9. NINE #2
The “shipwatch” would be Zeb, who had stayed to make their trap less obvious—no vessel would ever drop anchor without at least one shipwatch aboard.
A splash assured her that he had made his planned getaway over the rail.
A skiff waited for him, tied along the cove, to be rowed back for their rescue…
so long as things went smoothly and Mitek actually stuck to his part.
She never thought she’d feel so relieved to hear that idiot deckhand’s stupid voice; it meant she might be able to get out of these ropes and find out what snacks the Blue Wing ship stocked in their galley.
“They were imprisoning her below deck. Hurry. She must be so frightened!”
She had to hand it to Mitek; he wasn’t a horrendous actor.
Convincing a genuine Blue Wing captain to rescue his sister from a band of ransoming raiders was worth recognition, even if he had fought her through every second of practicing the cover story Captain Keane had given them.
She was sure the potential reward for rescuing a Skywalk child helped.
The footsteps made their way down the ladder from the hatch.
Fankalo counted five, ten, thirteen men descending to the mess deck.
Her nervousness tripled. They carried weapons: cosalts—the barb-tipped lances most often carried by militiamen—and tanka launchers mostly, but there was even a dowagist. A full squadron?
She should have guessed as much. A Blue Wing ship needed at least as many crew to man it, even for a rescue mission just around the peninsula.
Mitek hopped down the last several rungs, looking more an idiot than ever in his embroidered blouse and enamel boots—the perfect spoiled child.
“Quick! Before the shipwatch brings them back!” he pleaded.
A sailor in the Blue Wing’s cerulean uniform knelt before her. He removed the gag and began at the knot on her bindings. “It’s going to be alright. We’re going to bring you home.”
When the false bindings fell free, she threw her arms around him. “Thank you,” she whimpered.
The man had kind eyes and a broad chin, the kind with a little dent in it. He looked so concerned she nearly felt bad. Did her Luck lead her towards all-around good, or just the best option for her? She hadn’t considered it before.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” she replied, trying to seem shaken, realizing she genuinely was shaken, and mentally going over the next layers of the plan.
The rest had been her father’s idea. He’d made it sound brilliantly simple back on the dock.
But now her limbs didn’t seem to work in a way that had nothing to do with the ropes pooling around her like shed skin.
“Sister!” Mitek screamed dramatically. Fankalo nearly rolled her eyes. He barreled into her, smothering her with a hug so unexpected it shocked her from her stupor. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Which neighborhood are you from?” Dent-Chin asked. “My cousin lives in Gembolta’s Skywalk. She’ll help us get you to your parents.”
She hadn’t expected her “rescuers” to know the literal neighborhoods of the Skywalk. Her inner disquiet became a storm. Mitek had wanted to “wing it”. Mitek hadn’t wanted to spend an extra moment in her presence to plan if he didn’t have to.
“Dorune,” she blurted out—the Kaidechi street with the prettiest houses—in the same instant that Mitek said “Ketowa.” A scene played out in her mind where she punched the deckhand right in the nose.
The sailor’s brow cinched.
“They didn’t abduct us from Seraphinden,” she said quickly. “They took us from Kaidech.”
“All that way?”
Keeping a stern face had never been more difficult.
“It won’t be long before nightfall. The raiders’ll return soon,” Mitek interrupted. At least he was able to keep his senses after saying something stupid. Unlike her, chest in a squirming knot. She took his arm. Perhaps she could salvage this.
“Bring them up!” the officer barked at his crew. “Quickly now. And burn this vessel.”
Fankalo’s stomach turned once again. The plan had definitely not accounted for that.
Several of the soldiers jumped to action, removing small casks from their packs and pouring their contents along the floor. The sharp, woody scent was unmistakable: turpentine.
Another man in uniform, long-limbed and with a nose that stuck out like a hawk’s, ushered Fankalo and Mitek up the ladder to the main deck.
When they surfaced into the world of sun and wind, Mitek’s eyes caught hers, and she could see that his misgivings finally mirrored her own.
Zeb was supposed to meet them on the far side, but he couldn’t have swum all the way to the cove yet.
The Blue Wing vessel sat at anchor alongside the Respite, its masts shooting at least a story taller.
If these sailors started a fire, she and Mitek would be trapped with them.
A wave of heat belched from the hatch.
“Hold on,” said Hawk-Nose, rounding on Dent-Chin as the full Blue Wing crew surfaced from below. “Did she say they were from Kaidech?”
Fankalo bit at her lower lip in earnest plea, but the man’s expression soured.
“Kaidech is under quarantine. Wiped clean by the Strikapa.”
The words igniting a burning disbelief. Her skin prickled. Strikapa?
The blaze took hold below, and the sailors ushered her and Mitek away from the lattice dividing them from the mess deck.
Strikapa? “What do you mean, Strikapa?”
Her question was carried away with the wind, lost to the cove, but her fury swept through her: building, blistering, devouring.
Wood scraped wood as the gangplank between the two ships suddenly retracted. Just meters away, the sails of the Blue Wing vessel unfurled. The anchor was raised.
Dent-Chin ran to the rail and nearly tumbled over the side. “What the—”
A uniformed man, presumably their shipwatch, thrashed in the water beneath them. “We’re breached!” he screamed.
With increasing velocity, the Blue Wing vessel moved north, taking Fankalo’s heart with it. Surely their crew hadn’t seen the haze starting to rise from the hold? Surely she and Mitek were worth more than a pretty new ship?
The main deck of the smoking Respite erupted into madness, officers shouting and cursing as their vessel sailed away.
At risk of being stranded on the burning Rogue’s Respite, the Blue Wing company jumped overboard to swim for the cove, except for Dent-Chin and Hawk-Nose, who seemed to be in charge of her rescue.
Hawknose gripped Fankalo’s arm with a hand like talons. “The boy said they were abducted two ten-days ago.” He thrust a thumb at Mitek, who stood with his mouth agape, all confidence evaporated. “Kaidech’s Strikapa outbreak was a full moon ago.”
Dent-Chin seized Mitek by his hair. “What neighborhood?” he demanded. Mitek’s face went white as a sail. “What neighborhood?” He obviously didn’t recall the name she’d given them on impulse. “Kretch!” the officer moaned. “They’re in on it!”
“I say we hang them up on Gembolta’s tide walls to lure those fucking raiders in as bait.”
The ship was burning. Burning. And no sign of Zeb yet; they’d expected to have more time. Fankalo swallowed. She had been too ashamed to tell her father she’d never learned to swim.
Dent-Chin wrestled Mitek into a headlock. The boy beat at him uselessly.
“I say we tie them up and throw them below deck to burn.”
She couldn’t move. Why couldn’t she move?
“Just this one—” Dent-Chin cocked his head at Mitek. “We need one to ransom the ship back.”
Mitek’s foot collided with Dent-Chin’s groin. Like a trick of the light, a dagger slid into his hand.
The invisible bindings around Fankalo’s limbs snapped.
If that idiot, coward deckhand could defend himself, she certainly could.
She wrenched free using a swivel Zeb had taught her.
Fingers swiped at the back of her kaftan as she bolted away, but judging her the lesser threat, Hawk-Nose rushed to his comrade’s aid.
Fankalo made for a storage crate beside the center mast. Her father had hidden a tanka for Mitek on both the mess deck and main, should things fall awry—and awry they had plummeted.
She threw the lid, latched the too-loose weapon to her forearm, and tried not to think about how hot the boards beneath her feet had become.
When she turned, the men had pinned Mitek by his arms and legs.
He writhed until Dent-Chin had the dagger at his neck.
Fankalo crouched, breathed deeply, and aimed. The now familiar state of focus that guided her Luck fell into place. She looked at the uniformed man and moved the circular guide over his head.
No. Maybe a shot to the foot? Just enough to scare him away. Her Luck steadied her arm as she pulled the tanka’s lever.
Dent-Chin screamed and crumpled. Hawk-Nose released Mitek, hands shooting into the air.
He cursed and scrambled away from the range of fire.
Then he too leapt overboard. Fankalo didn’t shoot again; she waited, forearm raised, to ensure the remaining officer wouldn’t do any more harm to her idiot.
The man’s head swiveled. When his eyes found her he glared, but crawled for the rail, leaving a bloody trail on the deck behind him, and rolled himself over it.
She and Mitek were alone on the burning ship. She ran to him.
“Ay!” he screamed over the building roar. “You might have hit me! I would have had them all on my own.”
“Is it so difficult to say thank you?” she shot back, looking for the knot on his bindings.
“There’s another knife in my boot, brat!”
How many did he keep on him, anyhow? She found the sheath and pulled out the tiny blade.
After twenty seconds of sawing with the useless thing, she realized how futile the motion was.
Back to the first plan. Cam had taught her to untie this sort of knot.
She worked at it with her fingers and teeth until it broke free.
Mitek scrambled away. “C’mon.” He had moved to the rail and leapt over it before she could think to respond. A splash sounded below, followed by the sloshing of the boy’s strokes.