Oh, she definitely knows. Her eyes twinkle with mischief.
“And you would let me go?” She is Larus’s niece, but she has no loyalty to me. She could use me just as much as anyone else could. She could turn around and take us right back to Adria for a ransom if she wanted.
She shifts and turns the wheel with a hand so practiced, she barely looks where she’s going. “You are not my prisoner. If you wish to walk onto a battlefield with nothing but leather and that knife in your pocket, you are welcome to do so.”
She has a point. Though we wear our leathers for civilian life, the Nithyrian troops wear chainmail in wartime much like their Selaran counterparts, and they’re armed with longswords, bows, shields, spears, and daggers, not simple throwing knives. I’m not likely to make it long out there on my own. Even less if they realize who I am.
I don’t see what choice I have. I’m not wind-born, so it’s not like I can make theUmbrago any faster. And passing through the Nithyrian forces on land is more likely to end me up back in my sister’s camp than anywhere else. “What is there to do all day while we wait for nightfall?”
“Sleep. Keep watch. Share in each other’s company.” The way she says the last one, I wonder what kind of “sharing” they do,exactly. I think she wants me to ask, but thinking about the crew fumbling about together in the dark below deck makes me think of Ronan, and I ache from missing him. I hate being far enough away from him that I can’t feel him. I can’t imagine what it must be like for him to be so far from me that he can’t feel me, considering he does so almost all the time.
“Perhaps I’ll sleep now,” I say, gesturing down to the bunks where Larus is snoring lightly. “Since there aren’t enough beds for us all. We can take the watch at dawn.”
“Very well,” she says, but as I turn to go, she grabs my arm. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
I listen into the darkness, but I hear nothing but the gentle lapping of the wake against theUmbra, the slight creak of her bow, Larus’s snores, and the occasional gasping breath. The faint call of a curlew in the distance. The brush of wind through the reeds.
And a low, rhythmic whistle unlike any bird I know.
“A whistle?” I whisper to her. I don’t recognize it as any signal of the Nithyrian legions, but I’m not sure I’d know if it was.
Silently, with almost impossible grace, Octavia draws her sword in the narrow wheelhouse.
Fuck. Did she change her mind? Was she lying to me before, waiting for her opportunity to strike? I stumble backwards, fumbling in my pocket for the knife, but I know it’s no good. What use is a knife in a sword fight?
“You’ll need to be faster than that,” she says. “Larus told me you can fight.”
I can, but with my sword. With my shadows, when I’m with Ronan. Not like this. My only advantage is the close quarters—Octavia can barely move in here without running her sword into something.
But still, I’ll only get one chance before she runs me through. A good feint might save me, but if I misjudge it, I’m dead before I’ve taken a single step.
“I’m not going to fight you,” I say. It’s my only real choice. “Take me back to Adria if you must. I’ll go willingly.”
“What? What are you—you think I’m trying to fight you right now?” She laughs at me under her breath. “God, you’re just a girl, aren’t you? Just a young girl. Go wake Larus, darling. We’re under attack.”
Chapter Three
Larus jolts awake, his hand grasping for a sword that isn’t on him. He fumbles in the dark for his belt and sheath for a moment until I place it in his hand.
I head to the back of the bunkroom and choose a Selaran longsword and Nithyrian dagger from almost a dozen options on the weapon rack.
“How many?” Larus asks as we crowd behind Octavia, who’s looking through a slit in the door’s curtain.
She pauses, listening to the footsteps on the planks of the deck. “Two on board. The twins got their shadow-born, so they’re blind until they light it up.” She must suspect that the remaining attackers are fire-born.
“You think they’ll risk burning the boat?” I ask.
“Once they have you, it won’t matter.”
My stomach sinks. Of course they’re after me. “They’re Adria’s?”
“Nithyrian, certainly. Listen to that clink—it’s the sound of the straps that hold your leather.”
“How did they find us?”
“It’s a river, girl. There weren’t many places to look. The real question is how they caught us, and how they managed to do it without the twins seeing them coming.” She reaches for the handle of the wheelhouse door but stops when she hears more steps.
“That’s more than two,” mutters Larus. “I can feel their steel. I can disarm one no problem, but you’ve got at least three others to deal with.”
