there was no way she could avoid being noticed there. She peered in the opposite direction from the stairs. A few more cannons, also with hammocks strung between them, rested in that direction, but there was also a bulkhead with a hatch in it. Imagining the size of the ship and where she had entered, she figured that a decent-sized space lay back there, more than was needed for just a tiller room.
Snores came from one of the nearby hammocks. It was darker back there, so she risked easing off the stairs and onto the cannon deck. She hoped the shadows would hide her, and that nobody was looking down. Staying on her hands and knees, she crawled toward that back hatch, careful not to drag or bump her staff.
She made it to the hatch and was breathing easier when footfalls thundered on the stairs at the other end. Taylina rose to her feet and pressed her back against the bulkhead. She reached for the latch, but a man came into view at the opposite end, framed by the lante
rns to either side of those stairs. He looked toward the soldiers and barked what sounded like orders. Men groaned and rolled out of their hammocks.
Taylina bit her lip. With her hand on the latch, she wanted to open the hatch and slip through, but dare she move? It was fully dark at her end of the deck, but more than once, that officer’s gaze swept in her direction. If she was caught here, her mission would end before she’d even had a chance to verify that her sister and the others were on board.
She held her breath as grumbling men stomped for the stairs. One in the back passed within a few feet of her, but he did not notice her. Fortunately, nobody lit lanterns. The officer disappeared back up the stairs, and the woken men followed. When it grew quiet on the cannon deck, Taylina finally tried the latch. But it did not turn.
Locked? Her first reaction was to curse, but then she realized this might be a good thing. A locked door might indicate something valuable, such as a boatload of Iskandian prisoners.
Taylina had worked with locks before and might have been able to pick a simple one if she had tools, but unless the staff could move tumblers and pins, getting through that way seemed unlikely. She patted around the frame, checking for hinges. She was on the wrong side. Grimacing, she moved back to touch the exterior of the lock. She might have better luck using the staff to remove a few boards from the bulkhead, but on the chance it could break locks, she pressed the tip of it against the mechanism. Instead of breaking it, she imagined the likely layout for the inside and tried to suggest which pins she would like moved. Though she felt silly for hoping a big stick could pick locks, she hoped it would work anyway.
The tumblers thunked into place, just as she imagined them. She blinked and tried the hatch again. It opened with a faint creak.
“Thank you, Bhrava Saruth,” she breathed, poking her head into a passageway lit with lanterns hanging intermittently from hooks on the ceiling.
An intersection lay ten feet ahead. She did not hear anyone talking or walking, but noise filtering down from the upper decks made it hard to tell if she was truly alone. She eased forward and leaned one eye around the corner. A passageway to the left lay empty, but to the right—
She jerked her head back.
A soldier stood guard in front of a hatch farther down the passage. Taylina gripped her staff and pressed her back to the bulkhead, afraid he’d seen her and would charge around the corner. Seconds passed, and nothing happened.
She loosened her grip on the staff and debated her options. A guard should mean there was something to be guarded. Prisoners to be kept in, perhaps? It had only been one man, and he’d been leaning against the bulkhead by the hatch, looking more bored than alert, but he’d had a short sword and a cudgel, and he was far enough down the passage that Taylina couldn’t simply lean around the corner and smack him on the head. No, he would have time to see her coming and draw his weapons, especially since she couldn’t sprint that quickly with her awkward gait.
Her gaze fell to the deck under her feet, and she imagined making another hole, so he could run around the corner and fall into the hold below. That wouldn’t do much good, however, unless she could lock him down there. But—she glanced toward the cannon deck—maybe she could.
She eased back through the hatchway, relieved that none of the soldiers had returned yet, and strode to the stairs she had come up. This hatch, too, had a locking mechanism. She thought she might have to use the staff to break it but realized she could simply lock it from this side. She did so, then returned to her spot in the passageway. She touched the tip of the staff to the deck, but paused. Making a hole would be noisy, wouldn’t it?
She rubbed the staff, wondering if she could order it to be very careful to loosen the nails slowly and silently. Well, she would try, and if he heard and came running around the corner, she would do her best to clobber him in the face before he drew a weapon.
Easier said than done, she thought, but silently commanded the staff to unfasten the nails, regardless. The ship creaked as it tugged at its anchor, and thuds came from somewhere above. She welcomed the noise, especially as she watched nails ease themselves from their homes. The staff did seem to be working slowly. The muffled sound of voices came to her as she worked, and her heart thudded in her chest. Were those her people talking?
More nails came out, and she quietly pulled boards free from the deck. She grimaced at joists running perpendicular to the flooring. She would have to find a way to break through those, too, if she wanted a hole big enough for a man to fall through.
Several harsh words came from around the corner, and Taylina jerked to her feet, raising the staff. She expected to find that the man had heard her and was checking, but several more words followed the first. They were from down the passageway, from the door. Had he leaned in and threatened the prisoners? Ordered them to silence?
She gripped the staff tightly, tempted to run up and club him while he had his head stuck through the hatchway, but she did not know for certain that he did. She reapplied herself to the deck and soon had enough boards up to form a hole from bulkhead to bulkhead. The hold down below was still dark, but she could hear the sound of water flowing in, and hoped the guard would not also hear it.
Resting the tip of the staff against a support joist, she imagined it cutting through the wood. So far, her new tool had not done anything like that, and at first, nothing happened. Then a long piece of the joist fell away. She hadn’t expected that, and winced when it landed with a thunk and a splash down below.
The soft jangle of weapons dangling on a belt was her only warning. She thought about running, but did not want the guard to come slowly around the corner and have time to see the hole and avoid it. She eased past it and poked her head into the intersection. She pretended to be startled when she spotted him striding in her direction. Then she leaped back, avoiding the hole, and opened and closed the hatch with a thud, hoping he would think that she was fleeing and that he had to hurry to catch her.
It worked. He came charging around the corner. He almost stepped into the hole, but he managed to adjust that stride, and half his foot made it to the other side. But he was distracted for a second, looking down with his eyes wide. Taylina surged forward and jammed him in the shin, then lifted the staff to ram into his belly, hoping he’d lose his balance and fall.
The first strike was all it took, because he yelped and grabbed his shin, as if something more like an arrow than a blunt weapon had thumped him. Had the staff’s magic come into play? Flailing with one hand and gripping his leg with the other, he lost his balance and plunged down to the deck below.
Another cry of pain floated up as he thudded onto a stack of barrels. Taylina thought about trying to reaffix the boards to ensure he could not climb out that way, but there was no time. Besides, with the joist gone, what would she nail them to? No, she would free her people, and hope they could overcome the guard if he got out.
She ran around the corner, heading straight for the hatch he had been guarding. But as she reached it, a figure strode into view from around another corner at the end of the passageway, a long-haired woman in silks with a sword at her waist, a sword that glowed so fiercely that the light leaked from its scabbard.
“You think you’re clever, girl?” the woman asked in accented Iskandian. She strode forward, drawing her sword.
9
Taylina stepped back, lifted her free hand, and thought about dropping her staff. Or would it be better to run? What could she do against a trained sorceress? Whatever tricks her staff now knew, it would be no match against her power, especially if that was a soulblade in her hand.
“No,” she said to the cold-eyed woman, “I don’t think I’m clever. But I’d hoped—”
That Bhrava Saruth, the god would return, came a familiar cry in her mind. He did!
Before Taylina fully registered his words, something flew over her shoulder and crashed into the sorceress. A huge black panther. The woman yelled a startled oath and tried to bring her sword to b
ear, but the great cat moved too quickly. Claws slashed, and power flared around both of them, silvery energy blasting the passageway.
Taylina stumbled back, affected even though she was not the target. Her skin crawled, and her stomach heaved as wood snapped and smoke filled the air. The sorceress stumbled back but whipped her blade in front of her, trying to strike Bhrava Saruth. He flung power at her, even as he slashed with his panther’s claws.
Free your friends, Bhrava Saruth told Taylina. I will deal with the sorceress.
“Won’t her dragon come down to help?” Taylina asked, but she hurried for the hatch the soldier had been guarding. It wasn’t locked, maybe because he had opened it to yell at the prisoners.
Relieved, Taylina flung it open. Surprised gasps and shuffling sounds came from the dim hold within. The silvery light in the passage lessened as Bhrava Saruth and the sorceress moved farther away, the sounds of their fighting making the hairs on the back of Taylina’s neck rise. Some lantern light trickled in, and she could make out faces, many of them bruised. Her gut tightened as she looked for Jessa among the mass of women huddled in the space. They did not appear to be tied up, simply packed in and miserable-looking. One woman her age looked toward her with a black eye swollen shut. Mareeta, the blacksmith’s daughter. Taylina recognized her and many others too. She did not see her sister, but there were so many people jammed into the space that she wasn’t surprised.
“Taylina?” someone asked in a hoarse voice.
“Yes,” Taylina said, and stopped staring around the hold. She would find Jessa when everyone was filing out. “Come on. We’re getting off this ship, but we have to hurry.”
A crack sounded, followed by a sizzling sound, and Taylina peeked into the passageway. She glanced toward the battle before waving for the women to follow her out, not wanting to put them in danger.