The captain glanced down at Tolemek’s hand. The shadows should hide the grenade, but maybe Moravian knew his reputation well enough to know he would have something ready. He tipped his big hat again, then stepped back into the shadows.
Tolemek walked past the group. When he reached the door, he glanced back. The pirates had disappeared. Tolemek hoped that would be the last he saw of them, but he wouldn’t bet on it.
Chapter 5
The raft shuddered and wobbled, stones scraping the bottoms of the logs as the four porters steered it into the center of the river, pushing off the rocky bottom with long poles. Even the middle of the waterway scarcely appeared deep enough to accommodate the dubious craft. As far as Cas could tell, nothing except vines held it together, and more than a few boulders protruded from the shallow water.
“They promised we could go ten miles upstream this way,” Zirkander said, perhaps noticing her doubtful expression. He stood near the front, holding a pole of his own. He had already been called upon to use it, pushing the raft away from one of those sharp boulders. “And as slow as we’re going, it’s apparently even slower to travel on foot. Roads are non-existent on the island, and none of the trails stray far from the coast. The city doesn’t like to encourage the cannibals to visit, it seems.”
“You would expect criminals to have a greater sense of adventure,” Sardelle said from her seat on the gear and backpacks of supplies piled in the middle. She smiled warmly at Zirkander.
Thanks to the thin door, Cas knew they had enjoyed their night together. For herself, she had kept her back to Tolemek when he came to bed, afraid he would ask more awkward questions she did not feel capable of answering, not in a way that would please him. He had slipped into the other side of the bed without anything more than a soft sigh. When morning had come, they had each done an impressive job of pretending the previous night’s conversation had never happened.
Cas paced around the short raft, telling herself to pay attention to the present, not the past.
She had been asked to sit down and stay out of the way—at least, that was what she guessed the terse words and gesticulations from the porters had been about—but she couldn’t relax on this deathtrap. Besides, the closeness of the brush on either side of the river, not to mention branches stretching over their heads—and sometimes so low they had to duck—made her uneasy. Between the denseness of the vegetation and the perpetual twilight caused by the thick canopy overhead, someone could approach very close to the group without their noticing. She hadn’t forgotten the man from the dirigible.
Tolemek was sitting on the back of the equipment pile and facing the rear, in the direction of the town that had already disappeared, but he was tinkering with some gadget in his hands, and she didn’t know if she could trust him to watch their surroundings. Duck was busy poling along with the porters, though he hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet, and the men kept snapping at him in their own language or in broken Cofah. Even though Iskandian and Cofah were basically the same language, the dialect and accent made it hard for Cas to understand their version of it.
Zirkander was making a valiant stab at communicating with the men, though. At the least, they had figured out how to rate the drinking establishments in town, valuable intelligence, no doubt.
“Do you think the fliers will be all right, sir?” Cas asked during a lapse in the conversation. She leaned away from a vine dangling out of a tree branch, then grimaced when a lizard scampered up it. She had no idea what was venomous out here. The caws, squawks, and yips that drifted out of the dense foliage reminded her too much of the jungle on the first island, the one that had proven most inhospitable to their team.
“My father said he would look in on the men we hired to watch them,” Zirkander said. “That library he found isn’t open that many hours a day, so I shouldn’t have to worry about him getting too distracted by his research to handle that task.” His mouth twisted. Maybe he wasn’t that confident in that assessment.
“I wish he had come along with us.” Cas wasn’t usually one to quail at the dark or the wilds, but she had been raised a city girl, and the primordial jungle made her uneasy. Moe might not have been to this island before, but he must have explored all manner of wildernesses like this.
“My father is nearly seventy,” Zirkander said. “Claims of being a Rock Cheetah notwithstanding, this would be a taxing journey for him. Besides, he wasn’t that interested in it.”
That being the real reason he wasn’t coming, Cas gathered. “I’m concerned the toilet paper wrapped around the fliers this morning was a sign that we’re not welcome here,” she said. Sardelle had admitted her ability to protect the craft would fade once they moved more than a couple of miles from them.
“I’m still puzzled as to where the nocturnal miscreants got that paper to start with. It’s not as if there was any by that hole in the ground in the lavatory.”
“We decided that was what the sponge was for,” Sardelle said.
“There wasn’t a sponge in the men’s room. I had to use the hose.”
“Chilly water.”
“Tell me about it. You know, Sardelle, when I imagined traveling the world with you, this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.” Zirkander lifted his pole to push away from a boulder threatening to clip the corner of the raft.
“Nobody’s tried to kill me yet on this island,” Sardelle said. “That’s something I can’t say for Iskandia.”
“Just wait. Things will change.”
“In Iskandia?”
“Either that, or someone will try to kill you here.” He smirked at her.
Cas walked the three steps to the back of the raft. Tolemek had stopped one of the porters and was showing him the picture he had drawn of his sister.
“No. No see girls,” the man said. The other three porters had brown skin and short straight black hair, but this fellow had some mixed blood, with lighter skin and a few freckles on his cheeks. His Iskandian wasn’t any better than the others, though. “You ask guides who go with soldiers. They know.”
“I was told those guides haven’t come back yet,” Tolemek said.
“No, no back. Ever.” The porter drew a circle on his chest and bowed his head. Some prayer for the deceased?
A rock scraped the bottom of a log, and the raft shuddered. The porter returned to work.
“Zirkander said his father is going to watch after the fliers,” Cas told Tolemek when they were alone—as alone as one could be on a raft with nine people on it. She, Duck, and Tolemek had been discussing the how-do-we-get-home-if-the-fliers-are-sabotaged problem that morning while Cas had been setting booby traps in the cockpit of her craft. She had ensured nobody would steal her flier, but there were other things that could be done to harm it.
“Judging by Moe’s tendency toward distraction, I don’t know that I’m bolstered by that knowledge,” Tolemek said.
“I know you’re not talking about tendencies toward distraction. I once brought lunch to your lab, made tea, warmed up the food over a burner, and ate my half before you noticed I was there.”
“I was too deep in thought over a perplexing problem to speak. I noticed you were there.”
“Sure, you did,” Cas said. “At the very least, Moe should notice if the fliers are wrapped in toilet paper again, and he can take it down.”
“I’m not positive he would notice toilet paper wrapped around himself.”
Cas snorted and thumped him on the arm. It was a natural action for her, usually, but as soon as she did it this time, she wondered if he would prefer a more feminine acknowledgment of his humor. Except that she didn’t know what that would be. A kiss? Or a coy smile and batting of the eyelashes? Ugh. Anyway, this wasn’t a private spot. He should have stayed in their room last night if he had wanted kisses.
“Did you find out anything about Tylie last night?” she asked, though she guessed he hadn’t. He had not mentioned anything this morning.
“No. And I’m sorry I storme
d out on you,” Tolemek murmured, his voice low. “I shouldn’t have picked a fight.”
She appreciated the apology, but was reluctant to discuss the topic again, not when she hadn’t resolved her feelings on the issue. She opted for a light response. “You call that a fight? There weren’t even any bullets exchanged.”
“Does that often happen when you squabble with lovers?”
“Not lovers, but I tried to shoot my father a couple of times.”
“Does that mean I shouldn’t hold my breath, waiting for an invitation to a family dinner?” Tolemek asked.
“If you were invited, it would probably be a trap, so he could kill you more easily.”
“Yeah.” Tolemek stared down at the logs of their raft, looking so glum that it made her heart ache. She wished she could do something—say something—to improve his mood, but apparently, making jokes wasn’t the answer, not this time.
“My father never…” Cas lowered her voice, wanting the words to be for him alone. “Feelings were never discussed in my family, not after my mother died. You were supposed to be strong and independent, and it was a weakness to confess that you cared, I guess because that represented a vulnerability that could be exploited. My father never said he loved me, and I don’t think I ever said it to him.” Cas shrugged. This wasn’t a point of pain for her, not anymore, and she didn’t want to blame her father for who she was today, but she hoped Tolemek would understand that it might take her some time before she could say such a charged word to him, if ever. She did not want it to be a lie or a half-truth.
Tolemek grasped her hand in one of his and stroked the back of it with his thumb. “You don’t have to explain anything to me, Cas. I just said what I said because I wanted you to know. In case I had given you reason to doubt. That’s all.”
And because he had hoped she felt the same. The fact that she didn’t, or at least was not sure if she did, made her feel miserable, disappointed that there was something wrong with her. She had not known Tolemek for long, but after all the life-or-death situations they had been in, shouldn’t she know?
“Got a log tangle coming down the river at us,” Zirkander said. “Might need help.”
A couple of the porters joined Zirkander at the front, ready to push aside the island-sized snarl of wood, grass, and debris. A few rusty food tins floated along with the snarl. The sides of the cans were too muddy to read, but the garbage might be evidence that the Cofah had gone up this river too.
“Is that one of the missing porters?” Sardelle asked, a strange note in her voice.
“What? Where?” Zirkander looked to either side of the river, to the walls of green choking the waterway.
“In the tangle.” Sardelle pointed.
Cas placed her hand over Tolemek’s for a second, then broke the clasp and stood up. She couldn’t see anything past the three men in the front. Rifle in hand, she climbed atop the gear pile for a better look.
A male body was tangled up with the logs and grass, the brown skin waterlogged, the eyes closed in death. What remained of the clothing was similar to what their own porters were wearing, coarsely spun cotton shirts and trousers held up with ropes. Large flies hovered in the air above the body, but it didn’t show signs of having been chewed on by scavengers. Cas couldn’t tell what had killed the man, not seeing any sign of a bullet wound or other trauma. The mud and grass hid much, though, and only the front side of the corpse lay visible.
As soon as the porters saw the figure, they bowed their heads, muttering in their own language and making that circle over their chests again. When the clump of debris came close to the raft, Zirkander caught it with his pole, but he didn’t angle it off to the side right away.
“Do we want to stop and bury or burn the body?” he asked the porters. “I don’t know what the custom is here.”
“No, no,” the men said, more than one speaking at once. Their other words were indistinguishable, but they rushed forward with their poles, pushing the logs away from the raft.
“Guess that one goes out to sea,” Zirkander said.
Foliage stirred at the edge of the river. A long, reptilian shape slithered off the embankment and undulated through the water toward the log tangle. An alligator. A big one. Its giant maw opened, its fences of pointed teeth silhouetted against the background, then snapped shut around the body. Alligator and man disappeared beneath the surface of the water.
“Or not,” Zirkander amended soberly. “Looks like it’s not healthy to work for the Cofah military.”
Tolemek frowned. “It’s no less healthy than working for the Iskandian military. There’s no reason to kill one’s porters, especially if one has heavy crates to carry back through the jungle. Whatever killed that man, I doubt it was a Cofah bullet.”
“Was that supposed to be comforting?” Zirkander asked.
“Just an observation.”
Sardelle gazed thoughtfully back down the river as the rest of the debris floated away, finally disappearing around a bend. The porters were still looking that way, too, and exchanging long looks with each other. It took the bump of another boulder against the raft before the men returned to their work. Cas went back to her vigil, watching the route ahead and to either side for threats. The body was a reminder that whatever lay ahead was at least as dangerous as whoever had come off that dirigible, if not more so.
* * *
By the time the porters steered the raft into an inlet choked with reeds, Tolemek was more than ready to escape the river. Around noon, they had passed a second body in a similar state as the first, and who knew if they had missed spotting others? Given the way the vegetation choked the waterway, more might have been hidden near the banks.
He had been kneeling for the last half hour and ducking to avoid branches scraping at his hair. The waterway had narrowed as the miles passed, with trees and plants thrusting farther inward and encroaching from above, as well. In the last hour, they had been forced to stop every few minutes to cut away vines and branches so they could continue.
Any relief Tolemek might have felt at the end of their water voyage was dampened by the discovery of a third body, another deceased porter, this one tangled in the reeds of their inlet. As with the others, there weren’t any bullet or sword wounds that would have suggested the cause of death. A number of gashes had been taken out of the flesh—indeed, two big scavenger birds had flown up when the group approached—but he didn’t think they had been what killed the man.
“Duck, want to help me set an alarm with some of those tin cans?” Cas pointed at the muddy shore ahead of them. Branches had been cut or burned back, creating enough room for a small campsite, and litter scattered the area.
“An alarm?” Duck asked.
“I’ve got this hunch that someone may be following us. I want to be warned if that’s the case.”
“I’m more concerned about what’s ahead of us,” Duck grumbled, waving toward the body. Nobody had missed it.
The porters hopped off the raft, hustling to drag it to shore, but they kept glancing at the corpse and making gestures over their chests.
“Help me, anyway,” Cas said, slogging through the knee-deep water and ducking vines. She had shouldered her rifle and gripped one of the machetes the group had picked up along with their supplies.
“Let a person have one month of seniority, and she thinks she can order you around,” Duck grumbled but splashed into the water and followed her.
Tolemek slid off the raft and into the water, as well, not liking that it was too murky to see the bottom. Something brushed past his leg, making him glad for his long trousers and boots, not that either would be much protection if another alligator appeared.
“Let’s get the gear off,” Zirkander said, already removing backpacks from the raft and tossing them to the bank. “Don’t take long, Ahn. I want to see if we can cover a few more miles before night falls.”
Sardelle and the porters helped him unload the gear, but Tolemek wanted a closer look at the b
ody. He withdrew his utility knife and cut into the reeds, trying to free it.
“I don’t think that one wants to come with us, Tee,” Zirkander said.
“It might be conducive to our future health to figure out what’s been killing these people.”
“I find it telling that there aren’t any Cofah soldiers wrapped up in the weeds.”
“You think the Cofah were the ones killing their porters?” Sardelle asked.
“They might not want anyone to survive to blab about their secret.”
Tolemek put away his knife and tried to drag the body toward the bank, but the reeds proved reluctant to give up their prize. Soft clanks came from the brush, Duck and Cas setting their alarms. He pulled harder, worried he wouldn’t have time for as much of an inspection as he might need. Something slid past his leg again.
Duck let out a startled squawk. Everyone spun in his direction, a weapon of one kind or another in hand. Even the porters had bone cudgels and daggers that they brandished. Tolemek couldn’t see Duck from his spot, but he found his own hand on one of the pistols holstered at his waist. Everyone was on edge; they would be lucky if they didn’t shoot each other.
“Leeches out here,” Cas said, a distasteful note in her voice. “Check under your clothes.”
“And in your trousers,” Duck added, his voice far more distressed than hers.
Tolemek frowned down at his leg. He was fairly certain that whatever had brushed past him had been larger than a leech, but he would have to check when he reached shore. He cut at a few more reeds, trying to figure out what had hold of the body.
Something clasped his ankle.
Before Tolemek could react, his leg was yanked toward the center of the river with such force that his other leg flew up, as well. He landed flat on his back, muddy water flying everywhere. He scrabbled for the knife at his waist, but something wrapped around his torso and pulled him under the water. He hit the rocky bottom so hard, he almost lost all of his air—and the knife. Dark water swallowed him, and he couldn’t see a thing. He managed to keep his grip on the blade and grabbed at his chest, finding a rubbery limb—or tentacle?—as large around as his forearm.