Chapter 27
Eleanor lowered herself into the bath and shuffled to try and get comfortable. As the baby grew inside her it was getting harder and harder to find any good places to sit, but the water gave her some support and the warmth soothed her aching muscles. And if there was only one advantage of being a few short weeks from her due date, it was that someone would invariably offer to carry the buckets of water to fill the tub.
Since Daniel had taken Matt to the mainland looking for mistflowers, it was usually one of the new recruits who would offer, but today Lauren had insisted.
“It’s my fault,” she’d said. “If I hadn’t told you about the mistflowers, Daniel wouldn’t have gone off and left you.”
Daniel had put on a good show of feeling bad about the trip, offering to stay right up to the moment he left, but she’d always known he would go. As she scraped the cleansing oils from her skin, Eleanor smiled at the memory. The mistflowers bloomed for such a short season in the early spring, and if he missed it he’d have to wait another whole year to finish his experiments. At least he should be back in time for the birth, to hold her hand and feed her poppy extract again.
She pressed both her hands against her belly and waited for the child to kick. He – or she; she wasn’t going to make that mistake again – was more active than Bella had been, always turning himself around and pushing against her insides.
Lauren came in with a neat stack of clean clothes, placed them carefully on the sideboard behind Eleanor’s head, and bent to pick up the tunic she’d discarded earlier.
“You don’t need to do that,” Eleanor said. “Seriously, I can clear my own laundry.”
“Relax.” Lauren continued to collect up Eleanor’s trousers, underclothes, and clanking weapons belt. “I know bending down is awkward for you at the moment. Anyway, maybe you can return the favour one day.”
Eleanor stared at her. “Is there something you should be telling me?”
“Not yet!” Lauren called out, laughing, as she carried the dirty clothes out of the room.
“You haven’t found your dream man in our little Association, yet, then?”
Lauren came back with a towel draped over her arm, closed the door, and moved up beside Eleanor’s head. “Not exactly,” she said, and as she spoke she dropped the towel and Eleanor saw something glint in her hand.
“Lauren, what–?”
“Be quiet and listen to me,” Lauren said, the jovial tone of a moment earlier now gone from her voice. She pressed the flat of her blade against Eleanor’s windpipe, leaving no doubt of what the edge could do in a heartbeat. “I don’t want to kill you.”
“Is that why you’ve got a knife to my throat?” Eleanor asked, quietly, trying to work out what she could possibly have done to bring this on.
“Fair point.” Lauren took one small step to the side, keeping the knife poised in her hand. “But I’d hate to underestimate you so I think I’ll keep this out, just in case.”
“What’s this about? Are you still frustrated that some people don’t trust you enough?”
“Oh, I think you’ll find you’ve all trusted me far too much,” she said with a bright smile.
Eleanor’s stomach flipped as she realised what she was hearing. This wasn’t like the time she’d drawn her dagger on Mikhail in a burst of emotion. This was something much more serious.
“I lied about my role in the Shadows,” Lauren continued with barely a pause. “I’m one of Ivan’s own special agents.”
“Okay.” Eleanor nodded. “But why tell me this at all? Why haven’t you killed me already, if you’re working for them?”
“You know Ivan, he’s a practical man. He’s always been a pragmatist, and he really believes you’re the same at heart. Why hold a grudge when there’s more advantage to be had by moving on? I’m only to kill you if you turn down our offer.”
“That’s what he told you, is it?”
“He told me you’d admire his artistry in sending me to betray you, just as he admires the way you talked Nicholas into setting a trap for himself. Of course we saw straight through you, but you know that by now.”
“You weren’t even with the Shadows then.”
“No, but I’ve heard all about it. Here, do you want this?” She reached beneath her shirt and pulled out a small silver key.
Eleanor recognised it immediately as the one she’d failed to recover. “You know we don’t need it any more.”
“That’s why you can have it. Ivan said this way you’d know the offer really came from him.”
“Oh, I believe you speak for him, but that’s no reason to trust you. Now run home and tell Ivan that, as much as I admire his style, this war is a long way from being over.”
“Sorry, Eleanor, I can’t let you say no.”
“Let me? I’m giving you chance to walk out of here with your life, which is much more than I should.”
Lauren laughed, though she was careful not to relax her guard for even a moment. “You’re in the bath, Ellie. You’re not even armed.”
“Do you want to risk it? I only have to scream, and you’ll never get out alive.”
“Save yourself. The fact that I’m here surely proves the Association has no secrets left. Come with me before we turn this place inside out.”
Eleanor toyed with the pendant at her neck, wrapping the thin chain around her fingers. “I think we have a few secrets left.”
“And what about Bella? Are you going to condemn her, too?”
“Where is she?” Until that point Eleanor had felt only the cool anticipation of a fight on the horizon, but fear suddenly gripped her as she realised she’d too often left Isabelle in the care of this traitor. She hadn’t seen her daughter since the early morning. “What have you done with her?” she demanded, tension edging her voice.
“She’s perfectly safe. I sent her ahead of us to the Albatross, we’ll see her when we get there.”
Eleanor brought her pendant down in one sharp movement, breaking the chain and slamming the point into Lauren’s knife arm.
“Sorry,” she said as the poison began to work its way into Lauren’s muscles. “I would’ve preferred it if you hadn’t made me do that.”
Lauren tried to raise her dagger, but her arm was already locked. She tried to lunge, staggered, and fell.
“One last chance,” she said, struggling to push herself up to her knees. “Whatever you’ve just done to me, fetch the antidote. If we don’t leave tonight then you’ll be surrounded by dawn. They’re expecting us, and Bella...”
“Sorry, no antidote.”
“How many days do you think you can survive a siege?”
Eleanor ignored her, concentrating instead on heaving herself out of the water. She suddenly had a lot to do.
She dried herself imperfectly, pulled on some clean clothes and ran through the corridors, banging at the doors of lounges and common rooms, calling for the council. By the time she came to the council chamber herself, the room was already half filled with those she’d summoned first. Others followed closely behind her. They muttered to one another, expressions puzzled or curious or simply creased with frowns of irritation at her unexpected interruption of the day.
She slid into an empty chair and pounded her fist on the table to silence the room. Her other fist still gripped the pendant that had saved her life, though the broken chain had slid between her fingers as she ran, dropping to the floor somewhere between Lauren and the council.
“We have a problem,” she said once all eyes had turned on her. She fought to keep her voice as flat and emotionless as she could, but she was struggling to catch her breath and her words came out in uncomfortable bursts. “They know we’re here. We’re surrounded by ships.”
The room erupted with so many shouted questions that Eleanor couldn’t even pick the words apart, and this time it was Ragal who slammed the table to bring the meeting to order.
“Let her talk,” he said. “Everything you know, Eleanor, and quickly.??
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“Lauren betrayed us to the Shadows.”
A couple of mouths opened again, but a quick glance from Ragal kept them silent.
“She said that the navy has us surrounded,” Eleanor went on, her breathing beginning to steady. “Though I haven’t looked out to confirm it. I don’t think they’d be stupid enough to attack the island but they won’t let us out, or supplies in. And one of those ships has my daughter.”
“We can wait out a siege,” Dek said, forcing a cheerful note to his voice that contrasted sharply with the uniformly grave faces of the others. “They’ll get bored soon enough.”
“With fresh supply lines, they can wait forever,” Don said. “We can’t.”
Ragal turned to Nathaniel. “How long will our stores last?”
“Around six months if you don’t mind living off bread and porridge.”
“We can still fish,” Albert said. “We’ll drop lines inside the harbour. The catch won’t be quite up to the usual standards, but we’ll get something.”
“You can help Nathaniel with rationing, then,” Ragal said.
Don got to his feet. “If food isn’t an immediate concern, we should turn our thoughts to action. I’m going to see exactly what they’ve got out there.”
Eleanor was about to follow as he strode from the room, but Ragal called her back. “Eleanor, stay. Tell us exactly what happened. Where is Lauren now?”
“Her body’s in my rooms, I was in the bath when she–”
“How can we question her body?” David interrupted.
“I know, I know. She picked her time carefully,” Eleanor said. “I was almost unarmed, so I used the only poison I had to hand.”
“Why did she bother to tell you she’d betrayed us, anyway?” Bill asked.
“She wanted me to come with her. Apparently the Shadows still thought they might win me over.” Eleanor couldn’t help laughing at the absurdity of it, but no-one else looked amused. “I suppose she thought threatening Bella would be enough to make me play along, but she just made me angry.”
They were interrupted by Don’s return, with news of the few ships he could see and warnings about the likelihood of others waiting beyond their sightlines.
“We need to send someone to the mainland,” he said. “Who’s our strongest swimmer?”
“Probably Lukal,” Bill said, and no-one could think of a better name to offer.
“With a breathing tube, a man might be lucky enough to sneak between the ships, and once he makes Woolport he can send the word out. We don’t want anyone falling into this without warning.”
“The others should stay away,” Laban said. “At least for now. Tell them to stick to the rebel districts.”
“For now,” Don agreed. “But they should plan to be nearby, and look for chances to break the siege.”
“Someone needs to build a trebuchet,” Dek said.
“What makes you think we have enough wood for that?” Nathaniel asked.
“Not a trebuchet, then. Some other way of throwing fireballs at these pesky ships.”
“Is that everything for now?” Ragal said. “We can all spend a little time thinking about ways to scuttle their ships, and we’ll meet again tomorrow.”
“I’ll need some help to get Bella back,” Eleanor said. “I’m not exactly in top form.”
Everyone stared at her for a long, silent moment. It was Don who eventually spoke: “Are you seriously asking us to risk good men to go and rescue a baby?”
“We’re always risking good men,” Eleanor said. “That’s just life.”
“You’re suggesting suicide, though. Those are navy ships – armed and full of soldiers.”
“And we need everyone we’ve got to defend ourselves,” Albert added.
“Lauren mentioned one called the Albatross,” Eleanor persisted. “So it’s not like we have to search every ship.”
“We should vote,” Ragal said. “If you believe we should move to retrieve the child, raise your right hand.”
Eleanor thrust her arm into the air, but no-one joined her. Even Laban kept his hands folded neatly in his lap. It wouldn’t have made any difference to the outcome, but she would have liked someone to be on her side.
“Daniel would vote with me,” she said quietly. “If he was here.”
The meeting broke up and Eleanor walked briskly back to her rooms, ignoring Laban’s attempt to catch her eye. She didn’t really want him to tell her that he’d been right all along: that now she had a child, she cared too much for her own good. His words rang in her ears quite well enough without needing to hear him repeat them.
Her mouth set in a determined line. So what if she was over-reacting? Bella was in trouble, and no-one else was going to deal with it, so she’d just have to do it herself.
She wrote a short message, wrapped it in a sealskin pouch, and went to ask Lukal to deliver it as soon as he reached the shore. Once he’d gone, she started to gather other young recruits together in a small, out-of-the way chamber. Tal and Gaven and Simeon and Kit from the year before; Daryl and Billy and Bren who were still wet behind the ears and full of boyish enthusiasm. They were all she could find of those she’d recruited in person.
“Is this about the siege?” Tal asked once they were all seated.
A few of the others looked at him in surprise, but it was Simeon who asked, “What?”
“If you haven’t heard the rumours, it’ll reach you soon enough,” Eleanor said. “The navy have got us surrounded. It’s nothing to worry about, yet, we’ll just be cooped up for a bit while we work out what to do. But that’s only half of why I brought you here.”
They watched her expectantly.
“The council doesn’t approve this,” she said. “So I won’t try to make you, but I’m asking for your help. They’ve taken my daughter.”
No-one interrupted her as she explained, to the best of her knowledge, what had happened and where Isabelle was now. She told them about the note she was sending to Violet, and her plan to approach the Albatross herself.
“So you see, I just need some backup in case things go wrong,” she concluded. The lads nodded. “Thanks. I hope we’ll be ready to go before daybreak.”
“I wish you’d been right,” she said to Gaven as they walked to the dining hall. “If she’d been a boy, she might be safely in Venncastle right now.”
Nathaniel and Albert had wasted no time on setting up a system of rations, and dinner that night was a rather subdued affair, though they all knew it would get much worse once the fresh meat and vegetables ran out. Eleanor picked at hers but she wasn’t hungry and she ended up passing her plate to Simeon, food almost untouched. She excused herself, whispering to her co-conspirators that they should get some sleep and she’d come for them once she was ready to go.
Back in her rooms, she sat on the floor beside Lauren’s body and studied her, as if by staring at the corpse she could understand how she’d managed to lose her judgement so entirely. That Ivan had known her better than she knew herself, well enough to orchestrate such a scheme, was just salt in the wound.
Eventually she forced herself to get into bed and close her eyes. Sleep seemed unlikely, but moving her swollen figure around was exhausting at the best of times and she needed to get whatever rest she could before Violet arrived.
She must have slept, though, because she woke with a jolt when Daryl came to tell her that Violet was waiting in the next room.
“Thanks.” She rolled into a sitting position and pulled on her boots. “Could you go and wake the others? Gather them all by the boats, okay?”
He nodded and was gone, leaving her to hobble alone through to where Violet was inspecting Lauren’s corpse.
“Interesting times,” Violet said, standing to greet her. After swimming from the mainland she was soaked to the skin, but somehow she managed to look composed despite her dripping clothes. “You sent for me, cap?”
“I need your help,” Eleanor said. “I have to attack a ship.”
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“One of those big navy beasts?”
“Something like that,” Eleanor agreed. “They’ve taken Bella onto a ship called the Albatross. I need your help to get her back.”
“How many men have you got?”
Eleanor smiled ruefully. “Ah, that’s where it gets tricky. The council aren’t really interested in rescuing a toddler, so I’ve just got half a dozen kids who’ve agreed to pitch in. We’re not going to win this by the numbers.”
“I know that look,” Violet said. “You’ve got a plan. Let’s hear it.”
“The traitor,” Eleanor pointed at Lauren, “thought she could persuade me to go with her. The Albatross is expecting two of us to arrive before dawn. Now, you don’t look much like her, but you’ll be rowing with your back to them.”
She picked up Lauren’s cloak and draped it around Violet’s shoulders. She loosened Violet’s tight bun and re-fastened her hair into a low ponytail that matched Lauren’s usual style.
“You’ve the right sort of colouring, the right sort of build, and it’ll be dark. I, on the other hand, will be facing them from the back of the boat – and there can’t be that many pregnant redheads on this island.”
“They’ll drop ladders for us,” Violet said. “I like it. We’ll be on deck before they notice I’m not her.”
“In my dream world, they won’t notice at all,” Eleanor said. “She must have been there this morning to take Bella, but now it’s night, and a different crew should be on shift. If we’re lucky, they’ll assume you are Lauren and show us through to our cabins.”
“What about the others?”
“They’re our emergency plan,” Eleanor said. “If everything goes well, we’ll pretend to go to bed and then sneak back to our boat when no-one’s looking, quiet as anything. But if we have to fight, we might need a few extra hands.”
They made their way to the sheltered harbour where the Association’s boats were moored, safely out of sight of the surrounding forces. The youths Eleanor had called on were sitting on the quayside, waiting. Eleanor considered the options and then settled herself on the stern bench of a little black row-boat.
“Why this one?” Violet asked. “She’s not the nicest here.”
“I’m trying to think like she would,” Eleanor said. “If she took the best, someone might think there was something to notice. This one’s inconspicuous.”
Violet stepped past Eleanor, seated herself in the middle bench, and slid the oars into the rowlocks. Eleanor turned to loose the mooring line.
“I hope we won’t need you,” she said to the boys as she pushed the boat away from the quay. “So I hope we’ll see you right back here.”
Violet pulled on the oars and the boat slid through the water towards the mouth of the harbour and out into the pre-dawn light. She swung the boat left around the island, towards the huge hulk of the Albatross, and Eleanor squinted to try and spot the ship’s lookouts. It had taken longer than she would have liked for them to get going, but she hoped it was still dark enough to disguise their approach.
As they neared the Albatross a young man noticed them. Eleanor waved at him, but he didn’t lower his crossbow.
“Turn around and give them some kind of hand signal,” she said to Violet. “But turn back quickly so they can’t see you’re not Lauren.”
Violet twisted to look over her shoulder, raised her hand to acknowledge the youth, and was hunched back over her oars within a few heartbeats. “How’s it look?” she asked.
“They’re not shooting us,” Eleanor said. “That’s a good sign.”
Violet continued rowing until their little boat bounced against the hull of the Albatross and the youth threw down a mooring line. Once Violet had secured them he dropped a couple more ropes, and Eleanor saw the winch above their heads.
“He’s not going to try and pull us all up, is he?” she asked Violet, who laughed and shook her head as she tied a complicated self-tightening knot around one of the rowlocks.
“Nah, he’ll throw us a ladder once we’re ready. Here, you could help – tie this one to the stern bar there.”
Eleanor took the line and looped it around the bar. It had been quite some time since she’d needed to know sailing knots, but she thought she probably remembered enough. Then the youth lowered a rope ladder from the deck and she started to pull herself up, cursing as the ladder swung and she knocked her knees against the hull. Eventually she managed to get her hands onto the gunwale, and the youth finally dropped his crossbow to give her a hand with the last section of the climb.
“I think you’re expecting us,” Eleanor said.
The youth nodded. “Yeah, you’re headed to Almont, aren’t you?”
“Is the Albatross sailing all the way up the coast?” Eleanor asked. She wouldn’t mind a lift to the city, but it would be a long time to hold the pretence.
“No, we’ve a job to do here,” he said, motioning back towards the Stacks. “We’ve just to get you both back to the mainland.”
“We have a carriage arranged from Woolport,” Violet said, in a voice that sounded nothing like her own. Eleanor started; she hadn’t even heard her come up the ladder.
“Great,” Eleanor said. “Then we just need to get Bella. Where is she?”
The youth started to wind the winch, slowly lifting the little boat. Water poured from the hull at first, slowing to a steady drip as it rose towards their level.
“Lauren can show you to your cabin,” he said. “And you can both rest a while. It’s the morning watch who’ll see you safe to Woolport.”
“Yes, come on,” Violet said, striding across to where a covered trapdoor led down below decks. “Follow me.”
Eleanor followed, and it was only when they’d both descended the steep metal ladder that she said, “But you don’t really know where we’re going.”
“I know all these ships are built the same,” Violet said, back to her own voice again though she spoke in an uncharacteristic whisper. “This here’s all the officer sleeping quarters – how long can it take to find a baby?”
They walked across the ship, from one end of the corridor to the other, but there was no familiar gurgling or crying from behind any of the cabin doors.
“What now?” Eleanor asked. “Is there anywhere else?”
“It must be one of these. The kid said we had a cabin, and it’s all open bunks to the stern.” She glanced both ways again, and then rapped her knuckles against the nearest door.
Eleanor started to ask what in all the Empire she thought she was doing, but she closed her mouth as soon as the door opened.
“Excuse me,” Violet said to the bleary-eyed woman who answered. “I’m ever so sorry, I seem to have lost my way. I never can tell the back from the front of one of these boats. I was here earlier with a baby, they showed me to a spare cabin but–”
“Must be that one.” The sailor pointed across the way, yawned, and closed the door. Violet turned to Eleanor with a smug grin, and pushed her way into the cabin.
It was immediately obvious why Isabelle hadn’t been crying. She was in a deep, motionless sleep, strapped into a bunk to keep her from falling as the ship pitched and yawed.
“Sedated,” Eleanor said, putting her hand to the child’s cheek. Her skin was cold and clammy. “Lauren was probably going to shock her awake, but I don’t have the right potion. We’ll just have to carry her as she is. If anyone asks, you thought it’d be safer to keep her sleeping until we reach land.”
“Are we leaving now?”
“No.” Eleanor loosed the straps holding Isabelle down, and crawled onto the bunk beside the unnaturally still body. “We’ll do as the lad suggested and get some rest. If they’re going to take us to the mainland, we might be able to do this without giving ourselves away.”
“But sleep with one hand on your knife,” Violet said. “For when they realise I’m not her.”
“I always do.”
Violet climbed up onto the cabin’s second bunk, and they
laid for a while in silence. Eleanor pulled a blanket over Isabelle and hugged her tight, but she couldn’t warm the child. She drifted into an uneasy sleep, waking with a start every time a board creaked on the deck above her head, until eventually a knock came at the door.
Eleanor rolled into a sitting position and sheltered Isabelle behind her, while Violet dropped from the top bunk with an immediacy that suggested she hadn’t slept a wink.
“You ready?” a male voice called from beyond the door. “I’m to row you to shore.”
“Almost,” Eleanor called back.
“Well, come up on deck, I’ll be getting the boat ready.”
They listened as his footsteps receded.
“Are we ready, cap?” Violet asked.
Eleanor scooped Bella into her arms and turned to the door. “I think so.”
“Okay. Time to pretend to be a landlubber again.”
Back on deck, they found an ageing, weather-beaten sailor hauling a boat across the boards to the winch.
“Need a bigger craft than that little wreck you came in, if we’re to get you comfortably to shore,” he explained when he saw them watching. “You must be Eleanor, and Lauren, is it?”
“That’s right.”
He stared at Violet. “You’ve seen the sea yourself,” he said.
Eleanor saw Violet’s muscles tense, and hoped the reaction wouldn’t be so apparent to the sailor’s untrained eye. She willed Violet to bluff it out.
“We trained everywhere,” Violet said, putting on her best Lauren voice again. “In my line of work, you can’t afford to have limits.”
Eleanor had to bite her lip to stop herself from grinning as the sailor nodded and turned back to the winch.
Once the boat was safely lowered, and a rope ladder snaked down after it, the sailor called across to a young woman – looking barely old enough to have left school – who was to help him row them to shore.
“We can do our share,” Eleanor offered, but he was having none of it, and the four of them took it in turn to clamber down into the boat.
Eleanor settled herself uncomfortably in the bow with Isabelle resting between her knees, Violet sat cross-legged at the stern, and the two sailors shared the middle bench, each with a single heavy oar. They loosed the winch lines and the girl used the end of her oar to push the boat away from the Albatross.
“You don’t look how I imagined you,” the girl said to Violet as they moved out from beneath the ship’s shadow. “Mikey said you was hot, but I don’t see it.”
Violet shrugged. “Maybe you and Mikey have different taste in women.”
“He said you was hot even with the scars,” the girl continued without pause. “But you don’t have scars. And you look older than he said.”
“What are you saying?” the older sailor asked.
The girl waved at Violet. “Are you sure this is the right woman?”
Eleanor caught Violet’s eye as she got to her feet, leaving Isabelle propped against the side. She balanced herself along the line of the keel and crept forward inch by inch, glad she’d practised keeping her balance so that even with her swollen belly she could move without rocking the boat. She pulled the garrotte wire from her belt and looped it over the head of the old sailor just as Violet launched herself forward and thrust her knife into the chest of the girl beside him. Eleanor pulled and tightened the wire, holding it just long enough to be sure he was dead.
“We won’t risk turning,” she said, pushing the bodies out of the way so she could move onto the middle bench. “We’d have to go within reach of their crossbows to get back to the island, so we’ll keep on towards Woolport and just hope no-one saw that.”
She reached out to where her oar was now floating beside the boat. Violet sat beside her, took up her own oar, and slid it into the rowlock. It took them a few awkward moments to get into a regular rhythm, but soon the boat was gliding towards the shore again.
“Well, we knew it couldn’t last,” Violet said. “I’m not that much like Lauren.”
“I almost believed it’d last until Woolport,” Eleanor said.
“It almost did.”
They rowed in silence for a while, listening to the waves lap against the boat and the regular splash of the oars. In the distance, there were faint sounds of the town waking up: market traders calling out to advertise their wares, carts trundling to and from the docks, and shipwrights hurrying to effect repairs.
“I’ll take you back to mine,” Violet said. “You can stay until this nonsense dies down.”
“I’m not sure it’s going to,” Eleanor said. “But I’ll stay until the baby comes, at least. I’m no use to anyone until then.”
“I’m not sure about that.” Violet glanced down at the bodies by their feet.
“Is there somewhere we can moor up out of sight?” Eleanor asked. “Dead bodies tend to attract attention, even when there’s a war going on.”
“Nothing convenient.” Violet stopped rowing for a moment, leaned forwards, and pulled a thick tarpaulin from beneath the stern bench. She arranged it over the bodies. “How’s that? We should be able to get home before anyone pokes around in here.”
Eleanor nodded her approval, and they covered the remaining distance at a steady pace. Violet steered them into a space between a small fishing trawler and a trader’s ketch, and went ashore with a rope. Eleanor turned and lifted Isabelle from the bow, and was about to step out of the boat when she saw the six soldiers marching towards them. They were in regular army uniforms and marched in two columns of three. The townsfolk milling around the harbour moved swiftly out of their way without needing to be told.
“Eleanor,” said the one with a star on his jacket, nodding in her direction. “Lauren. We’ve a carriage waiting for you.”
Violet was bent over the mooring post and Eleanor tried to signal that she should stay as she was, with her back to the soldiers. Violet adjusted the rope with her right hand, and pulled her dagger from its sheath with her left.
“Are you all escorting us to Almont?” Eleanor asked. “That’s a lot of manpower that could be out squashing pockets of revolution.”
“Special favour for a friend,” the soldier said, glancing towards the back of Violet’s head. “Lauren always gets what she wants.”
“I’m sure she does.” Eleanor shifted Isabelle’s weight onto her left hip, and extended her right hand. “Can you help me up?”
He reached out to take her hand and she gripped his wrist, ducked suddenly, and pulled him down into the boat where she could drop Isabelle safely out of harm’s way before knifing him between the ribs.
One down, five to go.
As Eleanor jumped out onto the quay, daggers in both hands, Violet turned and slashed at the nearest soldier. From the corner of her eye, Eleanor could see people turning deliberately back to their business. Woolport didn’t see many skirmishes, even now – and regardless of which side won, no-one wanted to be noticed watching.
The soldiers were young and poorly trained, at least by Association standards, but they had the advantage of numbers and Eleanor found herself facing three of them almost as soon as she set foot on solid ground. She turned side-on to keep the bump out of the way of her arm as she blocked blow after blow from their identical short swords, while with her right she fumbled at her belt for throwing stars. The only way to get the distance she needed was to step back onto the boat, balancing between the accumulated bodies. She took a deep breath, felt the boat rocking beneath her and, once she knew its rhythm, timed her throws so each one would slice the neck of an approaching soldier. Not one of them knew how to block such an attack, and they tumbled where they stood.
She turned to where Violet, down on one knee, was struggling to fend off the two remaining soldiers. Eleanor thrust her dagger into the side of the nearest man as his sword came down. He crumpled and fell, but his blow still connected with Violet’s shoulder and she fell backwards with an involuntary cry of pain. Eleanor turned and swiftly dispatc
hed the final soldier with a slicing cut beneath his jaw, then bent to help Violet to her feet.
Violet groaned as she tested her weight on one shredded leg, and leaned unsteadily against the nearest wall. “Where’s Bella?” she asked.
“In the boat. Can you hold yourself up while I fetch her?”
Violet nodded. Eleanor left her for a moment and went back to the boat, where Isabelle was slumped on the tarpaulin. There was blood smeared across the tiny forehead, but when Eleanor wiped at it with her sleeve it came away without revealing a wound. She was still breathing slowly, and didn’t move when Eleanor picked her up.
Violet leaned on Eleanor’s shoulder and limped, cursing under her breath, as they made their way past dozens of people who tried to avoid looking at them. Woolport was, above all, a trading town, and the traders would stay out of the war for as long as they could escape it. If someone came to ask about the missing unit of soldiers, no-one wanted to have seen anything.
Violet and Sally’s attic room was above a silk trader’s workshop. Eleanor had met the man a couple of times before: he was sympathetic to the rebels, but a couple of spare rooms was the extent of his contribution to their cause. She struggled to avoid getting blood on anything as she squeezed between the dye baths and the rolls of raw cloth.
“What happened?” Sally appeared at the bottom of the stairs, staring at them. “By the flaming lady, Violet, what happened to you?”
Violet managed a weak smile. “Made the mistake of coming ashore,” she said.
“Do you have woundwort?” Eleanor asked. “And we’ll need clean water, and bandages.”
Sally nodded, her face pale as she led them up the steep stairs into the attic.
Eleanor helped Violet into bed and laid Isabelle down beside her. She stripped Violet’s blood-stained clothes away, and Sally returned with a bowl of warm water and a cloth to clean the wounds. The cut to Violet’s shoulder was deep, and it felt like a chip had come out of the bone. Eleanor fought to stem the flow of blood with compresses and bandages, but every layer was soaked red almost as soon as she applied it.
Sally sat in silence and watched as Eleanor worked, occasionally passing a clean cloth or more bandages without needing to be asked. Violet herself let out an occasional curse, but was otherwise still. Aside from a few minor scratches, the other main damage was to her leg, where one of the soldiers looked to have caught her repeatedly with shallow, ragged slashes that had torn through the flesh.
It was after she’d patched up Violet’s leg, and was about to turn her attention to waking Isabelle, that Eleanor felt an unexpected contraction in her belly, and wetness dribbling down the inside of her leg.
“Not now,” she mumbled, then gasped as a second contraction hit her. “Not now, it’s too soon.”
“Baby?” Sally asked.
“It’s too soon,” Eleanor repeated. “Should be a month away, at least.”
But she didn’t have to wait a month. Aided only by the tiny quantity of poppy extract that Sally happened to have in her medicine pouch, she was holding her new baby boy before the sun even reached its zenith. Isabelle came round while she was nursing him for the first time, and bawled until Sally carried her across to Eleanor’s side.
Eleanor looked down at where her new son was nestled in the crook of her arm. The tiny size of him terrified her; he was maybe half the weight Isabelle had been at her birth, and looked ridiculously fragile. Isabelle prodded him with one curious finger.
“Bella, this is your new brother Martin,” Eleanor said, moving the girl’s hand aside. “You have to be nice to him.”